Cynthia Ward · From fps #9 · November 2, 2006 | Back in the dark ages of the 1980s, most Japanese animation was available only in science-fiction convention screening-rooms or on recordings duplicated from Japanese videotapes. American anime fans developed a lively tape-trading underground, but supply was still limited. So sometimes you took what you could get without knowing what you were getting.

One evening I found myself watching an unknown anime movie featuring a macho secret-agent man with butt-length hair, high-soled shoes, and eye shadow. A delicate, doe-eyed young male clerk looked at this gentleman, and the next thing I knew, I was watching a close-up of the men's hands twining on the hotel desk, knocking over a vase of roses in a transcultural image of defloration. The secret agent's boss was a boy dictator who liked to sing in drag. James Bond was never like this.

The movie was wildly uneven, it was in unsubtitled Japanese, and, as a third-generation copy, it was hard to see. But I loved it. It wasn't like anything I'd ever seen or heard of. What an imagination! What beautiful men!

This movie, 1983's Patarillo: Project Stardust (also translated as Patarilo: Stardust Project), was my introduction to the world of gay romance fiction created by women for women.

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