A Fandom Life Well-Lived: A Conversation With Greg Ayres

• Author: Kennedy (Red Bard)

• Date: 2/17/2024

• Location: Katsucon 2024

Kennedy: So, Greg, normally I start this out by asking, like, “For our readers who don't know who you are, please tell us who you are!” But you—you've been interviewed by us a couple times!

Greg Ayres: A few times—not too long ago, actually.

Kennedy: So instead, I'm going to start this out by asking, so how long have you been a fan of anime?

Greg Ayres: Man, I don't know that I can put an actual number on that. I mean, I know when I started watching. I used to run around with a bunch of skaters, and there's only so much you can do as a skater in Texas during the summer because you have two options: It's either boiling hot or it's raining. And when you're a little kid, boiling hot doesn't matter—you're like, “Ah, sun, whatever.” But when it rains, there's nothing to do. And we had this—there was this one friend of ours who was always talking about, we didn't even know it was called. I think they were calling it “Japanimation” at the time. We had this one friend that just always had this ratty backpack, and he always had, like, a bunch of videotapes in it. 

He's like, “I really wish you would watch this show! Y'all would really like this!” And I think the first thing he ever showed us was, like, a bad transfer of Combat Mecha Xabungle, which is old—which is old! But we dug it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpoIiK8gk8c 

I think that part of what made it so cool to me then as, like, a 16-year-old was that it was this thing that had come from Japan; it was on this ratty old videotape, so you couldn't really see it that well. And so, then the next thing I remembered is he wanted us to watch Macross. And that was the first time I realized that storytelling was for adults—wasn't for kids. And of course, when you're sixteen, you want to do all of the adult things. So then I realized we were experiencing something that wasn't for kids. Because y’know, at first glance, they looked like, as American kids, they just looked like cartoons.

And what changed everything—and this sounds so cliche, but I guess not anymore, because I know young kids that haven't even seen this film—I was a big art film person. And we had gone to see—I can't even remember, it was Liquid Sky or some weird ‘80s movie. But this trailer for this movie called Akira played before the movie. And the first words I remember, “Neo Tokyo is about to explode.” And then the drums start. 

And I was like, “What is this?” And that opening animation sequence they used in the trailer reminded me of something from Blade Runner. And then there were these dudes on bikes and, like, this guy in a clown mask. And I was like, “What is this?” We were dead. We were like, “That thing, we're going to go see it!?” And my friend's like, “That's Akira! That's the type of animation I've been trying to get you all to watch!” So like, he knew what it was, and I remember he was like, “Y'all are just stupid.” So at that point, it was just no holds barred. We were like, just in for the ride. We were anime fans to the point that we were watching all of his videos. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nA8KmHC2Z-g 

But he had said that you could buy these things called laserdiscs, and we wouldn't have to watch these crappy looking videotapes. And so we hatched this plan. I love this. We were like, one group of us was going to buy the player and the others would buy the disks. Well, I don't know how I managed to be the one that had to buy the player. So I bought this laserdisc player, and I think I paid like $400 or $500 for it. It was really expensive for what it was. Like, when you consider VHS, you could buy a VHS player for like $50.

Kennedy: And this is $400 or $500 in, like, what is this, late ‘80s, early ‘90s?

Greg Ayres: Yeah, yeah! So it was really expensive. And then I had it. And I bought one—I think I had one of the Tenchi Muyo! laserdiscs. And I knew there was going to be a Criterion Collection of Akira. And I was like, “Hey, we need to get it! There's a special version that has an animated version of the manga.” Like, it was a walkthrough of the first volume— like a visual novel. I was like, “Oh my god, we have to get this.” Well, then my friends were like, “Well, those things are expensive.” Well, I already had this player, so I ended up being one to buy everything. But the cool thing about that is I have all these classic anime on the laserdisc that you cannot find anywhere. So, like weird stuff like Twilight of the Cockroaches and bad OVAs like The Humanoid, but I have all of them. I still have all of them. I have Serial Experiments Lain on laserdisc. I have a bunch of the Tenchi Muyo!, some of the Macross movies that never made it over here, I have on laserdisc.

The one thing I need to do is get that back in working order because the holy grail of laserdiscs at the time was the Miyazaki Museum Collection, which is like the definitive box set. And there were things at the time in that laserdisc collection that were not available anywhere else. And they were subtitled, so we were like, “Whoa, we can watch this in English!” And I remember you just couldn't get your hands on them. They were really expensive at the time. They're like $500, $600 just for the discs. And there was a limited run of them. Well, now, because everyone's gotten rid of their laserdisc players, you can find them sometimes for, like $75 online, the whole set. So I'm like—bruh! I need to get my laserdisc player working again so I can watch some of these classic anime! 

And I have another friend that's, like, a younger fan that's just really into old anime. So I told him when he comes down—he lives in Louisiana—I told him when he comes down, I'll dust off the old laserdisc player and we'll watch a bunch of old stuff on laserdisc. Like, I think I have Lensman on laserdisc. I have a bunch of just, really wild old titles that I haven't seen since probably I was like sixteen to nineteen years old.

So, I've been into anime for a really long time. And I kind of fell out of anime fandom for a while, just because I was in a store—it's no longer in Houston, so I can say the name, it was a store called Planet Anime—and there was this dude that worked there that was, you know, that know-it-all otaku guy. And, like, there was this little kid who didn't know a lot about anything, but he was a big Gundam fan and he was just in the store, like, just talking the poor clerk's ear off. Well, this dude, like, shamed this little kid. He's like, “Well, I saw it on TV in Japan. You don't know what Gundam is.” And at this point, I was, like, an adult. And I was like, “Wow, dude, you just made a little kid feel bad. Do you feel good about yourself?” And I was getting into other things.

And then my friend dragged me back kicking and screaming, because he had got like—there was probably a whole year that I didn't watch anime. And I'm like, “Ugh, no, I'm out of that.” And then the DVDs for Fushigi Yugi came out. And that was a big deal, because when they released Fushigi Yugi on VHS, they chopped the music—so they would do like three episodes on a VHS tape. The thing about Fushigi Yugi that's so cool is the music starts building, like, in the middle of the last scene and just builds and builds and builds till that boom, and then the song starts. Well, when we bought them on VHS, they would stop and they would go to the next episode and you only got one opening and one closing, and they were at the dog ears on the tape. So here was the chance to see Fushigi Yugi the way it was intended to be seen. And I started watching that, and we started watching it every night. I'm like, “Oh, God, now I have this hobby again.” (Laughs)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxxjwTre5JM 

The hardest thing is working in this industry has kind of changed that for me. I don't watch a lot of anime now. I'll watch the beginning of something that a friend's in. And I guess I get it because of being exposed to it all the time now. But I don't have the craving to watch it all the time like I used to, because I think it's so much of my Monday through Friday. But that love for anime is what makes me love this community so much. It makes me take shows seriously. It makes me realize, because I've been watching anime a long time, I know there are some just garbage shows out there. So sometimes, I get cast to work on something and I'm like, “Well, this is a show. Can I please just know what it is?” And I'm like, “All right, let's just have fun. Let's just do this show.” But I don't think if I wasn't a fan before I would have been in this industry this long because it's not a lot of money changing hands, at least not from the work itself. And it's sometimes hard work and sometimes it's a hustle. But being a part of something you love makes that a little different. 

Like, you're just like, “Oh, I can't run out on this.” But yeah, I've been at it for a while now, for sure.

Kennedy: And how long have you been going to cons?

Greg Ayres: Well, I mean, as an industry person, 24 years. I think my first con I ever went to was Animazement in North Carolina in either ‘99 or 2000. No, it was before that, because I was already in the industry at that point, so it had to have been like—I know that Jigglypuff was a big deal on the Pokémon show, because the reason we went to that specific one is the original voice actress, Rachel Lillis, was going to be there. And the idea that we would get to meet the Jigglypuff was outrageous. 

And now, granted, I was a grown man at this point—I was in my thirties, I think. But we wanted to go meet Jigglypuff. And it was the funniest thing. And some of the people that I got autographs from in that show ended up being, like, really close friends and colleagues that I worked with.

Brett Weaver and I apparently had an exchange in the elevator that didn't go well. And I wrote something rude in the program above him. And I told Bret, “I found this old program for a show I was at and I wrote this thing above you.” He goes, “Oh, yeah, well, you were probably a kid, so you probably irritated me.” (laughs) Like, it was just a great, funny moment. But working with him now, I know he's a great guy. And I find myself in elevators where like, I'll get in an elevator at a con, and I see a kid's pushed all the buttons, and I'm like, (exacerbated sigh). And I think about that interchange apparently between Brett, and I'm like, “Okay, don't—don't freak out, don't freak out.” 

But like, Toshifumi Yoshida—I was just pointing out his name in one of the mangas that I signed earlier. Some of those people that I saw at that very first con, I would end up getting to know very well working in the industry. So it's so weird. But I've been going to cons, not necessarily anime cons, since I was a child because my brother was a huge horror movie fan. So as a kid, I would get dragged to all of these horror movie conventions. So when I found an anime con, I was like, “Oh, I know how to do this! I've done this before! I know there's a vendor's room, there's a place we can go watch movies.” It was all very old hat to me, but it was all the stuff I was into versus, you know, my brother's horror movies. But, so, yeah, I've been going to cons since I was a kid. But anime cons didn't start until whichever, I have to look that up because I was already in the industry in ‘99, so it'd have to be several years before that.

Kennedy: So what about staffing cons? You've helped staff cons, you DJ at cons. When did you start doing that, and what made you want to do that?

Greg Ayres listed in Anime Boston 2011’s program guide as the con’s dance coordinator

Greg Ayres: So there's two stories that literally really were the beginning of my staffing shows. One has to do with me DJing and the other has to do with me being a guest. The DJing thing, people found out pretty quickly that I had been a nightclub DJ. Like, I'd only been in this business a while, and of course, people start digging through your old photos and stuff like that. Well, somebody here in Virginia saw a photo of me DJing at a theater after we wrapped Romeo and Juliet. Me and my friend Wilson were DJing up in the catwalk of the theater and playing on vinyl. And so somebody's like,”Wait, are you a DJ?” 

And I was like, “Oh, well, I used to be. I was a nightclub DJ for years.” They're like, “Will you throw a party at NekoCon?” And I was like, “I don't play anime music.” They're like, “We don't care! Just throw a party!” So that started. And once I started DJing at conventions, then everybody was like, “Oh, well, apparently he's a DJ, too.”

So this one convention I went to in Ohio, they had put me on the lineup, and they had told me that I was going to be DJing. They had not told any of the other DJs. So I was at another con in Cincinnati, and I said, “Yeah, I'll be at this con in January, and I'll be DJing!” And this kid was like, “Says who?” Like, in the second row. And he's like, “Says who? I'm one of the DJs. Who said you're playing?” And I was like, “Uh, the chairman of the con told me, who are you?” And I was like, “What is this?” So what I didn't know is that con’s chairman had made a promise that he really shouldn't have, because the people that run the dance should be picking the DJs and all that. But of course, as the person that was just, “Hey, do you wanna DJ?” “Yeah, sure!”

So I found myself in a really bad situation. And, unfortunately for the people that I was playing with, they chose to be really unprofessional in that situation. And while I was playing, they were unplugging my gear and causing problems to my equipment. And I've been a DJ long enough to know that once a crowd thinks you're stupid or you're no good, there's no winning them back quickly. And there was absolutely no way I could do it when the people around me were messing with me and messing with my equipment, and in my brain, I was like, “There's a room called the green room upstairs with free booze and free food, and I'm down here busting my butt with a bunch of guys that don't like me.” 

So, I put on a song that was impossible to mix out of and said, “Y'all have fun! I'm gonna go get drunk!” And so I left. Well, when I got upstairs, the con chairman was up there, and they were like, “What happened? They said it was a disaster.” I was like, “Yeah, they were unplugging the equipment while I was working.” And they're like, “We have so much drama with our DJs. If we had somebody that could—” I was like, “Wait, real DJs don't act like that.” It was like, DJs are nerds. We're just music nerds. And so a conversation happened that night like, “Hey, would you take over our dance and do this?” And I was like, “Well, these guys already hate me, so I'm not gonna be in this market,” I was like, “Sure, if that's your call, I'll take over your dance.”

And of course, I did the—probably not the smartest thing. I fired everybody and just brought in my own crew. But in doing that, I had this vision that took many years to make happen. But I wanted to build this group of nerdy DJs because a lot of the guys that were playing didn't even like anime. It was just a DJ gig. They're like, “Oh, I'm playing for nerds this weekend.” I wanted to get a bunch of nerdy DJs together that had no ego, that loved each other, that promoted and encouraged each other, and loved to play at cons and didn't think playing at a con was an insult. 

My friends that DJ in nightclubs used to tease me when I first started doing this. They're like, “When are you going to get out of hotels and get back into the nightclubs?” I'm like, “Bro, kids line up for the door to open at this show,” I was like, “Y'all have to hope somebody will straggle in in the first hour in a nightclub.” Being a nightclub DJ is so boring for the first hour because there's nobody there when they open, but the music's got to be going. Man, kids line up, and when the doors open, they have cat ears on and they're ready to party. The energy of my crowd's never off, so that's what I wanted. So at that show, I continued to build that, and that got bigger and bigger and bigger, and then other cons asked me to do it for them.

Greg Ayres in the Anime Boston 2005 (his first of many Anime Bostons) program guide

And the reason I got involved in staffing in another regard, I was at a convention that was run by my friends, and it was at the height of ADV's popularity, and I was the lead in a bunch of shows, and they put me as a guest at their panel because they were my friends or whatever. They're like, “Will you go to our show?” I'm like, “Sure.” And they worked me to death. There was one day that I did not have a break from 11 AM until 3 AM., like, from 11 that morning until 3 AM that night. I was furious. And I went—and my friends jokingly call me hockey tempered for a reason—I went in and just started screaming at my friends. I was like, “Why would you do this?!” Why do you think I don't need to eat?!”

Well, I'd also been around a bunch of other actors that had been really abysmal behaving at conventions, and I always hated the idea that some people treat con staff like maids. Like, “How dare you not blah blah blah! I was wanting water!” My attitude has always been like, if you're not willing to help fix a problem, you're just screaming. You're not being constructive at all. And so then I came back and I was like, “Hey, I didn't mean to come down so hard on you. You guys almost killed me.” And they felt horrible, and they're like, “Well, how can we keep this from never happening? Is it happening again?” Well, from that, I was showing them how to do this schedule that broke it out in a way. And they're like, “How do you know this software?” I was like, “Oh, I have a whole degree in advertising and marketing.” Before I knew it, I was a publications director for this position, and I was doing the program guide because the other person was trying to do it in PowerPoint. I'm like, “That's not what that program is for!” So I found myself in three years time, a triple department for that show. And I'm like, “I sure hope you don't want me to do guest stuff.” [laughs] But I do, and I still work at that show.

Kennedy: Can I ask what show it is?

Greg Ayres: Yeah, it's a con in Galveston. And actually, we were in Houston, and anytime a bunch of other cons get involved, there's this weird politics and this competition that really doesn't need to exist. And when the Houston market got gross and people started being weird was right around the same time that Hurricane Ike kind of wiped out Galveston. So we consciously moved that con there to kind of help with the rebuilding of that island's economy because—the IHOP that's next to our convention center said they meet their yearly numbers the weekend of the show. Because it's a small island, the goal for that IHOP was so low. And because kids just eat 24 hours a day at the con, because the older crowd that gets up, they go there for breakfast. The kids are up all night at the rave kind of wind down there. So they just were slammed 24 hours a day. And they're like, “Yeah, we meet our financial numbers for the whole year this one weekend.” And I'm like, “Oh my god.”

Kennedy: We’re running out of time. So on that note, I guess we'll go ahead unless you have anything else you'd like to add.

Greg Ayres: I continue to work to cons to this day, and the one thing that I love about that is if there ever comes a time that I don't want to do voiceover for a living, if there ever comes a time when the industry changes because there's all this talk of AI taking over everything or whatever, I won't have to worry about not being a part of this community. Even though I might not do the same job that I'm doing now, I've worked hard to be a part of the community itself, so I won't be one of those people like, “Well, I guess I have to find new friends.” I will always be a part of this community, for sure.