The Leaning Tower of Damocles

Who is this “Nozmo”?

I’m a “first-generation” anime fan, which is to say that when I started watching this stuff, we didn’t even know it was Japanese and nobody called it anime or even “Japanimation” yet. (We just thought they were different-looking cartoons… )

So it was about 23 years down the road when I was at a science-fiction convention video room (they didn’t have anime conventions in 1986 — and we had to watch everything untranslated back then*…) and first saw an episode starring the — urm, Lovely Angels. What I was taken with in these stories was their cosmically weird luck and the sometimes bizarre plot turns that resulted from that, with things generally erupting into chaos. I could sympathize with two characters who were young, somewhat inexperienced, and trying to do their jobs well, but who found that things had a way of getting out of hand (or, as the professionals say, “the situation is in a state of flux”)…

(* yeah, and we used to have to walk to school through a blizzard every day)

I didn’t get to see much more than a couple of TV episodes, “Nolandia”, and “Project E.D.E.N.” while I was still going to conventions. I moved to my present environs in 1988 and ended my involvement with organized fandom not long afterwards. So I didn’t see any more anime for quite a while. Just about then, though, Eclipse Comics started bringing out Warren and Smith’s comix version, so my interest in the DP was revived. It also helped that fan magazines such as Animag were running informational articles, so I was able to find out more about the TV episodes, the OVAs (which were new then), and the novels (of which there were three at the time).

Life went on and I had plenty else to deal with (like getting by). My circumstances had changed enough by 1998 that I was able to start renting and watching videos to see what had been going on in animation over the previous ten years (I only found out about “Flight 005″ then!). At my local comics boutique, I ran across a issue of the Anime Reference Guide from the Society for the Promotion of Japanese Animation, out of Berkeley, put together for Anime Expo ‘94. One of the articles covered the first episode of DP Flash, a development which was a total surprise to me. I was also able to get regular access to the ‘Net starting in ‘96 and then got my own rig in the fall of 1998, so I then learned quite a bit more about what was going on with the Lovely Angels (well, and a lot of other things besides).

As is common on the Web, there was lots of material, but it was usually pretty scattered. There was also no one site which presented information on all the versions of DP in one place, often owing to the particular tastes of the site-master. Well, as someone I knew a ways back once told me, “You *have* no taste”, so I found that I liked something about each version and started collecting information and items and reading and translating as I could find time (I *do* have a life outside of this, despite appearances…).

When I first started running my site, ‘blogs didn’t exist yet. Since Yahoo! began offering this feature for paying sites in ‘06, I decided to try this method of providing news on my site work, as I get to it, and on news of DP projects as I learn of them. I hope you find this worthwhile… (Other sites with news postings and/or material related to the DP are linked on this page.)