For the younger folks or the uninformed who may be reading this, Mark Merlino was an extremely important part of why anime was able to become as popular as it was in the US today. He helped form the C/FO, one of the first anime clubs in America, alongside Fred Patten back in the day. [He hosted some of the earliest screenings of anime at conventions as well]](https://dogpatch.press/2020/04/28/history-cartoon-fantasy-organization/).
He seems to be in stable condition currently according to this post but it’s still so scary to see a man so important to our fandom have such a scary medical issue.
There is currently an address listed where get well cards can be sent. It seems the least we could do in the anime fandom is to make sure this man’s mailbox is overflowing with kind words.
I’ll be sending a card, how about you?
I’d forgotten all about C/FO because it had been such a long time since I’d heard of them.
It was really local groups who organized anime showings on college campuses who kindled me to take a more serious interest in anime.
Tape trading is where those groups from the 70s and 80s got their imported show from, but tape trading happened in all kinds of media, e.g. rock concerts.
Often we’d wind up watching 3rd or 4th gen VHS copies, i.e. grainy, washed out with bad sound, because we were so far down the chain.
This community may not be active, whomever is seeing this message , please join https://lemmy.world/c/anime@ani.social - A fellow anime fan who just wants like minded people of similar taste to come together and build a community.
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn’t work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !anime@ani.social
