Category Archives: Conventions and Concerts

June 7, 2012

Anime Expo 2012: Guh

By omo

I think it’s safe to say that I approach cons on a fairly grounded manner. It’s so grounded, that I try not to fly to one.

When Anime Expo planning period rolled around this year I was leaning towards “not going” all year until just recently. Mainly, the motivation is largely rested on hope; two types of hope, in fact. On one end, I hope Anime Expo will offer good guests. Now I enjoy all kinds of guests, but it is a lot of effort to go to AX, and it takes a fair amount of time and money, both I would rather save for other stuff. And it’s sad to say but I’m not so excited about Yuki Kajiura, after finally getting to see her a few years ago. I’m probably even less excited to see most guests at this con. Yeah, I like Fate/Zero and Kara no Kyoukai, so I should be excited, right? Yeaaa not really. I’m more excited about Tatsuo Sato, but I’ve seen and talked to him before too!

It’s this weird space that I live in, on one hand I don’t mind throwing down 3 month’s worth of lunch money to buy some plastic disks, on the other I’m not all that excited to ask questions to the guys who made that thing which cost 3 month’s worth of lunch money. Well, I don’t know, maybe Aoki and Koyama are cool dudes to talk to. But are they? Can someone let me know ahead of time? It isn’t that I don’t have questions, I just am not excited about asking them.

The other kind of hope I have is that I will be able to enjoy Anime Expo like a vacation, where I get to hang with a bunch of like-minded hobbyists and bros and enjoy some time hanging out and enjoying the local environs–may it be what LA has to offer, or what the con has to offer. Well there’s that X-Games thing going on at the same weekend as AX, and it will monopolize half or more of the facilities at the LACC/Staples Center/Nokia Theater complex. Does this crimp my hope? Maybe a little.

I realize ultimately it’s kind of how you make it. And if I’m committed to going to AX I might as well enjoy myself. I’m not too worried about not having a good time at LA; I have a good time even when I go nowhere. But as a con, it doesn’t reflect well when it can’t please some of its easiest customers. Well, technically I am not a customer if I didn’t pay to get in…right?

I think it’s not that these guests are unexciting (although it could always be said that they can be more exciting), but the cost of the trip puts a damper on it if there are no OMG-tier guests this year. I suppose I can put people like Kuribayashi Minami and LiSA on that level, except I’m not really even fans of them.

What AX does have in terms of guests, though, is that there are A LOT of them coming. I wrote up a bunch of them here. I’m not 100% sure about GoFa–are they actually towing Toume and Range Murata to LA? Or just demoing their works? And who is this “director” for Yuki Usagi? The Vocaloid crew have not finished announcing their guests yet, but already they have tapped Dixie Flatline and 2 others, which is to me on the same level as LiSA. Scary, right? Who will Kajiura perform with (if with anyone)? How big will Bushiroad’s booth be? What’s NISA doing? Did MangaGamer finalize their crew at AX this year yet? We have heard nothing about Kurinoko’s little show to showcase MuvLov, even, besides the “Eclips[sic]” shows or whatever on the tentative schedule. Huge questions, no answers, less than a month to go.

AX can be very hit or miss. It’s not stacking the odds to its favor at this point, so it would be prudent to take a lower outlook at this con. You know maybe I’m just getting a little jittery about all this and want to let it out, but I think it’s important to be aware and adjust your expectations accordingly.

On the bright side, it means I might have fewer conflicts! I love how NISA’s panel is like, the very last panel at the con. That’s a great time for me at AX since I always take the red eye flight out…

7 comments | posted in Conventions and Concerts, Modern Visual Culture

May 30, 2012

Animazement 2012: Wrap

By omo

As usual, skim the bold-face headers if you want to just go through it.

Details

Attendence: about  7600 – never change, Animazement. Best con this weekend.

Website: Animazement.org

Location and date: Raleigh, NC. 5/24 to 5/28, 2012. It’s technically a 4-day con since programming starts Thursday night, but it really is just a weekend con, where there is about twice as many people coming on Saturday than Friday.

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1 comment | posted in Conventions and Concerts, Modern Visual Culture

May 28, 2012

Animazement 2012: KOTOKO Live

By omo

[6/7/2012 Edit: Updated track listing!]

I was going to include this in the wrap post, but it got way too long so I’ll spin this separately here and for now–

I think it’s never an exaggeration to say I enjoy the hell out of her lives, at least the ones I’ve been. Having her play at Animazement seals the deal for the con for not just me but a bunch of others; in fact other than the locals everyone else I went with had her in their sights as #1. That said, I wasn’t sure if that was the case for me.

It wasn’t much of a question; after her concert Saturday afternoon (3:30pm EDT) it was pretty much settled that was the case. I went all out, to say the least. Luck would have it that I had a front rail spot and hung all out cheering. The problem was that there was this dance floor thing and my footing was at the edge of it, which was sloping down to the carpet, where the rail was. It made jumping pretty difficult, especially because I was sandwiched between two guys taller than I am. One happens to be JAMBO MOMOTATO (sorry for bumping/running into you so many times). Anyway, I had a lot of fun.

The physical damage as a result of Kotoko’s live was significant because she played an “anime best” set, which I believe is similar to her Asia Live Tour sets, just shorter. By shorter I mean “hey let’s get rid of some slow songs and have shorter MCs!” Which means “hey let’s have fast songs back to back to back to back ARGH.” Which means my arms kind of fell off at the end, and I was drenched in sweat. Which makes sense; if you do a best-of-KOTOKO of anime (and some games) it’s going to be mostly fast dance beats with some rock stuff mixed in there. Chi ni Kaeru and Being became necessities because of their anime-tie-in-ness but also because they are songs where you (meaning the band as well) can take a breather.

Oh did I say there was band? KOTOKO concert is the best with a band, and if you haven’t seen it you are missing out. Coincidentally the band members dressed up as Lupin characters. The dummer was Lupin, guitarist as Jigen, and the bassist Goemon. That got me at the beginning. Kotoko had an outfit change. Her first outfit was this modified ninja-kimono-thing complete with swordplay. Her second outfit had her in this weird, but more usual, skirt thing. And then there was the t-shirt for the encore. I imagine the second outfit was one of the Asia tour outfit.

My overall impression on the show was obviously quite positive. It wasn’t flawless, but I was too wota’d out to care. It was great to relive Suppuration and Re-sublimity and I was thoroughly impressed with Light My Fire. Most of the MC was in simple Japanese. I think she has a lot of stuff translated in her cheat-sheet/floor-monitor thing, but she didn’t read off it much so there wasn’t much English speaking going on. The front-and-center view was glorious. I was just left of the stage center. Lots of eye contact. I can’t ask for much more. I think the killing blow that made me go “kyun” was Oboetete Iiyo when she sang the last chorus. Man!

Set list (now updated! to be determined, because uh I need to verify it when someone gets home to his mac):

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5 comments | posted in Conventions and Concerts

May 28, 2012

Animazement 2012: Day 3

By omo

Before I crash from being in an automobile all night, some statistics for the weekend:

  • Best round-trip time to-from Baltimore region: 2:42
  • # of tweets in timeline: 13157
  • # of sweaty T-shirts handled: 2; one used to be someone else’s
  • # of “Macaroni & Gratin” consumed: 0.5 (something like 1.5 servings)
  • # of types of beers had: 4
  • # of UO: 3
  • # of sketches: 1…..I guess
  • Hours spent on Wi-fi: about 3.5
  • Hours spent watching anime in the car: 1.5

Day three was uneventful despite being the longest “day 3” I’ve had for Animazement. We stuck around Raleigh until 4:30 or so. The highlight must’ve been Nagahama’s panel. I hope I can get a recording of it and write it up, because he talked about Simoun and I learned something new. Simoun! Amazing. It’s also amazing with lots of other tidbits, so yeah, hopefully I can write it up.

Furukawa told his Natto joke again. It gets ’em every time. It’s best you hear it from him, because I just can’t do battle attack sound SFX the way he does.

The charity Auction pt. 2. got on today as well. I think Itano’s Macross sketch fetched the highest price. Then it was Kotoko’s shirt. I think my group was the only people bidding on it, partly because we were the only people who had the head’s up on it? I am not sure. I asked about it on Saturday. Well, maybe for the wrap. Needless to say a lucky fan walked away with one of Kotoko’s shirts, and others with other autographed goods.

I never expected to see Densuke at the con, even more so when it was a sketch request. Really? I mean, he was credited as a key animator, but wow, that was way back in the days. Anyways, more on that hopefully later as well. And how that Masaru autograph came to being!

Theme in the car: Lots of iM@S (I’m sorry to those who had to be subjected to it) and something about a dollar getting you a huge piece of pie at the Waffle House.

2 comments | posted in Conventions and Concerts, English Language Modern Visual Fandom

May 21, 2012

A Week of Many Cons and Ds

By omo

Just another post of random notes.

That “Girls und Panzer” anime so reminds me of this:

What a surprise! Takaaki Suzuki is behind this thing. By surprise I mean OMG OPPOSITE MEANING. The man is a bro though, so I’d like to support his efforts.

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Sayonara Ponytail is the weird kind of band with a weird presence. Weird because they were an indie cartoon band and now a major-label cartoon band. It’s just three girls, but it seems one of them is responsible for most of the creative direction of the group.  They debuted for the major label last year, but I read about it back when j1m0ne was just starting to post about indie stuff she found. You can hear them cover Spitz’s Sora mo Taberu Hazu in Tsuritama at the usual places. (Scroll to the bottom of the tag listing to see j1m0ne’s post lol.) Well, if she found it in Tower Record, just how indie was it??

Anyway, you know me and 2.5D, and Sayonara Ponytail are very much so. Think of it as the pickup of the week, as their Tsuritama single comes out this week. There are three versions of this crap:

The double-sided poster that comes with the single features the Tsuritama boys on one side and the witches on the other. The LE version and the Anime version come with a bonus CD. But I guess you might have to shop elsewhere to get that poster as CDJ is out of it.

Actually I have sort of an opinion on Sayonara Ponytail, and it’s mostly made of ambivalence. That said I haven’t listened to their album from last year, which probably means my opinion doesn’t count. I sure don’t count it myself. Anyway, there’s a lot of stuff to be unsure about, but you can read about some of that here.

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In the US, Memorial Day Weekend marks not only the start of Anime Con season, but also of Summer vacationing among people who have PTOs, rather than mandatory school closures (though the period largely overlap). This year’s lineup are the three usual familiars: Anime North (most notable for English-language-tweeting Asakawa Yuu along with Sasanuma, also a p. cool DJ), FanimeCon (Aizawa Mai, the usual Yamaga crew, Kia Asamiya, Koyama Shigeto), and Animazement.

I’m going to Animazement. See you there? And if I make it to Kotoko’s concert alive that would make her one of my most-attended Anison artists at 3 concerts! Well, not counting Yoko Kanno. The three big Memorial Day weekend cons have pretty good guests as usual, but I think Fanime had some problems this year so all their announcements were pretty late. On the other hand Animazement called it out, well, when Mr. Ishiguro was still with us. Besides that, the usual old crew of voice actors and directors and producers will be there, specifically Itano (the circus man), Nagahama (director of Mushishi), Orikasa Fumiko, Kaikan Phrase mangaka, and lots of others.

I wonder if any of the cons are going to move their dates next year… Please peruse the links to the respective sites for the detail guest list!

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There’s that anime power ranking thing and I guess I’m suppose to vote for shows every week–makes sense if/when I am able to watch that week’s anime that week–just wanted to point out Tsuritama was great this past week. It’s a good week for the show too this week come to think of it…

I thought Sencolle, too, was quality this week. Tho I’m a sucker.

What’s more I didn’t even vote this week, because I was too busy partying! Perhaps fortunately this non-voting doesn’t happen all the time (translation: it happens way too often). If I had my way with Kevo, I’d retool it with a lag period–you rank the shows from Saturday to Friday, but make the ballot due like, Monday or something. Also if he’s good with spreadsheets, explore the wonders of Google Docs to automate polling and results? A resounding yes.

4 comments | posted in Conventions and Concerts, Modern Visual Culture, Seiyuu, Idol, Pop