After a conversation with Kate I have a revelation. As someone who does fan panels I think I am always a little guilty that I don’t attend enough fan panels. So when I “only” went to seven fan panels this year I felt slightly guilty when all in all that is more than most people attend. But I feel everyone doing a fan panel is always a little worried that not enough people are going to show up. (How many are enough people depends on the presenter.) Therefore every attentive person in a seat is one step closer to fine.

Plus, I can report back on the horrible panels and then savage them like a demon. (Or give constructive criticism which is actually far more valuable.)

With so many guests this year, I found myself at less fan-run panels simply because of time constraints and not due to a lack of fascinating topics.

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At points it seemed like one, and only one, anime came out last year. Some people loved it, some people hated it with the fiery passion of a thousand suns, with other felt the show had a major shift in the middle. It was on inordinate number of year in review lists in the general anime blogosphere. The hyperbolic Kotaku reviews did nothing but throw fuel on the fire of the discussion. And so now that the shows in question, Sword Art Online, is playing on Adult Swim it seems like the conversation about the show never stopped.

As we have mentioned multiple times during these Otakon reports they pulled out all the stops for the 20th anniversary so getting Shingo Adachi and Tetsuya Kawakami who were involved with Sword Art Online was no surprise. I’m sure staff members from the show were some of the most requested guests this year (other than Attack on Titan which came out a bit too recently to be negotiated as guests for this years con.) As Sword Art Online is getting a second wave of popularity while playing on TV they could not have timed their arrival at a better time. The only way it could have been better is if they got Reki Kawahara as well (my roommate is a huge Accel World fan so I’m sure he would have loved to meet him) but their lineup was hardly shabby.

The interview was supposed to be a roundtable discussion with 4 press groups but one group dropped out and the other just vanished. In fact at first it looked like I was the only person who was going to show up. But I did get to talk to Shingo Adachi and Tetsuya Kawakami with some members of the Ninja Legion podcast. I find that amusing because up until that point there were only that anime podcast that people always confuse with the Ninja Consultants. If nothing else that meant that both of our sites were pretty much free to ask both guests as many questions as we liked which was very nice.

Sadly, we were not able to record any audio or video of the interview so we will have to go off my handwritten notes about the affair. I apologize in advance about that.

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When I was at AnimeNEXT this year I noticed that the Japanese guests were doing more to engage with the American guests during their panels and this Otakon continued that trend. I did not go to a panel were the guest did not have some amazingly wonderful tidbit to share with the audience that would make anyone who did not attend the panel green with envy. The guest brought with them everything from exclusive trailers and never seen before videos to original art that was on display for the attendees. That was a wonderful set of treats that went above and beyond. It made the already special panels extremely memorable.

 I don’t know how many more Otakon introductions I can write where I say they pulled out all the stops for the guest list this year. But here I am once again because it can’t be stated enough. My hat is off and has been off ever since they started their announcements and I couldn’t put it back on again until now.

We’ve covered many of the Japanese guests in other posts. In this one we call out new additions to the Otakon line-up Kaoru Kurosaki and Yuzuru Tachikawa; returning vets Michihiko Suwa and Tomokazu Seki; and Masao Maruyama old friend to Otakon now.

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