Fanime report.
May. 28th, 2009 04:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elwenI have to say, of all the cons I have been to, Fanime 2009 was probably the one I enjoyed the most. Looking back at my comments on the previous two Fanimes, it's kind of hard to tell what was different. Maybe it was just the cosplay. Maybe there were subtle changes in operations. Maybe it was the realization that, even though Fanime guests are obscure and tangential to my interests, they are generally cool, amusing people. But whatever it was, it worked.
Since I'm on the topic of industry panels... Like I said, I've never been to one, but it seems to me that the industry largely ignores Fanime. The only licensing announcement this past weekend was by Funimation (but for Spice and Wolf, which is a big deal to me), and they chose the other Memorial Day anime con to do it at. But the bigger thing is, I don't think there were any industry panels at all this Fanime, except the Dark Horse one. I guess it's consistent with their whole "by fans for fans" and "we have more fannish panels" thing, which is just fine by me. It just seems kind of weird, though. Like we're still the otaku underground, watching fansubs and reading scanlations, and not the legitimate, in-the-light-of-day consumer fans. Which may be accurate, but which side is supposed to make the first overtures anyway?
Anyhow, moving on to the next failed panel. That was "Whose Line is It Anime?", which failed of too much win. Meaning there was a huge line of people waiting to get in after the room had filled up. So we gave up and went elsewhere. We came back and managed to catch a bit of the end, and that much was pretty awesome. So the main complaint here is that Fanime needs some better ways to gauge turnout and put popular panels in bigger rooms. One of the panel rooms was about twice the size of the others, and that's really where this panel should have been.
After that we stayed for the next panel in the same room, called "So You Want to Live in Japan." I don't want to be too harsh, since I have a lot of respect for fans who are willing to come up with a topic and get up there and do a panel on it -- I play with the idea every now and then and always decide against it. But. I am of the philosophy that if you can't do something relatively well, don't do it at all. So I'm not about to put on a panel on seiyuu, however much I love them, because I don't have the expertise. And I'm not about to cosplay something very fancy however much I love the character if I don't know how to make the costume or do not resemble the part closely enough. The problem with the Japan panel was, I think, a failure to follow my rule. These two people had majored in Japanese and been lucky enough to live there while in school. They wanted to share what they knew about living in Japan. . . . which was a bunch of disorganized anecdotes and afterthoughts. Maybe that would have been okay if the panel had been called "Funny Stories about Living in Japan". But both the title and the opening remarks heavily overpromised. They wanted to talk about cultural differences, about programs that can get you to Japan, about the difficulties living there. The problem was, all of these topics they were speaking to purely from personal experience and no research.
Having gone to a tech school for undergrad, I don't know much about the world of liberal arts majors. But the panel taught me something important: if you want to know about Japan, ask an Asian Studies major, not a Japanese major. If you want to practice the language, by all means, the latter is great. But hearing them try to explain culture, and grasp at straws trying to suggest ways to make use of your educational background in Japan . . . it was painful. Especially the latter, which amounted to "Find someone to hire you to do what you do." Like, "If you're a history major... well, you can teach history there. Oh, and if you're a scientist, I'm sure there are companies that want you to run experiments." Yeeeaaah.
I don't know. Maybe it was lack of preparation and organization. Underestimating how hard it is to put together an engaging panel and all. Again, I don't fault them for trying, but I do believe in specialization and in people being competent at what they choose to do. I'm sure the people who had not had more years than the panelists of culture-infused Japanese language instruction (like my sister and myself) got something out of it. (Although, from the fact that half the audience questions were asked in Japanese, I wonder how many people that was.)
The two skits I remember liking a lot were the Pokémon one, of course, and one from Kuroshitsuji with a lot of dancing. But overall, I think there were very few skits I found boring or too confusing to enjoy, and as I think back on it, lots of amusing snippets of skits come back to me: Cross Academy's Night Class starting their own host club, "seven days!" prank calls and ringtones, settling things "Fire Emblem style".
We didn't stay to hear the winners because we wanted to go check out Yaoi-Con's Bishounen Bingo (more on that later), but I hear that the Pokémon skit won Best Comedic, as it should have. There were no light-up Gundams near the stage, so at least I can rest assured that the judges didn't have that to blind them.
If you've ever watched or played even a bit of Pokémon, you should see the skit. There are a bunch of videos of it on YouTube. [Will add a link when I get home. In the meantime, just search for "Fanime 2009 Pokemon". Here is a good version, and it includes Ric's intro with Missingno. references.] It's hard to put one's finger on what made it so awesome. I mean, it was just some silly dancing to the theme song. But I think there was a lot of nostalgia value for people -- the audience sang along for a lot of the song -- and the energy of the dancers really drew you in. Plus there were lots of little moments of hilarity -- Caramelldansen no the least. (I'm sorry, I still like Caramelldansen. I kept wanting to join in when I saw various clusters of people doing it during the con, but it doesn't work with Xellos' staff. *sad*) It was also relatively early in the masquerade and the audience still had a lot of excitement to spare, I think. Still, it was amazing that they got a standing ovation, and no other skit came close to one.
Oh, I wanted to talk about the martial arts opening acts. In past years, we always had the Soul Calibur group, and it may have been the same dojo, but I guess they've given up on the costumes. I have seen that same form (with the pole) so many times now. It's still fun to watch, and I'm not saying it's a bad move on Fanime's part, but it always seemed kind of random. But the audience loves it. Fanime attendees are very easily swayed by weapons, apparently. The moment something sharp and shiny was drawn, people would gasp and cheer. Oh, and aerial flips. We are like goggle-eyed children. I guess it's a good way to build up excitement. I certainly appreciate it more than the singing, both the random J-Pop artist's and the karaoke contest winner's.
And B-Boy with martial arts. Awesome. They need this as a challenge in the next season of America's Best Dance Crew.
When you cosplay, you might not even know each other's names, but you have permission to hail someone in the hallway from your series. I chatted with both the other Xellos and Filia several times -- though I still regret that the three of us never managed to get together. And, of course, as a cosplayer you also give permission to everyone else to hail you in the hallway, but still, unless they're from your series (and maybe even this only works if you're from something obscure), the connection is not as strong. I think it gives you that sort of instant community that fans used to be able to get just from being at a con.
Anyway, I don't want to go too deeply into the social dynamics of cosplay. Suffice to say that it gave me a warm glow of happiness. A+++++++!!! Would do again.
Oh, and on the topic of cosplay, after paying more attention, I decided that the new series that got a lot of cosplay was Kuroshitsuji. There were apparently also a lot of Hetalia, but they are hard to identify when alone. (We missed the gathering, and by the time we got there everyone was just milling around while Austria played the piano, which was amusing but not photogenic.) The big carryovers were D.Gray-man and Vampire Knight. Oh, and there was lots of Code Geass, as there wasn't last year.
Last thought on cosplay: I think Fanime did much better at publicizing the fan gatherings this year, so that there was good turnout at all of them. The only confusing thing was that D.Gray-man got scheduled twice, and because of that, I managed to miss both. >_< Well, I guess it's mostly just my own fault. But now I need to go find some pictures online.
And that's Fanime 2009!
I really think Fanime hit its sweet spot this year. Enough people and things going to have constant excitement but not so crowded or busy as to be overwhelming. I'm afraid that it will soon pass critical mass and become "line con", but for this year at least, it was good.
[Pictures forthcoming, I promise. It's hard to juggle the rest of my life with bar review classes -- I had to write most of this post over the course of several lunch breaks. *sigh*]
ETA: Masquerade video links! Kuroshitsuji and Pokémon.
Panel Fail
The part that wasn't really different, that I apparently harped on the last two years, was the lack of good panels. Like I said, Sunday was all about panel fail. We looked at the schedule and thought there would be good panels, but I don't think a single one of them worked out. First, I wanted to go to the Dark Horse Manga panel because Carl Horn was one of those aforementioned cool, amusing guests, who gave one of the two great panels I went to on Friday. We left halfway through. Now, it's not really his fault, aside from the fact that he told some of the same stories again, which you can't really blame him for. I think it was more that I have never been to an industry panel, and didn't know what to expect, and what it turned out to be was not something I was really interested in, especially for a company from which I buy absolutely nothing. (Though I am going to buy their Clover re-release now, so I guess something good for them came of my attending.) Basically, he started going through the list of upcoming releases, and passed around some samples, and even though I wanted to see the Clover sample, I just couldn't bear to keep sitting there. So that was that.Since I'm on the topic of industry panels... Like I said, I've never been to one, but it seems to me that the industry largely ignores Fanime. The only licensing announcement this past weekend was by Funimation (but for Spice and Wolf, which is a big deal to me), and they chose the other Memorial Day anime con to do it at. But the bigger thing is, I don't think there were any industry panels at all this Fanime, except the Dark Horse one. I guess it's consistent with their whole "by fans for fans" and "we have more fannish panels" thing, which is just fine by me. It just seems kind of weird, though. Like we're still the otaku underground, watching fansubs and reading scanlations, and not the legitimate, in-the-light-of-day consumer fans. Which may be accurate, but which side is supposed to make the first overtures anyway?
Anyhow, moving on to the next failed panel. That was "Whose Line is It Anime?", which failed of too much win. Meaning there was a huge line of people waiting to get in after the room had filled up. So we gave up and went elsewhere. We came back and managed to catch a bit of the end, and that much was pretty awesome. So the main complaint here is that Fanime needs some better ways to gauge turnout and put popular panels in bigger rooms. One of the panel rooms was about twice the size of the others, and that's really where this panel should have been.
After that we stayed for the next panel in the same room, called "So You Want to Live in Japan." I don't want to be too harsh, since I have a lot of respect for fans who are willing to come up with a topic and get up there and do a panel on it -- I play with the idea every now and then and always decide against it. But. I am of the philosophy that if you can't do something relatively well, don't do it at all. So I'm not about to put on a panel on seiyuu, however much I love them, because I don't have the expertise. And I'm not about to cosplay something very fancy however much I love the character if I don't know how to make the costume or do not resemble the part closely enough. The problem with the Japan panel was, I think, a failure to follow my rule. These two people had majored in Japanese and been lucky enough to live there while in school. They wanted to share what they knew about living in Japan. . . . which was a bunch of disorganized anecdotes and afterthoughts. Maybe that would have been okay if the panel had been called "Funny Stories about Living in Japan". But both the title and the opening remarks heavily overpromised. They wanted to talk about cultural differences, about programs that can get you to Japan, about the difficulties living there. The problem was, all of these topics they were speaking to purely from personal experience and no research.
Having gone to a tech school for undergrad, I don't know much about the world of liberal arts majors. But the panel taught me something important: if you want to know about Japan, ask an Asian Studies major, not a Japanese major. If you want to practice the language, by all means, the latter is great. But hearing them try to explain culture, and grasp at straws trying to suggest ways to make use of your educational background in Japan . . . it was painful. Especially the latter, which amounted to "Find someone to hire you to do what you do." Like, "If you're a history major... well, you can teach history there. Oh, and if you're a scientist, I'm sure there are companies that want you to run experiments." Yeeeaaah.
I don't know. Maybe it was lack of preparation and organization. Underestimating how hard it is to put together an engaging panel and all. Again, I don't fault them for trying, but I do believe in specialization and in people being competent at what they choose to do. I'm sure the people who had not had more years than the panelists of culture-infused Japanese language instruction (like my sister and myself) got something out of it. (Although, from the fact that half the audience questions were asked in Japanese, I wonder how many people that was.)
Masquerade Win
I was very impressed by the handling of the masquerade this year. It just seemed to run very smoothly and was thoroughly enjoyable. As I've said in past years, the Civic Auditorium is a great venue and the double screens are so useful. (Of course, we still lined up an hour in advance so we could sit close enough to look at the stage, too.) I will always miss Dieter and his Totoro, but Ric Meyers is hilarious in his own way. Amazingly, the masquerade started on time, and I thought it was a good length, finishing just as people started getting really antsy. There were only five walk-ons, who had background music, which I think helped a lot in keeping them from being boring. The audio for the skits was good for the most part, and there was a good variety in entries -- though I don't know how much control Fanime has over that aspect.The two skits I remember liking a lot were the Pokémon one, of course, and one from Kuroshitsuji with a lot of dancing. But overall, I think there were very few skits I found boring or too confusing to enjoy, and as I think back on it, lots of amusing snippets of skits come back to me: Cross Academy's Night Class starting their own host club, "seven days!" prank calls and ringtones, settling things "Fire Emblem style".
We didn't stay to hear the winners because we wanted to go check out Yaoi-Con's Bishounen Bingo (more on that later), but I hear that the Pokémon skit won Best Comedic, as it should have. There were no light-up Gundams near the stage, so at least I can rest assured that the judges didn't have that to blind them.
If you've ever watched or played even a bit of Pokémon, you should see the skit. There are a bunch of videos of it on YouTube. [
Oh, I wanted to talk about the martial arts opening acts. In past years, we always had the Soul Calibur group, and it may have been the same dojo, but I guess they've given up on the costumes. I have seen that same form (with the pole) so many times now. It's still fun to watch, and I'm not saying it's a bad move on Fanime's part, but it always seemed kind of random. But the audience loves it. Fanime attendees are very easily swayed by weapons, apparently. The moment something sharp and shiny was drawn, people would gasp and cheer. Oh, and aerial flips. We are like goggle-eyed children. I guess it's a good way to build up excitement. I certainly appreciate it more than the singing, both the random J-Pop artist's and the karaoke contest winner's.
And B-Boy with martial arts. Awesome. They need this as a challenge in the next season of America's Best Dance Crew.
Cosplay Win
I really had a blast with my cosplay. It's hard to explain what makes it so fun... I think in part it just puts you more in the right mood. The other thing is, anime is big enough now that you can't relate to most con attendees. There are no more shows that everyone watches, and so you become one lone fan moving through a crowd. Being part of the crowd and reacting with them is still fun, like during the masquerade, but that's not the same as finding a fellow fan whom you can talk to. Cosplay is like wearing a big sign that says, "Talk to me!" And so you do manage to find people with common interests. The other ways are to go to series-specific panels, but there aren't all that many, and to talk to Artists' Alley people who drew the series.When you cosplay, you might not even know each other's names, but you have permission to hail someone in the hallway from your series. I chatted with both the other Xellos and Filia several times -- though I still regret that the three of us never managed to get together. And, of course, as a cosplayer you also give permission to everyone else to hail you in the hallway, but still, unless they're from your series (and maybe even this only works if you're from something obscure), the connection is not as strong. I think it gives you that sort of instant community that fans used to be able to get just from being at a con.
Anyway, I don't want to go too deeply into the social dynamics of cosplay. Suffice to say that it gave me a warm glow of happiness. A+++++++!!! Would do again.
Oh, and on the topic of cosplay, after paying more attention, I decided that the new series that got a lot of cosplay was Kuroshitsuji. There were apparently also a lot of Hetalia, but they are hard to identify when alone. (We missed the gathering, and by the time we got there everyone was just milling around while Austria played the piano, which was amusing but not photogenic.) The big carryovers were D.Gray-man and Vampire Knight. Oh, and there was lots of Code Geass, as there wasn't last year.
Last thought on cosplay: I think Fanime did much better at publicizing the fan gatherings this year, so that there was good turnout at all of them. The only confusing thing was that D.Gray-man got scheduled twice, and because of that, I managed to miss both. >_< Well, I guess it's mostly just my own fault. But now I need to go find some pictures online.
Random Remainders
- Bishounen Bingo was . . . interesting. I'd always thought it meant that you have a card with bishounen on it and they call out characters, or you have to spot them in a music video or something. In fact, they get a bunch of very good-natured and supposedly bishounen guys to wait on the attendees. Apparently you have to buy the cards, which we refused to do, but we got to watch the end of one round, when the boys stripped. Like I said, they were very good-natured, and when they got it on with each other it actually looked sexy.
- I spent surprisingly little money this year. Part of it was because I felt penny-pinching after all I'd spent on the costume. But I've also become more restrained in my lust for fanart after the first year when I went on a buying spree. I dug up a bunch of the stuff I bought from that time and really, I don't know what I was thinking in buying most of them. Some things I still like, especially two originals I snagged -- one a color picture of chibi-Lina and one a pen-sketch of the Hunter x Hunter cast as Naruto characters. I do have buyer's remorse on one picture I bought this year -- a Katamari vector art rendition of Sephiroth rolling up Aeris, a Cactuar, and a comet -- because I misheard the price and bought it on impulse, but it is an awesome picture. I just don't know what to do with it, like many of the fanart pieces I buy. I still like getting nice group pictures -- I got a really cute one of SSBM this time -- but mostly in the future I want to focus on things that are neutral enough that I could hang them in my office. For example, this really nice picture of Al from Fullmetal Alchemist sitting under some trees that my sister got. If you're not in the know, it's just a suit of armor, after all.
- We skipped out on the AMV competition this year, though we caught several portions of the AMV.org Top 100 that they showed over the course of the con. I think it was a good idea... I've been less and less impressed with the AMV competition over the years. I always think there will be some good new stuff to see, but every year it's just a bunch of Naruto, Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, and Hellsing. Watching the AMV.org Top 100, I got to see a lot of oldies-but-goodies along with tried-and-true newer stuff. Ironically, the bottom 25 were the best of what I saw, because it had most of the comedic ones, while we bailed out of the Top 25 after a while because it was too heavy and dark. Apparently action and drama still appeal to people more.
And that's Fanime 2009!
I really think Fanime hit its sweet spot this year. Enough people and things going to have constant excitement but not so crowded or busy as to be overwhelming. I'm afraid that it will soon pass critical mass and become "line con", but for this year at least, it was good.
[Pictures forthcoming, I promise. It's hard to juggle the rest of my life with bar review classes -- I had to write most of this post over the course of several lunch breaks. *sigh*]
ETA: Masquerade video links! Kuroshitsuji and Pokémon.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-06 11:24 am (UTC)Sort of surprised that Code Geass cosplays weren't more popular last year. The series has been over for a while by now...
no subject
Date: 2009-06-06 05:42 pm (UTC)1. I am often surprised by the lag time between a series ending or becoming popular and starting to see cosplayers. I'm not sure why that is, though I have several theories (people just not having time, people not thinking of it until it has sunk in a bit, people intentionally waiting for fear that their cosplay will be too new and thus unrecognized). On the other hand, some series, like Guren Lagann, catch on very quickly.
2. We "underground" fans tend to make the mistake of thinking a series has been over for a long time and thus common knowledge, when in this day and age, many fans do not watch fansubs, and hence will not know of a series until it's on Adult Swim or released domestically or whatever the process is. (You can see how totally underground I am.) But the point is, when you take into account the U.S. timeline of Geass releases, it is not as suprising that it was obscure last year and popular this year.