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Since I was in Los Angeles for Anime Expo, I decided to spend at least one day at the University of California at Riverside, which houses the Eaton Collection of Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, & Utopian Literature. Inside the Eaton Collection lies a stockpile of 900 boxes of fandom history, called the Fred Patten Collection on Science Fiction and Animation.
If you don’t know much about the early history of the American anime fandom, Fred Patten almost “officially” started it when he founded the Cartoon Fantasy Organization in 1977. Many Japanese companies, artists, and directors contacted Fred over the years, and through the C/FO he, along with many other fans, initiated the processes that would give birth to our contemporary anime industry. Unfortunately, Fred had a stroke in 2005, after which his friends boxed up all of his accumulated fandom memorabilia and sent them to UC Riverside’s Rivera Library special collections department. If you want to find out more about Fred or the early years of the fandom, go to Amazon and pick up Watching Anime, Reading Manga: 25 Years of Essays and Reviews.
Assuming that Fred’s collection would be fairly organized and comprised of mainly English fan works, I arrived this morning at UC Riverside (after a three-hour bus ride) to scope out the collection for potential future research. I spent the entire day looking through only ten boxes of documents (and occasionally antique toys and other items of historic interest). Half my time was spent slogging through hundreds of ads that ordinary fans would automatically toss into the trash, but it seems that Fred kept everything anime-related that he ever encountered. However, I did encounter a number of fundamental fanzines, specifically those of the original C/FO chapter as well as of other sub-chapters, along with various old convention booklets. Surprisingly, Fred also possessed a large hoard of documents, pictures, cels, and toys from Japan, some that he probably bought and others most likely sent to him. A prize for the biggest surprise of the day goes directly to the business itinerary for Osamu Tezuka’s visit to the United States in 1980.
I called this article Trials and Tribulations because the Fred Patten collection is a saving grace for any fans interested in studying/researching the American (and Japanese) anime/manga/etc. fandom, but also remains quite cumbersome to approach. The collection is barely archived. Any attempt to find a specific item related to anime or manga requires searching through at least thirty boxes of thousands of papers. Apparently at least 80% of the donated collection has yet to even be touched or examined by the library’s archivists.
Still, I enjoyed my time searching through those ten boxes. I took about 300 pictures, though I will not post them online. I am considering approaching Fred to ask if I can return in the future to scan the booklets and fanzines to add to the Otaku Archive, maybe building this project up to a fully-fledged website as well. If you’re in the LA area, email the library staff and drop by the collection some day. If you’re too far, try to satisfy yourself with some of the gems I’ve photographed above.
