If you were an anime or manga fan in Adelaide during the late 1990’s and early 2000’s it was hard to find anything related to the fandom. A handful of comic book stores had some graphic novels, and there was a smattering of VHS tapes around, but if you weren’t interested in Neon Genesis Evangelion, Sailor Moon, or Dragonball, you couldn’t find it in Adelaide.
If you were lucky you might find some toys at collectible stores, but more often than not you had to order everything through the Internet. There was nowhere to borrow anime or manga from, so you needed to buy series—usually from overseas or interstate. It was an expensive hobby.
Early file sharing networks offered one way to preview a series—if you were desperate—and it took days/weeks to download a single (grainy) episode.
Thankfully all this has changed, and anime fans in Adelaide now have lots of options available to them.