Tumbling down history

As with so many other online communities Project Zen’s roots can be traced back to IRC. It was probably somewhere near the end of 2001 and beginning of 2002 that I (Zhi Luang) started off with a small gallery, just for fun. I surely wasn’t the only one hosting a gallery though. Back then the most famous anime communities around were probably Anime Online (hosted and founded by Ewdi) and Anime Layer (started by a group of enthousiasts, such as: LSE, Kym, Jaz, Spiffu and later joined by Red). I often visited Anime Layer and idled at their IRC channel, where one day Red (Mary Lee) had suggested to start off a new community, a community not with a gallery that featured anime wallpapers but rather scans. This would be a source for all the people we knew mostly from Anime Layer to share and download scanned anime artwork.

Working together it was in the end of February that Project Zen saw first light, and with the help of members mostly originating from Anime Layer we rapidly got off the ground and quickly grew to be a nice community and big source for scans. Soon Project Zen enjoyed attention from outsiders as well. During all this Project Zen grew bigger by the day offering new features and updates (mostly graphical at first). In our first year we introduced the so called fruit flavors, such as orange, strawberry and kiwi. They were brightly colored themes each resembling the colors of a fruit. At the same time Red put a lot more effort to make Project Zen more unique and gave the site her own smilies (some of them can now be found in other communities I believe). At the end of the year Konekochan (Leanne) offered her help with a special christmas theme.

In between this first year we’ve switched hosts (often with help of Jarod) and were shortly even hosted by Ewdi from Anime Online. At the end of that period Project Zen experienced it’s first long downtime. It was then that we were offered hosting by Maxa (Max), he was even generous enough to provide IRC hosting so that we could host our IRC channel on our server. Thanks to that we also meeted and greeted some new faces who joined the crew. Towards the end of 2002 however a rapid grow of bandwidth usage forced us to move our server yet again. This was probably one of the longest downtimes the site had, yet at the same time first steps were being made for a huge update at Project Zen.

After almost half a year we managed to get ourselves back online followed by a series of updates. We called this Project Zen version 2. Most notably there were changes in the gallery, interface and some modifications made to the forum and we welcome a new administrator: Nat! The styles were now not just limited to fruit flavors, but fruits and drinks were also featured, additionaly cute pixel icons made by both Red and Konekochan for various themes. Having decided to reduce traffic the gallery was now restricted to scans only. However the forum grew bigger (and more chaotic) by the day. Members of all kinds contributed, shared and leeched images, manga’s and more. This led us to once again switch host and so we finally ended up being hosted by Zerophyte (Chris). As a result of all the traffic Project Zen invented it’s own anti leeching system that would only allow active members to access the gallery. Spammers became active and in no time moderators had a huge job cleaning up the forums. It was also then when Project Zen finally ended up getting hacked because we forgot to update the phpBB software which we faithfully used over the years.

After that Project Zen has never really returned and so other similar communities rose up to replace and take over most of what Project Zen was about. Some of it’s members stopped altogether but most have transferred to either Animepaper (set up by former Project Zen members Bantam and Nat) or Mini Tokyo or both. Both sites still exist today and are probably much bigger now then Project Zen ever was. And so now we open up for anyone who likes to meet up or be part of a fun community.

As a note: This article was written by what’s on top of my head, so if I forgot to mention anything or anyone (sorry) memorable feel free to leave your comments. As mentioned in the article there have been quite some people contributing, here are some of those names (in no particular order).

Project Zens good ole’ Crew: Dias, meg, w00tazn, Red, Cynical126 (Abstract Anime), Angel, Nat, Bantam, Tal, Almighty-Baka (previously Ponder Not), Koneko, zerophyte, wanjuro (shortly) and I

IRC idlers (that were not crew): sword, trance/elf, Phong, Sayumi, Mitsu, Raiji, Rax/paul, Dahak and Oni

Major Scan contributors: dev_Kimiko, shinta, Kei Kurosu, Yamashi, Zero, Yaone, andrsn52a, _tsunami, queen_akasha, aila, mimiru (both Nat and Cynical have been huge contributors as well but were already listed as part of the crew)

About this entry

“Tumbling down history” is an entry by Zhi Luang
Published:
9.3.06 / 6pm

Category:
History

26 readers have responded

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  1. Wallaby September 4, 2006
    at 11:29 am

    Good and bad times. Has it really been that long? And the funny part is, I’m still not a member yet…. =P

  2. Zhi Luang September 4, 2006
    at 3:38 pm

    Working on reasons for you to be though =P

    Yeah definitely fun times, I might post some of the old designs here later on.

  3. Rax_paul September 6, 2006
    at 3:49 am

    OMG! AM I Really part of the IRc idlers I’m sooo honered T_T

    I would like to thank my PC(that was on a modem at that time ) my friends for not being there…uhm BANTAM was part of Project Zen….

    *must control self…..must keep anger….

  4. Sayumi September 6, 2006
    at 1:48 pm

    PZ sure has been around for a long time. And who knew IRC idlers get recognition as well. :o

  5. Zhi Luang September 6, 2006
    at 4:20 pm

    Sure, IRC Idlers inspired progression on the site :D

  6. trance September 7, 2006
    at 6:37 am

    If not having to do anything but log into IRC earns recognition.. imagine what would have happened if I actually did something.

  7. Meg September 8, 2006
    at 9:03 am

    I didn’t lose hope! I knew you would somehow get this site back up. What a trip down to memory lane. Congrats Zhi for getting the site back up …..(after a long wait.)

  8. Zhi Luang September 9, 2006
    at 1:55 am

    Thanks meg :). Guess it took quite awhile, it’s still good seeing people return though. Makes it worthwhile !

  9. Red September 14, 2006
    at 1:35 pm

    ;_; …!!!!!!

  10. Meg September 16, 2006
    at 9:56 am

    Red~ how’ve you been?
    Zhi, what happened to the forum’s layout?

  11. Zhi Luang September 16, 2006
    at 2:59 pm

    I’m not sure, maybe one of the other admins has been messing around.
    В 
    Edit: Seems there was a small error in the template. I only just discovered it now browsing from elsewhere. Thanks for reporting :).

  12. zerophyte September 20, 2006
    at 5:35 am

    i wasn’t messing around.. i swear!! lol.. seriously..

  13. mimiru~ September 22, 2006
    at 9:51 am

    Unless there was another “mimiru” that was uploading scans as well, I’m pleasantly surprised to see myself mentioned! After the second downtime period I had thought PZ was no more. I’m really glad to see that isn’t true!

  14. DreadAngel November 2, 2006
    at 5:58 pm

    Bitter sweet history of PZ all in a nut shell, how can you remember the dates?! Thats amazing! But I hope PZ can make some sort of recovery

  15. Mitsu November 3, 2006
    at 1:35 pm

    Hey ! PZ back online ! :3
    I’m so honored too to be part of IRC ilder :)
    PZ, ever since multiple attacks, remain a huge community… something like a little family :p
    (as usual, sorry if i make mistakes… i’m fr ^^” )

    hope PZ will remain for long ;)

    @DreadAngel : don’t really mind if thier isn’t any recovery from before. Personnaly,i will re-upload my scans, and host them too if necessary ;)

  16. lclun January 18, 2007
    at 1:20 pm

    Guess I’m a bit late here but still glad to see PZ is back and running again =D

  17. Firestorm August 21, 2007
    at 12:18 am

    Hello,

    I’m from AP. A member there currently. And well, i just kinda got to know about this place. I thought i’d check it out. Your gallery still has some goodies. I like those planetary… imaginative artwork… or.. w/e it’s called… but it’s really awesome.
    The girl on the very front page with the bunny makes me sad :(

    I can’t really say much. Other than, i’m pretty sure, whatever has become of AP, has, somewhere along the way, been somehow, a little or more, been inspired by PZ. And AP is a great site now :)

    If i’d have had been around the internetzz during PZ’s golden age, i’m pretty sure i’d have been a member here aswell.

    Hats off to your contribution towards the establishment of some great sites in existence today. Well, every drop in the ocean counts :)

    Warmest regards,
    The Firestorm.

    *is a bit nervous since nobody here knows him and hopes that people don’t go…. “Eh..?? WTF?! Who the hell is this moron?? GTFO you random person!!”* >_

  18. Almighty-Baka September 4, 2007
    at 11:17 am

    memories T_T

  19. Jaki Degg September 17, 2007
    at 6:39 am

    Jaki Degg

    I Googled for something completely different, but found your page…and have to say thanks. nice read.

  20. Zhi Luang September 26, 2007
    at 12:28 pm

    Haha I had no idea people still replied to this old post. Thanks for all the comments…

  21. Yamashi December 31, 2007
    at 12:10 pm

    Ah, memories.
    I think I killed off two scanners due to PZ and manga scans back in my college days. :)

    I never did get those last few artbooks scanned…
    … and now I’m in Japan with the artbooks a few thousand miles away and no scanner! Doh!
    Apologies.

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  23. granula45 February 6, 2008
    at 1:42 pm

    Всем рефералам набор софта и полное описание накрутки!
    Всем привет!
    Значит так, времени сейчас у меня нету, так что много писать не буду!
    Говорю сразу, мне с этих партнерок капает гдето 200$-350$ в месяц! (Если хорошо потрудится, можно и больше! Я никого не заставляю мне верить… Так что эта информация будет полезна только тем, кто оптимистически настроен на работу (может и не совсем легкую… )!

    ВНИМАНИЕ!!!
    Так, как, на этом форуме запрещается размещать реферальные ссылки, Вам надо обратится ко мне, чтоб я вам их дал лично!
    Кому это нада - обращатся по ICQ - 353-867-001

    Я, на пример, НЕ использую сайты для тех партнерских программ! Исключительно накрутчики!

    ВНИМАНИЕ!!!
    Всем кто зарегистрируется по моих реферальных ссылках, могут БЕСПЛАТНО получить накрутчики для этих партнерок, и полное описание по работе!
    Я рад помоч всем своим рефералам!

    Всем, кто хочет получить бесплатный софт для накрутки, бесплатную информацию и помощ, обращатся по ICQ -353-867-001

    Желаю удачи…
    Вот выплаты!

  24. Satako March 10, 2008
    at 2:21 am

    Projectzen is still a very nice site :)
    I need to log in and scan some images sometime ;-;

  25. Margaret Dunlop May 22, 2008
    at 9:43 am

    Henderson,

  26. Anime Guru June 5, 2008
    at 4:30 am

    Very nice indeed.

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