Animazement ’08 Final Sunday of Happiness or Sayonara Sheraton it was a great run

The final day of Animazement is usually the calmest. Not many panels attended the final day but a lot of heartfelt goodbyes.

    As I write this I'm actually sitting at a table munching down on breakfast, a Danish and orange juice from the gas station. It's the last day of the convention so the hotel is looking pretty sparse. The mood is calm this morning as everybody gathers to take the last few photos of cosplayers. Watching people give heartfelt goodbyes to friends both new and old. People rushing to check out of their hotel room and filling their car with all the swag they got. A cool calm mood runs through the hotel this Sunday morning.

    So here I am back at the tent for TAF 2008, with Prof. Yasuo Yamaguchi. I don't really know what it's going to be about the book is vague about its description. The moment I walk in I'm handed a flyer by a member of the staff and Yamaguchi himself. Yamaguchi has a smile on his face as he hands me the flyer. The panel mostly consists of him talking about last year TAF. TAF stands for Tokyo International Anime Fair, and is a convention where anime companies invite companies from around the world to see firsthand what there is to license in the New Year. This has become important to the anime industry in Japan as it's becoming more and more important to get their work licensed overseas for them to make a significant profit. Other major points made in the panel were attendance of the fair last year which was up to 107,713 attendees. Also discussed was how they intend to improve TAF by allowing more competition and making it easier on overseas travelers to get to TAF. Of note was the Q&A session at the end of Yamaguchi's speech. Not many questions were asked as the tent was pretty sparse. As always one person asked the question "How can I get my manga published", and surprisingly Yamaguchi was very responsive to the question which in my experience most people guests, panelists and attendees would have easily rolled their eyes at. I have to say Yasuo Yamaguchi seems like a very warm kind man. He was wearing a yellow suit and jacket no tie with sneakers. While that is not weird he also had a very inviting smile and also liked to joke also with the translator. One thing I remember from the panel is that he told a story of visiting a small animation museum in the country. When I say small I'm talking about a mom and pop run business. Apparently that is a hobby of his, going to animation museums.

Some links of interest:

• TAF's English website
  
• The Association of Japanese Animations or AJA English website of which Yasuo Yamaguchi is the Executive Director.
  

    Of quick note since that was the only panel I had actually attended that day I went ahead to one of the video rooms for the first time the whole weekend. In there I saw Yawara! The Fashionable Judo Girl which after watching these first few episodes I need to preorder the set from AnimEigo. The second thing I saw of note in the video room was Tampopo, an eccentric comedy about a milk truck driver who helps a widow to make her Ramen shop better. Trust me it's a must see movie.

    So finally at the end: closing ceremonies. As the seats start to fill up the ballroom gets louder with the chatter of people. Music plays over the speakers as more and more seats start to fill. For some this will be the last time to sit and see the guests until next year. For Animazement this will be their final year at the Sheraton. Next year will be their first year at the new Raleigh Convention Center. A larger venue for an increasing audience. For most it will be a tough goodbye. Many an attendee will leave with fond memories of this weekend. As the guests start to come in cameras will flash and people will cheer as they fill the stage. As for me it's a short and lonely ride back home. During the drive back home I will settle back into my normal life and leave the craziness of the convention life behind. While I sit at home I will start to count the days until the next Animazement. Now if there were to be one word to describe my three day weekend it would have to be awesome.

The guests of honor, dancing and doing the wave, also awesome.

Animazement ’08 The Second Day or Japanese to American TV a study in awesome

Most of the notes from my second day at Animazement consist of the programming block Japanese to American TV. The panels varied and attendees got to talk to talk with people from not only the American side of the industry but the Japanese side also. While I didn't attend all the panels I heard they were all quite good. Here's hoping Animazement continues this programming block next year.

    Because of my initial laziness I missed the one panel I really wanted to see today, History of the Industry with Yasuo Yamaguchi. Arriving at around twelve noons I was able to catch From the Director's Chair with Mitsuo Fukuda. While not a real big fan of Mobile Suit Gundam Seed I enjoyed a lot of the questions directed towards him and the subsequent answers he gave. The panel started with him showing some music videos for Seed and stating that this is pretty much all he is doing right now until his writer for the Seed movie gets better.

Some interesting things he mentioned during the panel.

• He's a contract director for Sunrise so essentially whatever Sunrise wants him to do he pretty much has to do it.
  
• He is a very hands on director or "dictator" in his own words.
  
• No other director at the time wanted to do the new Gundam show and the main reason he took the job was because he needed the money.
  
• After he finished Seed he plainly stated that he didn't want to do anything else at the time just stay home and lay in bed.
  

The panel ended and I found myself with a new appreciation for the man.

    The next panel in the same room is the Producer's Role with Michihiko Suwa. The first thing the man does is introduce him and the next thing he does is show us a video clip of shows that he is currently working on. As his intro video plays Suwa stands toward the door viewing his work. The impression one gets from him is that he's all business. Even in his denim jeans and jacket the man doesn't really give off a relaxed vibe. The feeling one gets from him is that he is all business. During the panel he discusses his job in the most straight forward way possible. His job is to license a show, find a director, staff, and production company to work with as well as sponsors for the show. As a man who has worked on some of the biggest and longest running series in anime it's hard not to think highly of him. Towards the end of the panel he shows us some promotional material for the new Case Closed movie, and a preview trailer for the new Yatterman TV show. His hope with Yatterman, besides big ratings, is that the show will attract both new viewers and their parents to watch the show with their kids. His hope is that parents can share in the experience of watching a character from their childhood and share that experience with their children as they enjoy the same character. The man always shows an air of confidence, even when answering questions he is quick to provide a response.

Of note some interesting things said by Suwa during the panel.

• He's the producer for the 7-7:30p.m. slot on YTV, the golden hour as it is better know.
  
• The reason both Case Closed and Yatterman are on the golden hour is because that is the time when most families are home and are most likely to watch TV together at that time.
  
• In Case Closed, Conan's seiyu reads off the sponsors for the show which is a rare occurrence in anime today.
  

    The next and last panel I attended was the Dragon Ball Z panel. The panelists on this panel were Kara Edwards, Kyle Hebert, Ryuusei Nakao, and special guest panelist Vic Mignogna. Not surprising that the panel room was packed to the back with people who wanted to hear their favorite voice actors from one of their favorite shows in person. The room was filled with energy not just from the fans but from the panelists as well. A lot was said during the panel more than I can write or remember but if there is no denying that this panel was just pure fun. Of particular note was Nakao, the Japanese voice of Frieza, and how funny his stories were.

The list of only a fraction of the stories told during this panel.

• Nako's kids were never impressed with the other characters that he got on DBZ until he got the role of Frieza. According to his children every other role he had on the show was a "weak character".
  
• Nakao once called, on the behest of his child a classmate in the voice of Frieza. The classmate's response was there was someone prank calling her.
  
• Vic Mignogna, the voice of Broly, has admitted that doing Brolys voice puts a serious strain on his voice. Once had done all the movies he thought he was done with Broly only to get a call saying that Broly would be in the new DBZ fighting game. Crying ensued (not really).
  
• Both Hebert and Edwards used to work on Radio Disney and that's how Edwards learned about the show.
  

    So I'm at the seiyu concert right now and as I write this the voice Ryuusei Nakao and Akira Kamiya are on the stage right now. I'm constantly surprised by Nakao as he is practicing singing on stage and tuning his guitar. An actor, singer and guitarist, a true renaissance man is he. I'm also surprised at the set of pipes on Kamiya. His singing voice is actually quite powerful. I'm going to stop writing so I can enjoy the show and will continue to take notes after the show.

    So the show is over and what can I say but so entertaining. I'm not going to go into detail into what was sung throughout the concert. Akira Kamiya is the crowd motivator. He's really good on the mic and knows what to say to get the crowd pumped. Personal favorite picks from the concert. Akira Kamiya sang a medley of Babel 2, Getter Robo, Yuusha Reideen, and Kinnikuman. Fellow seiyu Takako Furukawa sang a cover of Tonari no Totoro. At the end of the concert the Kamiya, Furukawa, Jouji Nakata, Kumiko Watanabe, Catlin Glass all got on stage to sing one last song. With Nakao on guitar and vocals he and Kamiya started the final song off. Not content to get almost every Japanese guest on stage he instead opted to get the whole audience to sing. It was a great experience and a truly fun event to go to. You know you're around like minded individuals when right next to you a young anime fan is singing to the theme of Getter Robo. It almost brought a tear to my eye. (Not really)

    Now since I have no interest in the Cosplay Contest I instead opted to go wander around the convention and ended up in the game room. From there I met up with Paul, a member of the East Coast Anime Society. He having no real interest in cosplay either we instead opted to talk about the convention and what we had done for the day. We stayed in the game room and were witness to one of the most excellent Smash Bros. Melee tournaments I had seen. It being my first one of course I was astonished. At the end of the tournament we went over to Rock Band were Paul decided to pick up the mic and impress the room with his almost perfect score on singing. After being challenged I decided it was time to go and with a farewell I made my way down to one of the last panels of the day.

    For those who don't know who Kyle Herbert is what is wrong with you. Instead of listing his many accomplishments in the world of voice acting I instead will just link to his IMDB page. Now the panel in question I am attending at this hour is Dub Your Own with your host Kyle Hebert. The panel ran late because Kyle was also a judge on the cosplay contest but in an act of coolness he actually came into the room announced he was going to be late and apologized for it then promised to be back as soon as possible. For some reason I just found that cool as hell. Now the workshop itself was Kyle allowing people to dub an anime clip. The whole point of this exercise was to show fans how hard it is to dub an anime much less a tiny scene. Now he always kept things moving and was always entertaining. He really stressed the whole point that in Japan doing voiceovers is mostly based on performance so when a lip flap doesn't match the words coming out the mouth it gets a pass. In America and other English speaking countries not matching a lip flap is a big no-no and is seen as weird. There is also the pressure for the voice actor to try and bring the voice of the character usually without actually seeing the video of the scene in question. It really was an entertaining and learning experience that really made me appreciate dub actors and the work they do a lot more. For more on Kyle Hebert is suggest you check out his website at KyleHebert.com and be sure to check out his podcast the Big Bald Broadcast also.

    Now the final panel I checked out for the day was J-Rock with the Amazing Iris-Chen. First thing I saw were two girls dressed up as Goth Lolitas playing music video clips. So I left ten minutes in. I was tired and hungry it was time for a midnight snack. Besides tomorrow is the final day of the convention got to get up early for that.

Animazement ’08 – Welcome to Animazement or Friday Firsts a triumphant return!

The following passage is from my notes taken during Animazement 2008. The notes have been cleaned up from their original form to give them more of a clear narrative. Other than that these are almost word for word of my experiences from the convention themselves. All notes were written either before, after or during a panel. I only hope that my writing can properly portray my exuberance at this con.

I left Fayetteville around eight-thirty a.m. and got to the hotel around ten. One of the first things I see is the long ass line for registration. So as I contemplate whether to wait in this line or go drop my stuff off at my very gracious friends house an angel from the heavens, well the registration table, tell me this is the line for pre-reg and that the line for new registration is actually shorter. So I and a handful of people rush to the front of a line that runs across the hotel. I quickly fill out the paperwork for registration and claim my badge. A feeling of warmth comes over me as my first ten minutes at the con are already getting off to a good start.

As I enter the hotel the first thing that comes to mind is the lack of smell permeating from the hotel. Or should I say the dreaded fan-boy funk, a smell I know all too well from coming in on Saturdays and Sundays. The lack of the smell I have gotten so used to fills me. It's not that I don't like being in a barely full hotel able to breathe through my nose it's just that the sensation feels almost so foreign to me. It's almost like I'm lost without the smell. It's like I know not what to do or what to think. Around that time I start to roam the hotel lobby as it's my first time there.

Around the time I come out of my daze and actually start walking into the convention proper, who do I meet Chad "Macross-Junkie" Matich one of the head core members, if not the head, of E.C.A.S. sitting at the entrance checking people for badges. After a bit of small talk and since the convention hasn't officially even started yet I find myself sitting in the chair next to him checking badges and just generally making small talk. During the time we talk about the usual things such as anime, what's happening at the con, cute girls in cosplay and how you can look but not touch. So after a while of shooting the shit and checking con badges I start flipping through the con book. It's during this time that I finally decide on my first panel to attend for the day.

First panel and I'm about thirteen minutes early. Japanese Anime 2007 with Prof. Yasuo Yamaguchi, a producer and director who's worked on a plethora of titles over his career. One of the titles he's worked on that catches my ear is Getter Robo. I sit in an air-conditioned tent outside the hotel waiting in anticipation. For some reason the only thought that crosses my mind at this moment is that if I was a girl I would be wet right about now.

The panel wasn't exactly what I expected. I thought it would be a one on one instead it turned out to be a state on the anime industry. Nothing I hadn't heard before but still interesting nonetheless. Some interesting things he mentioned that caught my attention

• A major reason for the decline of anime sales in Japan is Japan's low birthrate.
  
• He believes that anime DVDs in Japan are too high and should be brought down to global standards. (Finally a man who knows what, "anime fan want".
  
• Cute Fluffy Tank. I wasn't able to write down the Japanese name of this series but he described it as a low budget flash animation that originally was shown online then packaged into a DVD set that sold for an estimated ten dollars US and had sold around nearly I believe around 100,000 copies and up. He used this as an example to show that well the anime industry has it wrong. Not only is the DVD pricing to high but a major lack of creative shows and overflowing the market is killing the anime industry.
  

After that I then headed out to catch the tail end of the Sentaifest panel which was essentially a person showing sentai TV shows and movies. Now considering that I only caught the tail end of the panel I can't say if they even had discussed anything about sentai but from what I had walked into I was very disappointed. Showing clips to illustrate what sentai is would be okay but to just show off a movie strikes me as downright lazy. Even if it was Gaoranger vs. Super Sentai doesn't make it any more of an excuse.

Probably because every Animazement previous to this year I had never been able to make it on a Friday is most likely why I'm in such a good mood. Only thing to add to that is the fact that I finally attended opening ceremonies, although starting at 5:30 I would hardly call it opening (oh my, that was so witty). Highlights of opening ceremonies in my honest opinion having Akira Kamiya in his best Kenshiro voice tell the audience that "I have just pressed the Animazement pressure point in your body." Then after a rousing applause from the audience, spoke into the mic, "That we already are having fun." Only two words can truthfully describe that moment, frog king awesome. Of special note was the announcement of the evening that Animazement would no longer be held at the Sheraton Imperial hotel anymore. Instead starting next year the convention will actually be held in the Raleigh Convention Center. A bigger forum

The next panel I attend is of course the Participation Webcomic Fan Panel because I like webcomics. The panels theme is draw your own 4-Koma strip and then have it judged. The grand prize cake and for once the cake is not a lie. It was a panel of 4 Chan memes, Portal quotes and weird drawings by our panel of judges. All in all it was a fun panel to cool off and just have fun at. It also gave me a chance to try out my artistic skill again in a workshop. Needless to say maybe it's a good thing I stopped trying to pursue art as a career.

My favorite panel of the day easily was Anime Hell. Hell starts at 8:30 and doesn't end until 11:00 but the effects last well until the next day. What makes this panel so fun is that it's not just originally anime clips but instead a menagerie of European music videos, 70's disco movies starring Patrick Swayze, Super Pres, experimental Tezuka films, and scandalous babysitters? There is almost no video shown in this panel that won't be stuck in your head for days on end. A full list of the material can be found at this link right here.

Final panel on this wonderful Friday is the MST3K Fan Panel. What is the purpose of this panel but to show old MST3K movies. Now while I am a fan of MST3K myself I was kinda disappointed. I'm not afraid to admit that I was hoping that they would show an anime movie or ova and then actually do the commentary themselves. Instead they just showed to old MST3K movies instead. The movies were Gamera vs. Guiron and the Prince of Space! Now given the size of the room I'm not surprised that they couldn't do a full blown "original episode" but there was that part of me that wanted more. I left a bit more than halfway through the movie. I was tired I'd been up since 5 in the morning and I needed rest.

So as I travel to my friend's apartment to prepare for the next day of Animazement I can only hope tomorrow brings me as much fun as today did.

Aloha Waldenbooks. Aloha 40% off.

So my local Waldenbooks in the mall is closing down which is a shame cause they had one of the bigger manga libraries in town. While that would be a shame to lose at least the liquidation sale they had more then made up for it. While I wasn't able to get some real good manga, seeing as how the shelves in the manga section were mostly empty I was able to score some nice books from the store any way.

The haul includes

• The Dark Tower : The Gunslinger Born (the trade of the comic)
  
• Shooting War
• Appleseed ID
• Penny Arcade vol. 3: The Warsun Prophecies
• Penny Arcade vol. 4: Birds are Weird
• Cyborg 009 The Manga vol. 1
• Hikkatsu! vol. 1
• Welcome to the N.H.K. the manga vol. 1
• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
• Anansi Boys

As a bibliophile this should more than hold me over till the end of the month. Whelp thats it, its time for me to dig in to the bliss that is the haul for the week.

It’s a conspiracy I tell you

Just a few days ago I had just finished reading Welcome to the N.H.K.. I remember someone telling me as I picked up this book that it was about the dark side of anime fandom. Upon reading it I can tell you with absolute certainty that this is not true. Certainly you can associate this book with the most extreme cases of fanaticism within any particular hobby be it anime, comics, movies or even stamp collecting. What this book is about is the dark side of the human psyche, the part that tells you that you aren't good enough, that nobody out there cares for you; the part that whispers into your ear every so often when you're at your lowest that maybe you should just give up and die. It's about the people that have held you down all your life; the teachers that gave you bad grades, the boss who fired you, or the girl who wouldn't go out with you. It's all a conspiracy purported by a single organization meant to keep you down. The truth, though as ugly as it may be, is that the only one holding you down is yourself. That's the just one of the lessons that author Tatsuhiko Takimoto includes in his work of autobiographical fiction. It's through the eyes of the main protagonist, Satou that we come to realize the truth of the matter that the N.H.K. doesn't seek to keep us down because we're already doing a good job of that ourselves.

Who is Satou though? Well Satou is a twenty-two year old college dropout who now holes himself in his small apartment afraid to venture out and even have social contact with people who had delusion's that the N.H.K. is conspiring to keep him and other people like him down and locked away from society altogether. It's through meeting two people does Satou's world only slightly start to change. The first is Misaki, a young girl that Satou meet's while answering the door for some evangelists. Misaki realizing what Satou is decides to break him out of it. Even going as far as to draw up a contract and have him sign it. Her reasons for doing this are puzzling but she provides a light side to Satou's life as she tries in her own little way to break him out of being a shut in. The second person in Satou's life is Yamazaki, an anime otaku with a very disturbing lolita fetish. A recluse in training he tries to bring Satou into his world by trying to impress his fetish on to Satou and trying to make him see the light. The light in Yamazaki's mind being that real women are not even human but monsters that don't even need love, that the only path for true love is in loli images and moe anime characters. Yamazaki is the dark side of otakudom, the dark side of any fandom. A person who feels that they can't connect to the outside world and therefore burying themselves in there escapism of choice so much that the real world isn't real anymore only the world only the world that they have created for themselves is. It's through these characters does Satou only really start to think about his future. You see Satou knows what he is exactly, and he has no qualms about it. He wants to change himself, he wants to get out there and be part of the human race again but he just can't. It's by the way of interacting with these two people does he even start to make any progress towards that goal. It's not all sunshine and rainbows throughout. In the course of the book we watch him slightly rise up then fall down even lower than before.

Does this book succeed in telling its story though? Well yes it in fact does. The author does an excellent job of relating to the reader what is exactly going through Satou at any particular point in time. The narrative is very clear and never confusing. It easily relates upon the reader Satou's thoughts and emotional state at any time. The book as a whole is a bit dark. Billed as a dark comedy, depending on the reader there may be too little of comedy to be seen in it. It may hit to close to home for the crowd that it is being aimed for. It's not as if the situations that the author puts Satou in aren't funny it's just that a person would have to have either a really good sense of humor or a really sick sense of humor depending on the situation. Something else to think about is that the author writing this would have had to gone through some of the same experiences himself to write some of the stuff in this book. He even admits it in the two afterwords that these experiences have come from his life in some form or another.

Was it enjoyable to read though, yes it was. That is to say if you think you would enjoy reading about a shut in who hates himself so much that he feels life at times isn't worth living. Is Satou a likable character? No, but then he's not supposed to be. Satou is what he is, a person with deep psychological issues that needs serious help in overcoming them. Satou is supposed to be a broken person because that's the person he reflects in the reader. When you read along with Satou and what he's doing you're initially supposed to laugh at this worthless human being and then feel either compassion for him and hope he gets better or utter disgust and hopes that he dies in the fieriest pits of hell. Something I liked about this book is that while it is being marketed toward the anime crowd it's defiantly accessible to just about anyone. You don't have to have a deep understanding of otaku knowledge to enjoy what is going on in the book. Being a light novel this makes it a very easy read as the page count clocks in at two hundred pages. Welcome to the N.H.K., is not a must read but is still a pretty fun read either way especially if reading about someone falling into a dark hole that is his life is entertaining to you then by all means give it a shot.