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General Products, known also as GenePro (ゼネラルプロダクツ、ゼネプロ) was a Japanese retailer, merchandise manufacturer, publisher, and event organizer active between 1982 and 1992 specializing in the science fiction and anime fan market. Originally based in Osaka, the company was established by Toshio Okada, Yasuhiro Takeda, and other staff members from the 1981 national Japanese SF convention Daicon III, the success of which inspired the founding of General Products. During its existence as an independent company, General Products would provide financing for both the amateur movie group Daicon Film and its later professional successor Gainax, while sharing staff and remaining closely associated with both studios; Gainax’s 1991 OVA Otaku no Video alludes frequently to General Products and features many of its staff in on-screen roles. Described as "the first successful sci-fi specialty shop in Japan," General Products, operating through brick-and-mortar stores and mail-order retail, developed a product line of both original and licensed goods for the Japanese domestic fan market; in 1984 the company founded the semiannual garage kit convention Wonder Festival, an event General Products would continue to operate until 1992.

Between 1989 and 1991, General Products made various efforts to expand into the United States fan market, including publishing a translated manga anthology and opening a subsidiary firm, General Products U.S.A., with an English-language mail-order catalog. Gainax and General Products were among the co-organizers of AnimeCon in California, an event regarded as a direct precursor to Anime Expo. By early 1992, however, both the domestic and overseas branches of General Products had ceased operations, with its remaining staff absorbed into Gainax. Although its founding president has attributed its closure in Japan to no longer serving a purpose as a separate firm, General Products' foreign executives have described its closure in the United States as based in a failure to adjust to the local fan market; both its Japanese and American administrators have stated that business management issues contributed to the company’s troubles in its later years. In the 2010s Gainax revived the General Products name in association with their merchandise sales.

Founding in Osaka and original SF fan base
Yasuhiro Takeda and Toshio Okada, who would later become the co-founders of General Products, met in April 1978 at Seto-Con, a regional science fiction convention in Kagawa, Japan. At the time, both were college students in Osaka; Takeda at Kinki University, and Okada at Osaka Electro-Communication University. In August of that year, the pair, while "feeling a little bored" among the Tokyo crowd at 1978’s national Japanese SF convention, known that year as Ashinocon, did an all-night improv routine based around science fiction films and TV shows that attracted a crowd, and led to them being invited to perform at the Ashinocon closing ceremonies. In his 2005 autobiography, Takeda described their reception: "'Sci-fi standup' they called it, and from the looks of things, no one had ever done anything quite like it before ... all of a sudden, it seemed like everyone knew our names." Writing in a 2010 memoir, Okada reflected on how the roots of his later career lay in the original competitive spirit among SF fans of his generation to try to impress each other by making interesting things happen, whether works or events.

Determined to hold a SF convention that would be "as fun as possible for the attendees," Takeda and Okada organized support from their fan club networks to first produce a local event in the summer of 1979 that included participation by Studio Nue, before securing official approval in the spring of 1980 to host the following year’s national SF convention in Osaka, to be called Daicon III. To get ideas for planning the event, the Daicon executive committee attended the World Science Fiction Convention, held that summer in Boston, which made a particular impression when they witnessed how original items for fans were not only being sold, but made; Takeda was amazed to witness a metalsmith fashioning fantasy-style swords for sale right in the dealer’s room. The Daicon staff produced a large variety of hand-made "trinkets" to sell at the convention, but also multiple variants of polyresin garage kits of the powered suits worn by the Mobile Infantry in Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers; the kits were based on the suits as illustrated by Studio Nue for the 1977 Hayakawa Bunko Japanese-language edition of the novel. Upon the opening day of Daicon III in August 1981, their powered suit garage kits sold out within minutes, which gave Okada the inspiration to start up a regular business for merchandise. In a 2003 memoir however Kaiyodo founder Osamu Miyawaki asserted that the founding of General Products was a development inspired by the advent of Asahi Sonorama's magazine Uchūsen ("Spaceship") in 1980; with its coverage of contemporary and classic Japanese and foreign SFX movies, he credited the magazine for raising creative interest among young Japanese readers, including in  making their own original models; Miyawaki described General Products as having swiftly ushered in "a new era of craftsmanship" in modeling. Upon its 1982 launch, General Products would advertise in Uchūsen.

In February 1982, the business opened with a physical store located near Momodani Station in Osaka; General Products also introduced their first of several mail-order catalogues. General Products had been named after the trading company run by the alien race the Puppeteers from the Known Space books of science fiction author Larry Niven; specifically, from its depiction in Niven's novel Ringworld, originally released in 1970 but not published in Japanese until 1978 through Hayakawa, its translation by Rei Kozumi winning a Seiun Award the following year. Takeda remarked that, "We received permission from Niven himself to use the term for our shop." The references to Niven's fictional universe were further reflected in the title given to General Products’ members club, the Known Space Club, as well as the club newsletter, Papetteia tsūshin ("Puppeteer Bulletin"), also stylized in English by General Products as Puppeteer Press. For much of its history, General Products saw its business as directed at Japanese fans of the science fiction genre itself rather than of any particular form of media, selling not only SF anime, but novels, live-action films, as well as related merchandise. Takeda related that his younger group of con organizers had planned their events with the concept that SF "was big enough to accommodate anything," although he noted a generation gap where Japanese fans older than them did not consider anime and tokusatsu to be "true" science fiction works.

In a 1983 poll answered by 3508 members of the Known Space Club, the single most commonly cited fan interest was speope (space opera), followed by movies in general, kaiju, and novels in general; anime as a medium was the fifth most cited choice. The poll indicated General Products' customer base at the time to be 63% men and 36% women, with 1% declining to state a gender; the most common member age given was 17. The largest single concentration of members was local to Osaka, but responses to the survey were made from every prefecture of Japan with the exception of Hokkaido. General Products continued to attend US fan conventions, including a visit to San Diego Comic-Con in the early 1980s that Osamu Miyawaki credited as influencing them to quickly develop a number of new techniques. In 1984, General Products would organize a guided package tour for Japanese fans who wished to attend the 42nd World Science Fiction Convention held that year in Anaheim, California, advertising their experience attending the event on previous occasions. Toshio Okada and Yasuhiro Takeda were both themselves members of the 1984 Worldcon, where the contingent from Japan made up the largest group outside of those from the US and Canada and included event support from Kodansha, who arranged the official American premiere of the  anime film adaptation of E.E. Smith's Lensman, as well as The Japan Foundation, which sponsored a panel and screening of a subtitled episode of the anime TV series Aura Battler Dunbine presented by its director, Yoshiyuki Tomino. General Products brought back American merchandise obtained at the Worldcon dealer’s room to feature in their Osaka store, and devoted two pages to US goods in their Fall 1984 catalog.

Merchandise and business ventures
While acknowledging that General Products was not the first store in Japan to specialize in science fiction fan merchandise, Takeda maintained that the company's success came from what he described as the innovative practice of prioritizing sales of their own original goods designed for and directed at the Japanese fan market, as opposed to other SF stores that placed their emphasis on selling imported items. General Products obtained licenses to make items based on properties owned by prominent Japanese media companies such as Toho and Tsuburaya. Takeda asserted that previous to General Products, only "established manufacturers" of toys and models had been able to obtain such licenses, and that it had been "unthinkable for a small garage kit company to even ask." He described the appeal to fans of such "small-lot licensed model products" as "[making] the things we wanted ourselves, because we just weren't satisfied with the range of products manufactured by big-name modelers;" an example given was General Products' replicas of items and equipment appearing in the Enix Dragon Quest games such as swords and keys. Takeda recalled that the licensing contact at Enix had assumed at first General Products wanted product rights to the characters appearing in the games, and that no one had ever approached them before asking for rights to the equipment items instead.

By 1985, General Products had created over 50 garage kits for sale, ranging in size from 50 to 560 mm and made using a variety of different methods, including vacuum-forming, resin casting, metal casting, and also papercraft. Most kits were based on Japanese tokusatsu and kaiju series under license from studios such as Tsuburaya, Ishimori Productions, Toho, and Daiei Film, with a few licensed from American SF series and films such as Star Trek, Lost in Space, Land of the Giants, and Dark Star. General Products also carried garage kits made by other Japanese labels, including Inoue Arts, Billiken, Skunk Factory, TVC15, Akkun & H Enterprise, and Mono Craft, tie clips and buttons referencing Japanese SF as well as the German series Perry Rhodan, and a selection of doujinshi including early works by Shirow Masamune and Kenichi Sonoda and fanzines for Minky Momo and the works of Stephen King. A large TV set in the Osaka store was used for screenings; a schedule for the 1984-85 winter holiday included films such as The War of the Gargantuas, The Mysterians, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Barbarella. A corner of the store was partially walled off in glass as a section called "Cafe SID." Promoted by General Products as "a place where SF fans can converse," Cafe SID served food and drink, opening in 1984 with nine counter seats, and further expanded by 1985 to include five tables. In addition to selling directly to consumers, General Products distributed their goods through other outlets; in April 1985, 106 retailers in 35 Japanese prefectures were listed as carrying General Products merchandise.

General Products proposed using their prior experience as convention planners to organize a con for the garage kit community, "getting everyone together for some kind of direct-sales event ... What we came up with was Wonder Festival." The first Wonder Festival was held as a "pre-event" at General Products' store in Osaka on December 22-23, 1984 with 10 dealers and 700 attendees, followed on January 13, 1985 by an event held on the third floor of the Tokyo Metropolitan Industrial Trade Center in Hamamatsuchō, Tokyo attracting 60 dealers and 2000 attendees. Wonder Festival remained in Tokyo and became a biannual event, by December 1989 expanding to take up the entire Trade Center building, with 11,000 attendees and 250 dealers. Takeda recalled that while General Products felt itself to be in "a perpetual state of event planning," Wonder Festival  "brought back the party-like atmosphere we had first experienced during the preparations for the [1979] Sci-Fi Show," noting that Wonder Festival's staff included volunteers who had also worked on  Daicon. Takeda further credited Wonder Festival with expanding the garage kit industry through a system where the convention would negotiate on behalf of amateurs who wished to sell models based on a license holder's IP to obtain a single-day license, allowing them at the event to "compete on equal ground with the major manufacturers ... providing an opportunity for both pros and amateurs to show off their wares side by side."

In October 1987, General Products opened a second store, located in the Kichijōji neighborhood of Musashino City in Tokyo; the company also transferred its headquarters from the Osaka store to the new Tokyo location. In his 2003 memoir, Osamu Miyawaki of Kaiyodo recalled 1987 as a time where "the rise of garage kits," had upended the hobby world to a point where the scene seemed "about to explode;" in this competitive environment, he described General Products as both "good at business and good at publicity ... a worthy rival to which we were constantly being compared." Takeda, however, had himself described the Tokyo move as a consequence of an "ever-worsening state of affairs at General Products," remarking that while the company had some hit merchandise, such as a soft vinyl Kamen Rider mask, "General Products items weren't doing very well in the marketplace." The decision to move was further influenced by the fact the companies that owned the rights to General Products' licensed character goods were located in Tokyo, as was Wonder Festival, which was "rapidly becoming the store's primary source of investment capital." Although the Osaka store remained in business, several of its staff who were asked to transfer to Tokyo declined and left the company; Takeda noted that after the move only "about ten employees" remained at General Products.

Following the move to Tokyo, General Products embarked on a licensed publishing venture with Cyber Comix, a monthly manga anthology released in wide-ban tankobon format. The initial concept for Cyber Comix was for a magazine to be "filled with nothing but Gundam manga," a proposal by Hiroshi Ueda, a veteran of doujinshi circles who had previously been an in-house editor at General Products. Using contacts made during the production of Royal Space Force, Cyber Comix was pitched successfully to Gundam rights-holder Bandai. The first issue of Cyber Comix, with a cover illustration by Kenichi Sonoda, made its debut in the spring of 1988. Contributors to the magazine included Kazuhiko Shimamoto, Taku Kitazaki, Katsu Aki, and Takami Akai. Although Cyber Comix did feature manga set in the background of the UC Gundam universe, it also included series unrelated to Gundam such as Dark Whisper by Ikuto Yamashita and manga inspired by Gainax's own anime Gunbuster. Takeda recalled that "the editorial framework that was set in place was rather lacking ... books were constantly published behind schedule. And given that Bandai had money invested in this venture, it's safe to say they were none too pleased with the results. Finally, our contact ... stated that [Cyber Comix] would be continuing without the services of General Products. Takeda assessed of the publishing venture that, "It was the greatest failure in our attempt to expand the scope of our company ... In the end, the editorial department offered the company nothing more than a larger circle of contacts," citing as an example Ikuto Yamashita, later to become the lead mecha designer on Gainax's TV series Neon Genesis Evangelion.

General Products, Daicon Film, and Gainax
During its ten years in existence as a company between 1982 and 1992, General Products remained a separate organization from the amateur filmmaking studio Daicon Film and its later professional spinoff studio Gainax; Takeda however described a close business relationship between them that included financing as well as shared personnel and facilities.

Daicon Film formally established spring 1982 (Takeda 68-69, 107) [therefore Daicon III not technically a Daicon Film, although Takeda includes it 107]

The last year of Daicon Film's activity as a studio overlapped with the first year of Gainax's. Gainax was professionally incorporated in December of 1984 and began their debut project Royal Space Force while work was still ongoing on what Taekda described as Daicon Film's "swan song," Orochi Strikes Again, which would not be completed until December of 1985.

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legal entity Although future Bandai Visual president Shigeru Watanabe would later bring Gainax into the professional anime industry through arranging for Bandai to co-produce their debut work, 1987's Royal Space Force,  his original involvement with their staff had been through General Products, which Watanabe described in a 2004 interview as "the predecessor of Gainax." Watanabe first met Okada and Tanaka in 1982 during an SFX convention held in Suginami Public Hall. At the time Watanabe was involved with product planning for Bandai's "Real Hobby Series" figurines and recalled "General Products had a booth at the event selling garage kits. I learned a lot from the products they were selling there."

some from Daicon Film live-action and anime

GP and Yamata Orochi (Takeda 95-96)

In his 2005 memoir, Takeda described Gainax's 1984 incorporation as having used two million yen in startup capital supplied by General Products; in 2017, Yamaga related a different startup figure of six million yen, which he characterized as having come personally from Okada: "Ever since Daicon III, his position has always been a client."

GP capitalized Gainax and registered it (91-92)

GP organized screenings of Daicon Film works (see Puppeteer Press)

Daicon sales as informal predecessor of OAV (Clements)

Puppeteer Press “What’s Gainax?” Puppeteer Press Vol. 04 No. 13 (in GP folder) Vol. 05 No. 16 (in print)

General Products made merchandise based off Daicon Film works from the beginning of the company; the very first issue of Puppeteer Press, published the same month as the opening of the original Osaka store, offered a mug featuring the schoolgirl protagonist of Daicon III.

The Daicon III opening animations was made on a floor of a warehouse owned by what was then General Products' legal owner, Toshio Okada's family business, Okada Embroidering Daicon IV at Hosei Kaikan (Takeda 80-81, 109)

[ONV Commentary B] In part two, there is a scene where Tanaka-kun is making a garage kit, but Okada-san himself has never made one. He would have things made and sell them as his products. In that sense, things were a little different from Kaiyōdō (a figure creator and manufacturer). Clearly, he was presenting “concepts” and his focus was not actual products. His products were images (ideas). That’s the difference between Okada-san and the characters here. I don’t know whether it was a request or an actual job order, but it was fundamentally the same way in the case of anime production. He came up with the initial vision and asked Yamaga-san, Anno-san, and Akai-san to make anime based upon it. He might inspire them to make things in a certain way, or he might tell them to produce in a certain way. The order of the process might vary. Kubo-kun is making a decision here in Otaku no Video, he’s saying something like: “I’m going to do it!” But he is not a creator. [LAUGHS]

and had directed the opening anime films for Japan's 1981 and 1983 national science conventions, Daicon III and IV, which through their sale to fans on home video through General Products were regarded as informal precursors of the OVA concept later to become a major element of the anime industry [refine this reference re Clements’ book].

Made contact with Shigeru Watanabe through General Products [ref RSF article]

Akai and Anno as GP catalog artists (Anno back cover 1985) Anno created MacArthur T-shirt 1985

Daicon Film staff were recruited through GP store

The Osaka store was used as a dressing room by the cast of Orochi Strikes Again.

Gainax moves to Kichijoji-Manami Mar 1987 (Takeda 14)Unmarried male staff from both Gainax and GP used a shared house as their living space in Tokyo (Takeda 118) Only four GP employees in Tokyo (120) GP and Gainax move back to Kichijoji-Higashi where RSF was made; three times size and GP began to expand (Takeda 121)

Dragon Quest merchandise led to Gainax's Dragon Quest Fantasia Video

GP profitable, Gainax's anime not; more people hired at GP, "go where the profits were" Takeda 138:

Although by 1989 Gainax had made the successful Gunbuster, the studio's physical presence remained smaller than that of General Products itself; Takeshi Mori, later to direct Otaku no Video, recalled that while he was inspired after watching Gunbuster to pay a visit to Hideaki Anno in order to work on his upcoming series for NHK, Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water, he was uncertain at first if he had actually found Gainax, as he described the anime studio at that time as being located "in a corner of the General Products shop in Tokyo." Jean-Jacques Beineix and Jackie Bastide's documentary for French television Otaku: fils de l'empire du virtuel ["Otaku: Sons of the Virtual Empire"] contained a segment with Takami Akai on the development of Gainax's game Princess Maker 2 filmed at the Tokyo General Products store; footage of store manager Hiroki Sato building garage kits appeared in its introduction.

The anime segments of Otaku no Video were separated from each other by ten live-action "Portrait of an Otaku" segments, shot in the style of a documentary interview with subjects whose voices were altered and faces Pixelization In the 2006 director's commentary, Hiroki Sato remarked that all but one of the interview subjects in the live-action segments of Otaku no Video were General Products employees. This included the only foreigner interviewed, the third and final

although she agreed that the Japanese interview subjects were also portrayed in an unflattering fashion.

Both the Known Space Club and Puppeteer Press would eventually undergo a name change in August 1989, to the G.P. Club and G.Press respectively; this change was later explained as reflecting that club members' interests had by then "broadened to the point where we couldn't express it with only the word science fiction."

General Products U.S.A. and later years of the company
Patten gives paragraph summary of GP USA history

Around April of 1989, comics creator Lea Hernandez, who had been assisting with lettering manga at Toren Smith's firm Studio Proteus, was informed by Smith that Okada and Takeda were interested in opening an American branch of General Products in San Francisco; he recommended Hernandez to them as a person knowledgeable in anime and business who could be their representative in the United States. Smith was acquainted with Takeda and Okada, having lived in a Tokyo residence known as "Gainax House" not long after GenePro's 1987 move to the city; originally rented out to provide living space for the staff of Royal Space Force, after the film's completion it was instead occupied by many of the single male employees of General Products. Hernandez had an initial meeting with Takeda and Okada in May 1989 at BayCon in San Jose, CA, a science fiction convention known as an important early venue for US anime fans; BayCon had hosted an influential anime program by Toren Smith in 1986. Hernandez first did advance promotion of General Products USA at that year's Dallas Fantasy Fair, followed by a table run together with Okada and Takeda at the 1989 San Diego Comic-Con. The table was across from that of guest of honor Syd Mead; Hernandez recounted bringing over to him General Products' licensed garage kit of Mead's Spinner from the film Blade Runner and introducing Mead to her Japanese co-workers.

In a 2014 interview with Anime News Network, Hernandez recalled that an ambitious set of business objectives had been discussed at the initial 1989 BayCon meeting. Beyond merchandise sales, General Products U.S.A.'s future goals had included organizing a fan convention of their own in the United States, as well as producing "some good dubbed translations of anime, because up until that point they hadn’t really been very good at all," and publishing transated manga directly to tankobon format at a USD $10 sales price, an approach that would become popular in the US manga industry when it was adopted a decade later. Hernandez compared GP U.S.A.'s ambitions to release both anime and manga in English to the later development of Viz Media, which began as a manga publisher in 1987, and in 1993 expanded into releasing anime on home video; she remarked that her advocacy to Takeda and Okada of releasing translated manga in a USD $10 tankobon format was based on that being the price American fans were used to paying for imported copies of Japanese-language manga tankobon.

Retailers or distributors in the US carrying General Products kits in early 1990 included Horizon and Pony Toy Go-Round in Los Angeles, and New Type in San Francisco.

Animerica. }}

June and August 1989 report on GP USA opening https://cdn.preterhuman.net/texts/news_and_media/stuf11.txt

In August 1989, General Products had a table at that year's San Diego Comic-Con, where

Lea moved to California in early October 1989 [Pulp, 29]

The catalog was itself advertised in fall 1989 on the inside back cover of the early English-language anime magazine Animag.

Hernandez noted that General Products existed in an era when there was often of a time lag of years between the release of an anime in Japan and the diffusion and growth of its fan base in the US, and that the Japanese office couldn't grasp why American fans would want, for example, merchandise from the 1985 TV series Dirty Pair, as from their perspective it was "so over;" instead they wished to push General Products' garage kits based off of the 1989-91 OVA series ARIEL despite it still being unknown at the time to US fans.

Toshiyuki Kubooka recalled encountering Hernandez while working on

Sato commented that around this time he was also filmed making a garage kit when "a documentary filmmaker came from France"

Sawamura, whom Takeda had known since 1978, had been a member of the Space Force Club [note 27 in Takeda, Noda and Sawamura both TV producers]

Mega Comics, which contained a publiction date of September 1, 1991, listed an address for General Products U.S.A. in the Bank of America Building in downtown Oakland, California for placing mail orders or to join the General Products club; however, a P.O. box in Austin, Texas was listed as "the address for letters of impressions" to "G.Press U.S.A./GAINAX."

A retrospective review in 2007’s Manga: The Complete Guide argued Mega Comics displayed a contrast between its "high production values" and its "sometimes decent but often comically broken English…The dissonance is all the more sharp considering the book's boldly declared purpose ('This is the book you desired earnestly, and would brought you a great impressions!'), which was to present itself as an authentic voice straight from Japan on the subject of anime and manga, but whose actual core seemed to be a membership form within offering $25 annual memberships in the 'General Products Club,' in exchange for exceedingly vague-sounding benefits."

Mega "consulting editor" Yoshimi Kanda--this is pen name of Hiroshi Ueda (Takeda 190)

The Cal-Animage contingent of AnimeCon '91's staff would return to the same venue the following year to organize what would become the first Anime Expo in 1992, forming for the purpose the nonprofit entity SPJA (Society for the Promotion of Japanese Animation); contemporary fan coverage noted the continuity between the two events.