Carlos Ross

Hometown: Chandler, Arizona, USA
Education: Arizona State University '08 - Asian Languages-Japanese

Howdy. For a long time, I was Meticulous Figurehead (Editor-in-Chief) of this website. As such, I get to actually write things in first person tense once in a while.

I got involved in THEM originally in 1998 through a chance meeting with several members in the Arizona State University Honors College, though I had actually already been reading the Anime Reviews site for quite some time. Once I put two and two together ("You wrote this?!? Cool!") I basically took on a lot of titles, often watching them in Raph's dorm. After Raph left for medical school in 1999, I took over the site, and it's been under my stewardship ever since.

I've been watching anime for far longer, of course, starting with Mazinger Z and Voltron, and only finally realizing what "anime" was many years later with Sailor Moon and Grave of the Fireflies.

Between 2000 and 2008, I was in charge of this website, all the while slowly working on my degree in (you guessed it) Japanese. I was involved in a few conventions here and there, mostly in Arizona. I was also an officer of THEM ASU for several years and also served as captain of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Academic Bowl team as well as the ASU College and Quiz Bowl teams (had to pay tuition somehow). I graduated in December of '08 and, like so many ASU grads before me, skipped town with all my belongings to a completely different life elsewhere.

As of the present time, I am the longest-serving reviewer on this site; you'd think that so many years reviewing anime would cause burnout, but thankfully that hasn't happened quite yet, though having a raft of other hobbies doesn't hurt. Aside from my work with THEM Anime, I am also an avid birder (particularly during Christmas Bird Count season), serve as an editor and/or superuser at, among others, Wikipedia, Foursquare, and the online nature database GlobalTwitcher.com, and maintain a keen interest in genealogy. Between all this, I'm pretty easy to find on the Internet.

Like Dave, I am one of the few people who can claim to have successfully used THEM for its secondary (unwritten) purpose more than once. *smirk*

I currently live in Orlando with my wife Kimi and our cat Kaji (yes, like the Evangelion character) -- I'm currently a bell captain at Disney's Old Key West and Saratoga Springs Resorts at Walt Disney World, and having a blast!

Due to my employment with the Walt Disney Company as of 2010, I am not currently reviewing titles distributed by the Company or its subsidiaries, so as to avoid conflict of interest. (But you don't need to work for the Mouse to know that Studio Ghibli is the bomb diggity and all that.)

Everything else you need to know, you'll learn in due time. Ciao!

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Incidentally, the Figurehead Emeritus is possibly the only guy on Earth who has had relationships occur as a direct result of Marmalade Boy multiple times.

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I've got a Facebook, a LiveJournal, AND a Twitter feed; you may have to do some minimal digging to find them.

Cheers!

Status: [PERMANENT]
(active 1998-present)