(note: No Type-Moon Weekly News Round Up or All Points Bulletin this week)
Rejoice! It is Otakon time once again!
This year’s guests include a number of staff from GARO the Animation, Masao Maruyama, Yuichiro Hayashi, Yasuaki Iwase, Toru Kubo, and Romi Park. Other exciting guests include Shinji Takamatsu (director of Brave Police J-Decker, Gundam Wing, Gundam X, Daily Lives of High School Boys), Seiji Kishi (director of Hamatora, Persona 3 and 4 anime, Game of Laplace), Toshiyuki Toyonaga (voice actor of Mikado Ryugamine in the DURARARA!!, Flit in Gundam AGE, Mahiro in Blast of Tempest), and Ei Aoki (director of Fate/Zero, Aldnoah.Zero).
With all those guests plus fan panels and other activities, Otakon promises (as always) to be a delightfully exhausting weekend.
We got panels, be sure to attend!
Sat. 7:00PM – I Hate Sports: A Sports Anime Panel
Panel 5
Sat. 9:30PM – New Anime for Older Fans
Panel 5
Our tentative schedule for the convention:
Friday
09:00 AM – The Nose Goes!!!: A FKMT Panel
10:00 AM – Shinji Takamatsu autograph session
10:15 AM – 70s Anime Funtime! panel
11:30 AM – MAPPA w/ Maruyama panel
12:45 PM – Kuro Fashion: African-American Influence in Animation and Japan panel
12:45 PM – I Love the 90s: Anime Edition panel
03:15 PM – Durarara!! Guest panel
04:30 PM – Shinji Takamatsu Q&A panel
04:30 PM – Garo: The Animation Official Panel
07:00 PM – The 3/11 Earthquake and Manga panel
08:15 PM – Feminism and Lesbian Representation in Yurikuma Arashi panel
08:45 PM – Skin Deep: A Historical Look at Diversity in Anime & Beyond panel
09:30 PM – Macross: The Walking Shadow panel
11:45 PM – Terror in Resonance: A Cultural Analysis panel
Saturday
09:00 AM – Fansite Bootcamp panel
10:15 AM – Awesome Women in Anime; 2.0. panel
11:30 AM – Seiji Kishi Q&A panel
12:00 PM – Maid Cafe Show
12:45 PM – The World Outside the Walls: Militarism and the Individual in Anime panel
02:00 PM – Aldnoah.Zero Guest panel
02:00 PM – Otakon is Alive with the Sounds of Anime panel
03:15 PM – Romi Park Q&A panel
03:15 PM – Sekai Project industry panel
05:45 PM – Shirobako and the Real Anime Industry panel
05:45 PM – Behind the Stand: Jojo’s Bizarre Discography panel
08:15 PM – The Wanderer’s History: The History Behind Rurouni Kenshin panel
08:15 PM – Bits of Victory – A Game Design Panel
10:30 PM – Anime Luminaries of Questionable Merit panel
11:45 PM – Twinfinite’s Shame-free Intro to Adult Visual Novels panel
Sunday
09:00 AM – The Ikuhara Trio: Analyzing Themes in Utena, Mawaru Penguindrum, and Yurikuma Arashi panel
10:15 AM – Art of Animation Featuring GARO panel
10:15 AM – Great Ugly Manga panel
12:00 PM – Breaking down the membership fee panel
12:45 PM – Discotek Media industry panel
I was pleased to see the variety returning to Otakon’s Artist Alley this year in terms of style, series displayed, and even the wares themselves. The up and coming items seem to be zipper pouches (which started showing up a couple of years ago but which now have exploded), lanyards, and, surprisingly, scarves. Despite these new crafts, I kept to my usual collections if only to stop myself from going into a frenzy of buying. How long I will hold out, especially with regards to lanyards, will remain to be seen.
As with the AnimeNEXT alley this year, there didn’t seem to be one or two titles that took over every booth. Certainly, Attack on Titan was quite popular, but with no new anime recently it seems to have kept it from overtaking everything else, at least in regard to what artists were making fan creations of. I was pleased to see a lot of the recent sports titles: Haikyu!!, Yowamushi Pedal, and Free! being represented, too.
It is a lot of fun for me to go to an artist alley with a new series to collect things from, for Otakon this year that was JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. There was no way I was passing up a Joseph Joestar button proclaiming “Holy Shit!” and the Joseph and Caesar postcard was from the same talented artist Doro. The Joseph and Caesar button is by Tayla. I loved the stylization in both of these, it is clear who the characters are but they still bright and fun on their own.
Reverse Thieves 