I have rarely been disappointed when attending a guest panel but few if any guests panels can cover the broad range of topics that the average fan panel can. You will find all levels of quality in fan panels but the good ones will teach you something while making you laugh. I have found that the large number of submitted panels usually let the panel selection committee pick the cream of the crop and give you some stand out lectures at Otakon. I know a good number of people who did not get panels this year (including myself) but I liked almost all the panels I saw so they obviously took great care in deciding what to pick.

Fan panels are a gamble, but one that often pays off especially at places like Otakon where people are vying for a panel slot so the competition is steep and so is the talent. I try to squeeze in as many fan run sessions as I can but it can be tough when there are so many guests. I feel like I attended so few panels this year, but all of them were good so maybe it worked out.

One of the most controversial panels this year was the You Don’t Like Moe – And Here’s Why! panel with Otaku USA’s original OGT and Pontifus. The panel attempted to give a high-level look at what moe is and why people hate moe as passionately as they do. The problem was most of the literary analysis terms were going over the heads of the audience; they needed more hand holding before being thrown into such academia. While talking down to the audience is patronizing likewise assuming everyone has a degree in literary theory in otaku culture is equally ineffective. But it did spawn some passionate debate at the end. We had a huge three and a half hour conversation on the bus ride home about the very topics brought up by the panel.

Over the weekend I attended two fandom specific panels The World of Sailor Moon: Countdown to 20 years and The Mecha Fan Panel. For the most part panels like these have a bad rap of being rather asinine displays where people just shout about what they like best, but both of these panels showed how to do it right. For Sailor Moon there was some brief information about the anime but then it went further into why reading the manga is great and how richly it stands against its more well-known TV counter-part. They also discussed the live action TV show that came out a few years ago and even showed a funny trailer for it set to the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers theme song. Equally funny was the short clip they showed of Sailor Moon Abridged which succeed in making me check it out. A good portion of the panel involved back and forth conversations about the Sailor Moon revival currently in full swing in Japan and other places around the world and of course the hopes that the U.S. would join in. Interspersed throughout was some trivia and giveaways. On the completely other side of the spectrum, the Mecha panel was going strong with a condensed history of the genre and some of its well-known creators like Go Nagai and Tomino. I did have to laugh as Carl (of Ogiue Maniax) kept holding his tongue when they got a fact or two wrong but it was mostly minor. There was plenty of pleasant attack name shouting thrown in and overall the panel was spry and lively. These guys did the panel last year, but this time around they were much better prepared plus had visuals.

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