Here at long last is our Anime Expo 2010 review episode of doom.  I bring you but a small sampling of the news that came out of the convention, as well as our famous Panel Discussions of Doom(TM) where we talked about AX, what we liked, what we didn’t like, and our thoughts on the event.  We’ve also got an interview with Ejen Chuang of Cosplay in America who recently put out an awesome cosplay photography book.  And, as always, we bring you the freshest, coolest anime picks.

Today’s Opening Music: “Lion,” Megumi Nakajima & May’n.  One of the opening themes of the excellent anime Macross Frontier.

AX 2010 Coverage – ANN and Japanator.
AX 2010 Photo Galleries: ANN (cosplay, exhibit hall/around the con); Japanator (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6)
Cosplay in America

Our picks:

Me – Highschool of the Dead, Evangelion 1.11 – You are Not Alone (DVD, Blu-ray), Cosplay in America, K-ON! (will be released by Bandai)
Danny – Durarara!, Heroman
Michelle – Hetalia Axis Powers, Eden of the East (DVD, Blu-ray)

Evangelion

Funimation 2010, DVD, $16.89

Evangelion

Funimation 2010, Blu-ray, $18.40

Cosplay in America

Ejen Chuang. OptikNerve 2010, Hardcover, 272 pages, $40.00

Hetalia

Funimation Prod 2010, DVD, $25.99

Eden of the East

Funimation Prod 2010, DVD, $40.99

Eden of the East

Funimation Prod 2010, Blu-ray, $44.99

Related posts:

1. Episode #0013 (Part 2) – Anime Expo 2010
2. And thus ends another Anime Expo… (Updated)
3. Anime Convention Alert: Anime Expo is THIS Weekend!

Naturally I’ll be blogging (as time, energy level, and bandwidth permits), and I’ll also once again activate the AudioBoo gateway, so you should be able to hear short audio updates as I find things that interest me enough to yak about ‘em.  Those will come out on the podcast feed.

But more importantly, I have some announcements about my panel.  First of all, I now know what room my podcasting panel will be in.  (As a reminder, that’s scheduled for Sunday the 30th at high noon.)  We’ll be in Panels 1 (Marriott Salon 1:2).  So if you’ve ever wondered what this whole podcasting fuss is about, or wanted to know how I run this three-ring circus we call Otaku no Podcast, come on by!

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!!!  (or, as the great Steve Jobs would say, “…There is one more thing.”)

Thanks to some cancellations in the panels schedule, I will now be doing ANOTHER PANEL!  Yes, you read correctly.  My friend Dave and I will be presenting a panel, ”Con Photography: Shoot to Win!”, which is currently scheduled for Sunday May 30th from 9pm to 10pm in Panels 3 (Marriott Salon 4:6).  Yes, as the title implies, we’ll be talking all about the tips and techniques that you can use to get those awesome cosplay shots.  Whether you’re a total photography n00b or fancy yourself to be the next Ansel Adams, whether you own an uber-crappy point and shoot you picked up for 20 bucks at a Wal*Mart or a DSLR with more knobs and dials on it than the space shuttle, you’re sure to pick up some tips, techniques, and gear recommendations that are sure to improve your photography.  (Or at the very least we’ll entertain you with our lame geek humor.)

One last thing: the full FanimeCon schedule is now online for your viewing pleasure.  Now you might be asking “So what’s the best way of keeping up with those inevitable schedule changes that are bound to happen?”  Well, FanimeCon has a Twitter account (which they actually use quite liberally throughout the con, for things such as schedule changes and event announcements).  But if you have one of those newfangled cell phones that can surf the Intarwebs, then you’ll be thrilled to learn that FanimeCon has a spiffy mobile website version of their schedule.  Just type in m.fanime.com in your phone’s web browser, and behold the marvels of modern technology.  It even has a nifty search function.  Schweet!

Related posts:

1. It’s officially official: Come see my panel @ FanimeCon!
2. It’s officially official, part deux: Looks like I’ll be at Anime Expo as well!
3. Episode #0012 – Convention Survival Guide

Project 760 Productions, the group behind many otaku-centric events in the San Francisco Bay area including JTAF, is teaming up with Pop Japan Travel to offer you a chance to travel to Japan to attend the 2010 Tokyo International Anime Fair, one of the largest anime trade fairs in the world! You’ll get to take a sneak peek at the latest anime projects and series scheduled for the Spring and Summer TV seasons in Japan.

In addition, the tour will include visits to famous otaku landmarks, including Akihabara, the so-called “Electric Town,” a major shopping area for electronics and consumer goods, and now a hotbed of otaku activity, with many anime and manga shops, maid and cosplay cafés, and the like; Nakano Broadway, a ginormous building chock full of otaku-worthy shops — arcades, manga, anime, idol, music, toy, etc.; the Ghibli Museum, shrine of all things Studio Ghibli; a dinner at a cosplay café, a picnic by the sakura (cherry blossoms), a visit to an animation studio, and more!

This 9 day tour will take place between March 24 – April 1, and will run you $1,985, which includes all costs including round-trip airfare from Los Angeles, transportation, interpreters/tour guides, entrance fees, etc. You’ll also get a customized guidebook created exclusively for the tour. If you like, you can arrange your own travel plans to Japan, which drops the price to $1,360.

If there’s enough interest, they will also make several tour extensions available, including a tour of the port city of Yokohama and the history-filled city of Kamakura; and a tour of Studio Pierrot. (Tour extension is contingent on whether or not there is enough interest in it, and will incur an extra charge.)

Also, to commemorate the Studio Pierrot Tour, Pop Japan Travel is hosting a special contest through their YouTube channel.
The fan that submits the best video with a question for Studio Pierrot will receive their choice of three books courtesy of Digital Manga, Inc. and will get to visit Studio Pierrot free if they take the tour. Winners will receive a PJT credit towards a future tour if they cannot attend the TAF tour. The contest concludes on February 14, 2010.

For more information, visit the Pop Japan Travel website or email popjapantravel@gmail.com for more information. Mention Project 760 and get a $50 discount.

Better hurry – all applications are due by February 23, 2010

Related posts:

1. DJ City and DJ Gladiator talk travel in and around Nara Prefecture
2. ChibiCast #0006 – Psst…wanna travel to Japan? Then listen up!
3. Want to find good places to eat in Tokyo? There’s an app for that!

AMV:

Action:

1st Place Judge – Alucard’s Sound of Madness
1st Place Audience – Some Ride it Ruff
2nd Place Judge – Rarity
2nd Place Audience – Dante Makes a Man out of Ryu

Drama:

1st Place Judge – Veni Vidi Vici
1st Place Audience – Tsubasa Falling
4th Place Audience – Ameno Tiara
Creator’s Choice – Guide Me

Comedy:

1st Place Audience & Judge – GoldenPants
2nd Place Audience – Ode to Cross Dressers
3rd Place Audience & Judge – Mean Woman Blues
Judge’s Favorite – It’s Tough to Be a Host

Pro:

1st Place Audience and Judge – Lord of the Anime
2nd Place Judge – Valhalla
2nd Place Audience – Standing Still
3rd Place Judge – You Know My Name
4th Place Audience – CityScape
Staff Pick – Diorama

Masquerade:

Best in Show: Workmanship
This is What You Give Me to Work With
Whitney Brown & Kiyoko Wakabayashi

Best in Show: Presentation
The Prince’s Tale
We’re Not Twins Cosplay

Workmanship Awards – Novice Division:

Technical Ingenuity Award
Evil Black Bunny Productions
Jeffrey Gerard

Excellence in Design
Romeo and Juliet’s Night at the Rose Ball
Laura Linnala

Honorable Mention for Detail
Dark Cloud 2
Robot Penguin

Honorable Mention for Armor & Leather Work
ia shake-zula of Anime Souffle
iakurosaki and DingSha

Best in Class
Soldier “A” Cosplay
Matt Wiseman & Amanda Avila

Workmanship Awards – Open Division:

Honorable Mention for Details
Wesley, Illyria, Gunn, and Spike from Angel
Li, Dawn, EJ, & Phil

Honorable Mention for Fabric Painting
Ahza Miracle
Cinthya Jeanneth Rmz

Armor and Wings and Jewelry, Oh My!
Do You Want to Date My Avatar?
Beth Hodgson & Jacob Hodgson

Perfection in Sewing
Good Enough Cosplay
Caistarrin T. Mystical

Obsession with Detail Award
Death by Sparkles
Garnet Runestar and Tenshi

Best in Class
The Prince’s Tale
Julia & Caitlin Doolittle

Presentation Awards – Novice Division:

Audience Favorite
Mangafreak 150 and Erin Chu
Mangafreak150 and Erin Chu

Honorable Mention for Performance
Fushigi Yuugi, The Mysterious Play
dot, Michi-chan, Melanie, Rin, Katie, & Britnay

Best Individual Performance
ia shake-zula of Anime Souffle
iakurosaki

Best Group Performance
Romeo and Juliet’s Night at the Rose Ball
Two and a Half Space Pirates

Presentation Awards – Open Division:

Audience Favorite
Ninja Stand-up Comedy
Mister Inu

Most Dramatic
Death by Sparkles
Garnet Runestar and Tenshi

Most Humorous
Do You Want to Date My Avatar?
Team Kaolinite

Best Individual Presentation
Good Enough Cosplay
Caistarrin T. Mystical

Related posts:

1. Back from Anime LA
2. Episode #0013 – Anime Expo 2010
3. Episode #0013 (Part 2) – Anime Expo 2010

I”ll try and schedule a recording session with The Gang soon to record our A-LA recap podcast. Look for that in the next week or two. In the meantime, here are my initial impressions and thoughts.

Anime LA, and the staff that runs it, continues to amaze me year after year. According to Chaz (the A-LA head honcho) this year’s attendance was just shy of 3,200, which, in this tough economic climate, is pretty amazing. I hear that some attendees came from places far outside of California, even. The Spoony Bards, this year’s musical guests of honor, came all the way from Indiana – Anime Los Angeles was their first appearance west of Chicago. Even more amazing is the fact that one of the Bards, who recently quit the band when she got married, rejoined the band especially for this appearance – and traveled here all the way from London, UK! One attendee even came from New Zealand! Anime LA is truly becoming a global phenomenon!

I definitely noticed the increased attendance, especially on Saturday (traditionally the busiest day). There was a certain buzz in the air; it had a certain energy to it that I normally only associate with much larger conventions. Even with the extra attendees, it didn’t feel crowded at all (except for Masquerade, which always feels crowded). It looks like A-LA will be able to stay at the LAX Airport Marriott for a while to come, which is good, because the hotel and facilities are really quite nice. Decent convention room rate, easily accessible from most modes of transportation, and a reasonable selection of nearby food.

Anime LA bills itself as one of the friendliest fan-run conventions out there, and I believe them. Every time I interacted with their staff (or saw others interacting with them), they were kind, courteous, and truly helpful. I didn’t detect a hint of the “attitude” that can often be found at larger conventions, or those that take themselves too seriously. The events (or at least the ones I attended) were well-staffed and it looked like they had enough people.

There were, I felt, a decent selection of events, including some that go beyond typical anime-related topics. (I don’t have a schedule handy, but the ones that come to mind are the Japanese calligraphy workshops, martial arts demos, handicrafts, Japanese ghosts and demons, and Tadao-san’s Japanese sword demo, which, sadly, I was unable to attend.) I’m always in favor of having events at conventions that go beyond typical anime fandom and explore other aspects of Japanese life and culture. One of my favorites were the food workshops (Sushi, fried foods, etc.) that Anime Expo featured several years ago.

The (always excellent) program guide and pocket schedule did a pretty good job of laying out the schedule of events and describing what they were all about. However there were a few that were described in vague terms, or even not described at all — for example, “Egg Samurai” — I’m still not quite sure what that was about… Also I was very pleased that A-LA posted a draft event schedule before the convention – for those of us obsessive types, it really helps us begin to plan out our convention time. However it might have been nice to have that up at least a week, maybe even two, before the convention – the extra time would really help those who are traveling from out of area and may not necessarily be traveling with a computer and Internet connection. I realize that sometimes it’s hard to nail things down until the bitter end, but even a rough preliminary schedule is better than nothing.

They did a pretty good job of communicating event and schedule changes. Changes were indicated on signboards outside each room, plus they also published a daily newsletter (the Shinbunshi) with scheduling changes as well as other items of note. These were fairly liberally scattered around the convention area, and were hard to miss. One thing I’d like to see for the future is for them to start using social media such as Twitter and Facebook. We are living in the age of social media, and almost any cell phone these days can access it ubiquitously, making it an excellent way of staying in touch wherever you are. FanimeCon stands in my mind as the “gold standard” in this department. Their Twitter account was extremely active both before and during con, with frequent updates when schedules changed, and they also sent out reminders of when certain “big ticket” events (concerts, Masquerade, etc.) were to start. With FanimeCon’s Twitter loaded on my phone, I almost never had to consult their pocket program guide. They also used it to remind people before con of certain important dates (pre-reg closing date, hotel reservation, etc.).

The guest list was pretty impressive for a small/fan-run convention. (unfortunately for a convention of this type it’s difficult to get those “big draw” guests, Japanese guests of honor, etc.) They had a pretty good musical selection. I got to see some of the Spoony Bards’ Sunday concert and they were pretty awesome; they played a nice selection of anime and video game music that had me nodding and thinking to myself “Oh yeah, I remember that one…” They also entertained the crowd lined up for Masquerade during the long interminable wait to get seated. I was also surprised to see the beginnings of industry support for A-LA; for example this year FUNimation chose Anime LA for an advance screening of their latest title, RIN ~ Daughters of Mnemosyne. (Unfortunately I was unable to attend)

I really hate to overuse it, but Masquerade can only be described as “awesome.” There were 29 entries consisting of a total of 76 people, and the costumes and routines continue to amaze. There are truly some talented people out there! As I recall it didn’t start too late, and there were only a few minor technical glitches (which are pretty much par for the course in an event such as this).

AMV, on the other hand, was, I hate to say, made of fail. I wrote about this previously so go read that post if you haven’t seen it already. However, none of the problems (I think) were the fault of the staff – they were all technical issues which, perhaps in hindsight, could have been avoided, but may not have been easily anticipated. My recommendations that I wrote about still stand, and hopefully they will take steps similar to the ones I outlined to make next year’s AMV contest a success. (They did replay all AMVs the next day, without a hitch, and the audience was invited to cast ballots for the Pro category that was skipped during the actual AMV contest.)

(I’ll post a list of AMV and masquerade winners shortly. Unfortunately not all of the AMVs have made it online yet.)

The dealers’ room and artists’ alley were impressive, and definitely felt bigger than last year, and most of the traditional vendors you see at dealers rooms were well represented. For one thing, they actually had some decent DVD vendors. Yay! I picked up some good deals on some stuff I was looking for. Of course, I’ll be reviewing my purchases for Otaku no Podcast. They also had several cosplay-related sellers, weapons sellers, character goods, etc. And it looked like artists’ alley was doing some good business – every time I looked in on it it was always pretty packed.

The video screening rooms had a decent selection of titles and genres. Support came from FUNimation, Nozomi Entertainment/The Right Stuf International, Bandai Entertainment, AnimEigo, Central Park Media (apparently this support came from beyond the grave — creepy!), Section 23 Films, Sentai Filmworks, Viz Media and Media Blasters. They also featured certain “Dealer’s Choice” titles, which, presumably, were whatever the dealers in the dealers’ room wanted to promote sales of. One thing I really liked was that they had big bright LCD screens outside of each viewing room showing the name of the title being played and what looked like example scenes from the various anime that they were showing. Really nice touch there. They also split the titles fairly equally between dub and sub, which prevented the holy war to end all holy wars from occurring.

I am once again thoroughly impressed with Anime LA. It’s the little con that could, and is showing no signs of letting up on its growth. It serves as proof that, even in these times of economic hardship, anime conventions are still needed, and are still viable. My congratulations to the staff and volunteers for yet another enjoyable year of Anime LA.

I’ve got about 1500 photos to go through, edit/retouch, and post; I’ll try and get to that by this weekend. I’ve also got about half an hour of video that I’ll edit down into a highlights reel and post soon.

Related posts:

1. Anime LA Day 2 mid-day convention report
2. A Winner is You! Behold the Anime LA 2010 AMV and Masquerade Winners
3. My Anime Los Angeles schedule

Related posts:

1. Photos from Comic-Con
2. Episode #0013 – Anime Expo 2010
3. Anime Convention Alert: Anime Expo is THIS Weekend!

Related posts:

1. Anime Expo 2009 photos on Flickr
2. San Diego Comic-Con is Here!
3. New Feature: Photo Gallery

In case you didn’t know (and count yourself among the lucky few if not), “kigurumi” cosplay is a particular subgenre of cosplay, which can best be described as “mascot cosplay.” Basically, the cosplayer dresses up in a full bodysuit styled after their favorite anime character or whatever — including a fully-detailed, properly proportioned (according to the given character’s design) character mask. Yes, a mask. With huge, non-moving anime eyes. And when the guy (for it will undoubtedly be a guy wearing these costumes) speaks, his (doubtless high and squeaky) otaku voice will be coming, somewhat muffled, from behind this huge character mask with the dead eyes.

*shudder*

If you are morbidly curious (or have a sado-massochistic complex), check out the above links for some truly disturbing pictures.

Fortunately this subgenre is not very popular especially here in the States. Of all the anime conventions I’ve been to, I only saw one kigurumi cosplayer, at last year’s Anime Los Angeles. (I did not see that person again this year, though that doesn’t necessarily mean that he wasn’t there at all.)

Basically my advice to you would be this: RUN AWAY, RUN AWAY!!!

This has been a public service announcement brought to you by Otaku no Podcast. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

Related posts:

1. Anime Convention Alert: Anime Expo is THIS Weekend!