William Chow's Personal Web Page

Arctic Animation Dedication Page

In the early days of anime in North America, Japanese Animation had a very cult following of die hard fans willing to watch horribly dubbed, multiple generation tape copies, Japanese only, and even paid bootleggers as much as $20 a tape for anime.

Arctic Animation came to life in 1988, where I started a movement to begin translating Japanese animation to make it more accessable to everyone. Using the fan networks by snail mail, BBS networks like FidoNet, and the early internet (not like the information super highway it is now), and other anime clubs; Arctic Animation became one of the largest anime producers and distributors in the North American Anime scene. Soon many other anime groups jumped into the picture to help with the distribution and the creation of anime for English speaking people.

It didn't take long before commerical interests finally noticed that anime had potential in North America, and they started to make anime available to the masses. At last after almost 15 years, I see the fruits of my work succeed. Who would have thought that we would be able to see such anime classics like Dragonball and Mobile Suit Gundam on North American TV. Well, back in 1988, it was nothing more than a fantastic dream, but now 15 years later, the dream is now reality. I am proud to be one of the pioneers to help bring this fantastic source of entertainment world wide.

Below are some of the letters that really stand out from my collection of letters. When I was cleaning out my files and records, I had over 5 long comics boxes packed full and filled with letters and fan mail.

Letters From Famous People

Not everyone I dealt with were people from the anime clubs but some people were. There were also people who started as just anime fans and later became famous too. I don't have every famous person listed here but here is a few I managed to pull and scan in. Click on the name to see their letter.

Anna Exter Letter 1

The translator for Dan Cougar and Sonic Soldier Borgman, later gained her fame translating shows like Sabre Marionette J and Tsukage Ran.

Anna Exter Letter 2

She spent many hours and many nights in my basement subtiting Dan Cougar.

Bruce Carlson

Creator of Panimator, a real time subtitling program for the Macintosh.

Ellison Navales

Executive Officer of Shinsei Anime

Chris Raymer

President of the Memphis Anime Club

Chris Raymer

Big supporter of the BBS network

Franklin Wang

Head of Nexus Studios, who also did fansubbing.

James Yee

General Secretary for DKJY Anime Club

Jason Bemis

member of Cal Animage anime club in Santa California.

Jim Yee

General Secretary for Club DKJY anime

Kelli Hazelwood

Member of EDC Anime, publisher of the "Whispers of Iscandar" fanzine

Martin Ouelette

Ianus Productions, Publishers of Protoculture Addicts and Mecha Press

Lloyd Rich

Lupin Anime Club, a very interesting letter to read.

Lloyd Rich

Another strange letter from Lupin anime

Michelle Rhodes

another fansubber and distributor

Robert Woodhead

Creator of the game Wizardry and the head of Animeigo

Roy Bruce

member of JAN and EDC as well as the old C/FO-OVA

Sylvio Martins

president of Fanime

For the sake of Paramount, a person whom I will refer to as the Star Trek Guy

Assistant Director for Star Trek Voyager & Enterprise, and anime fan

Letters From Donators

Here is a short list of the many many people who have donated money, translations, equipment, computers, networking and videos to help Arctic Animation. Again, this is not a complete list, but here is a few of the letters I found. Click on their name to see their letter.

Albert Lee

Bambang Suryanto

Eric Cheng

Eric Fravenfield

Gavin Chester

Jeff Drouhard

Shin Hsieh

Devoted Fans

Here is just a few of the many letters of praise from new and old fans of anime. Click on their name to see their letter.

Andrew Licsko

huge KOR and MI fan

Atul Varma

huge fan of Street Fighter

Brian Danker

MI fan

Chiu Ho

watched all MI and KOR

Craig Nishida

loved KOR, MI and Patlabor

Daniel Klain

KOR fan

Darren Selvage

Patlabor fan

Eric Thompson

fan of Toy & Daicon

Gordon Wong

a Gundam fan

Jack Kuramoto

Maison and KOR fan. Even to this date 2005, Viz still has not released all the episodes of MI.

Jack Shot

Miracle Girls fan

Jerry Martin

Maison Ikkoku Fan

Joe Boster

Rumiko Takahashi fan

John Haba

KOR and Sailor Moon fan

John Hermans

MI, Patlabor and Gundam fan

Jude Polzin

a real big anime fan

Jude Polzin 2

even a suggestion

Justus Pendleton

a KOR fan

Kwan Wong

a fan of MI and KOR

Laurine White

long time tape trader

Leslie Mills

City Hunter fan

Michael Breslau

Orange Road fan

Luc Paiement

anime fan in Montreal

Mason Chang

Maison and Lodoss fan

Neal Rao

Maison Ikkoku fan

Ron Jarrel

very supportive fan

Shen-Fen Ho

big anime fan

Thomas Stovicek

Canadian anime fan

Todd Scott

big MI fan

A Bit Of History

Subtitling Card

Something that today's generation of kids with fast computers and an economical internet have no concept of, PAYING for materials and equipment. Here is the first step in classic subtitling.