Feature by Chris

October 11, 2000

Six months ago, Dale and I laid down the first pages for this website. It's been a long journey since then, and it hasn't always been easy. Now that we've been online for half a year, we've decided to give visitors an inside look at the making of this site and hopefully give a little insight about ourselves. Enjoy the story.

The Pre-FAHQ Days

To find the origin of this website, you have to go all the way back to September 1998. That was when I finally got a new computer that was actually capable of handling the Internet. Looking around at the Internet, I decided that I would build the biggest website ever devoted to anime and fantasy books. Thus, on September 5, 1998, Chris' Fantasy and Anime Homepage (aka RFA) was born on the detestable Geocities. Having no previous web design experience, I turned to Dale for help. However, this was in the early days for him too, so he only created some graphics for me. After that, we went our separate ways as far as the website goes. As the months went by, RFA grew from a few poorly designed pages to a reasonably well designed site with many pages. In May 1999, the site moved to a new server on Xoom, and that's when things finally took off. Daily updates were made, and reviews were written. Despite the amount of reviews, the site wasn't getting any attention. In September 1999, the site celebrated it's first anniversary and underwent a redesign. During this redesign period, many new features were added, most of which are now on FAHQ. I became increasingly dissatisfied with the continued obscurity of the site, so in January 2000, RFA officially closed it's doors.

The Birth of FAHQ

After the closing of RFA, I went about my normal life collecting anime and reading books. Although RFA was not popular, I felt it was an important achievement and the first step to something bigger. I still had that desire to create a website that originally led me to create RFA. In early March 2000, Dale made me an offer I couldn't refuse. I had the desire to restart RFA, and he wanted to create a site devoted to Batman: The Animated Series. We decided it would be better to combine the two into one, and we immediately began planning the new site (which at this point was still called RFA). While Dale was beginning to create a design, I was looking through my old RFA files to see what could be salvaged. I also decided on the name 'Fantasy & Animation HQ'. In the middle of March, FAHQ made it's first appearance on the Internet through the horrible Crosswinds. I had set for us a launch date of April 1, 2000, and we scrambled to have content ready for that day.

The Big Day

Although we certainly didn't feel ready, April 1st eventually came around, and we officially opened the website to the world. We launched with a very small amount of content (check the archives for details), but we intended much more. Our biggest obstacle in the early days was not having enough material to review, which accounts for the large amount of rants in the early days. Those first few weeks we stumbled around with miscellaneous reviews, until we had an idea. Back on RFA, I had reviewed most of Macross. I still had all those files, so we decided to edit them and complete the reviews. We would build a Macross section the likes of which had never been seen. This new section required a lot of work behind the scenes, which prevented us from doing any other updates. For two and a half weeks, we practically disappeared from view. I had the crazy notion that on the first of every month we would have a new feature, so I promised May 1, 2000, as the launch of Macross, and we were hard pressed to do that.

Macross and Beyond

As May 1st rapidly approached, Dale and I worked at breakneck speed creating sections, testing graphics, and editing reviews. I never thought we would be ready, but after pulling an all-nighter, all was finally ready. On May 1st we premiered the Macross section with complete reviews for the entire original series, as well as Macross II and Macross Plus. Although that was a substantial accomplishment, we wanted to review Macross 7 and have a complete section. After acquiring fansubs, work began on that series. May 1st was a big day for us in other aspects as well. On that day, we also premiered the Dale Store and Miscellaneous and Recluce sections. However, the big concern was Macross 7. Now that we had a substantial amount of content, we wanted to make the site visible. Dale approached the editors of the anime site of About.com and submitted our site. They soon gave him a reply that stated how pleased they were with the original content of our site. They also made me an offer that I couldn't refuse. The editors especially liked the Rants section, and they asked me if I was interested in writing Rants for their page. I was very pleased with this offer and immediately agreed. By the end of May, my first rant for them, "Cut Uncut" had premiered. Things were starting to look up.

The Gundam Connection and Vash the Stampede

In late May, I was starting to become sick of Macross 7, and I desperately wanted to review something better. Dale saved the day by providing me with Gundam fansubs. I decided it was time to develop the minuscule Gundam section. I started out by taking a new look at the original trilogy, and I tried to proceed in order. Dale acquired several rarer series for me, such as Zeta Gundam and Gundam ZZ, which I was immediately hooked on and happily reviewed. During the same time, I continued to write rants for About.com. In late June, the Gundam section had begun to take on the complexity of the Macross area. We were sick of Crosswinds, and Dale proposed moving to his private server at AAMI, which I readily agreed to. I was going on a cruise at the end of the month, which left Dale in charge while I was away. Dale had no previous experience with reviews, and he intended to review a small series until my return. He chose Trigun, and that series turned out to be a boon for us. At this time, only a few volumes of Trigun were available, and no one had done anything beyond the standard shrines and garbage pages. At the same time, we started to appear favorably in search engines, and many visitors came. Trigun quickly became our most popular section.

The Big 200

As the site became more popular, Dale and I realized that soon it would be too big for two people. We decided to look for a third staff member. I already had in mind Miaka, who is a friend from Yahoo! She eventually agreed to review Slayers, and we decided to give her the spotlight by making her first review our 200th. Yeah, 200 reviews. We could hardly believe it ourselves, and it was something I stumbled upon by accident. We were writing so many reviews that we didn't even know how many we had. After the celebration of 200 reviews, we returned to the regular scheme of reviews. Now, it's been half a year since we started this website. Looking back, I see that our involvement with the website has changed. Back in April, we were two guys with nothing better to do (as our news page suggests) who wanted to run a website in our spare time. Now, we're so overwhelmed with the size of the site and the amount of visitors that it seems at times that the site runs us. I guess that comes with being popular. Even with the burden we carry now, it's all been worth it. However, I'm curious to see what I'll have to say in April 2001 when I look back at our first year as a whole.

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