by Andy Ionescu

My name is Andy, I'm 17 years old and reside in New Jersey, USA. I was originally born in Romania, but that's another story ;-).

Back on July 3rd, 1992, I turned on MTV to see what music videos were on (for those not familiar with MTV, it's a Music Video channel available in several countries). When I turned it on, I saw a strange sight..it was a music video by a guy named Matthew Sweet. In the background of the video was a very strange cartoon...featuring a beautiful girl with indigo hair and a tiger-skin bikini. I was impressed.

I had seen what Japanese Animation looked like before, but I had never seen it in motion before..I LIKED IT A LOT!! I knew that I had to track down the girl in that video. Yeah, I know she's an animated character but what can I say...I became obsessed.

At this time, anime wasn't easy to obtain...not where I lived, at least. Most people had no idea what Japanese Animation was back in '91-'92, but thanks to some comic catalogs, I tracked down the girl as none other than Lum from the mega-hit Urusei Yatsura series. I was amazed at how many shows / movies / OVA's were available...though most of them ranged from $25-$50 a piece. I saved up a LOT of money and bought whatever I could, one by one.

By 1994, I had an impressive collection and became a certified 'Lumaholic'. Now Japanese Animation is surfacing in a widespread form in the US. With channels like the Sci-Fi Channel which play anime on a regular basis, anime is seeing an entirely new fan base. Back in 1992 no video store carried Japanese Animation, now ALL the video stores do. We've seen a lot in the past few years as far as availability goes...which is a good thing, especially for prices!

I've never seen a copy of the video that Lum appeared in (Matthew Sweet's video for 'I've Been Waiting') floating around on the internet but I have it on tape and can convert it into a RealMedia file if people show interest in seeing it.