While attending Fanime 2009 in late May, I recorded most of the panels I went to with the exceptions being Meet the Anime Vice Squad (forgot) and Nerd Courting (because it was 3 hours!). You may hear some rustling noises caused by when I was shifting around or, in the case of Carl Horn’s panels, flipping through the samples he gave the audience pass around.
Music during lead-ins: “Blue Little” by 10:32 (album: Ghostly Swim – link)
A week ago, I wasn’t seriously considering travelling down to Anime Expo after last year’s long drive and feelings of fatigue afterward. But an hotel room offer came up recently from someone I know (not sure if I can say who) and since my family doesn’t have plans for the weekend, I decided to seize the opportunity. I pre-registered last night so unless I want to let my $65 go to waste, I’ll going to spend some time at the LACC next weekend.
Here is my preliminary schedule (subject to changes):
Thursday
10am: Digital Manga Publishing (will miss because I’ll be driving)
5pm: Nozomi Ent./Right Stuf
7:30pm: eigoMANGA
10pm-12am: TTGL Focus Panel and Documentary (missed this at Fanime)
Friday
9am: Bandai Ent.
11am: CMX
12pm: Aniplex or Yosuke Kuroda/Seiji Mizushima (leaning toward Aniplex) ***Why are these at the same time? ***
3:30pm: Viz Media
6pm: Without Watching the Anime: OPs & EDs (by Alex Leavitt)
9pm-12am: AMV Contest (list of finalists)
Sunday
10am: Directors Guests of Honor Panel
11am: Crunchyroll
12pm: The Problem With Otaku (Alex Leavitt again)
1pm: Production I.G.
2pm: NIS America (if I’m not exhausted by then)
Day 2 at Fanime (May 23rd) for me consisted of learning about the early days of fan subtitling, taking a slower walk through Artists’ Alley, getting something free for asking a question, eating an Italian dinner, and watching on-the-spot pitching of scenarios. Read the rest of this entry »
Two weekends ago, I drove myself and a press buddy down I-80/280/680 to San Jose over the course of about two and a half hours. We checked into our room at around 2pm and then walked down to professional registration to grab our badges. After that, I took a cursory walk through Artists’ Alley and the Dealers Hall before heading to the first panel I wanted to see. Read the rest of this entry »
Seven days from now, I will drive down Interstate 80/680 with some friends and arrive at the San Jose Convention Center. I missed last year’s Fanime in order to attend my brother’s high school graduation. This time around I will have a press badge clipped somewhere on me, if they still make clip-on badges.
However, I don’t know how often I’ll be exercising that privilege since a bunch of potential news might come out of another convention in the east, Anime Boston. (Other conventions that weekend include Animazement in Raleigh, NC; Anime North in Toronto [ETERNAL will be there!], Canada; JACON in Orlando, FL; and NipponCon in Neumünster, Germany.) I’m not going into thinking Fanime there would be a lot of news since the convention isn’t meant to be a wellspring of industry news – hence the “fan” part of its name – but the fact that only one publisher is holding a panel (Dark Horse) depresses me. Thanks, AB, for stealing some of our thunder. (Just kidding, though – I don’t want to start an East Coast-West Coast battle.)
Of course I’ll being stopping by one of my favorite events, the Swap Meet, to see if there are any bargains (I’m a sucker for old magazines) and I might try to get a few artists to draw me and compare their results (something I should. Some better-known names among the list of dealers’ hall vendors are Media Blasters and Aksys Games but there will also smaller operations like Kimonokitsy Studios (makers of the nemu nemu comic) and PMBQ. The maid cafe has reportedly improved since 2007 so I might peek into that and if I somehow get the courage to do karaoke, I’ll try to have someone record it for potential future embarassment.
A pocket guide version of the schedule went live on the convention’s website Wednesday – it’s good that it’s earlier than usual but it’s also a little frustrating that it’s a collection of images with no uniform document file offered, namely, PDF. I’m sure I will get one in a bag upon check-in, anyway.
Continuing a tradition from last year’s Otakon, I decided to do another con report while far away from the actual convention site. I won’t go over all the announcements and panels, just the ones that I found interesting enough to mention. As for why it took a week, I think it’s because I’m being secretly sponsored by the Pony Express. Whatever the reason, it gave me a reason to look through Creative Commons-licensed pictures so if you’ve already read the news before (it’s very likely you have), I hope you at least enjoy the pictures that other people took last weekend. Read the rest of this entry »
I have attended SacAnime twicebefore but two Saturdays ago, I went around the Scottish Rite Center wearing a press badge for the first time. The overall experience wasn’t very different but there were some highlights worth mentioning. Read the rest of this entry »
Like last year, I did not attend Otakon and instead watched the first days of the Beijing Olympics. Sorry, anime – sports trumped you this time. But I was able to catch up with the help of Gia-Japanator combo liveblogging as well as reading raw transcriptions from an IRC channel (I think I saw one of those guys at an AX panel). Surprisingly, ANN lagged behind in terms of reportsand also no video as of Wednesday evening, which is strange since they supposedly were taping the fansubbing panel based on one of Scott’s tweets. [UPDATE 8/16: ANN has posted a 79-minute video of the Fansubs and Industry Panel along with a breakdown of the event.] Read the rest of this entry »
Today is the recovery day after the long weekend at Anime Expo 2008 and during the con, I felt disconnected from much of the stuff that was happening. My hotel didn’t have free wifi and neither did the convention center and I had varying success at 7th + Fig (it worked in the pit but not in the second level? Come on!) so I only wrote one blog post during the convention since I’m too cheap to pay for LACC Instaconnect. But I did manage to send a bunch of Twitter updates during certain panels, which makes me feel like I did something in terms of reporting things.
Since I barely did anything at the convention itself on Thursday (Day 1) due to the long drive down to LA and the problems figuring out parking/rooms, Friday was my real first day at the convention with visits to the exhibit hall and panel sessions. I’m not going to rehash all the news that has already been reported but the things I felt interesting enough to write down in my paper notepad. If you want to all the pictures I’ve been taken this weekend, I made a Flickr photoset collection that I’ll update each night.
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