Welcome! This server contains issues of Anime Stuff, an electronic fanzine originally distributed on Compuserve (CIS). If you do not know already, "anime" is the Japanese word for animation, and is the term American fans use to refer to Japanese animation. If you have seen shows or movies such as Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Macross, Urusei Yatsura, or even Speed Racer, Star Blazers, or Robotech, then you have seen anime. The magazine consists mainly of reviews and short articles. Also included for recent issues are a GIF "cover page" and related pictures, which I am keeping in the same directory as each issue's text. Note that your computer will need a GIF decoder to view these. Also remember that GIFs are binary files, and must be FTP'd in binary mode. The magazine text files are encoded in the Unix 'compress' format and need to be uncompressed before they can be read. They must be transferred to your machine in binary mode, too. Be sure to explicitly state the mode; it may default to ASCII. Do this by typing "binary" or "set mode I", as applicable. * Note * The files are unedited, untouched copies downloaded directly from CompuServe. Due to the differences between the computer it was originally written on and Unix, there may be LF/CR problems. In the interest of keeping the files unedited, I will not filter out the extraneous characters. If you download the file to a personal computer, a good word processor should be able to deal with them. Enjoy, and let me know if any problems crop up. --Barry Brown bebrown@ucsd.edu --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Anime Stuff listing can be found on the first or second page of the latest newsletter. Most of the staff have accounts on CompuServe. If you wish to contact any of them, you can send mail to them directly on Compuserve. Just change the "," in the userid to "." and use the Internet domain compuserve.com. For example, Tom is 75156.1067@compuserve.com. Anime Stuff is Copyright (C) Midori Communications. Modification and sub- sequent re-posting of these files will not be taken kindly. MIDORI COMMUNICATIONS c/o Tom Mitchell 474 Chowning Circle Dayton, OHIO 45429 "GIF", "Graphics Interchange Format", and "Navigator" COPYRIGHT (C) 1987, 1988 CompuServe Information Service an H&R Block company. All files reproduced here by permission. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Note: some of the information below is obsolete; however, there is some interesting stuff in here. -BB] Some of you might be wondering why this is the only Internet site that is authorized to distribute Anime Stuff. In the past, one or two movie scripts written by CIS members have been modified and re-distributed through Usenet, against the wishes of (and with little credit given to) the original authors. As a result of this, new scripts appearing on CIS Comics/Animation Forum bear the message "This file may not be distributed on Usenet". I am very sorry that the writers feel this way, but it's not my choice. Fortunately, this has never happened to Anime Stuff magazine. However, in fear that it may, Anime Stuff is released on Usenet on the condition that it's only done through one channel. A little background on why Usenet/CIS relations haven't been the greatest: As some of you may remember, I tried to set up a gateway for messages in 1988 between rec.arts.anime and the Comics/Animation Forum (specifically SS5, the Anime section) on CIS in the hopes of making more anime information available to everyone. Indeed, for a while David Watson (a really nice fellow) brought rec.arts.anime digests over for CIS members to download. So later that year, I tried to get support for doing the reverse, with both mail and messages, allowing a two-way 'interchange' of posts. Unfortunately, at about the same time another CIS member (who had nothing to do with the Anime forum) decided to mass-download some forum's entire data library and/or message base, and place the files on his dial-up BBS. CIS lawyers decided that nothing of the sort would be allowed to happen again. In fact, for a while, GIF files on CIS bore the message "GIF file for personal use only. No distribution except under CIS guidelines." The argument was as follows: CIS costs money. BBS doesn't. CIS members will flock to BBS. Since, through the same reasoning, netnews (e.g. rec.arts.anime) and internet ftp are potential competitors for CIS, the gateway idea got squashed. So, to be able to distribute a file from CIS these days, it has to be copyrighted by the original author (that way CIS can't claim copyright for it), and the author has to give permission for its distribution elsewhere. All this legal mumbo-jumbo seems pretty outrageous to the average Usenetter; according to the "Guidelines for use of Usenet" in everyone's UNIX manual, anything posted to a netnews board is assumed by default to be in the public domain. Usenet is a laid-back, free-for-all kind of place. My impression is that most Usenetters are university students and UNIX hackers at computer corporations. Excepting those of us at .MIL sites :-), most of us believe that information should flow freely. This is contrary to CIS' policy; since they are running a business, their information flows for a price. So subscribers to CIS Fora and Usenet newsgroups have to work together to get around some of the restrictions. It is now based only on the goodwill of CIS members that their files can be placed for access on other systems without getting CIS lawyers upset. And that goodwill is why Anime Stuff is here for _everyone_ to enjoy, as it should be. There are other good signs... the message on GIF files has now been removed. Usenet and CIS are two of the largest bases for information exchange that exist. Hopefully someday there will be a real gateway between them. Disclaimer: I have absolutely no connection to CIS, Inc. except through my 2400bps modem :-) --Jude George (former host of the Anime Stuff Server) --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Last minute note: Older issues of Anime Stuff refer to a mail-order house called Wyvern Web Graphics. They have since gone out of business. See issue 13 for more information about this.