Well, I certainly enjoyed the con. Lots of fun. Here’s what I bought:
- Grey lain bag from Mythwear. Plenty big enough for my laptop, with plenty of pockets. I’m thrilled.
- Someday’s Dreamers DVD 1
- Last Exile DVD 1
- Mobile Suit Gundam DVD 3
- Someday’s Dreamers Soundtrack CD
- Trigun Soundtrack CD
- Spirited Away Soundtrack CD
- Haibane Renmei Soundtrack CD
- Rurouni Kenshin OVA 2 Soundtrack CD
- “Blue” (Cowboy Bebop OST) CD
- A little Bulbasaur plush keychain, because the booth babe begged me to buy it
Here’s what I watched:
- Scrapped Princess — A decent fantasy series
- Onegai Twins — A surprisingly strong romantic story is embedded in all the fanservice
- Gunslinger Girl — To quote AnimeNfo.com, “It’s a sad story about suffering girls who have lost their past but continue to live. After they were being brainwashed, they can kill with an innocent face and without hesitation at all. They don’t think through their deeds and don’t feel any pity. But behind their cute disguise, they destroy themselves and refuse to grow.” Ick. I’m sorry I watched it.
- PlanetES — My favorite of the con. It’s a hard SF series with strong writing. Only one of my readers is going to understand this, but it’s essentially Mighty Space Miners the TV show. I am not exagerrating.
Here’s what I attended:
- A panel on voice acting, hosted by two wonderfully kind voice actors who gave their opinions on the state of the industry, the difficulty of voice acting, and a host of other issues.
- A panel on translating anime and another on translating manga, both of which shared a panelist: Dan Kanemitsu, a funny, thoughtful translator who’s worked on a ton of anime and manga. Fascinating.
- X/Y, in which two fans gave X: The Movie the MST3K treatment. It was a horrible film, really, and they did a great job of making fun of it.
- Otaku Unite!, an excellent documentary film about the anime/otaku phenomenon.
- “Name That Anime Tune,” a game show where the crowd was invited to identify anime music. I actually did pretty well; better than the average fan in the audience, I think.
- An anime music video discussion panel, which included the guys behind Doki Doki Productions (“Right Now Someone Is Reading This Title”, “The
K-Team “, “Anime Mascot’s Day Off”, and the extremely disturbing yet hilarious “Lollipops, Sunshine, and rrrRRRrrr”) and Lee Sheng (“Stress”). This was one of those extremelylow-key Sunday morning panels where most of the guys on the panel were nursing hangovers and there were only half a dozen other people in the room.