I caught the end of Wendee Lee’s panel and got her autograph on a Lucky Star DVD.

After going off campus for lunch, I came back and saw the last part of Valkyrie Kiss performing in the student union.

There were about 15-20 artists and 7-8 dealers in Freeborn Hall, which was also where the two guest panels were held.

I didn’t get anything from any artists’ tables but I did buy 3 two-packs of old Anime UK magazines, a $4 con T-shirt, and a Nendoroid Plus Penguindrum rubber strap blind box that turned out to be Ringo.

The admission price of $12 pre-reg, $15 at the door was cheap for a small, one-day convention. I managed to say “hi” to a few staff members I recognized but I unfortunately didn’t see anyone from my earlier anime club years (only a couple had said they were coming on Facebook). I may return next year if I’m not doing anything that weekend because it’s not that far of a freeway drive.

Other coverage:
- Matthew Miranda of the California Convention Blog shot some videos of Wendee Lee’s panel and the Cosplay Contest.

- AC Paradise has a gallery of cosplay photos from the convention.

We’re well into the spring season of 2013 but it doesn’t hurt to look back at the last year in anime. (It was a fantastic year, wasn’t it?)

This AMV takes the Filmography year-in-review editing approach and tries to show bits of over two hundred anime TV series, movies and OVA’s from 2012 within a 5 minute span. See how many you can recognize and then check the long list on its AMV.org page for the ones you missed. (Squid Girl, Kids on the Slope, YuruYuri, and Gakkatsu! were among the ones I caught glimpses of.)

Sidenote: I also liked it because there was an Apples in Stereo song in it.

Streaming site DAISUKI will launch by the end of this month and I’m getting curious about which series will debut on it and be added soon after. I’m more interested in what some of their “older, classic, nostalgic titles” (as mentioned in a couple of interviews) will be than the newer series so I’ve have been looking at its current partners’ back catalogs, wondering how far back they might go or how varied their approach might be.

Something like Toei Animation’s Sailor Moon would be a headline grabber but what about ones that have not been officially localized in English such as Tiger Mask (also Toei) or Sunrise’s cooking series Mr. Ajikko?

It would be nice if some out-of-print series that were previously released in the US on DVD such as Kamichu! (Aniplex), Planetes (Sunrise) and Kodocha (NAS) were put onto the service.

Personally, I’d like to see a couple previously unlicensed comedies, both of which that had their original manga released by Viz: Yakitate! Japan (Sunrise) and Cheeky Angel (TMS). I would chuckle a bit if Secret of Cerulean Sand (TMS) was eventually added and smile if older sports series like Ikki-Man (Toei) and Ace wo Nerae! (TMS) make it on there.

Omo wrote about the venture soon after it was announced and thought it may experience problems because of its management structure. I’m optimistic about the project but then again I felt the same way about JManga at the beginning, which lasted about two years and seemed to connect with manga fans before starting to shut down last month.

What kind of titles would you like to see streaming on DAISUKI? Any specific ones?

screengrab from the Mania forums

There are a bunch of industry panels all in a row on Friday and some more on Saturday. I wonder what will be the differences between the two panels that FUNimation, Yen Press, Crunchyroll and Aniplex of America each have. I know that FUNimation usually has a Sneak Peek panel at conventions and maybe that’s what one of theirs is?

As far as fan panels go: I’d really like to read a report about Influence of Early 90′s West Coast Rap on Modern Anime (Fri 9pm-9:45pm) because that’s the first time I heard of such a connection (even though Samurai Champloo and Afro Samurai have rap/hip-hop influences in them). The Dark Side of Magical Girls (Fri 5:15pm-6:15pm) could be interesting and so could The Architecture of Anime (Sat 2pm-3pm) – will it be about actual structures within anime or more about story arcs & framing?

If you haven’t seen Mike Toole present Dubs That Time Forgot at some East Coast conventions, it’s a fun panel to attend and those who are going to Sakura-Con can check it out Saturday night from 10pm to 11pm. (If you can’t make it, you can at least watch a recording of the Anime Boston 2011 edition.) Anime Cult Classics (Sun 12:45pm-1:45pm) is another one of Mike’s panels that I’ve seen in person and it was my first exposure to any part of the Happy Science films.

It looks like there are at least a few game show panels – Name that Anime Tune (Fri 7pm-9pm), Otaku Feud (Fri 8:45pm-9:45pm) and Gameshow Panel with Bressler and Chip! (Sat 10am-11:45am). The last one looks like it will include versions of Press Your Luck, Only Connect and The $25,000 Pyramid, according to a forum post made by one of the hosts.

My convention schedule this year is pretty light – I will likely check out the local Kintoki-Con in late July and maybe Otakon again if my budget works out? I’m likely skipping Fanime for 2013 because even though I encounter some of my friends from college there, I get less enjoyment out of the event each year. I may go for one day depending on what panels end up on the schedule. Finally, I was considering going to A-Kon in late May for a change of pace and am still wavering on whether to go or not.

The longest regular-length anime series I’ve watched to completion was the original Full Metal Alchemist series at 51 episodes. I enjoyed the journey & liked the ending when I finished it back in my high school days. Watching it week-to-week helped and I had definitely invested some emotions in the characters along the way. (The longest short-form anime I’ve finished was Poyopoyo at 52 episodes.)

More recently, I’m watching three currently airing anime that have lasted more than three cours – Space Brothers, Hunter x Hunter and Polar Bear Cafe. The first two don’t have any announced ending at the moment as their respective manga sources are still running while Polar Bear Cafe is set to finish at an even 50 episodes in late March.

What was the longest series, anime or manga, that you’ve finished and was it worth the time/emotional investment? (I suppose the same sort “long haul” argument could be made for manga so I included it in the question.) On the contrary, has there been a particular series that you have been put off in starting because of its length?

By the way, you can see pages from this issue along with other issues of Animerica as part of Practice Makes Awesome’s Anime Archive Project.

- Inferno Cop is quick-fire and stupid in a good way.
- Yama no Susume‘s camping/hiking theme resonates with me as a former Scout.
- I’ve been watching Puchim@s as each weekday episode comes out so I must like something about it. I did like the Idolmaster series – at least the first half of it that I watched.
- Mangirl has a catchy opening and is funny, too.
- Ai Mai Mi has a weird sense of humor that I have come to like.
- Senyuu has a solid boke/tsukkomi dynamic.
- Boku no Imouto wa “Osaka Okan” has Kana Asumi (Nyaruko) as the Osaka sister, which makes it a weekly watch for me.
- Ishida to Asakura garnered a few chuckles from me but not as much as the other shorts.

Of the full-length shows on offer this season, I’ve seen Maoyuu, Sasami-san@Ganbaranai, Kotoura-san, Love Live!, Tamako Market, and OreShura.

I’ve kept up with Tamako Market (delightful series), Kotoura-san (more down at times but the humor shines through), and Maoyuu (the agricultural/trade stuff is kind of interesting, despite the sloppy relationship stuff). Unfortunately, I’ve fallen a few weeks behind on Sasami-san (an interesting spin on gods) and Love Live!, which I enjoyed more than I expected from its premise of trying to save a high school by becoming school idols.

I dropped OreShura after three episodes because although I liked a bit of the early humor stemming from manipulative Masuzu and childhood friend Chiwa, I started to get bored of it by episode 3. I don’t think the other two girls in the opening will make me change my mind.

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In my effort to sort out the many On Hold series I have, I tried out A-Channel ep 3 and Arakawa Under the Bridge ep 3. Both weren’t funny enough to keep watching so I moved both into the Dropped column. I also dropped Blue Exorcist after its 2nd episode because it was kind of a drag to watch.

Some “keep watching” winners were B Gata H Kei following ep 3 (the one with the darkroom) and Astarotte’s Toy after a sad 4th episode where Asarotte’s mom – the queen – is too busy to attend a school function before it’s over.

I also began a few older series – the 1st episode of Lupin III Part I (I didn’t know Parts I & II were on Hulu), the 1st 2 episodes of Urusei Yatsura and the 1st episode of Macross Frontier (I liked Ranka).

I guess I’ll try to do at least monthly updates on my general watching progress.

I don’t remember when I first saw this AMV (YouTube) but I was reminded of it while listening to Duran Duran recently. The band had created the song for the 1985 Bond movie of the same name. The AMV editor took that song’s spy movie feel and used Ryo from City Hunter as a spy character and the Sailor Scouts from Sailor Moon as Bond Girls of sorts.

I just happened to have this among my screenshots and wanted to use it.

We’re already a week into the new year so it’s time for me to evaluate how well I did with my resolutions for the previous year.

1. Write more about manga.

I started up a Tumblr called Tankōbon Tasting where I highlight untranslated manga that I have bought – it’s me trying to give them a little more exposure. I also wrote a promotional post about the Math Girls manga Kickstarter but didn’t publish any manga reviews.

2. Write more about sports anime and manga.

I gave a panel about sports manga at both Fanime and Otakon but didn’t do much writing about particular series. I also published a post in March called Intersection of Being a Sports & Anime Fan - it had been in draft mode since June 2011, which leads into resolution #3.

3. Clear out my drafts.

I moved some out-of-date stuff (mostly news-related) to the Trash bin in WordPress and plan to publish a post consisting of fragments of worthwhile ideas sometime soon. I don’t quite know how many old drafts turned into posts in 2012 but I think there were a few that got published, such as one where I speculated about ex post facto Japanese Academy Prizes for Animation.

art by pixiv user じぃと

So what about some new resolutions for the Year of the Snake? Well, I only really have one – try to figure out my On Hold/Stalled lists on MyAnimeList and Anime-Planet and make decisions on whether to make an attempt to finish certain series. As of this post, my On Hold list on MAL includes 198 series and my Stalled one on A-P has just a little less than that.

Part of the problem seems to be losing momentum in watching a series after missing a few weeks (in the case of new series) but not wanting to entirely give up on finishing it sometime in the future. Another factor is that I sometimes just don’t feel like watching anything on a given night so things continue to go unwatched. I guess I’ll just focus on the ones I want to finish and have almost completed, then trim away the ones that I don’t care that much about after giving some of them one more episode to prove themselves.

I would like to present a similar sports panel to the one I did in 2012 but I’m kind of getting a bit tired of conventions. Hanging out with people I know seems to be the main reason I attend these things and though I like to travel to different places, it can be a pain to deal with the occasional flight delay. Having to deal with pre-registration lines is one thing I didn’t like about attending Fanime & AX last year, though I could bypass Fanime’s by applying as press again and I already report on the panels & other things at the conventions I attend.

I don’t have any predictions for 2013 – simply couldn’t think of any for the 2nd straight year. … “There will be surprisingly great and disappointing bad debuts this year.” I guess that’s one vague statement that could be construed as a prediction.

Kaiba

The protagonist, Kaiba, wakes up with no memories and someone’s picture in a pendant. He journeys to find his memories and that person (Neiro) while meeting different types of people along the way. He doesn’t talk much during the first half of the series so the other characters end up driving the story more.

The show’s universe is a bit distressing as memories can be stored on chips and put into a different body. The opening to episodes 2 through 6 starts with a narrator asking “What are memories? Souls? Spirits?” Memories and experiences seem to be what many people cherish as part of themselves and what they like sharing with others. The ability to transfer and, in some cases, alter memories shakes up the dynamics of many people’s interactions in this universe.

There is also some importance placed on how bodies are treated. Some rich characters desire non-artificial bodies and poorer characters sell their bodies in order to help out their families, storing their memories onto chips in the hopes that they will live again someday. Others buy manufactured copies of bodies made on the planet Abipa, where food is provided for free but with a hidden moral price (the food is made by recycling undesired bodies).

A group called Issoudan despises body changing and desires to dethrone Warp, the king in heaven who controls memories. We find out more about the group in episode 8 and the story thereafter became more interesting to me as more backstory and key plot points were introduced. The previous episodes had set up the basic ideas of the universe but were a bit boring to get through.

Overall, I liked Kaiba. The ending seemed to wrap things up and there was a bit of romance between Kaiba and Neiro. I also liked the humor in the earlier episodes as well as how the show looks.

It’s not an easy series to recommend and I don’t like it when people tell others to stick with a show, saying that it gets better after a particular episode – so I won’t do that… I’d say give a try if you are interested in watching something that has a deeper meaning behind it.

Some side notes:
- Masaaki Yuasa directed the series and wrote the script – you might recognize the name from the “Kick-Heart” Kickstarter project that raised funds this past October. Here is part of a 2011 film talk conducted in Dortmund, Germany, where he talks about the production of the series.

- Kaiba got an official English release in Australia from Siren Visual and some reviews have been written based on those Region 4 discs.

After some frustration with fishing, Yuki finally catches a sea bass under the guidance of expert Natsuki. His first success leads him on a path to becoming a more confident person and also later on helping to save the world. Yuki goes home and wants to show Haru his catch but he’s not there. Yuki finds Haru outside in the water and though Yuki has a bit of a nervous moment, he jumps into the water after him, even though Yuki soon remembers that he can’t swim! (Haru helps him out as we see both of them on land in the next scene.)

Well, that’s it for my look back at favorite anime moments from the past year. I’ve been updating the 12 Moments project page so you can look at what was featured in previous years as well.