| FanimeCon - Day Two - Fred Patten |
 Fred Patten
was born before there was an anime industry or anime fandom. He goes back
to the original days of the Cartoon/Fantasy Organization, the first attempt
to organize anime fans. Some people sound nostalgic for those days, when
the only way to see most anime series was through copies of copies of tapes
and the hottest series in Japan were little more than rumors in America.
Patten disagrees, preferring the current era when nearly all of the best
from Japan can be found on store shelves across the U.S. |
 "I would say
the good old days are now," said Patten. "There is the attitude that anime
should have stayed in a small group. One fan said `Anime isn't special,
now everyone knows about it.' Making it available to everyone always was
the goal of fandom." Patten said he is surprised that so many americans
are infatuated with anime, and that this art form seems poised to become
part of the cultural mainstream... |
 ...but he
also thinks that there's a lot of growth ahead for anime fandom. Right
now, anime is still a cult thing in its own "ghetto," he says. "I still
think there's more to be done, so you can show Ghost in the Shell or the
X movie and have that considered as a normal movie instead as anime," said
Patten. To that end, he thinks that Kiki's Delivery Service should have
gotten the kind of theatrical release that Princess Mononoke got, instead
of being sold direct-to-video by the Walt Disney Co. |
 Since Patten
is the promotions director for Streamline Productions, the company long
identified with the 1980's Robotech series, talk turned to the Robotech
3000 animated project, which is coming not from Streamline, but from Harmony
Gold, the company that still owns the "Robotech" name. Robotech 3000 is
going to be a mostly computer-animated show, based loosely on the Americanized
version of Macross and two other anime series. Patten said Robotech 3000
is still being pitched to TV program executives for syndication and probably
won't get on the air until 2001. |
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