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WARNING. You have pressed Lurker's anime hot button. Please step back if you wish to avoid nostalgia.

I was ten years old, in the winter of 1980, when I first encountered Star Blazers.

Up until then, the best thing I'd ever seen on TV -- animated or live action -- was the Tarzan cartoon of the seventies (the one whose writers had actually read all the books). I'd seen Battle of the Planets, sure, but let's face it, Sandy Frank ripped the guts out of Gatchaman and showed us its corpse preserved in formaldehyde. I had no idea what "anime" was.

We were in a cross country trip, moving from Colorado to California, and had stopped to spend the night in a family friend's house in LA. I didn't know the friend all that well, so while he and my parents talked politics I had nothing to do but channelsurf looking for something kid-friendly.

And there it was.

The Comet Empire had just crushed Earth's space fleet and destroyed the Moon to make their point. The government had surrendered. Only the Argo remained to face the foe, and Derek Wildstar had just rammed it into Desslok's cruiser, and was proceeding, badly wounded and poorly bandaged, into the enemy ship to finish him off. As the blue guy stood there daring our hero to pull the trigger, Derek collapsed from the pain; before Desslok could do anything, Nova rushed in to stand between them, refusing to move away...

And rather than finish them off, Desslok relents, tells them the Empire's weakness, and leaves in grand Noble Enemy style.

...I had never seen anything like it. It was awe-inspiring and brilliant and I wanted MORE.

AND I HAD NO IDEA WHAT IT WAS. Couldn't find it in the TV Guide. For whatever reason, the show's name managed to elude me. I didn't even know whether it was a movie or a TV series or WHAT?! And then we were gone, hundreds of miles north of the station that had aired it, to a region that wasn't showing it at all.

Ten years old, mind, at a time when Usenet had only just been assembled. I didn't even have the resources that might have allowed me to find out what it had been.

But it was BURNED INTO MY BRAIN. And when one of the local channels finally begain airing something called Star Blazers, two long years later, I wept with sheer joy.

Perhaps fortunately, I was too young and too broke to get into any formal fandom, although I certainly heard of the EDC. But from that day forth, I have counted myself an anime fan.

--Sam
"We'll fight the Comet Empire, battle through the raging fire, filled with the hope that Earth will survive -- We'll keep peace alive with our Star Blazers!"