Today is the recovery day after the long weekend at Anime Expo 2008 and during the con, I felt disconnected from much of the stuff that was happening. My hotel didn’t have free wifi and neither did the convention center and I had varying success at 7th + Fig (it worked in the pit but not in the second level? Come on!) so I only wrote one blog post during the convention since I’m too cheap to pay for LACC Instaconnect. But I did manage to send a bunch of Twitter updates during certain panels, which makes me feel like I did something in terms of reporting things. Read the rest of this entry »
Since I barely did anything at the convention itself on Thursday (Day 1) due to the long drive down to LA and the problems figuring out parking/rooms, Friday was my real first day at the convention with visits to the exhibit hall and panel sessions. I’m not going to rehash all the news that has already been reported but the things I felt interesting enough to write down in my paper notepad. If you want to all the pictures I’ve been taken this weekend, I made a Flickr photoset collection that I’ll update each night. Read the rest of this entry »
I will begin my journey to Anime Expo early Thursday morning and probably make it there around 2:30pm. I plan to take some photos and short videos with my new digital camera, try to do a video diary using my older Handycam, meeting with other bloggers and fan press, and handing out the more than ninety mini-cards I still have bearing the blog’s name - but I should also try not to tire myself out. I’m going to leave the liveblogging to the professionals (not paying for wi-fi) but may try to Twitter some stuff. Hopefully the spacious atmosphere of the LACC - the once and current site of E3 - will make it less awkward to do media-related stuff than what was at AOD 2008.
Here is a listing of the panels and events I’m going to or at least interested in, in case someone wants to do some social stalking:
Day 1 - Thursday July 3th:
3:30-4:30PM - Hiromi Kato [GUEST OF HONOR]
5-6PM - Getting Into Anime Journalism
6-8PM - Anime and Manga in Academia
9-11PM - Anime in China (maybe)
Day 2 - Friday July 4th:
11:30AM-1PM - Ouran Host Club (going to get sense of atmosphere, might skip out later)
12-1PM - Viz Media Panel (wanna ask about Shonen Jump/Shojo Beat health)
1-2PM - mystery BONES guest autograph Masahiko Minami (via giapet)
3-4PM - Nozomi/TRSI Panel
4-5PM - ADV Industry Panel
7-8PM - Anime Genesis Live/Anime Diet joint
Day 3 - Saturday July 5th:
10-11AM - TOKYOPOP Industry Panel
3:30-4:30PM - Funimation Industry; Broccoli (still haven’t decided)
5-6:30PM - Otaku Parliamentary Debate Finals
8-9PM - Shira Oka Panel
10-11:45PM - Evangelion 1.0 movie screening
As far as cosplay goes, I’m going as the Computer Club President from Haruhi — with inaccurately shaded pants — and Shiratori from Mahoraba. They’re simple because I don’t like to sew. Speaking of cosplay, I’ll try to do a comparison of the Ouran and Lucky Star/Gurren Lagann booth groups. They should both be good since both are being done by American Cosplay Paradise but one will be dancing and the other will be running a host club.
Bandai’s blog has a Anime Expo page pimping all the events possibly connected with them as well as teasing secret guests like the new English Gurren Lagann dub cast and a person (Mr. X) from BONES who will be signing autographs. They gave enough references about Mr. X’s previous work - Ghost Slayers Ayashi, Eureka Seven, Wolf’s Rain, Scrapped Princess - to narrow the possibilities down to three men: Toshihiro Kawamoto, Takahiro Komori, and Masahiko Minami. Both Kawamoto and Komori were involved in various animation capacties including key animation, animation directing, and character design whereas Minami has produced and/or planned all four aforementioned titles as BONES president.
My educated guess would be Toshiro Kawamoto since he has visited American cons before including Sakura-Con 2008 in March. But wait, then his appearance wouldn’t be a surprise, would it? Perhaps it will instead be the other animator, Komori, since he might have more to do with the items being signed than the producer would. I suppose we’ll just have to see who shows up that afternoon to put his John Hancockjisho on free posters and other stuff.
(UPDATE 7/2: It turned out to be president Masahiko Minami.)
Also: I found this press release from four years ago where Bandai gave anyone who cosplayed as a Bandai character (e.g. Duo from Gundam Wing, Spike from Cowboy Bebop, Lime from Saber Marionette J) a chance to spin “The Wheel” to win prizes. Four years later, they have members of American Cosplay Paradise putting on Lucky Star dances and TTGL heaven-piercing. How far they’ve advanced…
So I was looking through the revised, more fleshed out schedule for Anime Expo 2008 and found something interesting Friday night at 9PM in West Hall B (Live Panel 1) - something called “Geneon Premiers”. One might first think this is a typo and assume it will be a screening of Rondo Robe titles like ef - a tale of memories and Kamen no Maid Guy but I would take it more literally and think that corporate executives from the Japanese company might talk about titles they distribute (e.g. Hayate no Gotoku!, To Love-Ru, Allison & Lillia) among other stuff during those two hours.
Unfortunately, Justin Sevakis says in a post on the AOD forums that nothing will be happening at that time - he has seen an updated schedule of events and the live panels and most of the related screenings have been removed. I guess we’ll see in a few weeks and since I’m not really planning on going to AX Idol, I might try to emulate Geraldo in his Al Capone special with the hope there will actually be something in the metaphorical vault. If there really isn’t anything there, then there’s always fireworks displays.
I considered composing a long post about Greg Ayres’ panels and how resolving the status of the anime industry may involve ditching dubs and/or , but it was just easier to embed some YouTube videos relating to AnimeNext instead. (OK, here’s my short take on it anyway: general population is growing tired of buying physical media to own and the current economic situation is compounding the problem.)
The dude in the above video is responding to a boring, grainy, crappy video an actual attendee made showing off the Lupin and DBZ figures he bought and I think he makes a good point about spending money on figurines that perhaps some of the figure bloggers can explain to me. Saying Trinity Blood was just “the Japanese not understanding Catholicism” made me laugh but so far the guy has only been doing commentaries through video responses so ‘meh’ to him otherwise. The rest of the videos will be footage filmed by citizen journalists/teenagers/bored people at the con. Read the rest of this entry »
While flipping through some of my older issues of Newtype USA recently, I found a feature story on Bee Train within the March 2005 issue. Written by Amos Wong, the story was well-timed as the first DVD volume of Madlax was to come out in America soon after on April 12th of that year. I enjoyed reading the feature when I originally bought the magazine and again when re-reading for this episode because it gave me a look into the origin and development methods of the studio that was deeper than I had obtained through the inserts packaged with Noir DVD’s. Read the rest of this entry »
The first DVD volume of Lucky Star shipped yesterday (the earliest I expect to get my copy is the 15th) and I figured this would be a good time to kick off an experimental, new feature for the blog. I’m calling it “Reading Out Loud” because that’s basically what the posts will be about: myself reading print articles, columns and reviews out loud with dramatic emphasis when appropriate. Read the rest of this entry »
Last month at AOD, I interviewed Sean McCoy after his Animation Industry Insight panel after about 45 minutes and last night I got around to uploading the video to Vimeo. I would have added subtitles or at least composed a transcript because the convention space was a bit noisy for the first half, and I might append said transcript later when I get the time, but right now I’m pushing this out the door since I have wanted to refer to it for a while in relation to industry trends and fan habits.
I hope you excuse my lack of prepared questions and the trouble I had in formulating them into something I could ask. It’s always odd for me to hear my own voice on tape and the stumbling made it worse during editing. As I gain more experience doing things like this, my delivery should improve as well as the quality of the questions.
I have been thinking of doing a weekly feature like this for a month or so and decided to kick it off this week when three series are slated to debut in Region 1 - Black Blood Brothers, Gurren Lagann, and Shuffle!. Future installments will likely go up Sunday night/early Monday and may eventually replace This Week in Akiba since I’m too lazy to wade through tens of posts on Akibablog or its recently debuted English version, despite its moments of Engrish. Read the rest of this entry »
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