Feature by Chris

February 13, 2002

It's been nearly two years since Dale and I started the Fantasy & Animation HQ. These last two years have been filled with many headaches, but also with many joys. I chronicled the first six months of our history in the article 'The Road to FAHQ', and now seems to be an appropriate time to pick up from there and cover the next year and a half. Here you'll find the story of what happened after that and how we became the Mecha & Anime HQ.

Chris, the Human Reviewing Machine

Following the premiere of our 200th review in August 2000, we pressed on with the reviews. During this time Dale completed Trigun, I kept working on Gundam, and we acquired a new staff member named Brolly (currently MIA). During this time we also had a feud with the now-defunct Gundam Lounge website. More details on that can be found in the September 2000 archives. The last few months of 2000 proved to be rather slow for the site, as both Dale and I had many real world obligations to attend to. However, we kept moving forward into 2001 with the commitment to providing in depth reviews. Pretty soon we discovered we'd be doing a lot more than that.

Enter Burke Rukes

I continued to review other series due to a lack of new Gundam to watch. In February 2001, Burke Rukes of the popular Mecha Domain announced he was closing the Fan Art Gallery on his website to save space. I decided this was an important collection of work to save, so I gladly volunteered to host it here. It was then that I formed a friendship with Burke that continues to this day. Dale and I quickly worked on creating a gallery and getting the pictures online. At the time it seemed like a minor achievement, but it was the stepping stone for something much bigger to come.

Wingzero.net

Many fans (myself included) were not happy that Wingzero.net was forced to shut down in early 2001. That website contained the largest collection of Gundam images on the Internet. While several websites had volunteered to become the new homes for the image archive, no one ever did any work on it. Around late March 2001, I contacted Wingzero.net's webmaster, Nicholas 'EchoFox' Paufler, and I expressed my desire to become the host for his entire gallery. It seems he had been trying to contact me about the gallery but ran into some difficulties. He agreed to let us host the entire gallery, and he set up downloads for Dale to transfer the pictures over to us. That's when the nightmare began...

Happy Birthday, FAHQ

At the same time this was going on, I had planned a short trip to Washington, DC Unfortunately, it meant I would miss the first anniversary of the website. During the time that I was away, Dale premiered my Babylon 5 reviews as the special update for the anniversary. Upon my return, the long and tedious work began on organizing Wingzero.net's massive galleries. Over 600 pictures had all been lumped together in one folder, and it was my task to organize them by series and delete repeats. After all this work was over, we began working on transforming the Gallery to accommodate the new content and slowly upload it. To give you an idea of how much these pictures added to our site, we went from having a site of around 20 megs to having one of over 140! It took a long time to get all the pictures up, but it was certainly worth the work to have this valuable gallery online again.

Gundam, Gundam, and more Gundam

There was a real lack of any new Gundam to review, but that changed around April 2001 when Neo-Era introduced me to the world of Gundam in IRC. Here I found DALnet's #anime-gundam, which was an outlet for episodes and a place to talk with Gundam fans. During this time I made many good friends. As my reviews of Gundam continued, I greatly anticipated the premiere of the original series on Cartoon Network. While waiting for this major event, we gained a new staff member, the always reliable Tanya, who began reviewing Vampire Princess Miyu. The long-awaited Gundam finally arrived on July 23, 2001, and I began my popular daily episode reviews. They served as a valuable resource for fans who missed episodes or did not have Cartoon Network. During this time the site reached a milestone: the 500th review. It seems I had come full circle- the very first reviews were for the original Gundam movies, and the 500th was for an episode of the TV series. As my reviews continued, other things were going on at the same time...

Mecha Domain, Exit Stage Left

On August 7, 2001, the Gundam fan community was shocked to read the news that Burke Rukes was shutting down the Mecha Domain, which was probably the biggest mecha resource on the Internet. Burke had come to the hard decision for two reasons: the bandwidth usage was a burden to his host, Gundam.com's Ben 'Amuro' Koshy, and also because of his declining interest in mecha. Fans scrambled to archive the site before its shutdown and caused an overload which forced Ben to shut it down before Burke intended. I decided to act during this time and offered to host the entire Mecha Domain. Because I had forged a friendship with Burke, he knew that the Mecha Domain would be in good hands with Dale and I. The Mecha Domain was dead, but it would soon be reborn. Coincidentally, I was going on vacation again, this time to New Orleans (it seems that every time I go on vacation, we get control of a major website). While I was away in New Orleans, Dale worked tirelessly to convert the Mecha Domain to match our style. I was quite pleased with his work when I viewed it from an old library in New Orleans. After I returned, I continued my Gundam reviews, and Dale toiled away at the Mecha Domain alone. Around this time I also discovered the channel #gundam, again thanks to Neo-Era. At this relatively new channel I met an administrator named Corben who has since become a good friend and constant supporter of the site. I helped promote his channel, which had become one of my favorite haunts.

Pick's Pics

In late August, I decided to go public with something that was potentially explosive and detrimental. I had used screenshots from the website Gundam Plus for my Gundam reviews, and though I had changed them, I had not credited that site's webmaster Pick as the source. Because of this, a cat-and-mouse game developed between the two of us. He implemented security features to prevent me from getting the pictures, and I circumvented them. To 'one up' me, he copied the entire Wingzero.net archive and claimed it as his own. As this nasty feud went public, I received some invaluable advice from Gundam guru Mark Simmons and decided to peacefully end the feud. After contacting Pick on AIM, we settled our differences and began peaceful cooperation between our sites. Had it not been for Mark Simmons, the situation could have ended in a different matter.

As the World Changes

After the feud with Gundam Plus was resolved, I joined Dale in the gargantuan task of converting the Mecha Domain, all while still writing reviews. Then, the world came to a screeching halt on September 11, 2001, when terrorists hijacked four airplanes and slammed them into the twin towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. When you watch people jumping out of windows from the 80th floor to escape death, it forces you to think about life in a different way. When you see those buildings in their full glory, it shows you some of what humankind does at its best. When you see those building crumbling with people inside of them, it makes you see how terrible humanity can be. As a result of this tragic event, the TV landscape was forever altered, and Gundam mysteriously disappeared without explanation from Cartoon Network. Though Cartoon Network has never said so, it is quite obvious they canceled the series because of Sept. 11. A few may have criticized me for demanding they continue the series, but I believe that in a time of crisis you need something that will give you a sense of normalcy in your life. There was also the hypocrisy on the part of AOL/Time Warner that bothered me: within a few weeks it was ok to air The 08th M.S. Team, but not the original series. Also, in the wake of the attack, it was ok to watch real people die hundreds of times in New York, but it was not ok to watch animated people in a 70's show die. Some call that sensitivity, but I call it stupidity and censorship.

Then Some Other Stuff Happened

As events continued to unfold around the world, Dale and I decided to go on with business as usual. We both continued work on the Mecha Domain and finally completed the Gundam area in December. After that I immediately began work on Macross, which was a new section Burke was working on but never completed. In the meantime, I also continued reviewing Gundam and bringing some sections close to completion. This time Dale and Tanya were on vacation, so the site was in my hands. As we entered into 2002, things seemed to be running smoothly. A fan contacted Dale with an amazing offer: a free domain and server space to host the site. We started to think about how we had never registered a domain for ourselves. Though we did not accept that offer, we decided we would register a domain ourselves. At the same time, I received early news from Mark Simmons that he would be shutting down the Gundam Project website because of the high cost and other obligations he had. I don't know why, but at I decided it was time for us to step out of the shadow of a sub-directory and have a true home for this site. Dale and I also agreed we needed to trim the fat off of the site, and thus the Mecha & Anime HQ was born. After registering the domain mahq.net, we began work on changing the site for the transition. That transition unexpectedly came on February 11, 2002, but I think we handled it pretty well. So, the question now is, what's in store for MAHQ, year three? Why, more reviews of course. Also, we will definitely complete all of our Mecha sections when time permits. A site redesign is also in the works, probably sometime after our second anniversary. We have some other things we're working on right now, but I'll leave that to fan speculation for the moment. As for the next 'Road to Whatever' article, expect to see that in a year, or maybe three.....

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