Virtual Fanime 2021
While we’re finally getting COVID-19 under control, its ongoing presence is still preventing a return to normal for a lot of conventions. This includes my enduring favorite, Fanime in the San Jose area. The pandemic has now prevented the convention from being held in-person twice. Fortunately, people want to attend Fanime and it’s how we got “Let’s Pretend We’re At Fanime” last year and “Virtual Fanime” this year. It should go without saying that the virtual experience is no substitute for the real thing. It was, however, a really good substitute when it came to the quality of the panels that I attended.
The panels this year were a mix of new presenters from the East Coast and Midwest, and a few familiar faces. On that note…
The Andre Pena Experience
Andre hosted three panels this year, starting with “Cthulhu for President.” His persona of the Elder God’s campaign manager was very nonplussed at his audience because we had failed to get Ol’ Tentacle Face into office in an election year. This set the stage for the traditional roasting of audience members who ask dumb questions (and can’t spell “Cthulhu” right) after the campaign platform had been laid out. Q&A is always the highlight of the panel as Andre is good at both raking the deserving over the fire and providing reasonable responses to people who ask serious questions. In fact, Cthulhu’s campaign platform, as he presents it, is pretty well-reasoned and doable. Andre noted that President Biden has already taken a page from the Elder God’s platform and made infrastructure a key policy focus. There is the matter of all the human and blood sacrifice which is also key to Cthulhu’s agenda, but those are just little details that I’m willing to put up with to keep America crazy.
“Midnight Madness” was a super-sized edition for the con, running from 11-3AM on Saturday, instead of the usual 11-2AM. While watching the videos he’s selected and participating in chat is always a good time, I’ve been tuning into his monthly streams of this since October. So there was A LOT of stuff that I’ve already seen before, and the extra hour mainly felt like an excuse to show all of it instead of rotating things out like he’s done in the past. Still, it was probably worth it just to see the tiktok of some teenagers doing real life “HEAT” actions from “Yakuza.”
“Fireside Chat” was Andre’s final panel and it was a chill experience as the name implied. He had some relaxing music in the background, some calming videos on his Twitch stream, told us he had a drink in his hand and recommended that everyone (who was over 21) get one for themselves as well. What followed was an hourlong chat session as we all talked about what we missed from Fanime, and what the future held. There was also some interesting speculation about the fate of the Fairmont Hotel — always the choice of John and myself whenever we attend the convention — which was bought out last year. All in all, it was a pretty sweet time hanging out with Andre and everyone else in the chat.
Evan Minto
I was only able to attend one of Evan’s panels this year, “How Anime is Made.” The panel’s content should be pretty self-explanatory with a title like that and the panelist did the quality job I’ve come to expect from him after years of attending his panels. He walked the audience through the pre-production stage, where financers and production staff are lined up, detailed all of the staff positions and how they contribute to making anime, and explained the post-production stuff, such as how anime actually makes money. (It isn’t through the actual airing — it’s through all the licensing.) Throughout it all he also punctuated certain parts with clips from anime about making anime: “Shiro Bako,” “Animation Runner Kuromi,” and Episode 10 of “Paranoia Agent.” All of which were very appropriate and entertaining in their small doses.
George Horvath
George hails from the East Coast and it was only Fanime’s “Virtual” aspect that allowed him to present a panel this year. That it looks like he won’t be able to present when the convention is held in-person next year is a damn shame as his panel “History of Shonen Manga” was a real highlight of the con. Making the case that the tropes of shonen manga didn’t spring up fully-formed in the 80’s, he went back 30 years to show us how they evolved from Tezuka’s work on “Astro Boy” and “Dororo,” to sports manga such as “Star of the Giants, “Team Astro,” and “Ashita no Joe,” as well as related genres like ninja and delinquent manga. It was a fascinating, well-researched panel that was genuinely illuminating about its subject. It also had a montage set to “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” where a guy grabs a spiral drill with his bare hands in order to discover a new pitching technique in order to illustrate the insanity that was “Team Astro.” So yeah, this panel had it ALL!
Fifth Gen Isn’t Pokemon
I only had time for Fifth Gen’s signature panel, which is the one that they take their name from. While I don’t play “Pokemon” in any form, the panelist’s mix of trolling and absurdist humor is always good for a laugh. As is the general fact that they’re getting worked up about something as trivial as the fifth generation of Pokemon design. While this panel was mostly great fun, the only disappointment came when the panelist made a couple of remarks that indicated he subscribes to the belief that “Pokemon” developer Game Freak was lazy when it came to including all of the Pokemon in “Sword & Shield.” Even if he was just trolling more in this case, it’s not a good subject to touch on given the unreasonable amount of hate that has been directed to Game Freak because of it.
The Megan DeYarman Experience
I kicked off my Virtual Fanime Friday night with Megan’s panel about “The Fabulous 49’ers.” The title refers to the group of women born in 1949 who went on to revolutionize shojo manga. While I was familiar with the subject, it was still entertaining to hear her talk about great creators like Moto Hagio and Keiko Takemiya, and how the titles they created reshaped a genre and still influence new manga and creators today. Her follow-up panel on Saturday, “Shojo Manga’s Lost Generation,” was similarly informative as we got to learn about the creators involved with shojo manga before the 49’ers showed up.
The real highlight of Megan’s trilogy of panels, however, was her con-closing “The Story of Animerama.” “Animerama” was a series of three films produced by Osamu Tezuka’s Mushi Productions that were done with the intent to produce… ART! While their first production, “1001 Nights” was a modest critical and commercial success, things were all downhill from there. “Cleopatra” and “Belladonna of Sadness” were doomed due to their unfocused production schedule and subsequent animation crunch, Tezuka’s control-freak tendencies, and all-around lack of money. Megan did an excellent job detailing the production struggles each film faced while also providing some clips to illustrate their eccentric, iconoclastic, anachronistic, and/or avant-garde appeal. Learning about these films and their stories was a great way to wrap up the convention as this was a subject that I didn’t know a whale lot about going into the panel. The best way to illustrate how well Megan presented things is to say that I went onto Amazon afterwards and bought all three films on blu-ray.
So that was Virtual Fanime 2021. I’ll look forward to flying out to San Jose next year, but attending all of the panels online this year was a great reminder of what I like about the convention. I learned new things, I laughed, I was entertained, and I got introduced to new and interesting people in the course of attending these panels. Kudos to the convention staff for making sure things ran smoothly on a platform that I had never heard of before (Whova) and for sorting out my registration when I didn’t get the confirmation e-mail. Virtual Fanime could’ve been a trainwreck, but it reminded me of what I love about the con and I definitely felt that my $10 and change were well spent in attending.