About Me
How's it hanging everyone. Street Savvy the Otaku Guy here, and this is my creation. With Otaku Universe, my goal is to give my fellow Otaku one single place that has everything they love in that one location 24/7/365.
How I Got Started
So here's me. My real name is Derrick McGee and I happen to be a very big anime fan. I believe that I started out like everyone else did, just watching it on TV. And then later on, I found out that I could actually buy anime from certain stores.
My Experiences At Suncoast
At the time, the best place to shop was Suncoast, here where I live at least. I loved this store because it had everything an Otaku loves all together in that one place. The only thing it was missing was video games, most likely because the mall it was located in had a very badass GameStop that it'd have to compete with. But otherwise they had it all. Anime, Manga, Live - Action, you name it Suncoast had it.
But unfortunately, the good times were not to last as I went to the mall one terrible day to find that it was closed. And being a noob Otaku at that time, I didn't know anywhere else to shop.
Right Stuf Replaces Suncoast
Fortunately, things got better when I got home that day as I found a catalog from Right Stuf in my mailbox. Now I've no idea how Right Stuf knew to send me one of their catalogs since I never signed up for anything and this catalog just now was my first time ever hearing about them, but I wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
So for a while Right Stuf was my new Suncoast, but even so it wasn't the same. They weren't as good as Suncoast as there were several things they were missing, and I happen to be old school in that I prefer brick and mortar stores where I can actually check out the products with my own two hands and eyes before I make a purchase. But despite their shortcomings, Right Stuf was still better than nothing.
How I Became A FYE Guy
Until one day, I happened to discover another brick and mortar store called FYE. Unfortunately FYE wasn't as good as Suncoast either as I found myself searching Right Stuf's catalogs for the things that FYE didn't have and vice versa. But at least I had a brick and mortar store again. Now FYE never closed and I still shop there now. But even though they continue getting better and better, they still have a long way to go before they catch up to where Suncoast was.
How I Began Rolling With Ramencon
But then one day came something that finally surpassed Suncoast. I remember reading somewhere "Just because something good ends doesn't mean something better won't begin." And that was clearly the case here because while Suncoast was good, Ramencon was better. In fact Ramencon was on a whole other level, as the shopping was only a very small part of it. And even then, the shopping alone had Suncoast beat by leaps and bounds.
And when my folks decided to start staying at the hotel, I was able to start fully enjoying everything Ramencon had to offer. I loved how I could cosplay every day, I loved all the dancing in the Rave, Ramencon was a dream come true. But it had one major flaw. As an anime convention, it only takes place once a year. Although I could theoretically make up for that by attending multiple anime conventions a year.
How All These Experiences Led To Otaku Universe
What I was looking for was a way to enjoy Ramencon, or at least Suncoast, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. But no matter where I looked, offline or online, this did not exist anywhere.
But then a light bulb went off. Instead of complaining about it, why don't I do something about it? Since what I want does not exist, I should create it myself. I was a freshman in college at the time, so it was a simple matter of changing my major to computer science.
And once I learned enough to start making my own website, I took one last look on the internet to see is there a place yet where an Otaku gets to enjoy everything he loves in that one location 24/7/365? The answer was still no, and thus Otaku Universe was born!
About the Mascot
By now you're probably wondering what is up with all of this Street Savvy stuff. So let me go ahead and clear that up before someone starts thinking that I'm the world's greatest gang banger or something.
An Interesting Habit From My Childhood
I've always had this crazy habit of inventing my own characters whenever I find that I really like a show or video game since I was a kid as a way to help out the heroes. I remember that I invented my own Mario brother, my own Ninja Turtle, my own Resident Evil survivor, and so on.
Sailor Mini Mars Got Things Started
So naturally, I did the same thing with my gateway anime Sailor Moon. The idea came from Rini when they found out that she was Sailor Moon's and Tuxedo Mask's daughter from the future when they're grown and married and all that.
And that got me to thinking about why was Sailor Moon the only one? Isn't there someone else who also has a boyfriend and could be married to him in the future and have a daughter in the future as well? And the first one to come to mind was Sailor Mars and that Chad guy.
So I pictured what Sailor Mini Mars would look like in my head, and I was really creeped out years later by Shakugan no Shana because it was Shana who came to mind! Just imagine the Flame Haze dressed up as Sailor Mars and there you have Sailor Mini Mars. Like WTF?! That was so spooky considering that Shakugan no Shana didn't even exist yet back then!
How I Came Up With Sailor Mini Mars' Moves
Now right off the bat, it was a no brainer that she'd have all of Sailor Mars' moves since obviously her mother would be teaching her. But remember that her mother is adult Sailor Mars from the future, not the present day teenager that we're all familiar with. So it only stands to reason that she should be a lot stronger and should have several brand new moves that she didn't have back when she was a teenager.
We don't know with any certainty how much stronger their adult selves are since we never got to see them fight, so the only thing we really have to go on is our own speculation. And I had always figured that a stronger Sailor Mars would not only have the power of fire, but would also have the power of magma and volcanoes. And considering that she's teaching her, I made sure to give Sailor Mini Mars these same abilities.
Now as for her brand new moves, I knew that I'd have to invent those myself. And after noticing that no one other than Sailor Saturn has any defense, I decided that they should be defensive moves. The first one would be her Firewall. When the bad guys attack, adult Sailor Mars would be like, "Step aside ladies, I've got this!" and step out front and stop the bad guy's attack with this move, while looking all badass in the process.
Her other move would be the Ring of Fire. I don't recall exactly which episode or movie it was where I saw this actually happen but if they're attacked from multiple directions simultaneously, adult Sailor Mars would shield everyone with a circular wall of magma erupting from the ground.
Of course to avoid making Firewall obsolete, I decided that Ring of Fire would be weaker. Which does make sense considering she's spreading her energy around in a big circle whereas Firewall has her concentrating all of her energy in one single direction. And like all of her other moves, Sailor Mini Mars would know both of these techniques as well.
How I Was Going To Use Sailor Mini Mars
But like all the other characters I invented, thinking about how the battles and everything else would've gone different if my character had been there helping the heroes was the only thing I had any intention of doing with her. But then around the time when Sailor Moon was getting old and Dragonball Z had just come out, I had a teacher who gave the class a very interesting assignment. We had to invent our own super hero and write our own story revolving around that super hero.
Well I was already way ahead of her. I remember I wanted to use DBZ but I ran into a major problem, namely the one I just mentioned. At the time DBZ had only just then come out, so I didn't know enough about DBZ to make my own Z fighter yet. So this left me with no choice but to go back to Sailor Moon and use Sailor Mini Mars.
So I first had to come up with my own set of brand new bad guys for the sailor scouts to have to fight, and since it was required by the assignment, I had to have them losing until Sailor Mini Mars came to help them. I even came up with a little comedy routine where everyone was thanking Sailor Mars for saving their bacons while Sailor Mars was looking at them weird because she didn't know what they were talking about.
Of course they would eventually discover Sailor Mini Mars, and since they're both from the future, I decided that Sailor Mini Moon would recognize her friend. I even had a part of the story where the two of them would be hanging out together as friends, you know shopping and all that. And just like Sailor Moon and Sailor Mini Moon, I had Sailor Mini Mars living with Sailor Mars and driving her crazy.
How Sailor Mini Mars Became Street Savvy
But basically everything was going great, up until the day that the teacher announced that she found out that the other boys in the class who were also doing female super heroes were doing their stories naughty. "She's got big tits and she's jiggling while chasing after the bad guy." That sort of thing. So she fixed the problem by making it against the rules for anyone to use the opposite gender for their super hero. Which meant by me being a guy, I had to change Sailor Mini Mars into a guy. Get the feeling this is starting to lead somewhere yet?
At first I thought this would really screw me up big time. Today of course, we all know now that there are both girl and guy sailor scouts. It was just mere coincidence that all the sailor scouts of our solar system just so happened to be girls with the sole exception of Tuxedo Mask/Sailor Earth.
And the reason we couldn't tell at first that he was the first male sailor scout that we knew about was that the guys prefer to never use their powers. It was never really officially explained why this is in either the anime or the manga, but my best guess is that the guys see all of those crazy poses that you have to do to make your powers work as gay. So they rather just do everything with their fists and leave all the crazy posing for the girls.
But it wasn't until I had gotten back my A+ paper that I realized that I had created a character that was 100% my creation. After I removed all of Sailor Mar's moves from him, everything left about him were all things that I came up with myself. But I still wanted him to maintain some connection to his Sailor Moon roots, so I decided that the guy who transforms into Street Savvy would be an Otaku who's a very big fanboy of Sailor Moon.
But now came the question of what in the heck could I use him for. Fast forward to a few years ago when I decided to create Otaku Universe and I got the idea of using him as the website's mascot. This is why I always refer to myself as Street Savvy.
Being a sucky artist, although I did a pretty good job of drawing his eyes to use as the top banner image on the home page if I do say so myself, I knew that the only way I'd be able to get an image of him would be for someone to take a picture of me cosplaying him at Ramencon. Especially since no one but me really knows what the guy is supposed to look like.
And finally, the very first social media platform that I heard about was YouTube. And even then, I only looked at it on my Nintendo Wii because I thought it was another movie watching service like Netflix or Hulu. And it just so happened that the very first YouTubers that I found were these guys who stole Bill Nye's idea. Eric the Car Guy, Eli the Computer Guy, Bill Hammock the Engineering Guy, The Firearm Guy, and so on. So that gave me the idea of calling myself The Otaku Guy. And hey, it wasn't taken so why not? That's how I became Street Savvy the Otaku Guy (Whoa, now I sound like The Brady Bunch!).
But back in those days we did not know this. As far as anyone knew, only girls could be sailor scouts. And Tuxedo Mask was nothing more than a regular person with no powers at all who somehow got it into his head that he's the Japanese version of Batman. So since I couldn't have my character be a sailor scout anymore as far as I knew at the time, I had to come up with some way of explaining who is this guy with all of these fire and magma super powers who's a friend helping the sailor scouts fight these new bad guys.
But I soon found that it didn't take much tweaking to make things go smoothly again, I just had to change the reasons. To give him a different reason for why he'd be staying with Sailor Mars, I simply had her get into some very big trouble where he would be the only person who could help her. He would then get very badly hurt in the process and would pass out from his injuries in front of her temple when bringing her back home. So as the least she could do to say "thank you," she would take him in, have Sailor Mercury treat his injuries, and let him stay with her until he was fully healed.
To keep the whole thing about him driving her crazy, I decided that he should be one of those really nice guys but she doesn't want him being nice to her. But I soon realized that there was only one reason that she could possibly have for this, she doesn't want the other girls thinking the reason he's being nice to her is because she's doing something with him that she shouldn't be if you're catching my drift. But for that to work I could no longer have him be Sailor Mini Moon's age, he'd have to be at least Sailor Mars' age for this to make sense.
And because he was one of those really nice guys, I decided to have the girls mistaking all of his attempts to be just friends as him hitting on them. Which actually made the part about him hanging out with Sailor Mini Moon even better because I could have that be the point when the girls would corner him and make him choose one of them.
But since just being friends is his only intention, he wouldn't understand and would choose Sailor Mini Moon just to be one of those people that's nice to kids. Which allowed me to turn this into a very hilarious comedy routine as I could now have the other girls sneaking and following them around thinking he's a cradle robber.
And since I couldn't have him be a sailor scout anymore, I explained who he was and everything by saying that he used to be a part of the only other group that has super powers, the bad guys. And him being very very nice would be self explanatory for why he refused to go along with their evils and turned good.
And as for his name, I just grabbed the very first thing I heard that I thought sounded cool without any clue to what it meant. Street Savvy could've been some gang banger way of saying "I'm a faggot who needs to be spanked by a skinhead" for all I knew. Of course I know what it means now, and I think that makes it even more perfect a name for him.
But I soon found that it didn't take much tweaking to make things go smoothly again, I just had to change the reasons. To give him a different reason for why he'd be staying with Sailor Mars, I simply had her get into some very big trouble where he would be the only person who could help her. He would then get very badly hurt in the process and would pass out from his injuries in front of her temple when bringing her back home. So as the least she could do to say "thank you," she would take him in, have Sailor Mercury treat his injuries, and let him stay with her until he was fully healed.
To keep the whole thing about him driving her crazy, I decided that he should be one of those really nice guys but she doesn't want him being nice to her. But I soon realized that there was only one reason that she could possibly have for this, she doesn't want the other girls thinking the reason he's being nice to her is because she's doing something with him that she shouldn't be if you're catching my drift. But for that to work I could no longer have him be Sailor Mini Moon's age, he'd have to be at least Sailor Mars' age for this to make sense.
And because he was one of those really nice guys, I decided to have the girls mistaking all of his attempts to be just friends as him hitting on them. Which actually made the part about him hanging out with Sailor Mini Moon even better because I could have that be the point when the girls would corner him and make him choose one of them.
But since just being friends is his only intention, he wouldn't understand and would choose Sailor Mini Moon just to be one of those people that's nice to kids. Which allowed me to turn this into a very hilarious comedy routine as I could now have the other girls sneaking and following them around thinking he's a cradle robber.
And since I couldn't have him be a sailor scout anymore, I explained who he was and everything by saying that he used to be a part of the only other group that has super powers, the bad guys. And him being very very nice would be self explanatory for why he refused to go along with their evils and turned good.
And as for his name, I just grabbed the very first thing I heard that I thought sounded cool without any clue to what it meant. Street Savvy could've been some gang banger way of saying "I'm a faggot who needs to be spanked by a skinhead" for all I knew. Of course I know what it means now, and I think that makes it even more perfect a name for him.
How I Decided On What To Use Street Savvy For
But it wasn't until I had gotten back my A+ paper that I realized that I had created a character that was 100% my creation. After I removed all of Sailor Mar's moves from him, everything left about him were all things that I came up with myself. But I still wanted him to maintain some connection to his Sailor Moon roots, so I decided that the guy who transforms into Street Savvy would be an Otaku who's a very big fanboy of Sailor Moon.
But now came the question of what in the heck could I use him for. Fast forward to a few years ago when I decided to create Otaku Universe and I got the idea of using him as the website's mascot. This is why I always refer to myself as Street Savvy.
Being a sucky artist, although I did a pretty good job of drawing his eyes to use as the top banner image on the home page if I do say so myself, I knew that the only way I'd be able to get an image of him would be for someone to take a picture of me cosplaying him at Ramencon. Especially since no one but me really knows what the guy is supposed to look like.
And finally, the very first social media platform that I heard about was YouTube. And even then, I only looked at it on my Nintendo Wii because I thought it was another movie watching service like Netflix or Hulu. And it just so happened that the very first YouTubers that I found were these guys who stole Bill Nye's idea. Eric the Car Guy, Eli the Computer Guy, Bill Hammock the Engineering Guy, The Firearm Guy, and so on. So that gave me the idea of calling myself The Otaku Guy. And hey, it wasn't taken so why not? That's how I became Street Savvy the Otaku Guy (Whoa, now I sound like The Brady Bunch!).