Everyone’s question was would NYAF live up to, exceed, or fail compared to the two previous conventions? There was quite a bit of talking with the announcement that NYAF would join with NYCC for 2010 so there was also the question of what would NYAF do as its last year as an independent convention? Although those are all pressing questions my main question was if I was going to have fun? Was I going to be able to do as much as I wanted to? We were also running two panels one of which had a lot of people looking forward to it. The Bloggers Roundtable had some big names on the marquee but it was a the first time we ever ran the panel. I had the most expectations for the panel because I felt it could succeed or fail so much more than any of our previous panels. On top of all that I had two guests staying at my humble abode during the convention so I had to play host as well as press.

It was no secret that we were looking forward to New York Anime Festival, probably more than any other con previously thanks to a killer guest, director Yoshiyuki Tomino. This sent NYAF which I always enjoy but never as much as say Otakon right to the front of the line this year. That being said, the rest of the con experience remained the same though I was happy to see quite a few license announcements this year. Since NYAF’s space has basically stayed the same from its first year, there weren’t too many surprises but that also means it still has some of the same problems. Javits, is Javits, its a bit of a walk from the train, the hotels, and most food. Though it also means that for the most part events went off without a hitch and things seemed to be well in hand with the staff.

The convention for me started on Thursday night since most of my main convention group went to see the Eureka Seven movie. Although not officially a part of the convention experience it felt like a great way to spend an evening before the big show. The movie itself was bizarre. I will never forget the line, “I am an enemy alien spy robot” as long as I live. It was a visually appealing movie but otherwise a utter train wreck. I appreciated their attempt to do something new with the original story but their execution left something to be desired. Though I was happy to watch a film with my friends and be able to talk about it afterward because I often feel like I hardly watch any anime at anime conventions. On Friday morning my two guests the spectacular OGT, the amazing PatzPrime, plus the remarkable SDShamshel all met up and went to the Javits center early to get Tomino autograph tickets. We were all a little worried when we heard that people were already starting to line up at 7am. We finally arrived at 10 and got progressively worried when we saw how the VIP line was growing but we were able to get our autograph tickets. Since we got there before the con officially started getting our press badges was a snap. We all went for some delicious Go Go Curry before starting the convention. Starting the con with curry is a tradition I could get behind.

Once again, the staff of NYAF as far as tickets goes were on top of it. Not a moment more than one was I in line for my press badge, which incidentally looks very different this year. This goes for the weekend con badges and VIP ones as well and only half for individual day passes. I’m not sure what to make of them, on the one hand I really like the hard plastic but on the other hand the badges aren’t very fun. Maybe that sounds like a stupid complaint, but too bad, many of us have a grand time trying to guess what show or characters will appear on the badges before going to a con. The speculations can even spawn forum threads, so it has become a popular and expected part of anime conventions. And I was surprised to not at the very least see the badges sporting the logo from this year’s contest winner. Since I never made it to the convention center before opening time, I have no idea what the lines looked like but from the massive crowds on Saturday I can imagine there was a pretty good wait in the morning. However, panels seemed to be well organized in this regard though having a press badge prevented any problems for me. The Javits space allotted for NYAF was insufficient for Saturday but was tolerable on Friday and Sunday. Happily this mean the Tomino panel was rightfully full.

I had heard so many stories about Yoshiyuki Tomino but it is still hard to say what I was expecting. To be very brief, Tomino was quite chill from the moment he cut the Opening Ceremonies ribbon to the insistence that he finish answering all the fans who lined up to ask him a question at his Saturday panel. To expand more thoughtfully, Tomino in the past has made some pretty harsh remarks about all his works and most notably about Gundam but at this convention (and quite possibly because this year also marks the 30th anniversary) he seems to have accepted its value, its popularity, and become more content because of it. During his keynote, he remarked that he wanted Gundam to be remembered even more fondly than Star Wars. Tomino also gave the impression of being proud that he created something that is still watchable and relevant thirty years later then going on to discuss his use and philosophy of cinema which made Gundam the show it was. Though the audience may have been missing out on more wisdom from Tomino due to a poor translation at the Keynote, but thankfully at his Q&A this was corrected. The Q&A started off very lively as they showed a reel of Tomino’s work, many members of the audience sang along to the theme songs and of course there was mass cheering for many pieces on the screen (surprisingly Gundam ZZ had a rousing reception). Tomino then finally took center stage and got down to the nitty gritty of tackling fan questions. It was pleasing to see, after a couple of questions submitted online were answered, Tomino signaled that he would much prefer to answer those standing before him. He clearly understands how many people came from varying distances just to see him in the flesh, and frankly they should get the priority. The people helping to the run the Q&A went down the line hearing everyone’s question first, and making sure it was actually Tomino related. One could have probably heard the collected booing a mile away from the Keynote when a con-goer stood up and began to ask a question about Gundam 00. Tomino’s visit ended (not counting a final autograph session) with a showing of Ring of Gundam, his short 30th anniversary film. Tomino left the room with a standing ovation and there was little doubt that he made many a fan happy this past weekend.

I was expecting Tomino to be a man of very little words but for those few words to be extremely cranky and point blank. However, he  seemed genuinely happy and upbeat at the convention but you could tell that the cranky old man Tomino we all knew and loved was there. While his answers were always pleasant, he never seemed to be holding back. As expected there were a few lame question, a few rephrased and then repeated questions, and a few super egotistical questions from the attendees but overall selection was very good. Tomino mentioned that he always had regrets on all his series because he always felt they could be majorly improved in retrospect. But he also felt that feeling makes him always strive to do better in every project he works on. He said that one of the major themes of Gundam was that adults who were rigid in their mindsets were the enemy so therefore since he was super old that made him the super enemy now which got a good laugh out of the audience. Tomino seemed to have a fuzzy memory on any sort of details of the projects he had worked on. He thankfully remembered a little something about Sayla so I did get a partial answer to my question about what her role would be if she was in Zeta Gundam, he seemed to think he would have left things as is. I was also thrilled we got a good answer to the one Turn A Gundam question about why no newtypes appeared in the series. Tomino clarified the confusion by saying the people in Turn A would later become newtypes but the story couldn’t have been told as it was had they already evolved so. The way he dodged questions about Gunpla and his time at Mushi Productions told volumes but his actual feelings. When someone asked him about the possibility of Double Zeta Gundam compilation movies he stated that he was ignoring the fact that he was asked that question. Thankfully no one brought up Victory Gundam or Brain Powered. On a side note, during a reel of Tomino’s work they played almost every one except for Garzey’s Wing. I wonder if that was an accidental or deliberate oversight. Everyone who went to the Tomino panels and autographs sessions got a unforgettable experience out of it. Just look at that man’s face on the picture above. He seems down right giddy and it’s not just because he is holding a book with a page turned to Sochie although that is a good reason to be giddy.

So NYAF marked the first Bloggers Roundtable, it was an interesting experience, a learning experience if you will. You always have to have the first of these things and often times it has many flaws. Biggest being, there were just too many people but it’s such a difficulty because you want to get as many great people as you can! Also this panel was our first technical difficult in a while, and it was never actually corrected. We just did the best we could, and since the panel mainly involved talking it wasn’t a major issue. It started to get more lively as the panel continued, people got comfortable, and the discussions became more interactive. When first deciding what this panel was about, we thought asking only blogging questions might seem too blah (perhaps people wanted to know these bloggers on a more personal level), but they really engaged the audience so that would be the majority another time around I would think. In any case, it was fun and we did end up with plenty to talk about (even spilling over a bit since we were the last panel of the night).

Overall I think the Bloggers Roundtable went well despite the fact that it had major flaws. Several things will have to be changed if we ever run the panel again such as a maximum of five participants. I was a little worried that people would not have enough to say on certain questions but everyone had a good deal to share. In fact they often held back because of the size of the panel. We should also try to go to audience questions quicker, I was impressed by the number and quality of the questions from them. After this first round, we got a better understanding of what questions worked and what questions fell flat. Despite all the flaws I know I personally had a good time on the panel. I had fun hearing everyone’s answers and the playful banter of the panelists when things got rolling. I hope the audience had a good time, too. We even got a question from Zac “Answerman” Bertschy over the internet. I would definitely run this panel again if I could get people to do it. We will take what we learned from this attempt and make the panel even better.

We once again presented our Anime Recruitment panel with a good 30 or so people in the audience. This was a pleasant surprise considering the time slot of 4PM on Sunday, essentially the last panel slot for the convention, but hey someone has to go last. As always the Q&A portion where we answer any and all recommendation questions to the best of our abilities is the most fun and interesting part of the panel. This time around we were hit with some difficult requests like something gothic in style but with robots or a gore comedy. We were also called experts which was a little unnerving but kind of cool at the same time. Each time we do this panel we hone it just a little better and our ability to come up with a show for anyone increases. This is a panel that will be around for a long time with us because it goes over well and it is a lot of fun!

It is always fun to see a premiere at a convention. The ability to go a screening of something you will before everyone else is exciting. Much like Voices of a Distant Star it turns out that Cencoroll is the almost entirely a one man project done by Atsuya Uki. Cencoroll is the story on a bored teenager named Tetsu who has a shape shifting monster that is forced to do battle with another boy with a similar creature. Tetsu’s female classmate Yuki gets drawn into this conflict  when she discovers Tetsu’s secret. It was an amazing little piece especially since it was done by one person and used no CG. I had a very good look and feel. I am curious to see more work like Atsuya Uki. I would like to see him as the next Makoto Shinkai.

I didn’t really know much about Cencoroll till it was announced as a premiere title for NYAF. Then I began to hear things about it, most prominently that it was another one man show and put together without the use of CG. A fascinating part of this short was the discussion of what is acceptable in a short film verses a series. Cencoroll tells you virtually nothing about the why of its world or its premise but that was fine for a half hour jaunt. Beyond that, the relationship between boy, girl, and Cenco was well formed with some humor and moments of surprise. This 30-minute short ended up being a highlight of the convention.

There was a good amount of manga news and manga licenses at NYAF. While the manga market might not being growing anywhere as quickly as it used to it is not sickly from what I can see. I missed out on the Vertical panel because it was against Tomino but they announced four new manga titles, including Chi’s Sweet Home. More obscure titles were Peepo Choo from Felipe Smith that did the comic MBQ for Tokyopop before he started doing manga from Morning 2 in Japan; and Twin Spica and Needle which are two very different sci-fi manga. Tokyopop still seemed to be alive despite what everyone fears, for how long is another question. They admitted to switching to a cheaper paper company but had to switch back after a huge number of customer and retailer complaints. They had some new title announcements, including the next installment in the .hack line .hack//Link, so they still are in the game enough to get new manga. VIZ seemed to be doing extremely well as they announced not only some new manga but also anime and sci-fi novels. The most interesting announcement was that they will be streaming Inuyasha: The Final Act. I had a feeling that this was going to happen but it was never definite. I am curious how well this new fiction line is going for VIZ. All the other manga companies have been delaying or seemingly canceling their novel lines. Del Rey did not have a lot to say but they did pick up Rave Master. If there was any sure sign that Kodansha has cut off its ties to Tokopop it was the fact that they gave Samurai Deeper Kyo and now Rave Master to Del Rey despite the fact that both series had almost finished under Tokyopop.

The majority of the panels that I attended were industry related which in recent years have become fairly entertaining rather than tedious. Funimation always puts on a good show but I was shocked to find them making an announcement at NYAF. An announcement that personally made my draw drop, Initial D Fourth Stage. Actually, they have acquired all of Initial D and will be repackaging it. I nearly wept with joy. They also made mention of their upcoming ShoDojo site which is going to be a sort of social networking tool. The piece of the site that sounds fun is the ability to chat while watching streaming video. The launch of the site has been delayed but it could be another thing Funi does right for fans. Bandai didn’t have too much new stuff to say though they did have dates for things like the Eureka Seven movie on DVD (January 2010) and mentioning of things making the move to Blu-Ray such as the Escaflowne movie. These companies and others sat down on Sunday for, what has become a standard, State of the Industry panel moderated by Chris MacDonald of Anime News Network. There was not much new ground covered at this one, topics like watching digital media and reading digital media differing greatly as well as the difficulties in simulcasting (seemingly ignoring all the successful ones currently going on) were well discussed. One thing that leapt out thanks to so many anime companies finally doing streaming video is the inability to monetize such ventures, yet. It was pointed out that most likely their day will come but DVD/Blu-Ray is and will remain king for quite sometime.

I went to the How to Become Famous on the Internet panel which was an informative presentation on how to promote your work on the Net be it a blog, podcast, webcomic, or anything else that shows your skills as a artist or writer. It was pretty solid advice from panelists who knew their stuff. As always the most important thing is to go out there and honestly connect to other people. The How I Broke into the Anime and Manga Industries panel was nothing I did not know but I think it was a good wake up call for anyone who did not realize how hard it is. Kevin McKeever made it clear that it was extremely difficult to make your way into any entertainment industry because everyone else wants in as well. Sacrifice and the ability to deal with repeated failure is essential. The CPM Retrospective was a nostalgic look back on working at Central Park Media. I had heard quite a few stories from various people on how crazy Central Park Media and John O’Donnell could be for better and for worse. Although everyone spoke glowingly about their times at CPM is was obvious they took their fare share of lumps as often as had great times. It was a fitting tribute for a former major player in the anime industry.

The artist alley was located in a much better spot this year, and it was really hopping! And most importantly, it was open until the convention closed up at 10PM. I saw some familiar faces among the artists but plenty of new people to go around. In fact, while I had set a strict no buying policy for myself at this con, I broke it in artist alley for a piece of Cloud fan-art by a very talented fellow, ningyee7. I was much better at resisting in the dealer’s room. There were visibly more booths but the merchandise itself didn’t seem to be too special or rare for the most part. I was also sad to not see Ultimate Doujinshi. While I avoided this section for most of Saturday, I did move through it a little and found it cramped but not wholly deadly. Still is there ever enough room in the dealers room anywhere?

One of the biggest draws of any convention has nothing to do directly with the convention itself and that is meeting with your friends who you do not normally get to see and to hang out with your regular friends in a dynamic setting. I think that meeting One Great Turtle in real life was almost as awesome as meeting Tomino and that is saying a lot. I also got to meet the infamous Wild Arms Heero. He was unsurprisingly normal and quite amusing in real life. It was extremely fun going out to karaoke, stores, arcades, and meals with people you have only met online. Hey, I even got to play Melty Blood: Actress Again on an arcade machine. Speaking of karaoke, I am always fascinated by other people’s song choices. I wish I had enough Japanese knowledge to sing the Japanese songs like many others but people had to settle for my lame renditions of Queen and the Police instead.

New York Anime Fest brought many familiar faces to NYC this time around, some of which I already knew and some I would meet for the very first time during this event. So instead of having a big dinner at this convention, the theme was karaoke with many bloggers in tow (and friends) on Friday night. My Japanese is about pre-school level but others among me belted out all kinds of fierce Japanese tunes including Holy Lonely Night from Macross 7! If I practice really hard maybe I can pull some opening off in the near future. But there was also plenty of English songs being sung,  most memorable being On A Boat from SNL. This was the latest night of con and really wrecked me for the rest of convention. There were also various dining and chatting experience a plenty during the con and after hours. NYAF overall became a rather large hang out and meeting convention.

I am always most interested in the Japanese guests and the panels at any anime convention. They tend to be my meter stick of how much fun. Tomino pretty much assured that NYAF won completely and utterly in the guest department. My now signed Turn A Artbook was worth the time and money I spent on the convention alone. I would have liked to have seen one other big named Japanese guest but that was hardly a requirement. I did enjoy several of the panels but for some reason I felt this years panels were lacking. The ones I went to were excellent but there was a good deal of dead space for me on each day. It did give me time to hang out with people and have leisurely meals but I would have rather had to decide to either have a leisurely meal or a quick bite to eat like at Otakon. I am also a little bummed out that next year there will not be a single solitary NYAF but instead it will be combined with NYCC. I liked having a anime convention and a comic convention in Manhattan. I could do my anime events at NYAF and my comics events at NYCC. Hopefully NYAF will not just be a name tacked on the NYCC but only time will tell. Still I will remember New York Anime Festival with fond memories.

While I don’t want to be running without a moment to spare at a convention, I found myself too often with time on my hands. If there was one of two more rooms for panels or workshops this problem would be solved. Also the lack of fan run panels is certainly getting better but still wish to see more of a fan presence in the presentations. It will be interesting to see how it combines with New York Comic Con in the coming year. So really the highlight and reason for NYAF 2009 for me was Tomino and everything else was just something I went to in between. It can’t be said enough that having a chance to see and hear speak a director of such importance is a rare chance which makes NYAF one of the most memorable anime events I may ever attend. As Dave said during the Bloggers Roundtable, “Tomino Con 2009 was great!”

Top 5 Tomino shows I want to watch that are not Gundam
5. Aura Battler Dunbine
4. Invincible Super Man Zambot 3
3. Invincible Steel Man Daitarn 3
2. Space Runaway Ideon
1. Combat Mecha Xabungle

If you have never been to Otakon, let me just say that it is like a whirlwind of anime, manga, costumes, music, fans, panels, guests, and friends. You are practically going non-stop from the moment you touch down in Baltimore. Maybe it is just the way my mind works, but it seemed to be ten-fold this year! The amount of things seen and done in just one day sound almost impossible. I distinctly remember some of us talking on Friday night about how things done that morning felt days in the past rather than just hours before. But I’m not complaining, I call Otakon the highlight of the summer for a reason! This year only went on to prove that statement further.

Otakon came and went in an amazing and thrilling blur. I remember the highlights but the details even a few days later are still sort of fuzzy in my head. So in many ways this con report is just as much for me as it is for anyone reading it. This is my chance to sort out what I felt and what I did in my own mind because there was just so much information to process. I was almost always doing something. In fact, I wore myself out so much there was two or three times I just had to stop and nap or get food even if it meant missing out on something awesome. At first I was worried that there were not going to be any Japanese guests worth talking about but in the last few weeks before the con they pulled some great guests out at the last second and turned my perception of how great this was going to be right around.

Friday
No Means No, Defense against Fanboys and Fangirls panel
Know Your Creators panel
Yutaka Yamamoto panel
Mobile Suit Gundam: Celebrating 30 Years panel
Anime Recruitment
Legend of the Galactic Heroes: History’s Future panel
Mecha Appreciation panel
Opening Ceremonies
Kikuko Inoue panel
I Can’t Believe You Haven’t Seen This!
MELL concert
Guess the Melons 18+ panel

Saturday
Gundam Model Building workshop
Funimation panel
MELL press conference
Maruyama, Ishiguro, Kikukawa, Matsubara press conference
Anime and Manga Studies panel
From Kenshiro to Kenshin: The Neo-Shonen Revolution panel
Fred Schodt panel
Fred Schodt autograph session
Return of the Anime Old Timers? panel
Otaku TV panel
The Problem with Otaku panel
Review Anime the Right Way panel

Sunday
Without Watching the Anime: Opening & Ending Themes panel
Hidenori Matsubara panel
Osamu Tezuka, Astro Boy, and the Manga/Anime Revolution, with Fred Schodt panel
Naomi Tamura concert

Narutak, Kohaku, and I all met up at my apartment. The anticipation was practically visible! Before we left I got an early birthday present of some very choice pencil boards, one of manga art Hayate No Gotoku and a cute Gakuen Kino one. We fortunately got a ride to the MegaBus pick up in front of Penn Station. I must agree with Mike Dent, MegaBus rocks! I will never ride a Greyhound again unless forced to. The free WiFi was awesome and the ride was smooth and clean. We took over the back of the bus where we pretty much had a pre-Otakon party. The Baltimore public transportation was a little slower than we had first anticipate but we arrived at our hotel by about 6:30PM. Here we encountered the first and only real major problem of the convention: the Radisson overbooked the con rooms. They tried to throw us into a super small single when we had booked a double. Thankfully Narutaki is a master of getting what he needs and they eventually gave us a bigger room.

If you saw the amount of stuff being lugged to Otakon, you would think we were moving there. Heck, at the very least you would have thought everyone was a cosplayer bringing gear, but no. However to be fair, when I say we, I mean 9 people and also a lot of it was free stuff for our panels and food that was quickly eaten up. I wouldn’t say I was nervous about MegaBus, I had done some research, but a new experience is always a little worrisome in these cases. Though really with so many friends along, a misstep can easily turn into an adventure! Luckily we didn’t have to prove that rule as the bus was great, well-organized, and on time. While the bus stop is certainly far out from the Inner Harbor in Baltimore, the price tipped my hand and everyone seemed satisfied. I was a bit miffed at the Radisson because they have served me so well in the past. In the end, things turned out fine once a larger room was acquired, remember: calm persistence! I will just mention that I use quite a bit of the tips in our Con Survival guide and they serve me quite well.

Since getting into the hotel took a bit longer than expected, we had to rush over to dinner at The Cheesecake Factory. We met Clarissa from AWO, Patz Prime from the Gaming Dungeon, and Ed from Comics Worth Reading for the first time in real life. I wish I had gotten more time to talk to everyone there. I know they made a good impression on me. After dinner we saw the crazy long pre-registration line. I have never seen it anywhere that long. I was quite glad to be able to just stroll in and get my press badge. Some of our friends said the wait wasn’t too long. We all stayed up shooting the breeze since the first night is usually the first and last time everyone is in the same place at the same time before the trip home. I don’t know about everyone else but I was so amped up I hardly got any sleep.

Thursday night is the only planned dinner that I have, everything else is on the fly based on who I run into when the time is right. In fact, I wasn’t even going to do the usual Thursday thing, but hey everyone’s gotta eat so why not do it together! You would have found many voices from the internet at our table including Carl (Ogiue Maniax), Scott (Anime Almanac), Evan (Ani-Gamers), Keith and Joe (The Pokemon Times) who we traveled with plus the new faces that Hisui mentioned. It was quite a gathering! Every year it seems to be more and more true that a big part of Otakon is meeting up with people. I was planning on picking up badges before dinner but the unexpected delays prevented that from happening. Considering the line, there was no way our friends were getting badges before dinner anyway. Press Ops was fully operational so the slue of us were in and out in a matter of minutes. Most troubling was that a lot of our contact information didn’t seem to be entered in the database. This lack of communication seemed to fluctuate throughout the convention. However, there were no interviews in our future and I wish this was communicated to us rather than me finally giving up on the notion. Their twitter account was very informative though giving us little tidbits of info during the con including attendance numbers and the like. Also from talking to staff, it seems they got almost 10,000 badges out on Thursday night! While line management seemed to be handled, I did see people still waiting in line for non-pre-registered badges around 4PM on Friday.

No Means No, Defense against Fanboys and Fangirls was a fairly light panel and most of the advice was common sense. The girl who ran the panel was rather amusing and she had a good collection of pictures to go with each slide so everyone was having a good time. I missed the part were the audience shared their stories and I am sure there were some good stories because I had to get to the press briefing. I went to Know Your Creators with natural born enemies Daryl Surat and the Geek Nights guys it was an entertaining panel to watch just for the natural amount of underlying tension. Still they had a good mix of prolific and influential anime and manga creators, what they had done, and why you should care about them. They mentioned the panel would have new creators on it all the time so it is always worth checking out. It is a great panel for anyone who is just starting to get into anime but wants to go deeper into the art.

I was truly sad to miss out on Otakon’s opening animation last year, so I made it a priority this time around. Opening ceremonies was actually in the mid-afternoon of Friday, probably to make sure all the guests had arrived as well as having as many attendees already in the building. We were first shown a reel of all the guests with music and clips of the things they are best known for. Since the room was filled to capacity it was telling to see who people cheered for the most, not too surprising to me after so many years, but the American voice actors were easily who the crowd favored. Matt Smiechowski the con-chair talked to us a bit and then introduced some of the Japanese guests. Yutaka Yamamoto, Naomi Tamura, Yukio Kikukawa all said a brief hello to the crowd while Kanon Wakeshima made a surprise appearance. And at last we were privileged to see the Madhouse produced introduction to Otakon staring their two mascots, the con staff, and a deluge of references from anime and science-fiction. It had a lot of energy and we all laughed to see our favorites parodied so it was a nice way to officially open the convention up to what would be a memorable weekend. It was a sad moment at the end when were were informed the director Takuji Endou had passed away just a short while ago.

My first panel with a Japanese guest was Yutaka Yamamoto’s. He was quite amusing as he looks like a mild-mannered salary man. I was surprised by the detail he gave in his answers. I did not expect him to so frankly talk about his feud with Akiyuki Shinbo and his views on the industry. Japanese guests usually give very polite but ultimately empty answers. I noticed this year all the guests starting with Yamamoto were rather frank while still being polite and cautious. Some joker had to ask him about him getting fired from Lucky Star but Yamamoto gracefully deflected the question. Omo did a great transcript of the panel if you want to learn more. I also saw Kikuko Inoue that day. She was very charming and answered all the questions with a smile. I was a little miffed that I never got to ask her a question but the panel itself was enjoyable. We all got to hear her sing “My Heart Iidasenai, Your Heart Tashikametai,” “Cruel Angel Thesis,” and “Seikan Hikou.” That was without a doubt the highlight! Welcome Datacomp has all the highlights of the panel as well as some from Yutaka Yamamoto’s panel.

I seemed to hit a lot of robot related things on Friday. I had heard good things about the people who run the Gundam panel at cons, so this time I decide to catch it for myself. The Mobile Suit Gundam: Celebrating 30 Years panel was a quick run through of the major parts of the Gundam franchise that have been animated though they didn’t mention the MS IGLOO OVAs. The “celebrating 30 years” part of the panel consisted of talking about the 1:1 scaled Gundam recently erected in Japan as well as a little speculation about the coming Unicorn anime. It was lightning fast information with an anecdote thrown in here and there, so while I didn’t learn anything new, recent fans to the franchise would do well to attend this. I skipped out on the last half which was a quiz show. I also attended the Mecha Appreciation panel because everyone should really appreciate such things. This started off in rather a flurry as we all yelled out “Sieg Zeon!” The panelists were really knowledgeable especially regarding Go Nagai which got a lot of attention unsurprisingly. They went through an explanation of Super Robot vs. Real Robot (and something they deemed Super-Duper Robot!) There were many good laughs had at the expense of robots everywhere. They really got caught up in the 70′s shows so had to rush through the rest practically skipping present day series. They also lacked any visual materials which was a shame. I would love to see them do this again with a bit more organization, it was a lot of fun.

The two guys running the Legend of the Galactic Heroes: History’s Future panel were appropriately dressed as Wenli Yang and Reinhard von Lohengramm. Besides being dressed for the part they were quite knowledgeable making it a great intro to what Legend of the Galactic Heroes is and why you should care about it. I am pretty sure that most of the people who went to the panel were already LotGH fans but if they were not the panelists’ enthusiasm hopefully got them to check out a great space opera. Later at the convention I talked for a bit with the man cosplaying Reinhard. It turns out he is one of the people behind Hero Legends and is extremely knowledgeable about Gundam in addition to LotGH. I wish I had caught his name because he seems like someone you should check out whenever he does panels. I peeked into the Evangelion panel which looked to be going well but I was really starting to fall apart due to lack of food. So I went back to my room and got a snack that carried me to 7-11 to get a more substantial snack. I actually could feel my spirits rising as I digested food. I made sure for the rest of the con to never let myself get that hungry again.

Both of our panels took place on Friday which was actually quite nice since it meant we’d have the rest, and busiest, day of the con to concentrate on events. Panel Ops was efficient and quick, they even allowed us to leave some stuff in the room for later in the day. Anime Recruitment was held in the very panel room where it premiered in 2007 so it had a nostalgic feel to it! We had a good crowd, definitely more than 50 people, and a plethora of questions that we just plain didn’t have time to get to. With so much extra free stuff leftover it was kind of a free for all at the end. While I was happy with Anime Recruitment, nothing could have prepared me for I Can’t Believe You Haven’t Seen This! which was held in a very, very large panel in the new Hilton section. We easily had more than 250 people in the room . . . YIKES! Since this panel line-up changes every time we do it, I was a little uneasy. Plus, we were also doing this panel for the first time showing the openings for each show. But somehow we pulled it off and had a happy crowd by the end. We had zero time for questions so once again a mad dash that made us look like celebrity superstars was done in the pursuit of free swag. I can say though that I won’t ever be scared about doing a panel again, after that many people we can handle it!

Anime Recruitment went fairly well as it usually does. One day we will learn to be more snappy in our answers but I think we did okay in our Q&A section. As always people loved the free stuff. It was good I took the time to recharge myself before our I Can’t Believe You Haven’t Seen This! panel because we were in a huge room and had an overwhelming turnout. It was the first time that we ran the panel with the openings before we started talking about the shows. We had to cut down the number of shows we talked about but I think that the shows we talked about had more impact this way. Whenever we run these panels I am always surprised by what people know already. The amount of reaction to Princess Nine caught me off guard. Shows how little I have my finger on the pulse of fandom!

One schedule conflict that came up was our panel butted up right next to the MELL concert and since we tend to be chatty after a panel it was inevitable that I was going to miss a bit of it. After we skedaddled we jogged over to the other side of the con where the concert was being held. Luckily the press area was near the stage and we were able to jump in rather easily. MELL started off in a very elaborate Victorian-esque costume dress and fan which made it a feat that she was able to move around so fluidly on stage. She did several numbers of heavy beats then exited the stage for a wardrobe change and returned in another white dress that was only slightly less complicated though it was missing the wide skirt. She sang some slower and more melodic pieces before amping it up with the Black Lagoon opening and others then rocking so hard she broke her dress! For her encore she came back on stage in a red kimono and started off by singing the opening from Rideback which was really the one thing I wanted to hear most of all. Easily one of the best parts of the convention, I would certainly love to see her back in the U.S. I was also able to attend her press conference where she was very gracious and talkative. I asked her about the process for doing an anime opening, she went on to explain that the production studio contacts her. After her manager has laid down some sound she then starts to work on the lyrics. MELL also mentioned that this was the first time she was invited anywhere because of her involvement in anime openings and endings. Afterward she was kind enough to even take a photo with me!

After the concert a bunch of us hooked up with Clarissa and had dinner with a big crew at a local sushi place. It was another delightful dinner and I got to meet Daniel Briscoe from The Anime Chop Shop. After that I tagged along with Gerald and Daniel as they went to the Guess the Melons late night panel. It was a game show where they showed you the cleavage of an anime, video games, or manga character and you had to use that to identify who they were. There was one guy on the panel who was pretty good at the fighting game girls were but other than that most of the people from the audience were more knowledgeable. Gerald would have schooled them all had he been picked to play.  It was a funny panel but I found it most amusing that despite being an 18+ panel there was no nudity. Even when they had a Queen’s Blade character! Daniel and I left about 3/4 of the way through because it was getting late.

If it was not absolutely clear that I am a mere amateur when building models, the Gundam Model Building workshop made this fact 100% obvious. The man giving the panel was extremely knowledgeable and skilled. He quickly went past where I was and went straight to advanced techniques to make your kits look both professional and unique. He mentioned he has a web page but I sadly did not stick around long enough to get his card. I popped in on the Otaku TV panel with Viga the Otagal of the site of the same name. She looked at various anime about otaku and then played clips to show how they each had a different look at fandom. She looked at shows like Genshiken, Cosplay Complex, Comic Party, and Welcome to the NHK. After relaxing for a bit I went to the always entertaining Return of the Anime Old Timers? panel. It was fun to see some of the first wave of anime fans tell about their experiences. I asked what shows they felt everyone else had over looked and people should check out. I was surprised that everyone on the panel said Sentou Mecha Xabungle.

There was a last minute press conference with 4 of the major Japanese guests at Otakon. One has to wonder why this was planned at the last minute to begin with. So entered Masao Maruyama, Noburo Ishiguro, Yukio Kikukawa, Hidenori Matsubara to a fairly empty press room. Maruyama and Ishiguro tried to slip in the back row and were amused by us and the rest of the press room pretend interviewing their interpreter. Once they were corralled on stage they were very talkative and each answered the questions with solid responses. Kikukawa talked a bit about the production of Legend of the Galactic Heroes going on to say that he thinks it went on so long because the top people at the studio just didn’t notice it. When a show was just staying in the middle they had free reign to do what they wanted. Matsubara mentioned that he would really like to do a Dororo anime and in addition to that Maruyama said they were considering the project very seriously at Madhouse. Ishiguro hinted at a project he has had in his heart for many, many years but fears he will never be able to make it. He also talked a bit about Nagahama Tadao, the long deceased director, and gave us some insights into how he worked. Near the end Ishiguro went on to talk at length about the lack of preservation for film in Japan and how envious he was of the care given to American films, even bad ones. The press conference went on longer than expected and was really diverse in the questions, good job press!

I took a little nap before catching the tail end of the Funimation Industry panel. The couches in front of the panel rooms at the Hilton are quite comfortable let me tell you. I got  in pretty much as they were announcing licenses so I got to hear what everybody really cares about. I was surprised that they got Eden of the East. Narutaki and I expected it to be picked up by Bandai. I was sort of shocked that they picked up Casshern Sins. I have heard it was an amazing series but I wonder how many people care. I will probably pick it up based on sdshamshel’s recommendation alone. I am still a little surprised no one has picked up Toradora! or Rideback yet but the con season still has a little while to go. I guess they have to save something for NYAF. 

Fred Schodt was one of the guests I was looking forward to the most. I read his book Manga! Manga! many years ago and have recently read both Dreamland Japan and The Astro Boy Essays making me a certifiable fan of the man. His Q&A was just that, there was very little introduction and for the people in the audience there seemed little need for it. From the moment the first question was asked it just went non-stop until the panel ended much too soon. He was very soft-spoken and patient with the audience which created a very comfortable atmosphere. Schodt started off by telling us the answer to a question a lot of us were asking each other over the weekend, “how do you pronounce Schodt?” apparently it is simply “shot.” Other highlights included Schodt’s telling of how he met Osamu Tezuka, what cultural parts are hardest to translate, and the Pluto manga which he is currently working on for VIZ. When asked about the rise in manga and anime studies, Schodt replied simply that people should read more and watch more, that was the most important part. He also seemed disinterested in writing another book about manga because the awareness had grown so much. I didn’t have a chance to ask if he would think about writing commentary on manga, but he did say he hoped to translate a biography about Tezuka in the future. Directly after his panel was an autograph session that I rushed over to and happily got my copy of The Astro Boy Eassys signed. 

I tried to get into Daryl Surat’s Anime’s Craziest Deaths panel which had a huge line on which I ran into Dave and Joel. We were eventually told that there was no way on God’s green earth we could get into the panel so we all went down to the video games room. Unsurprisingly, I hung out by the Type-Moon fighting games. It really made me want a PSP and Fate/Unlimited Codes. I then ran into Ko Ransom who mentioned that they shut down Anime’s Craziest Deaths for being a 18+ panel despite not being marked as such. Daryl argued that he came close to the border but never crossed the line. This would quickly become a constant topic of conversation. Yet again AWO almost gets kicked out of Otakon. That is why you have to love those guys. Maybe next year Clarissa will run a panel that will come close to the danger zone and they can have a hat trick. I sort of lost track of time browsing doujin so I was a little late for From Kenshiro to Kenshin: The Neo-Shonen Revolution. I missed the first third of the panel but it was rather good. Daryl was really well spoken and proved that he can be very even handed and moderate when he wants to be. He gave an excellent analysis of how shonen has changed over the years which I found fascinating. Not that I really have to tell anyone but Daryl is another person who you should go out of your way to see if you get the chance.

I attended Reviewing Anime the Right Way because quite frankly who know what we do on this blog? The panel consisted of Mike Toole of Anime Jump, AWO/OtakuUSA‘s Daryl and Clarissa, and ANN’s Bamboo Dong. Since all of these people get paid for their writings I was hoping to at most pick up some tips, and at least see an amusing panel. Throughout the session each person gave examples of how they work and talked about their own approaches to things like having your own voice and writing consistently. I wouldn’t say I was surprised that everyone said they take notes while watching shows but I know it is not something I subscribe to doing. Of course hearing that made me reconsider my position so we will see. I found the advice about how to avoid falling into the trap of just summarizing helpful as well as their suggestions to write too much and edit down rather than the other way around. They finished off the panel by mentioning how to get paid writing gigs and answering a few questions. So if you were just thinking of writing reviews for the first time it was worth a listen and a laugh.

I eventually fluttered over to Anime and Manga Studies which was an overview of how to look at anime and manga from an academic perspective. Alex Leavitt, who was on the panel, was surprised how many teachers and professors asked questions about ways to convince their school to let them do anime related programs. It was a good panel for anyone who wanted to start looking at anime from a more intellectual perspective. After that I headed over to the The Problem with Otaku also chaired by Alex. This panel looked at the word “otaku” and how it has evolved in Japan and the U.S. I did not learn much I did not already know but it was a good and even-handed discussion on a somewhat controversial topic in the U.S. that has inspired myriads of debate in the fan community. It definitely helped me organize my thoughts for our next Otaku Dairies article though!

As I mentioned previously, dinner plans during Otakon after Thursday just sort of happen by chance. So on Saturday evening a gathering emerged of some familiar fellows from previous dinners and some new faces like Alex Leavitt of Department of Alchemy who we’ve met briefly before and Link. The gang rounded up and headed over to the food court with the insane notion that since the masquerade was in full swing it wouldn’t be as crowded. Once it became apparent there wasn’t much room for us people grabbed food to go and we ate and talked leisurely outside one of the con entrances for a bit. Some of us headed for Mike Toole’s  Dubs That Time Forgot panel but to no avail! Wow, what a line!

Narutaki, Kohaku, and I all went back to the hotel to rest up for the Big Dave and Joel party. This was a good idea because me and Evan ended up there until about 3AM. Without a doubt I don’t think Otakon would feel right without going to Dave and Joel’s extravaganzas. It is a excellent chance to talk to everyone you would ever want to at a convention who was not a Japanese guest. Dave and Joel were charming and hysterical as always and everyone else was equally chill. Some people in attendance were the Ninja Consultants, Viga, AWO, Matt Burnett of For Tax Reasons, and Mike Toole after his panel. I was utterly drained by the time I left the party. It did take us a little while to get to bed because someone accidentally locked the deadbolt to the room so we had to keep calling people until someone unlocked. This always has to happen to someone during a con.

Early on Sunday morning was the Without Watching the Anime: Opening & Ending Themes panel run by Alex Leavitt. His mission statement was to show us the history of anime with just openings and endings and to show how they have evolved over the years. We started with some classics like Astro Boy and Mazinger and even a hilarious English version of Mazinger! A little too much time was spent on the openings to Cutey Honey. He went on to talk about the lack of synchronization of animation with music which has changed in more recent times, the example he used was K-ON! Additionally he talked about experimental openings that don’t necessarily reflect the show at all like the opening to Honey and Clover. There was some weird scheduling conflict that seemed unknown to our host so the end of the panel was rather rushed along. While I liked the overall concept of the panel since I too am a big fan of openings, I think the examples could be more effective and diverse combined with more discussion. Also I wouldn’t mind seeing the focus possibly switched to the more experimental or innovative openings.

The Hidenori Matsubara panel maybe had a dozen people so we did a little roundtable discussion. Link and I both asked a bunch of questions sometimes following up each other’s inquiries. It was a shame more people did not attend because he was very open and talkative. I got to gush a little about Sakura Taisen and mention that I really liked Gemini Sunrise’s character design. He was willing to give some insight into the Rebuild of Evangelion movies as well. I was surprised how casual about the movies he was, according to him there is almost no chance that the 3rd and 4th movies will play together in theaters like originally planned. I did notice three things that Matsubara and Yamamoto both mentioned. Both had very vague definitions of moe when asked about moe. This leads me to believe that the Japanese are just as confused about moe as we are. Both felt there was an increasing trend among Japanese otaku to want nothing bad or horrible to happen to characters. And both conveyed a fondness for American conventions were they can sit and talk with fans. Why they don’t have these type of conventions in Japan is an eternal mystery. After the panel I got his autograph which made me happy. It was the best panel almost no one went to.

Since the panel with Matsubara ran on as late as it could I was a little late to the Osamu Tezuka, Astro Boy, and the Manga/Anime Revolution, with Fred Schodt panel. Schodt comes off as an amazingly scholarly asset to the anime and manga community in the U.S. And I must agree with Mike Toole’s assessment that he looks remarkably like Revolver Ocelot. It was a  good overview of Osamu Tezuka and Astro Boy much like a live action version of his Astro Boy Essays book. At the end someone had to ask the age old question about whether or not Disney stole the idea of the Lion King from Tezuka’s Kimba. While Schodt has written and probably spoken about this numerous times over the years he didn’t bat an eyelash at the question and in fact answered quite succinctly. I think everyone came away with a little more knowledge after the panel.

Dave Wujcik/Copyright 2009 by Otakorp Inc.

There was a double concert session on Friday. No I’m not talking about Becca, I’m talking about the rockin’ tunes coming from the Otacafe where on Sunday you could find Carl, Big N of Drastic My Anime Blog, and Omo of omonomono singing! And then the Naomi Tamura concert rounded out the con with a very exciting performance. Naomi is best known, atleast to me, for her songs from Magic Knight Rayearth and I hadn’t really looked much further into her repertoire. She quickly proved to me that I should have as she had some very hard rock sounds to share with the audience in addition to her Rayearth more pop-rock pieces. I am happy to report that she ended her concert (minus the encore) with my favorite piece Yuzurenai Negai the first opening to Rayearth. I jumped up and down, I waved my hands, I screamed, and I clapped for the song I had been waiting for! I was very worried I wasn’t going to hear it because we had to catch a bus but the con gods smiled upon us. It was the perfect way to end the incredible weekend.

The dealers’ room was impressive as always. There was a wide variety of items and a huge amount of dealers. As per our Con Survival guide I only looked at what I had priced beforehand (expect doujin) so I was easily able to keep my spending under control. I mostly looked through the doujinshi because I did not see the Maria figure from Jun Planning. I got some good stuff and picked up a doujinshi for OGT I thought he would like. I also picked up a Nirvash kit as a birthday present for Patz, and then grabbed up some items for my travel companions that couldn’t get to the dealer’s room again which included a Souther Revoltech for Carl, and a Red Comet Gundam action base for Narutaki. Patz got me the Gundam Double X with G-Falcon as a birthday gift earlier in the convention. Did I mention that I love Paula Cis? It is only tangentially related but I figured I would bring it up again. I wish I had had a little more time to just look over the dealers’ room in hopes of finding something rare but my schedule was a little too jam packed for that. While my heart was sad my wallet was happy.

I really didn’t get a chance to spend as much time as I normally like to at the Artist Alley probably because there were so many events going on I barely even had time to eat let alone meander. However, I did make a point to check out the art auction and to see the very large Big O model that was for sale. A mere $9500.00 could net you that behemoth, atleast that was the starting price! I haven’t heard anything about what it sold for. There were other unique pieces like quilts and door shades as well as traditional paintings and the such. I am always amazed to see people willing to pay top dollar for prints, PRINTS, of stuff that you can buy right over in artist alley just because they are framed. They aren’t even numbered or have a limited printing. The alley itself seemed to a little less crowded but the artwork seemed to be a bit higher in quality over all.

I had a ton of fun with people I have known for years, people I know casually, people I only know through the Internet, and with people I just met for the first time. My biggest problem was usually deciding what to go to because there were too many good options. If your major problem is too much fun then that is always a good thing. Without a doubt Otakon once again proves that there are major benefits and experiences you can only get out of a big convention. I know that Narutaki and I are already planning to go next year.  If you are on the fence I suggest you attend as well. The only other conventions that are going to give you anywhere as much bang for your buck on the East coast are New York Anime Festival and Anime Weekend Atlanta. So I hope to see everyone I met at Otakon next year and I hope to see some new faces as well.

Otakon is a special convention that is not without its problems but they more than make up for it in enthusiasm for the fans themselves. With the new addition of the Hilton the convention seems poised to continue growing in the many years to come in Baltimore. Crowd control over all never seemed to be an issue for me and congestion seemed to be kept to a minimum. The events were top notch and very rarely started late, even the concerts were efficiently run on their time schedules! Being our first year as press we still have some things to get used to and learn. And while I would have liked better communication about interviews and the such, it didn’t wholly overshadow the experience. I can honestly say overall praise is what Otakon staff deserve this year! If I haven’t made it clear in my report then let me say plainly that Otakon was amazing, full of people and events that were second to none, and plans for next year have already started taking shape in my mind.

Top 5 Model Kits I would like
5. 1/144 PTX-003-SP1 Alteisen Riese & 1/144 PTX-007-03C Weissritter
4. Moebius Zero & Sky Grasper 1/144 Scale EX-15
3. MRC-F20 Mobile Sumo / Gold Type (1/100)
2. 1/100 MG Nu Gundam
1. 1/35 AT-05E Rodeo-Star

Narutaki and Hisui’s schedule:

Friday
Anime Through the Generations Panel
Anime’s Pirate Legacy Panel
Anime Princesses Rule Panel
Japanese Crime Fiction in Anime Panel
My Stereotypes are More Offensive than Yours Panel
These are a Few of My Favorite Scenes Panel

Saturday
I Can’t Believe You Haven’t Seen This! Panel
Psychology of Anime
Vertical Panel
ParaPara Dance Workshop
Directing! Panel
Funimation Panel
Bad Anime, Bad! Panel
As the Otaku Grows Panel

Sunday
History of Manga Panel
Otaku Perceptions and Misconceptions Panel
Anime Blogging Basics Panel

Aren’t cons exciting? No matter how many I go to, I always look forward to another one. This has become especially true in recent years as I meet more and more people from blogosphere and other outlets. AnimeNEXT usually kick starts my con season every year and this time around is no exception. It was one of those inbetween conventions that holds a special place because of the dates it usually lands on. There was a major location change this year so it the con had a bit of a unknown factor going in.

I have to agree with Narutaki. As I am more and more a part of the menagerie that is the anime community, I look forward to going to conventions more than ever. It is a great opportunity to see old friends, meet up with people you have only talked to on the Internet, and discover awesome people you have not yet met. I know people are always disappointed that I am not actually an emotionally dead red-headed magical maid when they meet me. Then again I am actually emotionally dead so that is something, right? AnimeNEXT also has very good panels thanks to some very knowledgeable old time fans attending every year. There is also a strong and growing blogging presence. Since the thing I like the most about anime conventions, besides Japanese guests, are the panels it is always nice to seem some quality lectures about fascinating topics.

So around 1PM I hopped on a train bound for the unknown (or New Brunswick, New Jersey) with two of three people I would spend a good portion of the convention with, Carl from Oguie Maniax and Ko from datacomp (the third, and missing, companion being Hisui). A short amount of train trouble later and we had arrived, kind of. As we were waiting for a shuttle from our hotel to pick us up, we were hit up for change a number of times. To be honest, I was rather unhappy with having to grab a hotel at the last minute but the location is just not conducive for commuting to three days in a row. They also seemed rather unhappy to have con goers in the hotel. I had to implicitly insist that we get a coffee maker in the room. In any case we checked in with relative ease and the room was decent enough. There was a small walking path to the convention that got a lot of use over the weekend. Getting panelist and press badges was virtually painless though they did spell our blog name wrong (REVERSE THIVES). Once all of these details were taken care it was time to dive in! 

Friday started off a quite the rainy day. I was stuck at work with various misfortunes until late so I myself did not arrive at the convention until after 9PM. The hotel would not send me a courtesy driver to pick me up from the train station so I had to take a cab. Upon further thinking I wonder if the fact that I mentioned I was going to AmineNEXT had anything to do with it. The woman I was talking with very suddenly changed her tone after that and overall the hotel seemed less amiable to AmineNEXT guests. A guest is a guest in my opinion and should be treated as such. After I got to the convention and got my press badge I was off to the panels. On a side note, I got the Keroro Gunso badge because the Code Geass badge did not have Euphemia. No pink princess equals no badge.

We peeked at the karaoke room and I was told their song selection and set-up was only so-so and we quickly exited. Not that I was planning on doing any anyway. We then headed to our first panel for the weekend: Anime Through the Generations. I was unsure what to expect here but it seemed like a place that interesting discussions might arise. I was surprised to see the panelists were fairly young. It ended up being basically a group discussion with large amounts of audience participation. Topics were thrown out and the fans answered along with the panelists. The room was a mix bag of older and younger fans. They also ran a panel on Sunday called Otaku Misconceptions and Perceptions. Not sure if it was their first times with these panels but it seemed that way. In group discussion panels its important to keep things on target and not to let the panel runaway with itself. I think if they just exert themselves a bit more this will be corrected. Would enjoy seeing these discussions again.

I stated off on a good foot by going to a trio of panels by Brian T. Price, Walter Amos and Rob Fenelon. They are knowledgeable guys and it is always a pleasure. They are well versed in a variety of subjects including anime, manga, history, literature, and philosophy. If you attend one of their panels you will always walk having learned something while still making it entertaining. First, Anime Princesses which looked at various strong female anime princesses who act like real princesses. I was really disappointed that I missed them talking about Princess Euphemia. Next, My Stereotypes are More Offensive than Yours which sounds much worse then it really was. It was mostly a discussion of tropes and ideas that were unique to anime. They realized that anime could be just as cliched as any other form of entertainment but sometimes a formula can uplift the medium. Last, These are a Few of My Favorite Scenes where they took a couple of scenes and tried to sell you on the series. I especially liked the series of super weapon scenes. My only real complaint was they often had a decent number of non-anime shows as they did anime ones in all of their panels. I would have liked to have seen just straight anime in their panels but they always picked shows worth watching. I had wanted to chat with the panelists but it was 2AM when all the panels were over so I went straight to bed. I hardly even saw my fellow roommates. Apparently they need more and 4 hours of sleep a night and went to bed way before I did.

We ordered pizza to our hotel room and regained our strength before heading back for more convention going action. I missed a bit of the beginning of the Anime’s Pirate Legacy panel. Without having a panel description to consult I thought it was going to be about piracy’s history in anime fandom. It turned out to be a panel about pirate anime or atleast kind of. It started off fine talking about all kinds of shows from space pirates to traditional but at the half way mark it deteriorated. They ran out of titles so started talking about tangentially related shows like Gurren Lagann. They then showed the 12-minute OVA of it. There was also a lengthy discussion of Dragonball thrown in the middle. The same people ran a panel later called Japanese Crime Fiction in Anime which mostly consisted of Golgo 13 and a brief mention of City Hunter. This was rather a let down, they seemed very enthusiastic but certainly needed to do more research. The subject matter certainly interests me so I would love to see it revamped and done again. I then caught the tail end of Anime Princess before dropping off to sleep for the night.

Saturday stared with a delicious breakfast of instant Sukiyaki Udon otherwise know as the breakfast of champions. Then we wandered over panel room to give our I Can’t Believe You Haven’t Seen This! panel and I had some coffee and trail mix. That was certainly important because I did not really wake up for the panel until about half way through. I think the panel went well and got a decent crowd considering how early in the morning we were scheduled. Carl was a new addition to the panel but he was an excellent speaker and brought some shows we we not have normally had in our lineup.

Despite our panel’s terrible time slot and also the omission of the panel description in the guide book, we had a decent turn out. The location of our panel room was a good spot right near the artist alley. We had almost 40 people listening to us babble on! It seemed like all of us including the audience were still half asleep till about half way through the panel then we hit our stride. Since this was only our second time running this panel it still had an uneasy quality to it. Also since we switched out a deal of shows for new ones, it wasn’t and probably won’t ever be as natural as Anime Recruitment comes off. Still I think the panel is getting there and will probably end up in our rotation of panels. We are updating it and presenting at Otakon, too. The Vertical panel was a little later. Their panel had no major new things to say, yet. Ed hinted all over the place and has so on his Twitter that there should be some upcoming manga licenses that will be buzzing. They mostly talked about their current catalog and also gave some things away. One thing that was awesome was these Sayonara, Mr. Fatty! notepads. I was also able to snatch up a copy of the book which doesn’t street until July!

After the panel I checked out the game room and watched some Tatsunoko vs Capcom. It looks like a fun game that I will have to get for the Wii when it comes out despite the fact that I am rather horrible at fighting games. I then went to the Psychology of Anime panel. Although it was listed as a workshop it was more of a talk. But it was certainly a fascinating. The lecturer showed how various psychological theories were used by anime to enhance their stories while other psychological theories could be applied to analyze different series. The guy running the panel was very good at getting the audience involved while making sure that it moved forward at a decent pace. It went over rather well and he promised he would run the panel next year with new material. At one point Narutaki and I went back to the hotel room to chill and eat and we got to see a sneak preview of the blogging panel. It was fun to see the powerhouse team working their magic. After shooting the breeze with everyone I tried to go to the Japanese Sweets and Snacks panel but it was all filled. I therefore went to Directing! Panel. It had Toshifuma Yoshida and Tom Wayland talking about directing anime DVDs in America. They answered questions about directing and the American side of the anime industry. I did not learn anything new but both panelists were friendly and well informed.

After the rain let up I went back to the con in time to catch the ParaPara Dancing Workshop. It was run by the same girls from last year who are from ParaPara NY. It was the same general set-up hosted in the “arena” area of the exhibition center. There are bleachers in the back for chilling out and watching what is going on. It is rather populated area since its one of the more open sections indoors. They upped the amount of dances from 3 to 5 over last year but I was quite done at 3. I am not good in the least but its a lot of fun and I highly recommend it at any convention. I tried to go to the Funi panel and as per usual it was packed to the gills for no reason under the sun. I promptly deserted and went to stick my head into the Restricted Rock Paper Scissors panel. I came in too late to actually play but Carl was able to join in. It’s a game from Kaiji where you use cards that are either rock, paper, or scissors. You try to beat other players and gain points. Obviously in Kaiji its a bit more cutthroat and you have more to lose! The panelists seemed surprised how many people showed up and it threw them off for the beginning. Once the game got underway things seemed to go fine. Though they seemed anxious to rush everyone out because the Masquerade was soon after.

Since the Funimation panel was in the same room as the Directing! panel, I fortunately had a seat for when everyone streamed in. I always find it funny that so many people show up to Funimation panels hoping to get free stuff but they never give anything away. I must have heard three separate conversations about free stuff before the panel. There were no big announcements but I did notice one thing. When the topic of picking up Central Park Media’s old licenses came up I did notice that the Funimation rep said they were interested in all of the titles including ones with pink-haired girls. I am glad to hear they are looking into getting Utena because I would certainly buy it again they they cleaned up the video from the mediocre job CPM did on the first 13 episodes.

After all this, somehow most every blogger we knew (and a few we hadn’t met yet!) came together to get some much needed grub. This ended up being perfect timing because a good portion of the con attendees were at the masquerade. After a game of musical cars we were all seated at the Ruby Tuesday’s a couple of minutes away. The table was large and you could essentially talk to everyone. I was sitting nearest to Carl, Brad from Japanator, Ko, Moy from 11-15% suki, and Super Rats from Happy Soda. Dinner was good, the place serves endless fries! Conversations were varied and laughter was plentiful. These dinners are really becoming one of the things I look forward to most at conventions.

The dinner round table was definitely one of the highlights on the convention. It is a nice chance to speak with people outside of the hectic environment of the con. It worked better than the dinner at NYAF because I got a much better chance to speak to everyone as opposed to speaking to a small group of people like the last time. I loved talking with the people at my table at NYAF but I was essentially cut off from the other 2/3 of the bloggers. Though I was seated closer to Omo from Omonomono, Trish from AnimeNEXT, Scott from Anime Alamanac, and Brad. Dinner with good conversation is always very nice. This time around, dinner topics ranged from anime to politics and everything in-between. I had a delicious buffalo burger and, of course, endless fries.

I’m pretty sure I experienced my first Bad Anime, Bad! panel at an AnimeNEXT a couple of years ago. It has certainly become popular, though I also wonder if that is because it was a little earlier than normal. Anyway, this time was solely devoted to the monstrosity known as Dracula Sovereign of the Damned which was brought over and dubbed by Harmony Gold so you can imagine where this is going. I had only seen pieces of this previously and admittedly he still cut parts during this showing as well. I can now see why it needed to be seen. Not only is the story bad, the dialogue is incredibly inept, and the voice acting even worse. It is one hilarious moment after the other and just when you think it can’t get worse it has . . . an explosive ending let’s say. It’s a show you don’t care about spoilers for but it just wouldn’t be as funny unless you see it for yourself!

After dinner I made the very poor choice of going to the As the Otaku Grows panel. I have gone to panels that I felt could use some polish but I had never been to a panel that was worthless. Until this panel. It was essentially what if Paul “Otaking” Johnson ran a panel about 90′s anime instead of 80′s anime. He basically ran a panel about why 90′s anime is the best ever and everything else is garbage. I had to leave the panel halfway through. It’s not the fact that he loved 90′s anime so much. Everyone is entitled to have a favorite time period in anime history. But I won’t stand for people saying that everything else is worthless. There are great, mediocre, and horrible anime from every time period and saying otherwise is both ignorant and closed-minded. The scary part was the audience mainly seemed to be agreeing with him! I wanted to stay and argue but I decided against it and just had fun elsewhere.

On the morning of our last day we finished off the last bit of food I had brought along. Yes, that is right, my con survival talking about how to save your pennies on food for the weekend in practice right here ladies and gents! In any case, my load was still pretty heavy thanks to a couple of purchases as well as some free books I had acquired. Checking out was also painless thank goodness. We headed over the con about a hour or so before the first panel began. This is a rather magical time that is kind of frighteningly quiet. We also took this time to get refunds for our badges since we were press. I also took this time to take one last look around the Artist Alley. It had a decent turn out this year with talent ranging from fan-art to crafts. I picked up a button of Kanda from D.Gray Man and contemplated a nice print of Howl from Howl’s Moving Castle but decided against it.

Sunday started with an apple and cupcakes which is another power breakfast. I then attended the History of Manga panel. After some technical difficulty the panelist launched into his lecture. It was a good overview of the history of manga in America. He hit all the high and low points and it was very good for the amount of time that he had. I did notice he had a bit of more of an emphasis on OEL manga than I assumed he would have but it is not as if he neglected anything so I was fine. It was just an unusual choice. As Ko said you could tell he was an old school fan due to his obvious interest in furry titles like Fred Perry’s Gold Digger. Still it was an informative panel and a great introduction to how far manga has come in the U.S. The next panel was Otaku Perceptions and Misconceptions. The panel started late as the members rushed to get to the room. The idea was interesting. It was panel about what how anime and manga fandom feels about itself and how does it think that other people perceive it. They seemed to have a list of topics they wanted to talk about but since it was a discussion panel with the audience their speaking points quickly got cast by the way side as the audience took over at many points. Still it was an interesting panel as I always like to see fandom’s views about itself.

Even with some crazy scheduling changes the Anime Blogging Basics panel ended up being our last event of the convention. Unfortunately with a sudden time change and room change the panel mostly consisted of other bloggers. Besides Carl, the panel was Omo from Omonomono, Moy from 11-15% suki, and Super Rats from Happy Soda. These guys put together a good outline and all seemed to work quite differently with different philosophies about blogging. It was a pretty relaxed atmosphere for the most part. I think handouts would help for anyone who was actually wanting to get tips on starting to blog. Hisui also swooped in to ask some hard hitting questions!

The dealers room was nice but I am bit on a budget so decided that I was only going to look for two things. The only way I would buy anything else is if it so shocked me I had to buy it. I was looking for a model kit of the RX-78-2 Gundam or Nu Gundam and the Jun Planning version of the Maria figure from Hayate the Combat Butler. I never saw the Maria figure but I did stumble upon a prefect grade original Gundam. I was informed that it has light up eyes and I am merely a mortal so it was not easy to resist that siren’s call. But I eventually decided to wait for Otakon. There I will most probably get some form of Amuro’s Gundam. There was a bunch of nice stuff but nothing worth splurging on. I almost bought a Mylene pencil board for Mylene’s fan #1 but at $12 I decided against it. But I partially blame my mad net skills on that fact. 

The dealer’s room seemed larger than last year which is certainly a plus. There was also much more room to maneuver around making Saturday even pretty decent to go into the fray. Since I have a strategy when going in, it makes things less chaotic and makes me seem less like a maniac with no worries about money. I needed up with just a couple of purchases most happily is the one pictured above. When they guy was willing to go down to $10 I was in! But most dealer’s were not making deals, very sad times. I wanted to walk away with Athrun’s Aegis 1/100 scale but no dice. I also saw a decent amount of people selling doujinshi which keeps increasing every year it seems. Also I barely resisted getting some Record of Lodoss War pencil boards since I had never seen them they snuck up on me! As usual the dealer’s room is not my priority at cons but this one was manageable enough to be worth exploring.

AnimeNEXT is like spaghetti with plain sauce when there is no solid Japanese guest. It is satisfying but you feel like something major is missing. So just as a meatball would make the meal complete, likewise a Japanese guest would have rounded out this con. I like AnimeNEXT but I’m not sure I would go next year because it has shifted from being a New York City/New Jersey convention to being a New Jersey convention. The old convention site was super convenient to get to from New York City and there was no reason to have to stay overnight. Being so convenient, there was no reason not to go AnimeNEXT. Now that it is harder to get to, I am no longer 100% locked into going again. I will only go if two things change: if they move the convention back to the old site or if they have a have a decent Japanese guest. Otherwise I might as well spend a little extra and go to Anime Boston instead. AnimeNEXT is an excellent New Jersey convention but if I am going to an out of state convention I want more bang for my buck.

Once again AnimeNEXT proves that some of the best parts of conventions are the fan run panels and the people that you meet. Unfortunately, that is just not enough this time around. I have to agree with Hisui, this location is not New York City friendly mainly because the convention itself is not close to the train station. The train ride is a mere hour but then you have to get to the con. While the shuttle was super plush it just wasn’t running often enough for me to do it three days in a row. Also the location has very little food close by. Really this is a con for people with a car. And thanks to that fact I have to assume their attendance was down this year. I like NEXT, I always have a good time, and I want to go back but not if I have to stay in a hotel.

Top 5 panels I would like to attend (These might exists but I don’t see them enough)
5. The Hidden World of Light Novels
4. Secret Shopper: A Guide to the Best Otaku Stores in Japan
3. I Don’t Know These Characters: The Best Original Concept Doujinshi
2. More Than Just Option #3: JAM IT IN! – A Beginner’s Guide Visual Novels
1. You Have to Get This: A Guide to the Most Awesome and Wackiest Anime Merchandise

Narutaki and Hisui’s schedule

Thursday
ICv2 Conference
Pre-Con Party at Dave and Buster’s

Friday
NYCC Focus Group
News Flash Teen Girls Read Manga Panel
Teaching Comics Panel
MARVEL: X-Men Panel
The Business of Web Comics! LIVE!
MARVEL: Dark Reign Panel
Batman: The Brave and The Bold
Vertical Publishing Panel
Yatterman Premiere
Wonder Woman Premiere

Saturday
How Not to Break into Comics
Del Rey Manga Panel
Gabe and Tycho Spotlight Panel
MARVEL: Cup o’ Joe Panel
Yen Press Panel
Robot Chicken Panel
FUNimation Panel
Men Are From Kyrpton, Women Are From Paradise Island Panel
The Venture Bros. Panel
Bloggers Dinner

Sunday
VIZ Media Panel
Scott Pilgrim vs. The Panel!
Mondo MARVEL: 70th Anniversary Special Panel

So with 18 guests of honor (J. Michael Straczynski and Grant Morrison had to drop out), 6 living legends, 7 special guests, 32 featured guests, 79 artists and writers, 31 literary guests, 7 anime and manga guests, and 8 performance guests, plus dozens of premieres and sneak peeks for movies, video games, books, comics, cartoons, and TV shows. There had to be something for any type of nerd at NYCC 2009. Narutaki and I practically attended two different cons for the amount that we crossed paths. And we didn’t cover half of what was offered at the convention. In many ways it is the clearest example you can find of how our taste may vary when it comes to things outside of anime and manga.

Good lord, NYCC you never cease to wonder a person. The guest list was insane as proven by the statics mentioned above. The amount of panels to go to was overwhelming creating endless schedule conflicts as you are pulled in three directions at once. This was made twice as difficult because no one seemed to have the chart/grid of all the panels. Apparently there was one, no one we met ever saw it. It was also amusing how other bloggers seemed to only see one of us each day. No one could find me on Friday, likewise Saturday Hisui was missing till the end. Not only was there a ton to see and do there was also a huge amount of bloggers and friends to pal around with for the entire length of the con and after!

So my co-worker and me practically ran out of work to get to the Pre-Con party because they were giving away swag if you were one of the first 200 in. This ended up being mostly nothing worth having. Though I did keep the Ultimate Spider-Man 100 Project which has a ton of pics drawn by lots of artists. I was hoping Dave and Buster’s would have more Comic Con related stuff and atleast a discount on game credits! But we made our own fun. I played 88 games of skeeball and gave all the tickets to kids randomly. We bailed pretty early and went to dinner. My co-worker did get to speak with Joe Quesada for a minute though!

I was barely at the Dave and Buster’s party. It was just a good place to meet up with people after the ICv2 conference. I met with Scott of Anime Almanac and Dave of Subatomic Brainfreeze. I didn’t really spend any money at the arcade but I guess I am one of the reasons they are dying in America. Then again the Deal or No Deal game is not something that particularly makes me want to spend my money anyway. From what I understand the food at D&B’s is hideously overpriced and merely okay so we went to the nearly empty Applebee’s downstairs. I finally learned of Dave’s opinion of Type-Moon which made the whole convention a success. It was a good warm up for the upcoming convention.

I started the convention proper by attending the News Flash Teen Girls Read Manga Panel. It was a well run and Brigid Alverson from the Manga Blog was part of it. I did not learn anything new but it was a panel for librarians and store owners to learn about manga and its appeal to girls. All the panelists were quite knowledgeable and the panel was well run. The Teaching Comics Panel was putting me to sleep. It was basically was a panel for teachers and how they could teach language and theory behind making comics in their class. The high point was an exercise at the end: they had everyone draw one panel and then tried to make a complete comic out of it. Being interactive it woke me up to participate.

I came to the convention after the professionals panels (I worked a half day). I was sad to miss those few special hours but I took advantage of the early entrance into the exhibitors hall when I got there. It was certainly the most calm time for the convention. I always look forward to Marvel panels, they are always a good time. Luckily my first panel of the con was X-Men. It was amazing seeing so many creators up there at once, not the least of which were Chris Claremont, living legend himself, and current Uncanny writer Matt Fraction. They talked quite a bit about the upcoming Messiah War. They also hinted around at a lot of things like the new mutant child named Hope. And she has red hair and green eyes, don’t draw conclusions. . . but draw conclusions! Looks to be an exciting time to be an X-Men reader. A couple of hilarious moments occurred, as per usual. A guy stood up and asked Matt Fraction why he refused his friend request on about Xbox Live. Everyone was cracking up till we realized the guy was actually serious! Also a guy asked about Scarlet Witch, Jim McCann told him to ask at the next panel where Dan Slott would be. This seemed reasonable enough but the guy walked out and yelled “coward!” This then became a running joke at all the Marvel panels for the con.

I decided to pop into The Business of Web Comics! LIVE! panel with Scott Kurtz and Robert Khoo. It was interesting to see under the hood of how big name web-comics make their money. It was a great panel if you wanted to draw your own web comic and hopefully make money off it one day. Robert Khoo lent the panel a serious and professional quality whereas Scott Kurtz make the panel entertaining and quite funny. Both had good insights for the audience. Scott Kurtz mentioned that most professional comic artists seem mystified by the concept of putting up their work for free then making money on merchandise only.

The Marvel fun just never stops! The Dark Reign panel was awesome. Probably my favorite comic writer now is Brain Michael Bendis so I was ready to here about all the coming plans for this crazy twist. Certainly keeping a lot under their hats but they love throwing out hints to get people all excited. One guy in the audience was going on and on about how Doctor Doom would never take a backseat to Norman Osborn. Doctor Doom then became the default answer for everything in the panel. Of course there is always one guy who stands up to say how much he DOESN’T like what is going on, as if the rest of us agree with him? Joe Quesada is really great at taking the wind out of their sails. He basically says, our sales are better when big events are going on, if people weren’t buying them believe me we wouldn’t be doing them. And that was that. In other great news, they are doing Dark Young Avengers!

I then went to the Batman: Brave and the Bold Panel. Since I don’t have cable at my apartment I was sadly unaware of this show which is a shame because it seems to be rather awesome. Batman teaming up with a variety of other superheros it seems to have a good amount of Batman style and action while retaining a tongue in cheek sense of humor. They really sold me on Aquaman. I think the line, “He thinks he is an awesome hero and does not realize you all think he is lame” really sold me. They then played a rather cool episode had Batman go to an alternate Earth where all the heroes were villains and all the villains where heroes. When the leader of this alternate Earth’s heroes is the Red Hood you know you have a Comic Con episode.

The Vertical panel and my first industry panel of the convention started off slightly depressing. They have very few books coming out in the next year and only four of which are manga, all Black Jack. They talked about some of their crafting series and about how the word “cute” in the title helps them sell better. I think proposed they start calling it Cute Black Jack. Luckily there was a bright spot, apparently they are getting new investment and teaming with a Japanese publisher who they have yet to reveal. I also asked about more Shinjuku Shark novels. They said they will at least do the third book but would like to do all ten. At the end they gave away signed copies of To Terra . . . by Keiko Takemiya! I didn’t win one and I was really jealous!

I attended the first half of the Vertical panel but I wanted to make sure I got to the Yatterman premiere on time. There I met up with Scott of Anime Almanac, Gia of Anime Vice, and John of Japanator. We had a nice conversation about various things including Kaiba. The audience that was not press seemed to be mostly made up of crazy Sho Sakurai fan-girls. This was made painfully obvious because anytime anything Sho related was mentioned or appeared on the screen the audience went nuts. The squeals when Yatterman No.1 kissed anyone was simply amazing. The movie itself felt like a Stephen Chow movie. It had that same mix of goofy comedy and over the top action that made it feel like a live action cartoon in every sense of the word. I think that Stephen Chow does it better but overall I enjoyed Yatterman. You just can’t go in expecting Ichi the Killer. It’s a dumb movie but it never wants to be anything else. I am sure Yatterman fans are going to get more out of it. There was some question and answer after the panel with Sho Sakurai and Takashi Miike.

My last excursion of the night was the Wonder Woman premiere. My friend and I also caught the last few minutes of the Futurama movie before it. It seemed reasonably funny. As we waiting, the IGN theater showed a bunch of looks at things on the screens like at a regular movie theater. We saw a first look at the G.I. Joe movie which will probably be awful. They also mention how they were really making it diverse but I saw about 80 white people in it and one black guy and one Korean guy so whatever. Apparently Cobra Commander won’t be in it?! We also saw some stuff about the upcoming Chun-li movie which looks worse than the G.I. Joe one. All the fights they showed where in the shadows probably because this girl playing Chun-li can’t fight worth a damn. Anyway, the Wonder Woman movie was really great! D.C. has really done some great animated productions over the years and this ranks up there with them. There was some adult humor and was more violent than I expected! Bruce Timm along with the director and writer did a Q & A after the showing. He said he thought this was the best yet, even better than Mask of the Phantasm. NO WAY, but it was still really good.

Saturday was my big day so there was quite a bit to do. I started with the How Not to Break into Comics panel. I was hoping it was going to have a lot of funny stories. It definitely had some good ones but it was mostly a very serious look at how to try to get a job in the comics industry. Apparently people constantly don’t put any contact information on their submission making getting back to them impossible. A very useful panel for anyone who is serious about doing their pitch right.

Bandai is going to be okay people! They are going to be doing a lot more online, including having Code Geass and Gundam 00 available. Also they picked up the Gundam 00 manga and novel! YAY! I am hoping they do similar packaging with Gundam 00 as they did with Code Geass with including manga in the awesome box. Looks like Hayate the Combat Butler will be released subbed only in 13 episode boxes. This seems like a smart move, plenty of fans wanting to pick that up but not enough to go through dubbing it. I’m sure they will have a few more announcements coming this year, all of them good.

Like many east coast residents I have never had to good fortune to get out to PAX so it was really awesome to be able to Tycho and Gabe at NYCC. You definitely see where the characters in the comics come from when they talk. I found it amusing that Gabe would constantly pick people from the audience to ask questions and Tycho would have to force Gabe to stop and let him pick someone from the audience on occasion. They were very personable and entertaining and had an excellent chemistry with each other and the crowd.  It also started the trend for Saturday, every panel I attended was standing room only.

Attended Del Rey panel with a good portion of the anime/manga blogging crew. They mentioned doing some “manga” versions of X-Men at NYAF 2008. But what I saw was quite unexpected. Emo-boy/Bishonen Wolverine? Turning X-Men into a reverse harem romance comedy? It just seems like a strange way to approach things. Wolverine is rather beloved. Oh, and he is a totally crazy, deadly, bad-ass. It was really off putting. The same goes for the X-Men story. While I like Kitty Pryde, as do all, and am glad to see her staring, this wasn’t what I had in mind. One of the great things about X-Men is their strong female cast which was mentioned in this panel. I asked about the decision to then exclude most of them in favor of this school comedy bit. It was basically like “well this is just what we decided to do.” I am clearly bias and not the target audience but come on!

I barely got into the Robot Chicken panel due to a good deal of madness. It was the least organized of all the lines I saw. Staff pulled the press out of the line to get us in, then security refused to let us. I eventually got in but had to stand along the wall after one of the other press guys pulled out an class-A ability to complain politely but loudly. It was worth it. The main question and answer consisted of Seth Green talking about everything with backup from Robot Chicken crew and the Cartoon Network representative trying reign things in. Seth answered all the question (other than being super precise about their budget) but once he started talking there was almost no stopping him. He told a hysterical story about dressing up as Spider-Man at San Diego Comic Con. It turned out that he received just as much attention as Spider-Man as he did without the costume. There was also a amusing story about how they bought a vintage Batmobile off eBay and the woman who sold it to them wrote them a letter about how glad she was it was going to a good home. They tried their best to use the car without damaging it but wound up having to trash it beyond all recognition. I also loved the Star Wars joke they could not use for the show. After the Q&A it took about five minutes to get Seth to stop talking so they could play a ten minute clip. I only watch Robot Chicken on DVD so I am not sure how much of it was new stuff and how much of it has already been on TV. It was definitely worth the hassle of getting in.

One of the key things that has made Marvel a fan favorite in recent years is their off the cuff interactions with fans. So one of the highlights of every convention, for Marvel fans, is the Cup o’ Joe panel with head man himself, Joe Quesada (and usually a few guests along). It is essentially just a panel to ask questions to Joe about anything comics related. This time around he had Jim McCann, Brian Michael Bendis, C.B. Cebulski, and Marvel’s publishing director with him to help out. There were actually a lot of questions directed at Bendis which is no surprise with Dark Reign in effect. Some memorable moments included a woman dressed as Black Cat, very well done, asking when she will get her own comic; a semi lengthy discussion about the rising price of single issue comics; and me telling stories about other Marvel panels with the guys sitting next to me.

Men Are From Kyrpton, Women Are From Paradise Island Panel was packed which for some reason surprised me. There was hardly a free seat in the room. I was tempted to go to the Dr. Who panel because hey, it’s Dr. Who but I was curious to see an analysis of gender in comics. The discussion was lively and the panelist did broaden the discussion as race and homosexuality started to come up. It was all interesting and the moderator let people go off on related tangents while making sure that everyone got back to the topic at hand. I really wanted to state that it’s important to keep in mind you can’t force sensitivity or diversity into a story. If people want stories about females, minorities, or gay characters you can request that they do so and hope that someone listens. If you force people to do it then the stories will come out as disingenuous and be horrible. The best solution is for people who really care to go out and write those stories themselves but not everyone has the time or ability to do so. It can be frustrating to not see the topics you want  addressed in a sensitive and entertaining manner. I am not sure what to say other than people have to be patient but politely vocal. Though I was unable to express this to the panelist because everyone was so engrossed.

So, so much anime and manga industry stuff on Saturday. Next up was Yen Press. Everyone was excited to see they grabbed Yotsuba&! People couldn’t be happier! Though the surprise was kind of spoiled by a flaky PowerPoint presentation. They gave books galore and it got a bit crazy. This also explained why when most industry panels and empty this one was packed. Soul Eater was clearly the crowd favorite, unfortunately for me and great for Yen Press. Funimation was right after that. I liked the new Funi media player plus they are getting a lot more series online for free. I am yet to check it out since but I plan to. They showed a lot of trailers and two dudes behind us were so annoying and loud yelling DBZ and Afro Samurai the entire time. I had a major headache after that. I also found it amusing that when people realized there would be no free stuff the room emptied fast before the panel was over.

I finished of Saturday with the Venture Brothers panel. It did not have as many panelists as last year but it was still fun. I came in just before it started so I had to sit all the way in the back. It was actually great because everyone just sat on top on their chairs to get a better view. Since they did not yet have a trailer for the fourth season, they played some deleted scenes from the third. The rest of the panel was Q&A. They kept bringing up that they killed number 24 but in their defense so did the audience. I enjoyed Doc Hammer and Jackson Public saying they were going to make sure to keep the murderous moppets around just because they were universally hated. The same Triana cosplayer that made such a big splash last year showed up again and invited the cast to have coffee with her. This of course set everyone on the panel and the audience off like nobodies business. And speaking of Triana the inevitable topic of the inexplicably popular friend Kim came up. The panelist all but said they would make sure she never came back just because people keep asking for her. I really hope they do the panel again next year because it is always one of the highlights.

My last panel was industry related, as a lot of Saturday was given to. CMX did a great job. I love this company anyway and they are truly one of the under appreciated manga publishers out there. They do a lot of good smaller manga, more obscure stuff. They did announce anything new but we got to see covers and interiors for upcoming releases. One was a mecha series that looked cool called Broken Blade! I asked them about the marketing strategy of releasing different series by the same author simultaneously rather than one after the other. It was as I hoped, they are trying to build a fan-base for the manga-ka. Also they hope you don’t feel like there is too long a break between titles if you are reading my series by the same manga-ka. I like this a lot and it does seem to help name recognition. They also seemed receptive to my and Kohaku’s opinion on some licenses, like Yoroshiku Master (which was my manga of the month recently!). This panel also became the unofficial gathering place for all the bloggers going to dinner.

I met up with everyone after the Venture Brother Panel. It took a bit of herding but we got everyone to go to dinner. At final count we had a group of 15 and had to be  separated into three groups. I was seated with Gia and John along with my old friend Eric. Gia and John were nice conversation. I was interested to find that John liked Diebuster more than Gunbuster despite seeing Gunbuster first. That is almost never the case although he made a convincing argument about the themes of Diebuster being more relevant to him. After dinner I went with Dave from Colony Drop and Carl from Ogiue Maniax to karaoke with some anime podcasters. It was awesome seeing Erin and Noah again and no one can ever get too much David Riley. Ed Chavez did an awesome rendition of Metamorphoze by Gackt. Seeing Dave and Carl back to back singing giant robot openings was quite awe inspiring especially King Gainer Over!. I was also quite happy that Carl did Century Color from Turn A Gundam. Mike Toole showed up later on to kick it up a notch. I was happy finally be able to sing karaoke with people who were not all gods but merely mortal men. It made me much more comfortable. I myself got home around 5 in the morning.

The bloggers dinner, as we are calling it, was definitely a highlight of the convention. Some of the people in attendance I had only just met at the con. There were also a few that I have hung out with before, and of course good friends too. After we split into our booths all after each other, I was with Kohaku, Carl, Dave, and Evan of Ani-Gamers. This led to many amusing discussions (and the showing of video clips when Dave’s phone felt like working). On the menu for talking was creepy teachers, never drinking Snapple again, giant robots, and Segata Sanshiro. At one point we heard what sounded like a intelligent conversation going on behind us but then we promptly put it out of our minds. I had a blast, laughed a lot, and ate a yummy cheeseburger. I took part of it home but then forgot to refrigerate it, I was rather sad about that. I went home early with Kohaku and Eric in toe.

I really only went to two panels on Sunday. I went to the VIZ panel with everyone else. The there were two big topics and several smaller announcements. First they talked more about Japanese science-fiction line. It seems to have a wide variety in the first four titles upcoming. This could open up new avenues for VIZ and anime fans if these do well. The big announcement was the licensing of Rumiko Takahashi’s new manga. As far as I can tell they licensed her new manga sight unseen. Rumiko Takahashi equals money no matter what she does. I am very curious what it is going to be about. Also it seems that this will be an almost simultaneous U.S.-Japanese release if they want it to be. I am curious how simultaneous the release will be.

What most excited me at the VIZ panel was the announcement for the Natsume Yuujinchou manga. If you have been keeping up with my ongoing investigations, I have a gushed about this series a few times. After this, Evan corralled a few of us and we headed to the press room to do a podcast for Ani-Gamers about the convention. On the way there we must have been yelled at five times for allegedly trying to cut the Joss Whedon line. Podcasting ensued with the likes of yours truly, Hisui, Scott of Anime Almanac, his friend Greg, Brigid of Manga Blog, and of course Evan himself. The conversation was lively and fluid covering topics like crowds, licenses, Yatterman and state of the industry. Go take a listen!

I then went to the Scott Pilgrim panel. I have heard quite a few good reviews of the series so I was interested to hear the author speak. Most of the audience wanted to hear about the upcoming movie but Bryan Lee O’Malley could not really say anything more than what was on the Internet. I have to say comics like Scott Pilgrim are OEL done right. American artists should take their interest in manga and let it influence their  art and their storytelling but not try to adapt the “manga style” wholesale. I can’t say the panel made me want to rush out and buy Scott Pilgrim but I will probably pick it up the next time I see it.

My final Marvel panel of the con was Mondo Marvel. It had a good number of writers and artists there. About 14 in all plus Seth Meyers and Bill Hader from SNL showed up much to the surprise of the audience. They are doing a one shot Spider-Man story called the Short Halloween. The crowd chuckled at the name in a knowing fashion which lead to Seth and Bill making the comment that this was the only crowd that would get that joke (if you have no idea what I’m talking about, there is a famous Batman story called the Long Halloween). They kind of stole the spotlight, unsurprisingly. One other cool announcement was The Marvels, it is will be taking us back to the origin of origins, the Marvel universe itself. We know certain characters came from experiments, accidents, etc. but we are going to get a look at how those organizations that caused these things came to be. Sounds like a really interesting project.

Sunday I finally got to spending some cash in the dealer’s room. I bought five Revoltech figures since it was buy three, get two free and there were only 20 dollars each. I got an Ingram, King Gainer, Gurren Lagann, Yotsuba, and Dark Saber. I was a little sad they did not have Revy but that was not unexpected. I almost got the two Valkyries but decided to have some restraint. I also went to the Yen Press both as they were giving away manga but it had been mostly picked clean. I got a copy of Black God three but not one or two.

The Exhibitors hall as always was giving away some free stuff, but seemed like less than last year. I did get a copy of the first issue and a poster of Watchmen which was cool. Sunday was the first time I set foot in artist alley and it was great! Comic cons version of this is a little different because there are actually famous comic artists and writers sitting right there! There are also amateurs, too. We saw Ryu Moto (who we have interviewed) and talked with him for a few minutes. He seemed really impressed with the convention as well. I happened by the Jim Lee booth and he was actually there! The line was also fairly short, what luck! If I had come by ten minutes later he would have been gone. I got two signatures plus he took a photo with me! This man started my love for American comics, it was a really amazing way to top of the convention.

After the con we met up with some friends. We went down to Kinokuniya and Book Off. I did not spend any money but I came very close to buying the new Kido Senshi Gundam-san manga. Mostly because it has Sayla on the cover but also because it looks funny. I learned about Blaster Knuckle and Jesus manga from Dave. Both of them seem like epically horrible, but therefore enjoyable, manga. Blaster Knuckle is about a African American in the south who has to fight flesh-eating KKK members with magical brass knuckles. I can’t casually find anything about the Jesus manga I saw at Bookoff but it was about an assassin codenamed Jesus. There is a manga called Jesus about the biblical Jesus, a romantic comedy called Jesus!, as well as another romantic comedy called Jesus Christ that was in Bessatsu Friend. I was dead tired by the end of it.

I think many of us were reluctant to have the convention end! So meeting up right after we were being kicked out seemed like a way to prolong the inevitable. And a good number of us spent even more money that we didn’t have! But really, Bookoff was having a sale, how could I resist? I was also lucky to make it out of Kinokuniya with any money at all considering Gackt was in three magazine this month. I only bought one, sigh. At about seven or so we parted ways and the magic was over. Leaving a con is like having been in another dimension for three days then coming back to reality. I came out of this con with great deals, hilarious stories, and some new friends. Overall it was one of the best, and best run, conventions I have ever been to. Next year I expect great things but I have to wonder if they can top my experience this year.

I don’t think I have ever been to a convention that was so jam packed with stuff to do. I really regret not being able to go to more anime and manga panels but that is what anime conventions are for. I wish I had been able to see Joss Whedon but I did not feel like hacking through the crowd to hear him talk on Sunday. I also regret not being able to see the Dr. Who panel but such is life. There were just so many to events attend!  There were dozens of minor problems but overall I had a blast. My greatest criticism is that next year it may be almost impossible for them to duplicate the sheer amount of things as they did this time around. NYCC is clearly become a force to rival San Diego. I am curious how the date change for NYCC 2010 will effect things but we shall cross that bridge when we get to it.

Top 5 Anime songs that must be sung at karaoke
5. Tobe! Gundam by Koh Ikeda
4. Cha-La Head-Cha-La by Hironobu Kageyama
3. Rinbu Revolution by Masami Okui
2. Yuusha-oh Tanjou! by Masaaki Endo
1. Ai wo Torimodose by Crystal King

Posted in Conventions, Events Tagged: anime industry, bloggers, fan community, fans on fans, manga industry, New York Comic Con, panels, press, Sho Sakurai, Takashi Miike, Yatterman ]]> http://reversethieves.com/2009/02/16/new-york-comic-con-2009/feed/ 6 reversethieves http://reversethieves.com/2007/12/12/new-york-anime-festival-2007/ http://reversethieves.com/2007/12/12/new-york-anime-festival-2007/#comments Wed, 12 Dec 2007 23:05:13 +0000 reversethieves http://whendistancefails.com/reversethievesblog/?p=45 ]]> Hisui and Narutaki’s NYAF schedule

Friday
Del Rey Panel
ImaginAsia Panel

Saturday
The Art of Reviewing Anime Panel
Katsushi Ota Q&A
Kobun Shizuno Q&A
Viz Media Panel
Otaku USA Panel
Unicorn Table Concert

Sunday
Vertical Inc. Panel
State of the Manga Industry
State of the Anime Industry

This was the first anime con in NYC since 2003, but nevertheless I had high hopes for NYAF. They were planning far in advance; they got the Javits Center; the schedule was up almost a month before the convention; and they were advertising. However, this last one was a bit worrisome, NYC is a big place and if everyone in it who likes anime shows up at a con you can expect a freakin’ crowd. Their projected numbers were around 15,000, I am eager to see what the actual was. Unfortunately for them, it didn’t seem that busy. It is not that I want to be squashed between otaku all day but for how big this con seemed like it was going to be, it wasn’t.

Without a doubt, this was definitely a professionally run convention. There were no major schedule changes and everything ran as smooth as silk. Even Otakon at it’s best did not run as smooth as NYAF. I think it could be argued that it ran a little smoother than Anime Expo. I have only gone to Expo once and it was very well run the year I went, 2006, but they still made things a little bit difficult and obtuse. They also had a bunch of schedule changes and mix-ups. So not matter what there is something to be said for professionally run conventions.

Saturday at NYAF, which is always the busiest day at most cons, seemed like a Friday at any other big con. When something like AnimeNEXT gets a crowd like that, it seems fine because they are smaller cons and have smaller expenses. They don’t need as many people to make back their money. Doing anything in Manhattan is expensive. I too wonder if this is the last we shall see of NYAF. First year cons almost always have a low number of attendees, so maybe they will wait and see if this con will grow. If given an chance, I’m sure that this con will grow but it has to be given that chance. According to this, BAAF had 3,500 people during its first year in 2001. Then again, BAAF 2001 was a much smaller affair from what I remember of it. Still, it was a convention that grew in numbers and scope as the years went on. BAAF did occur at another time but it still shows that even in NYC it takes time for a convention to grow. I’m also not really sure what exactly killed BAAF. I have heard several stories but they were more rumors rather than anything close to factual evidence.

Friday started out well for me, I got there around 2:30 since I had silk-screening in the morning. I met up with Kohaku to wander this new experience. The first thing that struck me was how the dealers room was set-up. It was very similar to comic cons and there was a lot of free stuff, which is always a plus. There weren’t too many people so navigation of the area was fairly simple. The entire convention was in a relatively small area but had very wide hallways.

I missed Friday because of work (and the fact that I accidentally FedExed the print out of my ticket to one of our clients). I guess on Monday there was a very confused guy opening up an overnight package. I showed up at around 6:30 to see Narutaki and Kohaku getting out of the convention.

The dealers room was definitely set up like the New York Comic Con when it was at the Javits Center. I don’t remember this convention having more free stuff than any other anime con. But maybe that is because I’m a moody loner that ignores other people where as Narutaki and Kohaku are normal functional human beings. I remember the comic con was pretty packed but things still moved nicely most of the time thanks to the large hallways.

It was also the best day to talk to industry people since there wasn’t a whole ton going on and they weren’t overwhelmed with questions yet. We chatted with Mike Bailiff (I think) from ADV and also Chris Oarr. We also talked with quite a few people over at the newest addition to the manga market, YEN Press. And as per usual, talked with the people from Del Rey as well. Del Rey certainly made a lot of acquisition announcements for the coming year, of which included a light novel of XXXholic and the manga of Gankutsuou.

I’m curious to see what the XXXholic light novel reads like. It was great potential to either be very good or very bad. XXXholic can be very episodic so a random story in the middle is not anything that would be obtrusive. I have not heard anything about the Gankutsuou graphic novel but historically any manga based on an anime is weaker than the original work.

ImaginAsia, I wanted go to to see how the classics were doing. I really wanted them to be going well! And thankfully they are, thanks to the sets being really nice and them being shown on their cable channel. They also have a block of programing that is all Geneon titles, I had to ask what was going to happen to that with the recent news. They said it would remain as is, and they have hopes that Geneon isn’t completely dead yet. I also spoke to them after the panel and asked about Rose of Versailles. I thought I was going to hear the usual about it being expensive, and the creator is problematic. But she told me that the biggest obstacle right now is Riyoko Ikeda wants the manga released first! Well, bring it on people!

Well did they not say that Riyoko Ikeda was not a super crazy lady but she was a super crazy lady who also wants the manga released first. Also Geneon still seems to be in an odd undead limbo between being fully dead and just half dead.

The dealers room, the industry booths, and the artist alley were one big mish-mash. I can’t really find a reason for this, except to possibly just fill the room to make it seem bigger. But after some searching you could find everything you wanted. And of course the dealers room did hold some gems. But this is not really my priority at cons.

I did not buy much this convention most because it was so close to Christmas. I did find it odd that they combined the dealers room and artist alley into one as well. I did pick up a neat Gundam doujinshi where they remade Azumanga Daioh strips with Gundam characters. Any doujinshi with Domon Kasshu and his glowing King of Hearts in a Azumanga strip is worth the price of admission.

The Art of Reviewing Anime panel was rather uneventful, but it did reaffirm my beliefs about the AnswerMan being jaded. I don’t think it’s impossible to work in the industry and still be a fan. Daryl from AWO was there to and it was rather amusing to see him and the AnswerMan saying the completely opposite of the other. But the Katsushi Ota panel was wonderful! Thank you Del Rey for bringing him. He is the editor of Faust which Del Rey announced they would be releasing parts of. It is a light novel anthology series that has illustration accompaniment. This will definitely be an experiment here in the U.S. and I’ve very excited about it. I asked him about digital distribution and he said there was something big coming up later this year that he couldn’t talk about.

Jaded? The tomb of a Chinese Emperor is not as jaded as Zac Bertschy. A noir gumshoe is not as jaded as Zac Bertschy. The fact that he did not light up cigarettes to put them out on members of the audience was somewhat surprising.

Well if nothing else, Katsushi Ota provided me with the highlight of the con. Kinoko Nasu who writes for Type-Moon (games like Tsukihime and Fate/Stay Night) also has written for Faust so you know I was at this panel. I like the idea of light novels in general so I was probably going to go anyway, but once I found out they might be announcing some works by Nasu, I was there in a flash. Faust seems pretty interesting. They have a collective mix of authors and artists working on the book. We will only be getting selected parts of the Japanese Fausts but as long as we get Garden of Sinners, DDD, and see their CLAMP artwork I’m happy. I asked Ota what his impressions of Nasu were and he gave me both an amusing story and a definite insight into the man. That was awesome. I also thought that their boxed line of books looked nice.

I am always interested in more light novels being released, since I’ve such a big reader, so this is a dream some true to me. Ota seems to be smart, insightful, and has a desire to bring creative people together into projects. Anthologies haven’t been bigger sellers in the U.S. but I hope this turns that around. It will have short stories and also excerpts from longer works.

At the end Katsushi Ota gave me the first two books of DDD and then took my picture with the books and promised to send the pictures to Nasu himself. WIN! That is the second Japanese creator that now has a picture of me. Without a doubt my favorite part of the convention.

The Guest of Honor was Kobun Shizuno. At first Patrick Macias asked him about how he became a director in the anime industry and what he though of the industry in general. Then Shizuno showed a pretty long clip of his newest show, Cross Climber. It seems to be about a full immersion virtual reality MMO with a sinister secret purpose. Then a bunch of people asked him questions about the Evangelion movies that he could not answer. The most interesting part was listening to how Shizuno worked his way through the industry to become a director. I sort of wished the people from the audience had asked him some more interesting questions. I did like that someone asked him a Princess Nine question. That show does not get enough love.

You are kinder than I was. I was practically leaping from my seat in outrage at the crappy questions. Two questions were not about his OWN work but about Ginax works. This man is a director, not a film critic, you shouldn’t be asking what he thinks of other peoples’ work. Not to mention there was only time for about 5 or 6 questions so them being wasted was quite a frustration. After this panel we also man into Dave and Joel from Fast Karate and talked with them a bit.

I had never heard of Unicorn Table before they were announced as the musical guests. But I am always up to hear some J-pop! So the concert was something of a high priority for me, and I wasn’t disappointed. There were 10 or 11 songs, which was more than I could have hoped for. We pushed our way to the second row and enjoyed quite a show! We survived the otaku stink for nearly an hour and a half. Although, I wasn’t crazy about her solo songs in the middle, the entire band was the best part. They really got the crowd up and cheering. There was even a raffle at the end, they gave away a t-shirt, a DVD, and a small bag.

Unicorn Table was pretty fun, although my favorite part was when the guitarist and the bassist just started to rock out while the main singer was changing costumes. I stayed away from the madness at the front of the concert and enjoyed myself in the back. I also have no need to be around stinking touchy-feely otaku.

The panels were all industry run and this was my biggest complaint. I really like a mix, I always go to many industry panels but I also like things about older anime or some aspect of anime. I hope this can be remedied next time around. The best things were the state of the industry panels where people from all over got together for a round-table of what’s been going on in the last year. As can be imagined, the anime one had a lot of what if’s and what can be done. It was really informative.

I’m not sure why they did not have any fan run panels. I admit when fan panels are bad they are very bad but they also could have had some good fan runs panels. It might be that as a professionally run convention they did not want to take the risk of a non-guest/nonprofessional run panel. Excluding fan run panels cuts down on your poorly done panels but also excludes a good many interesting panels that could exist.

It was really interesting to hear the two state of industry panels. The manga panel was happy talk and full of what are we going to do next. The anime panel was full of what can we do to pull ourselves out of this mess. Both panels talked about digital distribution. The manga panel speculated on why they were doing so well and how they could keep up their success. On the anime panel, they discussed why sales were down, what they could do to counter it, and what their hopes for digital distribution were. John O’Donnell, from CMX, definitely stole the show during the anime round-table. His answers/tirades were insightful if a little harsh.

I feel like this was a small con that seemed bigger because of the industry involvement but really it wasn’t anything like Otakon. A small con dressed up in big con clothes. Then again, it was its first year and also it is the winter…in NYC, not exactly the most inviting scenario. I also feel like it should have gone on longer into the night. Panels running till 8 or 9 at least and showings till at least then if not later. We know they could do it since the concert went on till almost 10. Overall, I had a good time and learned a lot. It wasn’t the best time I’ve ever had at a convention but I look forward to another one of these, if there is one.

I like having a con basically in my back yard. I’m sure I would fly halfway across the country to go to NYAF, but I will definitely take a subway ride again next year. It was not my favorite con but I had a good time and it did everything I need a con to do. I was never at a real loss of what to do; there was always something interesting going on. I sort of wish I had had some more time to see some of the movies they premiered on the big screen but there were too many good panels. Too many good things is never a real problem. It proves that a for profit convention can be done in an acceptable manner. If NYAF takes what they did this year, and grows, it has the potential to be one of the big name East Coast cons. I look forward to seeing how things turn out next year.

MangaNEXT, for better or for worse, is very much a small convention. This is the convention’s second year. If it will always stay a small time convention is another story but for now it is a little con. The down side to a small time convention is less guests and smaller guests. There is also less programming, panels, dealers, and workshops. The up side is a greater sense of community, not waiting for anything, and a lot more access to guests and panelists. The ability to just come up to the guests and just chat, even sort of hang with a guest, is almost unthinkable at larger cons. If you thought Anime Expo was going to let you within 10 feet of CLAMP you were sorely mistaken.

I like both types of conventions, one kind is really crazy and goes by like a whirlwind and the other is relaxing and slow-paced. I have equal amounts of things that I learn from both. Besides most of the guests I want to see, no one cares about anyway! This is terribly unfortunate but completely true since I like to see the directors, producers, character designers panels. However, even when there aren’t a lot of people, at a big con you still don’t get to talk one on one much.

We started our trip on Saturday because the three of us (Narutaki, Hisui, and Kohaku) had work on Friday so that made Friday a no go. There was a Media Blasters panel that might have been interesting. Media Blasters licensed The Gorgeous Life of Strawberry-chan by Ai Morinaga and I was curious if they were looking into other Ai Morinaga titles.

The panel I was interested in was one Jason Thompson mentioned he did on Friday, about Japanese manga magazines. I was even most interested in it after he inferred, in a panel later on, that Weekly Shonen Sunday is not doing so hot.

There was a panel on strong female characters. I would have liked to have seen. I’m sure I would have had some interesting conversation with the panelist for that one. We saw her the next day and she gave us her list of shows with strong characters. It was mostly good, but there were some interesting choices on the list. Miaka Yuki and the dolls from Rozen Maiden are hardly anything near strong female characters IMHO.

I remember her from the previous MangaNEXT, and she did other panels about women. She seems to know a lot and has a good deal to say on the subject. If I had had time, I would have liked to see her reasoning behind some of the choices on that list. You will remember her best as the woman running the panel where that girl said Misa Misa was a strong female role model.

I’m also very curious to have seen what was talked about in the famous manga-ka and their not so famous works panel. You can sometimes be surprised what other works can come out of a manga-ka you think you already know. The fact that Rumiko Takahashi does both Ranma 1/2, Rumic World, and Mermaid Saga might not be immediately obvious.

On Saturday, we started by signing in at Panel Ops. MangaNEXT was pretty cool in the fact that we got special panelist badges. I don’t remember getting any special privileges due to the fact that we got panelist badges but it was still cool.

I was so stoked to get special badges! I want everyone to do this from now on. We had a regular badge and another badge letting them know we are panelists. I think this would be especially helpful at bigger cons where people are trying to get through lines to check in and not be late. Sure people would use them to always get in a few minutes early, but is that really so bad? After all, we are helping at the con. And why is it that Panel Ops always looks so baffled when we check in early, are anime fans really that unreliable?

The first panel we went to was Women in Fandom. We only caught the final part but it mostly seemed to be a discussion of how women have different experiences being a part of anime fandom than men. It seemed an interesting panel so I’m curious in what was discussed in the earlier part of the panel.

It is pretty obvious that women and men show and experience fandom in different ways but also in similar ways. Being that I sort of had knowledge of this already I didn’t learn anything new but it is nice to share experiences with others.

We went to the dealer’s room, it was small but it had doujinshi so we were happy. Nartutaki and Kohaku bought some doujinshi from a dealer that let you browse before you buy it. I almost got a Akiha figure from Melty Blood but I decided to hold off from buying it. Maybe I will pick you up another day you wacky incestuous tsundere.

I see that dealer at all the east coast cons and never knew I would open anything! Actually, they are on our little side bar, Ultimate Doujinshi, and they are always getting new things. This time around they had lots of Fruits Basket, I however did not pick any up. I finally found a Cowboy Bebop doujin that was good and also grabbed a fun little Bleach one as well. I don’t really care if the dealer’s room has tons of vendors, but boy, was it cramped! It was really clogged up on Saturday, I could barely breath.

We saw part of a rather mediocre Manga vs. Anime. Dubbed vs. Raw panel. The part we came in on mainly seemed to be bashing the Naruto dub and how awful it is. I’m no Naruto fan but the dub seems at least to be to do an adequate job. If any Nate the Ninja fans want to chime in on their opinion, I’m interested to hear what people think of it. I thought the guys complaints seemed sort of a super weaboo argument to me. There was another guy who was supposed to do a similar panel at the same time, but due to a mix-up he never got to do his panel. I’m curious if his panel would have been any better.

Okay, I dunno what nice pills you were taking, but HELL YEAH THAT OTHER DUDE’S PANEL WOULD HAVE BEEN BETTER! That panel was awful, there is no way it could have been worse. It was exactly what I try to avoid, panels that deteriorate into nothing more than, “yeah I hate this,” “me too,” “isn’t this cool,” from a bunch of kids that think Naruto is the end all of anime. Gar. I know panels like this exist, but damnit I got roped into one for a few moments and it was so not cool.

We then went to Jason Thompson’s panel on his new book Manga: The Complete Guide. He basically talked about how he got started in the anime and manga business at Viz and how that eventually led to him writing a book for Del Rey about manga. He then talked about his book which is a complete guide to all the manga published in the United States. It seemed very thorough and will be getting regular updates online. My only objection was the fact that all the entries were reviews. I tend to like my reference books without an opinion. I don’t want to go to the encyclopedia and have the author tell me why he thinks the Holy Roman Empire was lame sauce. I will probably still get it but I would have preferred a comment free guide.

Well, I am definitely buying it. Even before we met Jason Thompson, who is a really cool guy, I heard about this book. He read some entries out loud to us, and what was really great was the reviews themselves are entertaining. You are getting a “what’s out there” guide along with some witty commentary. Most of the reviews are written by Jason, he became a Hikkikimori for a year to do it, and the hentai and yaoi sections are mostly written by a few friends of his. His experiences at Viz were funny and he was an all around charming guy. He is no longer with Viz, he said he had to leave before he wrote the book because he wouldn’t hold back!

The Del Rey panel was a well done but rather standard industry panel. Other than the announcement of the licensing of Faust there were no shocking revelations or announcement of note. Faust seems to be a light novel anthology so it’s the first of it’s type licensed in the US. I’m kind of curious how well it’s going to do. There are some illustrations in the magazine but it’s mostly text. That means a lot of translation and adaptation so it’s riskier than some licenses IMHO. But it has Decoration Disorder Disconnection in it so I’m waiting for that with bated breath. I also heard that some little known female mangaka named CLAMP have done illustrations for the magazine. Might be a selling point for some people.

I had never heard of Faust magazine, no surprise really when I looked it up to find it was mostly a light novel publication. The official Japanese site is really great as it lets you see sample chapters and art, from what looks to be every issue. I really like the concept of following a novel chapter by chapter every month, kind of exciting like TV. I’m looking forward to more novels making it over from Japan, so this sounds like a great way to kick start it. However, Del Rey did mention they won’t be localizing the entire thing, so it is still unclear if we will be getting a monthly adaptation or just anthologies released every few months with their picks. They also mentioned they will be having an event at the Kinokuniya grand opening near Bryant Park, NYC on November 3rd. I haven’t found confirmation of this online yet but hopefully it is still going on.

Mari Morimoto had a panel about her experiences as a translator. She gave an overview of how she got into the industry, what a translators role is, how a translator works with others to make a manga come to the U.S., her views of the industry and how its changed, and then she gave advice about how to break into the industry as a translator. It was a good behind the scenes peek at one of the vital grunt jobs of the industry. Morimoto was very friendly and open so the panel was very relaxed and informative.

Mari is the semi-famous translator of Naruto, since the original translator was panned by fans. She almost always does Shonen translations, she mentioned that translators have to have a different voice depending on the genre. She says by now if she did a shojo series it might sound awkward. She also does Saint Seiya (Knights of the Zodiac) and we sort of bonded over it! She brought a new release of it with her, so cool! It was also hinted that the Saint Seiya manga is in the bottom 10 of sellers for Viz but they are on contract to finish the series, 28 volumes! We talked to her a lot after her panels. Kohaku asked her if she knew anything about Princess Knight but we found out it will not be released.

Morimoto was at the next panel we went to as the translator for Hiroki Otsuka. He used to be a Japanese erotic/shojo manga-ka then he came to the U.S. to pursue a slightly more relaxed career. He is currently living in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. He seemed like a friendly guy and spoke a decent amount of English, not enough to go without a translator but still a good amount. If nothing else, we reaffirmed the fact that being a popular manga-ka can be hellish and that editors are often like co-writers in Japan. I also got a good insight how a Japanese artist makes it into the Japanese manga industry. It was definitely a unique experience to find a Japanese manga-ka living and working in the U.S. and getting to hear him talk. Often manga-ka are so busy that they can’t often come to American conventions and when they do they often are not that accessible.

Hiroki was a delight. It was the first time that I heard a manga-ka be very frank about the manga industry. He wasn’t completely candid, but a lot more open about what goes on. This could be because he is no longer working in it. It was fun to hear about his adventures in doujinshi and fan-made games. That was actually how he got discovered and was hired on. He has done a variety of genres but likes shojo best as far as I could tell. He has a shonen series out in the U.S. called Boys of Summer although he only does the art for it. He also has an exhibit at the Japan Society in NYC which I am hoping to check out. Hiroki seemed to think that as a growing artist, not just manga-ka, NYC was the best place for him to be.

On the way back, we ran into some internet celebrities in the form of Erin and Noah of the Ninja Consultants. They were rather delightful to talk to. I distinctly remember the topic of strong female characters in anime turned into a conversation about NANA.

Well, I never miss a chance to theorize about NANA. I had only spoken to Erin and Noah briefly at Otakon so it was cool running into them again and having a chance to chat.

We started Sunday with our own panel. Our panel examined the history, methods, and impact of scanlation in America. I think it went pretty well but it was the opening slot on Sunday so we had about 6 people at the panel all together. If nothing else, everyone who came to the panel walked away with a decent amount of free manga. One girl got the old versions of of Cardcaptor Sakura and Magic Knight Rayearth.

I always get so nervous right before a panel! Ugh. But once I start going, I get into it. All the people who came were very attentive and talked a lot with us afterward. Seemed that most of them had dabbled in scanlation but hadn’t really known much about it. I do wish there had been more people but luckily no one got up and left. I would love to do it again in a different time slot. When I mentioned to panel ops how few people we had they said the feedback panel only had about 10, it was running at the same time, so I didn’t feel too bad.

We inadvertently got roped into a horrible D.Gray Man panel. The panelist itself seemed to be rather well-informed and well-prepared but she also seemed like a ferret on cocaine. We had to leave when she left all of a sudden to talk to her friends. I think that was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Okay, it was my fault we went in that panel. I love D.Gray Man. It’s true. It was not truly awful but once again, it was a panel that I could have looked everything up on Wikipedia for if I wanted to. D.Gray Man is full of dark and religious themes, plenty of fodder.

I think the main problem with panels about one title is they are just why title X is so cool and why character Y from title X is so cool (and maybe why we hate character Z and hope characters A and B get together). I really would like to see more panels like the panel I saw at Otakon about Hellsing. A detailed analysis of characters and themes of a title. A more mature and detailed examination of a work. That would make me happy.

Exactly, I don’t feel anymore that people go to panels about shows to learn about them. There are just so many other resources for that. The only thing I learned before hi-tailing it out of there was that D.Gray Man will be going on after 52 episodes. I probably would have known this if I wasn’t pissed at the show at the moment. But now maybe I can get over it since it is continuing, hopefully without filler.

We ended the day with the Manga Industry round-table panel. All the guests were on one table and Morimoto acted as moderator as she asked questions of all the guests and took questions for the guests from the audience. Morimoto started the panel with the joke that she recognized everyone in the room from other panels she had given over the weekend. I guess that show once again that most of the time people who come to conventions don’t care about the guests.

All in all I think MangaNext was worth the time and the money. I had fun, learned some stuff, and met some very cool people. I would like it to grow a little more so they might draw some bigger guests, while keeping that same relaxed and comfortable atmosphere.

MangaNEXT grew by leaps and bounds since last year. I am proud to be a part of it. And hope to do a panel next year as well.

P.S. This con report is ridiculously long.

Nartutaki Currently!
Watching Gundam 00
Reading Saint Seiya
Listening to L’arc en Ciel

Hisui (Brainwasher Detective) Currently:
Watching Orguss, Super Dimension Century
Reading Negima! Magister Negi Magi
Listening to Tobira Wo Akete by Anza