Two Years Living with the Loons
By Dylan Acres
On August 17th, 1997 I posted my first homepage on the internet. I was
a complete beginner with the computer, but I was obsessed with creating
a homepage for my favorite series. That series as you all know, is
Maison Ikkoku.
I had discovered the series a year before that and had fallen in love
with it instantly. It was the first anime series that I bought just for
myself, even though I've been an anime fan for quite a long time. My brother
had been collecting
Ranma 1/2 since the beginning of its run in America,
and I thought it was time to have something that I could call my own.
I was a big fan of Rumiko Takahashi's works so I thought that it would
be a safe bet that if I tried
Maison Ikkoku (which had just started its
anime run in the US at that time) that I couldn't go wrong. So as we were
coming back home from my grandparent's house, we stopped off at a galleria
we always go to when we're travelling to and from my relatives. I went
into the Suncoast store there and purchased the very first tape, "Welcome
to Maison Ikkoku." I remember the day perfectly because I also got an
Anne Rice book, that coincidentally I never finished reading because I
became so obsessed with catching up on the
Maison Ikkoku manga.
A year after that, we got our first home PC. After my brother created
his first website, I took my shot at it. A site entitled simply "Maison
Ikkoku" was the result. It was very simplistic to say the least, but I
really enjoyed creating it. As the months rolled on, I noticed that there
weren't many MI pages that updated on a regular basis, so I added the
"Manga & Anime" section to ensure that my site would have new material
for visitors every month.
During this time period, I never received much feedback about my page,
and that was the one thing that always disappointed me. I had always hoped
that I had visitors that would check in on it every once in awhile to
see what had changed, but I never knew if I did. It finally got the recognition
I had always hoped for when I re-wrote most of the pages and re-named
the site "Yusaku Godai's Life at Maison Ikkoku". I couldn't be happier
with the way things are now. The
Maison Ikkoku manga is ending in December,
and I find myself in the same position as Godai did in the beginning of
the series, I'm about to start my first year of college. Luckily, unlike
Godai, I didn't have any problems passing my exams. But unfortunately
not everything can be perfect. The Viz website has announced that they
are "reworking" the
Maison Ikkoku anime releases which you can see
here
in its entirety. I wish I knew what this meant, but I'm at a total loss.
Hopefully it won't mean cancellation of either version of this wonderful
series.
In closing, I would like to thank all of the people that made this site
possible and every visitor we've had in the past two years. You have made
this a joy for me, and have only enhanced my love for this series. Thank
you all from the bottom of my heart, and I hope to see you again this
time next year.
Dylan Acres is a psychologist and college professor.
Maison Ikkoku has long been his favorite manga and he has written a number of articles on the series and Rumiko Takahashi including
an analysis of the animation directors of
Maison Ikkoku, Takahashi's love of the
Hanshin Tigers and a
cataloging of the color artwork of Rumiko Takahashi.