Fate/kaleid liner PRISMA ILLYA 3rei!! #01: Tanaka-kun is Always Clueless

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hisui_icon_4040_round For awhile it seemed like I was doing an episodic review of some Type-Moon property every season with Fate/Zero, Unlimited Blade Works, and Fate/Kaleid Liner Prisma Illya leapfrogging between each other to make sure I was always writing about one series or another. But then there was a lull. The Heaven’s Feel movies are currently being worked on by Ufotable and considering the minor train wreck that was the God Eater I don’t mind waiting. Fate/Extra Last Encore was announced by Shaft but that does not come out until 2017. I have heard rumors about a possible Fate/Apocrypha or Fate/Grand Order animation but that is nothing more than rumors. But Fate/kaleid liner PRISMA ILLYA is back in full swing so it feels good to be writing about Type-Moon shows again.

The Fate/kaleid liner PRISMA ILLYA anime has never been a one to one reproduction of the manga. They have added material, removed various elements, combined events, and quite often moved whole scenes around to fit the schedule of the season or the differences between the media. Most of the time it has never been anything egregious and mostly things that would only annoy strict purists. Bu the last season was a bit different. The Fate/kaleid liner Prisma☆Illya 2wei!  manga lead directly into Fate/kaleid liner PRISMA ILLYA 3rei!! without even a second for the story to catch its breath. The anime on the other hand very clearly hits the breaks after they defeat Gilgamesh only hinting at the next story line with its antagonists as part of the stinger.  So if nothing else I was a bit curious to see how quickly and seamlessly could they swing back into the main plot line after the break.
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Hamacon 2016: General Impressions

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hisui_icon_4040_round I now have an official entry at Animecons.com. I have been a featured panelist before this but I never got that illustrious position on the Internet hub for anime conventions. This year at Hamacon has changed all that. It does feel like I have step one very important step forward as a blogger and podcaster. This is not to take away from my previous appearances as a featured panelist at Genericon or Castle Point Anime Convention. Those were definitely fun experiences that paved the road to this point. I doubt this is going to lead to me be a Charles Dunbar styled anime panel professional but I do hope it is less of a fluke and more of an occasional treat.

I happen to attend several more professional anime conventions a year as a function of living in an area with a decent number of larger events happening around NYC. Because of that, I have been accused of not understanding what smaller conventions outside of my area are like. The only anime convention I have been to outside of the Northeast is Anime Expo and that is hardly a small local California relaxacon. So I was curious to see the REAL anime convention as opposed to the corps d’elite of conventions I am used to going to.

Before I go into my convention report proper I will mention two important points. One: This was the 7th year for Hamacon so they have had a few years to really build up a reputation, audience, and overall organization that a convention that just started could never have. In 2015 they had over 3,500 attendees which would still take more than 7 Hamacons to equal the number of people who attended the rather anemic numbers for Otakon 2015 but that is still a great turn out for a smaller local convention. Also, it is clearly doing well enough to fly in someone like me just to be a featured panelist. Therefore it means that while this is hardly the final form of Hamacon it is also possibly not the 100% standard experience one would have at a small convention.

What I am saying is this is probably one of the best examples of a small pure anime convention. If you wanted to know what is probably the premium experience you could have at a small to the medium-sized local convention then Hamacon was probably the ideal way to judge the best a smaller con has to offer.

How do the down-home charms of Hamacon compare to the big city razzle dazzle of Otakon? Let’s find out!

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Slayers Rewatch Podcast: Spell #09

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Lina Inverse: Bandit Killer, Dragon Spooker, and Beautiful Sorceress. That’s right, we decided to revisit the classic 90’s fantasy comedy Slayers.

The show is a mixture of comedy and adventure that is both a parody and homage to the various worlds of fantasy and roleplaying. Lina, Gourry, Zelgadis, and Amelia are your stereotypical D&D adventuring party (albeit with a rather spell-casting heavy focus) killing monsters, hording treasure, fighting amongst themselves, and causing tremendous amounts of collateral damage which sometimes inadvertently save the world. And in the 90’s Megumi Hayashibara was the queen of anime voice actresses and one of her most iconic roles was Lina.

Back in the day not everyone liked Slayers but almost everyone had watched it and had an opinion about it. Now even with the two recent seasons in 2008 the series is distinctly seen as a product of the 90s.

We are recruiting adventures for our journey to discover if Slayers is still an enjoyable 90s romp or a cursed relic better buried in the stream of time. If you are a high enough level, you should rewatch Slayers with our party!

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