"The Web's #1 News and Information Network celebrating the works of Rumiko Takahashi"
Rumic World is one of the most complete English guide to the works of renowned female manga artist Rumiko Takhashi.
The large fansite consists of 7 series-specific subsites: Tomobiki-cho, Life at Maison Ikkoku, Ranma ½ Perfect Edition, The Inuyasha Companion, Mermaid's Flesh, The Ring & The Rosary and Rumic Theater.
Over 10 years old (counting its subsites), Rumic World is one of the oldest site of its kind, and it continues to grow as new works from Rumiko Takahashi are published every week in Japan.
Get to know the faces behind Rumic World!
*Note this was taken in late 2006.
Name: Harley Acres
Tell us a little about yourself?
I'm currently a graduate student nearing completion of my masters in Art History (Asian focus). That takes up a good bit of my time, as I'm beginning to write my thesis, and prepare for my comprehensive exams.
How are you involved with Rumic World?
Initially when I got online around 1997 or 1998, there were tons of Ranma ½ sites. When I first decided to build a site, I decided that even though Ranma ½ was my favorite series, I had better start cut my teeth on a series that was less represented online. That was when I designed a "Please Save My Earth" site on Geocities. That gave me the motivation to eventually build "Ranma ½ Perfect Edition," which also was inspired by Mason's "Tomobiki-cho," even though I didn't get to know Mason until quite a few years later.
Eventually as the years passed and Dylan and I built other Takahashi pages and Geocities bandwidth got smaller, we decided to bring them all together and Rumic World was born. I'm pretty much responsible for the day to day running of things along with Dylan. Doing chapter summaries for Inuyasha, posting up new contests, etc.
What's your favorite Rumiko Takahashi work and why?
Ranma ½ will always be my favorite manga and anime. It was the first work that really introduced me to manga in 1993 when I was in 7th grade. It has wound up being the longest running manga series in the US, and has seen me through junior high, high school, college and now graduate school. So it's been a big part of my life for thirteen years now.
Likes/Dislikes:
Since I'm an art history student, I have to do quite a lot of analysis on Japanese arts right now. I'm into the Super Flat movement and Yasumasa Morimura, Takarazuka Theater and things like that.
Non school stuff would be my motorcycle (a Yamaha SECA II), music (David Bowie, Cocteau Twins) and films.
As for manga and anime outside of Takahashi, I like Tank Police and Ghost in the Shell by Masamune Shirow, Touch by Mitsuru Adachi, 20th Century Boys by Naoki Urusawa, Please Save My Earth by Saki Hiwatari and Short Cuts by Usamaru Furuya. Pretty much anything running in Shonen Sunday is fairly interesting to me right now.
What are some websites you visit everyday? Share your bookmark with us!
Daizenshuu EX (http://www.daizex.com) - this is a Dragon Ball site I browse through fairly often. I'm not a huge Dragon Ball fan, but I like to visit well made series-specific sites.
Tezuka In English (http://tezukainenglish.com) - This is a nice site that was affiliated with a really spectacular Tezuka Translation site (http://tezuka-translated.com), which was unfortunately closed down at the request of Tezuka Productions. You don't see a lot of creator-specific sites (ala Rumic World), so I think it's special when you find one.
Golden Gash (http://golden-gash.sitesled.com) - a nice Gash Bell site. This is such a bizarrely drawn series that it caught my attention when I was in Japan.
Name: Dylan Acres
Tell us a little about yourself?
I'm living away from home in the crummy little town of Huntsville, Texas finishing up my last year of graduate school in clinical psychology. Over the summer I began working on my thesis "The Effects of Positive and Negative Hedonic Artwork on the Emotions of Depression, Stress, and Anxiety" (Quite a mouthful I know).
My time on the site is limited because I've begun seeing patients this semester and am volunteering at an abused women's shelter.
How are you involved with Rumic World?
Well, Rumic World came together a few years ago after Harley, Mason and I merged our various sites into one nice, big collective. Everything sort of relaunched from there, becoming more professional looking and less fan-ish.
My day-to-day job at Rumic World now is trying to finish up my Maison Ikkoku site and splitting the weekly updates to The Inuyasha Companion with Harley. Everything else is sort of quasi-finished right now, but we've started planning some special events, articles and give always to make up for that.
What's your favorite Rumiko Takahashi work and why?
My favorite Takahashi series is Maison Ikkoku without a doubt. I got into Ranma ½ with Harley, but that was always "his" series. In 1996 I wanted to find something that could be mine, and decided to check out Viz's then brand new anime release of Maison Ikkoku. It's so different from Ranma yet still retains that charm that all of Takahashi's works possess. It was love at first sight for me.
Likes/Dislikes:
I'm so burned out on school right now, so I'd have to say that's a major dislike.
Manga and anime have become a soothing presence in my life as of late, and I'm always looking forward to catching new episodes of my favorite series.
Many of the series that are popular here in the U.S. right now I'm sort of "eh" about. I do enjoy Ghost in the Shell and Gash Bell (Zatch Bell), and Naruto and my girlfriend has gotten me interested in Fullmetal Alchemist, but as far as the trendy series like Trinity Blood, S.Cry.Ed, and most of the stuff on Adult Swim, I'm not as interested in. I guess that's sort of interesting as Inuyasha (which I love) is on Adult Swim, huh?
What are some websites you visit everyday? Share your bookmark with us!
DC Comics (www.dccomics.com) - Yeah, I'm a big DC fan. I've gotten back into in the last four or five years and really enjoyed all the buildup to Infinite Crisis over the past year or so.
Empty Movement (http://www.ohtori.nu/) - I love Revolutionary Girl Utena, and this is the best site for it. It's such a strange series, and is one of the closest things to a pure piece of artwork that I've seen in anime.
Wikimon (http://www.wikimoon.org) - This is a fun little site that I started visiting recently. It reminds me of my early anime fandom. Ah, Sailormoon fans, why did you abandon your fandom?
Name: Mason Proulx
Tell us a little about yourself?
I'm a graphic designer born and living in Ottawa, the capital city of Canada. I've had a fascination with Japan as far back as I can remember. I've also always had a particular attraction to animation as an art form. As a byproduct of those two interests I've been an anime fan off and on for 25 years.
I've traveled North America, Europe and Asia (as inexpensively as possible), including Japan. I can get by speaking Japanese, although nowhere near as advanced as Harley.
Unlike the twins, I've been out of college and working full time for several years now. I guess that makes me the old man of the group, but I like to think of it as "sagely".
How are you involved with Rumic World?
I created the Urusei Yatsura web site "Tomobiki-cho" pretty much from scratch. It's the oldest site in Rumic World, which eventually became the template for the rest of the sites. I also designed and coded all the main Rumic World pages. I designed the site for, and made the initial push for the Project ILM scanlation group.
I pretty much gave up the day-to-day work years ago and now contribute only in occasional spurts. You could say that currently I serve as a kind of consultant, although I will sometimes do site design when the mood strikes me. In recent years it's Harley and Dylan who've been doing most of the content updates.
What's your favorite Rumiko Takahashi work and why?
I like everything she does pretty much equally. But obviously in my case Urusei Yatsura has a slight edge. I dig it for various reasons.
Likes/Dislikes:
LIKES:
According to MySpace, apparently I like the following: World travel, alternative standup comedy, bicycling/camping, Japanese language and culture, liberal causes, British comedy, comics, animation, video games, mixed martial arts, boxing, live theater, animals, cooking, politics, history. But it's definitely standup/sketch comedy that's my biggest obsession. I love seeing live comedy more than I like live music, which should tell you something.
In terms of anime and manga, there's too many to name. But at the moment favorite manga are 20th Century Boys, Vagabond, Gantz and Phoenix. Anime shows I've enjoyed recently are more grown up fare like Mushishi, and Monster. I'm still slowly working my way through the old 80's OVA serial Legend of the Galactic Heroes which is an underappreciated masterpiece. Although less sophisticated than those anime, I was really into One Piece ever since it first came out, but I've taken a momentary break from it. It's just so long.
DISLIKES:
I won't bog you down with my personal gripes, so let's keep things anime focused. Nothing specific, but most formulaic teen-oriented anime bore me to tears now. That pretty well covers 75% of what's out there. It's probably because I'm well over a decade older than the target demographic. But also, after a while it can feel like if you've seen one shounen/shoujo show, then you've seen them all.
There are many exceptions though. I've never felt that way about Takahashi's stuff for example. There's something ageless about her work that can't quite be imitated, even though they all try.
What are some websites you visit everyday? Share your bookmark with us!
I'm not as involved in the anime community as I once was, although I keep up to date with the latest releases. There aren't a lot of anime sites I visit these days, unless you count fansub/scanlation torrent sites, but we don't need to go into that. What other sites do I visit daily?
http://www.aspecialthing.com
The online epicenter of the best comedy in the english-speaking world. I visit here multiple times each day. It's a community of alternative comedy fans based mostly around the Los Angeles live comedy scene, but it extends to all types of comedy worldwide. Many renowned comedians who've been on TV are also members and they post regularly. A really smart and funny group of members, but steer clear if you're into hacky comedians with little substance (i.e.: Dane Cook).
http://www.wikipedia.org
I shouldn't bother listing it since everyone in the world knows it already, but I do visit Wikipedia every day. I'm naturally curious, which means I hate not knowing everything. Even though you're bound to find some flawed information, it still serves as a great starting point for further investigation.
http://www.pridefc.com/
My favorite sport organization in the world. I check back from time to time to see what events are coming up.
http://www.subfighter.com/
I'm a mixed-martial-arts fan (and an inexperienced practitioner), so I go here to catch up on the latest fight news, and sometimes get tips on technique.
What's the future for Mason?
Marriage, kids, globetrotting. Oh you mean the site? I dunno. For the last couple of years I've considered Tomobiki-cho to be a finished product. But I'll probably return to it a couple of times per year for some minor additions. I'll otherwise be mostly hands-off until the next time there's a big redesign.
If I were to guess, I assume I might get involved the next time the Ranma, Inuyasha or Maison Ikkoku sites get a redesign, but there's been no discussion of doing so as of yet.