Jump to: Tokyopop | Go! Comi | Production I.G. | Funimation | Kadokawa Pictures USA | Shira Oka | Eva 1.0 | Last Exhibit Hall Run

Saturday 10am: Tokyopop [AOD report with dates]
I was a few minutes late to this panel but I didn’t miss much because what the panelists were talking about when I came in was the Ghostbusters manga. That was followed by more media brand titles like Camp Rock, High School Musical, and Hannah Montana. The Battlestar Galactica manga anthology series, Echoes of New Caprica, was also mentioned and is expected to come out in March although it is in very early development.

They next described a 2009 series of color graphic novels drawn by international authors that will have a tradiational GN trim of 7″ x 10″. The first was Orange by Benjamin (Hong Kong), which is about a young woman about to commit suicide who is stopped by a guy who later commits suicide himself. (They will also be publishing Remember by the same artist.) Next was Pixie by Mathieu Mariolle and Aurore from France – it’s about a young boy traveling with a prince and when they encounter a crossroads, they travel to different dimensions. The last one was Luuna from Spain, which focuses on a Native American girl going through a rite of passage that takes place on a cursed day and, to make matters worse, she receives a cursed name as well.

They mentioned new manga titles like Tsubasa – those with wings, from Fruits Basket author Natsuki Takaya, where a ex-thief and ex-military commander are now friends; The Tarot Cafe novel (the manga had previously come out); a new .hack//GU novel; the Peacemaker Kurogane novel, a followup to the manga series; Momo Tara, a retelling of the historic Momotaro story; Castle of Dreams, a collection of stories from Kare Kano author Masami Tsuda; NG Life, where Japanese teenagers begin remembering their past lives in Pompeii; Tagainu no Chi, a BL game adaption; the Ugly Yet Beautiful World manga; and Maid-sama (Kaichou wa Maid-sama), wherein a strong-willed female student council president secretly works at a maid cafe.

Frankly, the only ones I were interested in were Maid-sama because I had heard of it before and Tsubasa (kind of) because it has adventure aspects to it and is a relative short series.

Some of the questions posed by attendees yielded the response of “that’s part of what we’re currently reevaluating” such as Mobile Suit Gundam, 12 Kingdoms, and the light novel line as a whole. They are planning to release bindup versions of DramaCon and Ai Yori Aoshi. One suggested picking up some .hack manga that ran in a magazine. Some weird older guy wanted to know where their London office is located in relation to the British Museum so they could adapt the Egyptian scrolls of the dead. Another dude wearing an Anime Pulse T-Shirt (probably from that site) garnered boo’s and laughter from the crowd when he asked the panel to stop publishing yaoi because he didn’t like it.

More relevantly, Kodansha’s US self-publishing venture won’t impact them as far as they know and one panelist commented that “it’s a crowded market right now” and it’ll be interesting to see how successful the Japanese publisher’s endeavor will be.

11am: Go! Comi Panel
The next panel I attended was by a smaller manga publisher, Go! Comi. The panelists were CEO David Wise, creative director Audry Taylor (cute), and promotional director Mallory Reeves (also cute) and they led off with a trailer for 07-Ghost (pronounced “seven ghost”) that had cropping and manipulation to make it look more than plain pages of manga (you should try that sometime, Viz and Tokyopop!): “Orphaned by war; raised to be a soldier; betrayed by the truth; rescued by 7 mystical beings.” It has been serialized in Monthly Comic Zero Sum magazine, where Loveless and Amatsuki also ran, and is supposed to come in the beginning of December.

They then mentioned some of their recent releases including Yggdrasil, Kamisama Kazoku, and Cy-believers from Shioko Mizuki, the author of Crossroad. There was another trailer with added effects, this one for Ultimate Venus and used classical refined music with dramatic vamps: “a waif without a home, a castle without an heir, a mentor without a pupil”. This basic Pygmalion tale from the author of Tenshi Ja Nai!!, Takako Shigematsu, had its first volume come out last month.

Some new licenses announced were Days of Cool Idols, a BL oneshot for fall; Angel’s Coffin, a oneshot based on the Mireling affair; and Crown by Wata Shinji, which was described as like the Princess Diaries in a way. They ended their new title announcements with a trailer for Bound Beauty (Shibariya Komachi), coming out in fall from Mick Takeuchi (Her Majesty’s Dog), that seems like something a casual manga reader like me might want to check out. It deals with a 17-year-old girl who has the ability to see red threads of fate and gains the power to manipulate them at the cost of reverting to a 9-year-old body.

The most interesting part was saved for last when they showed off their part of their upcoming O-Play program of browser-based, episodic “immersive manga” with a game called Dragon Academy. They plan to launch with three games that are similar to renai in terms of items arranged on the screen and on-screen character expressions but they are intending to replace relationship stat building with shoujo plot building. The prologues will be free but further chapters will cost an unspecified amount with a subscription option possible down the line. Dragon Academy, the game they showed, had a Wheel of Emotion (WOE?) mechanic that comes key decision moments with possible options like Sad, Angry, and others. They also mentioned that if O-Play is initially successful, they may try to localize Japanese games for the service.

Line for the Shokotan concert at the Nokia Theater

1pm: Production I.G. Panel
This panel was hosted by Maki, who hadn’t planned on holding a panel this year until her trip to Japan got delayed by a week, so the only timeslot available was opposite Shokotan’s concert across the street. The main focus of the panel was The Sky Crawlers, a film directed by Mamoru Oshii coming out in Japanese theatres August 2nd. Its main characters are Kildren, children who do not age and pilot fighter planes. Maki jokingly said it could be described as “teenagers killing each other in the sky for entertainment” and when one attendee asked what’s going on in the world of the film, she tried not to reveal too much and said it takes place within a peaceful world while the main setting is a base. The trailer certainly reflected dark themes and the sound was mixed at Skywalker Ranch. They are currently looking for an American distributor and apparently there is enough smoking to make it not easy to get a PG-13 rating.

She also showed off a demo reel of their previous work including Ghost in the Shell, Seirei no Moribito, and Dead Leaves, followed by promos for Real Drive, the live action series Phone Braver 7, and a really short teaser clip from the Ghost in the Shell 2.0 remastering. Manga Entertainment will have an announcement about it at SDCC and any theatrical screenings are in their hands. GitS 2nd GIG was confirmed by a staffer as coming out on Blu-ray in November.

3:30pm: Funimation Panel
At first, I didn’t plan on attending this panel since I knew it would be packed but I wanted to find out a bit more about their big deals of the weekend so I decided to go. It began with Adam (Sheehan?) highlighting a quote from Gen Fukunaga’s keynote a few days earlier: “Change creates opportunity”. He then told us that Funimation is looking at the bigger picture – the non-anime market; new technology such as Blu-ray and digital downloads; and changing with packaging trends – followed by some bullet points about market growth.

The next part about Funimation Mobile didn’t appeal to me as I’ve previously said I don’t want to consume manga on cell phones and anime is not different. But I suppose you’re riding across the country on Amtrak, you might be interested in this. They are currently offering two different series packages (Gunslinger Girl and Moon Phase) that you can watch in five-minute chunks for $5/month per package. Some Blu-Ray releases they’ve already put out include Afro Samurai, Shinobi, Vexville, Robotech Shadow Chronicles, and 2 different DBZ double features.

Next were price and date information for various season sets:

• Case Closed Season 1 – $50 – ep. 1-26 – July 22th
• Yu Yu Hakusho Season 1 * – $35 – ep. 1-26 – July 8th
• One Piece Season 1, Set 2 – $50 – ep. 14-26 – Sept. 23
• Dragonball Z Season 6 *- 29 episodes, 6 discs – Sept. 16
• Ouran Part 1 ** – eps. 1-13 – $60 – Oct. 28
• Ouran Part 2 ** – eps. 14-26 – $60 – Jan. 6
• Darker Than Black v.1 – Nov. 25

*features Marathon Play that allows viewing of all episodes with the in-between previews cut out
**Ouran Extras: Actors Commentary, Manga Pages, Outtakes

I personally think that the Ouran season set prices are a little high ($10 more than the One Piece sets) but the dubbing costs may be more than usual and they also might have figured they could charge more for Ouran due to the high demand for it.

They then recapped their recent normal acquisitions as well as their pickups from Geneon and Sojitz. One title from Geneon that caught my eye was the live-action Ninja Vixens, a series of softcore mini-features that ANN’s Bamboo Dong very recently called “either one of the worst things I’ve seen this year, or vaguely brilliant in a disturbing way”. They are keeping the voice actors for the incomplete projects and just started working on the Sojitz titles. More details on the Geneon relationship are that Funi will market and distribute volume by volume, then box sets while Geneon will supply the packaging materials that they had already made. Older Geneon titles (like Trigun?) reportedly reverted back to the Japanese owners.

The newly revealed YouTube relationship was hashed out with new episodes every week and some form of advertising (10-second Google ads?) helping to keep it free with an asterisk.

From Q&A: The Negima OVA & Season 2 will be coming soon, possibly late summer/early fall, while another Ken Akamatsu anime Love Hina, which was “rescued” from Bandai at AX 2007, is still TBA with a chance at late 2008. [Note: The Anime Legends collection that came out in June 2006 was priced at $80] They don’t have anything on xxxHolic Kei not yet.

Why the long delay for Ouran to come? Well, it was a combination of a delay of materials and wanting to time the cast announcements and other details to coincide with AX. To cheers, they said Kodocha Season 2 would be coming in August/September – TRSI and RACS list an August 5th date. They are aggressive pursuing VOD while not explicitly giving satellite owners the bad; they are also really optimistic about One Piece and Shin-chan. Someone suggested they look at Gintama (uh, not so sure about that…) and a whole bunch of people led off their questions with praise that made me roll my eyes and think I was sitting in a revival instead of an industry panel at an anime convention.

5:30pm: Kadokawa Pictures USA
Panelists Chiako and Yuko began with a brief introduction of Kadokawa as one of the largest publishers of manga in Japan then went right into their new title announcements, most accompanied with animation footage (i.e. openings): H2O footprints in the sand (12 eps), Good Luck! Ninomiya-kun (12 eps); Rental Magica (24 eps); Coo ~Our Guardian~ (24 eps); Romantica ~Pure Love~ [Junjou Romantica] (12 eps); and Spice and Wolf (13 eps).

The Tokikake regular and special edition DVDs will hit shelves November 18. There are screening planned in Boston and Seattle theaters this August as well as ten other cities planned including San Francisco. A language teacher asked if they could put Japanese subtitles on their DVDs so that his students could read the words they were hearing. Another person asked about Blu-ray for the film and they hope to have that by next year.

They plan to continue having English dubs with their new titles and they said “the more you wait, the better the contents will be” when asked about Haruhi season 2. Naturally as publishers, they would like to promote IP’s they already own as manga and light novel titles so that’s why most of the releases are adapted from works they publish.

6:30pm: Shira Oka Panel
I had been idly watching this indie game’s development since hearing about it at Fanime 2007. The panelists were Megan Christiansen and Andrew Chu and they gave the small audience a look at the introduction and a walkthrough of the initial character building. The setup of the game is that an angel called Satsuko sends you, a miserable drinking wreck, back in time to relive your high school days and improve your life.

While the character base stats cannot be changed later in the game, you can earn points throughout the game to improve stats and personality quirks. You can also call on Satsuko (angel) for advice – you get fuzzy, inexact results. Your mental and physical health bars are displayed on a top overlay panel and various activity options like calling people or studying appear as buttons on the left/right hand sides as you play through the game.

There is battle system involving card games that can actually result physical injury for the player’s character. It took a long time to write the dialogue and cutscenes but now the voice recording is ready to be done for the introduction, endings, and the intermission. They are aiming for a T rating and when I asked after about the range of endings, Andrew said there will be varying emotional levels in different character endings.

A single play through is estimated to take 40 hours but players will certainly want to have multiple goes through the game to see the different results. There is still no release date planned but it’s expected to come within a year. The game begins during Golden Week and makes reference to Japanese holidays so it could be localized for Japanese consumers; in fact, there has been interest for other firms in doing just that. Andrew said he’s still interested in open sourcing the engine/system; the game is written using a mixture of C and C++.

10pm: Evangelion 1.0 Screening (mini-review)
This first in the tetralogy of reimagined films had been shown earlier in the con at 11:30AM Thursday and 12:30PM Friday but Saturday night seemed to be the best time to watch it aesthetically. It was also the only time I would be able to see it. It was shown on 35mm film on a large screen and I would guess there were 400-500 people in Petree Hall (didn’t try to count).

I was very impressed by how crisp the animation and settings looked (this SHOULD get a Blu-ray release) and the storyline was more streamlined, ending with the Ramiel fight from episode 6. Of course, there were the key fanservice moments like Misato’s cleavage while drinking with Shinji and Shinji falling onto Rei while delivering her new ID card. By the way, hearing Megumi Hayashibara as Rei made me want to go back and rewatch the anime in Japanese – something I haven’t done as I first saw the series in English through Adult Swim a few years back. Overall, I enjoyed it more than I thought I would but it’s not perfect so it’s about a 9, 9.5 out of 10. I’m looking forward to the second installment especially the new female character who was wearing shades in the preview.

Sunday 11am: Last Run of Exhibit Hall
I returned to LACC the next morning to legitimize my 4-Day Attendee badge and also to attempt to spin the Bandai Entertainment wheel. I had bought one of the cheapest items at their booth – Rescue Me Mave-Chan for $8 – to get a ticket the previous afternoon but they were setting up for the Shokotan signing at 11:30 so I gave up on that. A few booths over occupying part of Broccoli’s space was Circus, a company that makes dating sim games like D.C. ~Da Capo~ and Edelweiss. They are trying to sell English translations of their games and gave me a trial disk. I also bought for a dollar some music from Cy-Rim rev, Aina Kase, and another artist that has been in their games and most of it is pretty good.

My last stop was the Akadot Retail booth, where I had walked around on previous days but hadn’t found anything worth buying. Well, I ended up getting a Lain illustrations artbook for $15; there was also robot 2 for $10 but I kind of wanted to get out of there and paying for my hotel room share and parking left me with less desire to spend more.

I finally left Los Angeles at quarter after noon and it took a little less than seven hours to drive home with stops at a Del Taco in Bakersfield for food and a Valero gas station in Merced for fuel. The convention experience was a good exercise in being a fan reporter and taking notes but I’m inclined on not going next year unless there is some deeply compelling reason like better guests to justify the long journey down Interstate 5. It’s going to be at the same place – the Los Angeles Convention Center – July 2-5, 2009 for those interested in being one of more than 43 thousand.

Jump to: The Art of Reviewing Anime | Exhibit Hall First Impressions | Viz | Dark Horse | Right Stuf/Nozomi | ADV Industry | Reprisal of Exhibit Hall | Anime Genesis/Anime Diet Joint

10am: The Art of Reviewing Anime
Late Thursday night, I decided to change my plans for the next morning and attend a panel on crafting anime/manga reviews instead of the Ouran panel since the latter’s news would get out anyway. It was a good choice because I got some tips from by the three ANN employees hosting the panel: editor-in-chief Zac Berchtsy, managing editor Bamboo who does the Shelf Life column, and manga reviewer Carlo. They began with stating some basics of review writing – that they are subjective and not plot summaries, that they need to provide enough information for the reader to make a decision, and that you should be aware of the story’s target audience.

During the Q&A portion, someone asked how a reviewer should deal with discussion after it’s posted. Zac says he really doesn’t look at it since he hasn’t written reviews for a few years but he did say he defends his writers, citing a recent Death Note review where the series was described a masturbatory exercise catered toward vengeful teenagers. [Update: Quote from Carl Kimlinger's review: "It's a streak of solipsism so extreme that the series sometimes borders on a masturbatory fantasy for every teenager who ever blithely came to the conclusion that the world was evil just because they felt disenfranchised."]

Bamboo said she sometimes jumps in and other times stays out of it because other readers might defend you themselves and Carlo admitted Zac is better at defending him than he is at defending himself. I asked about how they introduce the subject in their leading bits and Carlo recalled beginning a Mushishi review with something to the effect of “it was so good I cried over a bamboo plant” (it showed up in the post-AX Right Turn Only column about volume 4).

11am: Exhibit Hall First Impressions
I had an hour before the next panel I planned to go to so I figured I would survey the exhibit hall. Funimation and Bandai had big booths with cosplayers and setups while ADV was literally stuck between them in a square made of tables, selling DVDs for 10 bucks a pop. Since I hadn’t read the news yet about Funi’s acquistion of 30+ plus titles from Geneon and ADV, I was surprised to see posters of Ergo Proxy and Rozen Maiden with a “Distributed by Funimation” sticker on the front. I don’t know how long the rebranding on boxes will take but the boxes from the previous distributors will become collectors’ items when they run out of stock.

After seeing the very large banner walking toward the hall for 07-Ghost (“the manga event of the year”) from Go! Comi (“the soul of anime”), I figured I would ask them at their booth about what that’s about. It’s coming out in December and it’s focused on a boy who has some…I honestly don’t remember that part but I can recall that they said they select projects to work on based on they really like, a sentiment I heard echoed later in the day from Dark Horse and Alteil.

12pm: Viz Panel
Viz’s noon panel began with some updates of upcoming anime releases like Blue Dragon vol. 1 on 9/16. They asked the audience simple questions about details covered in the previous slide and gave away prizes. When they started talking about the second Naruto movie, I had a thought that Gelel sounded more like a haircare product than a legendary place. One of the features in the upcoming DVD will be a translated movie pamphlet, or panfuretto as he continued to call it later in the presentation. The first volume of Hunter x Hunter is coming out 12/9 with 15 episodes on 3 discs; when I asked later if they had plans to put any more of their shows like HxH on TV, they said they didn’t.

The manga portion was more plentiful – they described Cat Eyed Boy as not as harsh as Drifting Classroom, One Pound Gospel as about a boxer with an eating problem, and solanin as one of many mature titles they are trying to bring over for an older audience. One panelist had to repeatedly but gently remind the audience to save their questions for later. Also announced were oneshot Heavens’ Will; Magic Touch, a shoujo title about massage; Otomen by Aya Kanno, which is popular with the ladies in the Viz offices); Honey Hunt from Hot Gimmick author, which will run in Shojo Beat and debut in volume form in mid-March; Gestalt, a bimonthly release that has “lots of hot elves” in it (their words, not mine); and some others that I’m sure you can find out in the ANN panel report and/or video.

They began taking audience questions at around 12:35 and one of them was about why certain volumes of Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo are not being published over here – short answer: it’s for content reasons. One female fan asked if there will be child molesting in Gestalt and their response was “as far as I know, all characters are of age”. Another fan asked about putting sign only subtitles as an option of their DVDs and they said they would talk to their video department about that. The HxH main series will come out in 4 box sets but the status of the OVAs is uncertain at this point and they ARE planning on releasing Monster on DVD sometime next year.

1pm: Dark Horse panel
I didn’t think I would like this panel very much since I’m not too into manga in general but by the end, I wanted to read some of their stuff, perhaps because of their self-proclaimed willingness to take on titles other companies won’t print. The panelists were PR guy Jeremy, assistant editor Samantha, editor Carl Horn, and licensing man Michael Ganbos. (Off-topic: I tweeted during the panel that they could make a indie rock band based on their looks.) There was a dedicated audience of fans who cheered for the upcoming releases of Berserk volumes 24 & 25 and many of the others on the calendar for the next few months. They talked about Style School, a series that encourages well-rounded illustration training; Evangelion alternate universe manga Shinji Akari Raising Project; and the manwha Explosive Delivery Man which you could buy at their booth.

In talking about Kurosaki Corpse Delivery Service (another crowd favorite), Horn said some series offer you a robot, others zombies and still others otaku but only KCDS vol. 7 “promises you a robot zombie otaku”. Some proofs from that volume as well as Japanese volumes of Clover and Shinji Akari Raising Project were passed around the crowd and all of them made it back to the front by the end except for one copy of Clover.

They admitted that the Kodansha US deal will affect some of their titles but that they are still getting materials for some others so the latter set shouldn’t be affected. Someone asked if they had considered ramping up the release schedule from their current bimonthly one; Sam replied that their pace is working well for now and going any faster would put their quality of work at risk. There were a few crowd suggestions including Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou and Highschool of the Dead – the first caused Horn to say they’re “always ready to give things a try” while the second was already picked up by another publisher but they did recommend Reiko the Zombie Shop. When asked about whether they would go back and reviving old series like 3×3 Eyes, they answered that their focus is more on trying to introduce manga that haven’t been brought over here than bringing back old series. Finally, I don’t remember what exactly the question was about (something with Kodansha) but Horn spoke the line “CLAMP is like a ska band” and I believe he later mentioned the X manga.

3pm: Right Stuf/Nozomi panel
Everyone’s heard about the Toward the Terra and Gakuen Alice announcements so let’s jump straight some Q&A material. Dark Lord Shawne said that some “unusual marketing” is planned for Maria-sama in the coming months. He was asked a number of questions about how Nozomi evaluates potential titles and he responded that they listen to the fans’ requests (he apparently reads every e-mail) but that they have to be careful as a small publisher in managing sales expectations and the inverse relationship heavy fansub traffic has with potential sales.

Cost effectiveness will also come into consideration when determining if it is worth it to produce a dub for a new title – they’re not giving up on them altogether but such a project would have to be projected to sell enough to recover the extra production costs involved. He later added that they are already working on digital properties that might come out over the next 6 months so we’ll see how that turns out.

Someone asked about the possibility of soundtracks for Emma and Aria coming out, the response being if there’s a demand, we’ll look into it. This question was also asked during the Viz panel regarding Naruto and presumably a few other series so there is at least some small fan interest for bringing anime soundtracks to America; whether they would actually sell is unknown. When asked about how sales of non-DVD merchandise are selling (e.g. keychains, T-shirts), he said that it varies and that frankly “the anime brands are undermerchandised” aside from the most popular brands, like Naruto and Death Note. One person later suggested anime car sunscreens (okay…?) and Shawne laughingly told him that they’ll consider it if there is enough demand for it.

I also learned some reasons why TRSI is headquartered in Des Moines, Iowa. Transportation is a large industry in the state (not as large as insurance but still big) and the city happens to be at the crossroads of I-80 and I-35, making it a great site from which to shipping things all across the country compared to being on the coasts. Finally, for those who have been waiting: yes, there is a box set coming in the near future for The Third.

4pm: ADV Industry Panel
As the last panel ended, the people in line outside began to be let in and they just coming and coming and coming until the whole was pretty much full. The co-founders admitted it’s “no secret it’s been a bad year” for ADV but they followed that up with an announcement that they found a replacement for Sojitz (can’t say who yet) and that they are currently in negotiations for a large quantity of acquisitions, some of which may be revealed at Otakon.

The live action Eva movie has grabbed the interest of three major US studios and 1 Japanese studio (unnamed due to NDA) after seeing the box-office success of Transformers, another giant robot film. They ARE looking to put out Blu-ray versions of titles but they have to wait until the Japanese version comes out first because the Japanese companies are like that. They are ALSO still producing in-house dubs with the equipment they still have, just not as many as before. There will be no new additions to their manga line in the short term.

When asked about why the recent re-releases of the Maburaho and Fumoffu thinpak collections bore different covers, one founder (don’t remember who) said “if you change the cover, they [the products] sell” since it might grab the attention of new people in a store situation.

I came up to the front to ask a couple questions after they began screening episode 1 of Kiba for those who didn’t see it Thursday. I had missed the Sneak Peek panel and hadn’t heard about all of the titles FUNimation had claimed from other publishers so I asked about Keroro only to find out that FUNi now has it. I also asked about when Kiba was coming out and was told it’s tied to a TV deal with an unnamed network (a Cartoon Network?) so the timing is dependent on that.

4:30pm: Reprisal of Exhibit Hall
Before I went to get some food outside the convention center, I returned to the exhibit hall and walked around for some more. I hit the Dark Horse booth and made my first anime-related purchase of the con: the first volumes of Mail, MPD Psycho and Eden.

I also stopped by the Alteil booth right next to Media Blasters, where I was shown how the free flash-based browser card game plays out by one of the team managers, who also does box design for MB. She played a game with another TM while I asked her questions about play length, community aspects, and their alpha testing. It seemed like a game I might want to try some time so I signed up for an account and was entered into a raffle for 1 of 4 prints that I don’t particularly want.

7pm: Anime Genesis/Anime Diet Joint
My long day at the LACC ended with sitting in the audience of Anime Genesis and Anime Diet Live! Benu from Anime Genesis, Jeremy from Redondo Beach, and Mike from Anime Diet sat in the front while Ray, also from Anime Diet, on joined over satellite from Taipei. They led with some “News You Can Believe In” such as legal downloads are killing the industry worse than fansubs, FUNimation buying licenses for any current and yet-to-be-produced anime and charging exorbitant fees to watch them online, and Ray getting arrested in his own home in a disgraceful way.

A few soft roundtable discussion topics followed such as their past bad experiences at cons before they introduced a special guest (a used panties machine cosplayer) and had some fun throwing them into the audience. The whole thing was entertaining in parts, with Ray being the highlight as always, but it was still weak in my opinion. I’ve never listened to Anime Genesis and only occasionally listened to Anime Diet (sorry, dudes) so maybe this was a slump episode.

Here is a listing of the panels and events I’m going to or at least interested in, in case someone wants to do some social stalking:

Day 1 – Thursday July 3th:
3:30-4:30PM – Hiromi Kato [GUEST OF HONOR]
5-6PM – Getting Into Anime Journalism
6-8PM – Anime and Manga in Academia
9-11PM – Anime in China (maybe)

Day 2 – Friday July 4th:
11:30AM-1PM – Ouran Host Club (going to get sense of atmosphere, might skip out later)
12-1PM – Viz Media Panel (wanna ask about Shonen Jump/Shojo Beat health)
1-2PM – mystery BONES guest autograph Masahiko Minami (via giapet)
3-4PM – Nozomi/TRSI Panel
4-5PM – ADV Industry Panel
7-8PM – Anime Genesis Live/Anime Diet joint

Day 3 – Saturday July 5th:
10-11AM – TOKYOPOP Industry Panel
3:30-4:30PM – Funimation Industry; Broccoli (still haven’t decided)
5-6:30PM – Otaku Parliamentary Debate Finals
8-9PM – Shira Oka Panel
10-11:45PM – Evangelion 1.0 movie screening

As far as cosplay goes, I’m going as the Computer Club President from Haruhi — with inaccurately shaded pants — and Shiratori from Mahoraba. They’re simple because I don’t like to sew. Speaking of cosplay, I’ll try to do a comparison of the Ouran and Lucky Star/Gurren Lagann booth groups. They should both be good since both are being done by American Cosplay Paradise but one will be dancing and the other will be running a host club.

My educated guess would be Toshiro Kawamoto since he has visited American cons before including Sakura-Con 2008 in March. But wait, then his appearance wouldn’t be a surprise, would it? Perhaps it will instead be the other animator, Komori, since he might have more to do with the items being signed than the producer would. I suppose we’ll just have to see who shows up that afternoon to put his John Hancock jisho on free posters and other stuff.

(UPDATE 7/2: It turned out to be president Masahiko Minami.)

Also: I found this press release from four years ago where Bandai gave anyone who cosplayed as a Bandai character (e.g. Duo from Gundam Wing, Spike from Cowboy Bebop, Lime from Saber Marionette J) a chance to spin “The Wheel” to win prizes. Four years later, they have members of American Cosplay Paradise putting on Lucky Star dances and TTGL heaven-piercing. How far they’ve advanced…

Unfortunately, Justin Sevakis says in a post on the AOD forums that nothing will be happening at that time – he has seen an updated schedule of events and the live panels and most of the related screenings have been removed. I guess we’ll see in a few weeks and since I’m not really planning on going to AX Idol, I might try to emulate Geraldo in his Al Capone special with the hope there will actually be something in the metaphorical vault. If there really isn’t anything there, then there’s always fireworks displays.