About Slr2Moons, and a history of AMP
Truth be told, I'm not that interesting. ^^ As a quick overview, I'm 25, female, live in the US, have a college degree but no job, read, write and speak a bit of Japanese. Oh yeah, and I love anime.
I found anime in 1996. I was on the EF net of IRC, using an Elfquest handle, "Leetah". Someone in a chat room asked me if I had ever heard of Sailor Moon, since my nick could be seen as a respelling Jupiter's English-dub name, Lita. I said no (I thought it was a new music band or something) and she told me it was a Japanese cartoon, and to try it out. I found the show in the TV Guide, and since I had nothing better to do that summer, I tuned in. In three days I was hooked, in one week, I was recording every ep. Then I found fansubs a few months later, and my world changed.
I used to hate anime. I couldn't stand it. I considered anything animated in Japan to be trash, full of nothing but sex and voilence, and in no way anywhere near the quality or validity of American animation. I positiviely LOATHED anime. But the death of Nephrite left me in tears, and I knew my opinion was uneducated and completely wrong. Anime showed me the power of animation, and made me realize the art form's full, storytelling potential.
It didn't take long for me to begin including my favorite anime openings and endings on my cassette tapes. The first two were Moonlight Densetsu (SM tv op), and Itooshi Hito no Tame ni (FY tv op). Before long, I had two tapes full of nothing but anime music. Then I went digital, and started hunting for all my favorite anime themes as mp3s in mid 1998. When I could, I made my own from my CDs, but the vast majority I had to find on-line.
In the months it took me to track down the songs I could not rip for myself, I visited more anime mp3 sites than I could ever remember. >< Downloading a zipped mp3 on my 24k modem made me appreciate sites with accurate, full information about each song. I'll never forget the day I finally found the Tenchi oav op2: I am a Pioneer. I had been unable to find the song anywhere! I screamed with delight and immediately started saving the zipped mp3. Half an hour later, I unzipped it and gleefully hit "Play", only to yelp in terror, hit "stop", and delete the mp3 and its zip file from my hard drive. The site had not bothered to say that it was the ENGLISH DUBBED version. *shudders*
That experience, and many many more like it (*wince*) brought the idea of samples to me. I went through hell to find all my mp3s, and I decided to make it as easy as I could for other people on the same quest. My solution: start my own music web page. And each song I listed would have its own sample always available, to let people listen to the song BEFORE they devoted the time and bandwitdth to save it. No nasty dubbed shocks on MY site!!
Thus, in April 1999, AMP was born, with 6 songs and samples. ^^ Those very first six AMP mp3s were: FY tv op and ed, Ranma 1/2 tv op1 and ed1, and SM op ver1 and ed1. ^^
I still love anime every bit as much as I did when I first started watching it. ^^ My all-time favorite anime is still Sailor Moon (original Japanese version only). My other top six titles are Rurouni Kenshin, Fushigi Yuugi, Hana Yori Dango, Vision of Escaflowne, Zetsuai 1989, and the last alternates between Brother Dear Brother, Ranma, Bastard, DNA2, Utena, and Slayers, depending on my mood. ^^
a timeline, for those who are curious:
4-?-99 - AMP launched on Geocities with 6 songs
4-?-99 - my old comp dies. Ouch.
10-10-99 - new comp arrives
10-20-99 - AMP leaves Geocities and moves to Derik.org
1-14-00 - mailing list debuts with first update notice
3-1-00 - clicker counter CGI applied to all links
4-26-00 - 25,000 hits
8-11-00 -200 available songs
11-10-00 - AMP's site format changes to use frames and one separate page for each anime title
8-26-01 - AMP leaps past 1,000 granted requests
10-?(late in the month)-01 - counter code stops working, for reasons still unknown
1-6-02 - AMP's site upgrades to use CSS, and I bid a fond farewell to my beloved SM wallpaper. And the number of requests I receive each week doubles X_x
2-3-02 - AMP passes 2,000 granted requests. ><
3-17-02 through 3-31-02 - I take my first official vacation from granting AMP requests in well over a year. Ghaa!
10-13-02 - I begin to limit the number of requests I grant each day...to keep them under control and me sane
11-03-02 - reach 600 songs
11-3-02