Sure, there are still some problems, like the autographs always feeling like a work-in-progress after 25 years of experience to figure out what to do(!), but Otakon has proven that the move to DC is truly for the best, and the fans came to the city in such a large number that a white supremacist rally planned for Sunday wound up being absolutely innocuous, partially because there wasn't enough space in the hotels for them! Anyway, as always, allow me to go over what I personally held at Otakon, because I was more than pleased with the results.
First up was Anime Openings in Video Games for the New Millennium, which was held Friday afternoon in the AMV Theater. This was the sequel to the panel I held last year, where I turned the standard anime OPs panel on its head by showing off cool & memorable intros for video games that utilized anime, instead of something like CG; also no video games based on anime, as that would be cheating. While there were some repeats from last year, this was mostly new content, and it was primarily from 2000 to 2008, plus a handful of sneak peeks from what the current decade has been up to. Like last year, the crowd was into it, and they looked to have a good time; if I can, I'll definitely look into getting a hat trick next year, and make it a "New Teens" panel. After that was Saturday's Saint Seiya's Masami Kurumada: The Man Who Defined Shonen Action, which was a new variant on the Kurumada panels I had done in the past. This time around, I focused on how Ring ni Kakero, Fuma no Kojiro, Otoko Zaka, Saint Seiya, B't X, & Ring ni Kakero 2 (& even the non-Kurumada Team Astro) not only showed how Masami Kurumada created, evolved, & even deconstructed his own brand of shonen action, but also how his works have inspired & influenced others, from CLAMP to Takehiko Inoue to Tite Kubo to Kazushi Sakuraba to Yuji Nagata, & how Kurumada's style is still adhered to by mangaka to this very day.
This second panel had all the more importance to me come Saturday, as the night before featured another panel about the "Evolution of Action Shonen", but was filled with not just inaccuracies but also fallacies, some of which even required the panelists to bend or even break their own self-enforced rules to explain. Unfortunately, their panel still had a larger crowd than mine, but I still actually managed to have a decent crowd (about 1/3 of the room's capacity), and just about none of them left during the entire thing. This was all the more awesome, since I was put against Shoji Kawamori, Nobutoshi Canna, & even Anime Burger Time. I had the crowd's attention, their interest, and at the end they absolutely loved my panel; one even called it "brilliant". That kind of stuff makes me happier than anything else during that entire weekend; those Discotek announcements were a close second, though.
So, without further ado, if you are curious about what I showcased at the Anime OPs in Video Games panel, here's the final roster:
Namco X Capcom
Tech Romancer (a.k.a. Choukou Senki Kikaioh)
Breath of Fire IV
Genso Suikogaiden Volume 2: Duel at the Crystal Valley
Tales of Eternia (a.k.a. Tales of Destiny II)
Oni
Ys II Eternal
Goemon: Shin Sedai Shumei!
Sakura Wars 4: Fall in Love, Maidens
Wild Arms 3
Metal Saga: Chain of Sandstorm
Tales of Legendia
Heavy Metal Thunder
ef - the first tale.
Shining Force EXA
Lux Pain
Persona 4
Tales of Vesperia
Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Cross Generation of Heroes
Otomedius Excellent
Metal Max 4: The Moonlight Diva
God Eater 2: Rage Burst
Project X Zone
See you all at Otakon next year!
You've uploaded your list! Thank you very much! I was one of the people who've asked you for the list after the show. It was a fantastic panel. Here's hoping to your return next year!
ReplyDeleteNo problem. Thanks for attending the panel, and here's to next year!
DeleteI think you should do videos to YouTube again, as in the mold of what you have about RnK about the other works of Kurumada and also others you like. It would have more visibility than just staying with the blog. It's just an opinion.
ReplyDeleteThanks, but I'm fine with sticking with the blog for the foreseeable future. Online videos add in a whole bunch of extra work, especially if you want to do it well, but there is no guarantee that it will reach larger audiences.
DeleteMy two most recent videos productions, the American Laser Games interview & Twinkle Nora Rock Me review, both have seen more views on the blog than they do over at YouTube. Nora, in particular, has over 1,000 clicks on the blog, while it hasn't even passed 200 views over at YouTube, and I definitely tried what I could with promoting & sharing both of them when I released them.
Will I create more video content in the future? Possibly, but it certainly won't ever anything more than a rarity, and it would have to be something that I feel would have some sort of benefit by being done in video form.
Well, I would clearly say that the more videos about popular works you make, the more subscribers you would earn and more views. Anyway, I took a look at Saint Seiya's positions when the arc in progress was Hades-Hell, and the manga positions are medium (site comic vine), but the manga in that part was clearly rushed. It was only because Kurumada was tired (I remember reading this in some interview from him) or did Jump push him to finish faster? Two examples, the cover of volume 24 has the "boat of hope" background, it would probably be used. Who knows, Seiya and the others would find him at Cocytus and so they would arrive in the houses of the judges of hell. That is the second example, the Kurumada would never put together all the villains. They should be in their houses, since it is logical too, for the knights were going there. And it had been that much of Hell was not shown, like the forest and the desert. Do you have any information about this hurry to finish the work?
DeleteThe thing about what I do, though, is that I don't tend to cover "popular works", or at least what would be popular in the United States, which is where I live. My schitck or gimmick is that I write about stuff other people may not ever bother to, which I fully understand instantly restricts my appeal. The thing with video, too, is that doing those, & more often, would require me to do less traditional writing. We'll just have to see what happens in the future, really.
DeleteAs for Kurumada's handling of the Hades Arc, the only thing I can say is that the ending was most definitely rushed because of the cancellation. As for whether the entire Inferno section itself was rushed, I have no idea.