Fanime 2018: Worth It — Tech Glitches and All

There’s always going to be tech problems at any con.  Between mechanical and human errors it’s always a matter of “when” things are going to go wrong rather than “if.”  For the first couple of days at this year’s Fanime it seemed like every panel that involved a laptop was hamstrung by some kind of issue.  The lowest point, for John and a lot of other people, was how Saturday’s Anime Music Video competition was cancelled partway through the drama category (but not before John got to see an awesome AMV of the “Magnetic Rose” segment from “Memories” set to a horror-movie version of Beethoven’s “Fur Elise”).  Fortunately from Sunday onward things smoothed out and the AMV contest re-do went off without a hitch, but with an apology from the staff for the problems.

Even with the tech glitches, John and I still had a lot of fun for the time we were at the con.  Most of the panels we attended were entertaining, even with the tech issues, there was lots of cool merch to be found in the Dealer’s Hall and Artist’s Alley, plenty of good food to be had both in the convention center and in the area around it, and plenty of good cosplay to be seen at any moment in the convention center.  Still a win overall, and you can find my thoughts on what panels worked — and which ones didn’t — below.

Q&A With the Knights:  The Twilight Knights are a Renaissance Guild that specializes in combat from the era all in all its forms from around the world.  Even though this isn’t really my thing it’s always interesting to hear someone articulate talk about as subject they’re well-versed in (this will be a recurring theme with these panels).  Their leader, Ben, was shaking off a cold this year but he still had plenty of interesting stuff to say about things like the differences between knives, daggers, and short and longswords and what kind of training you could expect a medieval peasant to get before going off to war (answer:  peasants were only given some training after they survived their first couple of battles).

Jojo’s Bizarre Fan Panel:  I sat in on this because the two panels after it looked interesting.  To my surprise, this wound up being one of my favorite panels of the convention.  It was moderated by two women who had a long history in “Jojo” fandom, which is what this panel turned out to be.  Not a history of the “Jojo” manga, but of its fandom in the States. We got to hear about the days when fans were relying on Japanese-to-Chinese-to-English fan translations, to the time of its first English release of the “Stardust Crusaders” arc and how it was almost derailed thanks to the controversy regarding how the OVA series used a page of the Koran, which wound up being a major international incident on Japan’s side.  Then it was on to the brighter days of when the first PS3 fighting game was given a proper English release and the explosion of “Jojo” fandom once the recent anime adaptations kicked off. The ladies were as excitable as they were knowledgeable with lots of insight into how creator Hirohiko Araki responds to editorial interference and how publisher Shueisha turned a blind eye to “Jojo” scanlations at first. Why? Turns out that there were a lot of American fans buying “Jojo” merch directly from Japan and the publisher appreciated that.

Mythology in Final Fantasy History of Mobile Idol Games:  For reasons unknown to me the “Final Fantasy” panel was cancelled and moved to Saturday and replaced with one about idol games on mobile phones.  Though I’ve got zero interest in this subject, it was in a room I was camping out in and I was hoping that its moderator could find a way to make the subject interesting.  That didn’t turn out to be the case and while I felt bad for the guy because technical issues meant that he couldn’t get his slideshow going for a third of the panel, I spent most of the time there reading through the comics I brought with me.

History of Awful and Weird JRPGs:  I was hoping that this was going to be a Heidi Kemps-hosted panel as she has killed at this convention before with panels on “Hilariously Awful Bootlegs” and “Awful Videogame Voice Acting.”  That wasn’t the case, but the guy who hosted the panel turned out fine enough. He took us through a history of admittedly awful and weird JRPGs spotlighting notable trainwrecks like “Stargazer” for the NES and “Virtual Hydlide” for the Sega Saturn as well as a stopover for SNES classic “Earthbound” to drive home the point that weird doesn’t also mean awful.  It was a solid enough panel, but it was dragged down a bit by the host’s decision to make into a console history lesson along the way as well. If there is a next time for this panel then I hope he just focuses on the games.

Evan Minto:  This writer for “Otaku USA,” among other things, was all over the convention hosting his own panels and MC’ing ones featuring the con’s guests of honor.  It’s easy to see why Fanime was willing to give him so much time because he’s an engaging presence even in his less interesting panels. Which is absolutely not the way I’d describe the first panel of his I saw Anime Before Astro Boy which was a look at the medium’s origins prior to that title’s debut in the 60’s.  Backed up by an impressive array of clips, Minto laid out anime’s origins, influences, and key figures in a way that held my interest through a packed but clear presentation.  He let the clips do most of the talking with Anime Burger Time, which spotlighted the many, many, MANY times anime characters can be seen chomping down on a good burger.  From Bright Noa in “ZZ Gundam,” to an exotic hamburger cook-off in “Food Wars,” this panel was exactly as advertised and plenty fun too.  Less interesting was Radicals of Anime and Manga as we were told about the most notable left-leaning creators in these mediums.  While there was plenty of interesting information to chew on, it didn’t have the same focus of his other panels.  The Changing Faces of Anime was an interesting look at how character designs have changed in anime over the years, while Animation in Anime took us through the nuts and bolts of how anime is animated, how the medium interprets Western animation principles, and spotlighted notable animators in Japan.  The fact that I attended five of Minto’s panels should let you know that I think he’s a panelist I’ll be following at future Fanimes. Much along the lines of…

Richard “MoNgR3L” Neil:  This of my third year of catching Mr. Neil in action and he has yet to disappoint.  Even though his Anime to See Before You Die panels was beset by technical problems at first, once things got underway the proceedings turned out to be great fun.  Rather than rifle off a list of titles, he had everyone pick from a grid of twenty numbers on the screen. Most of the numbers would lead to an eclectic group of series that included “Detroit Metal City,” “Black Lagoon,” “Haibane Renmei,” “Michiko and Hatachin,” “From the New World, and “Urotsukidoji:  Legend of the Overfiend” — one of a couple titles that led to this panel being rated “18+”. Even if his explanations as to why he picked these titles tended to run a bit long, they were very well-reasoned and interesting to listen to. It also helped that I was in general agreement with the titles he picked for this panel — yes, even “Urotsukidoji.”  Also some of the panels led to “surprises” which included Rickrolling and a visit from the B&J Super Squad.

The other panel of his that I attended was Anime’s Fiercest Females, which means that I’ve now seen it for the three years it’s been done at Fanime.  Not only was this year’s selection of fierce females all-new, but it benefitted from an overall stronger selection of clips by Neil.  None of the clips this year featured the character in question getting slapped, which was a definite improvement.

Todd Haberkorn’s HaberTweets:  This was one of the more interesting guest of honor panels I’ve attended at a con.  Instead of talking about his career and doing audience Q&A as is common for most of these kinds of panels, Haberkorn — a veteran voice actor for anime dubs, as well as the man who played Mr. Spock in the “Star Trek Continues” fan-film series — simply sat at the podium and conducted the whole affair via Twitter.  It actually worked pretty well since the actor is also a very witty writer. I even wound up getting on Twitter to follow the panel because while his laptop was connected to a projector, the projection would spaz out every time he posted a new tweet. Once again technical issues impeded my enjoyment of a panel, but didn’t extinguish it.

Cthulhu For President:  In the era of Trump, I keep waiting for the tagline to this panel to become “Now More Than Ever,” but campaign manager Andre Pena is sticking with the still appropriate “Make America Crazy Again.”  While Cthulhu’s cabinet and policy platforms haven’t changed much in the years I’ve been attending this panel, the real fun comes from seeing Pena handle the Q&A session that follows. A few of the questioners had serious ones, most were goofing around and earned his ridicule, and a couple were being so dumb that he sent them to the back of the line.  As I’ve probably said before, Pena is a master of being a dick to the audience, but in a way that’s genuinely funny rather than aggravating.

Pena is also the ironman of this year’s convention as far as I’m concerned.  I say this because between the “Cthulhu” panel Saturday afternoon and the “Hentai Music Video Awards” Sunday night he had his appendix taken out.  He was on a cane and getting by on painkillers, but he still gave it to the Hentai AMV audience as good and hard as he has in years past.

Choose Your Own Yuri Adventure:  That’s what it was called in the program guide, but was changed to the pun-tastic “Choose Yuri Own Adventure” in the panel.  It was exactly what you’d expect: A choose-your-own-adventure-style story with the audience voting on the story choices by volume.  The story itself was just okay as it put us in the role of an American student who is now attending an all-girls school in Japan and the yuri (girl’s love) shenanigans which follow.  That wasn’t much of a problem as the audience was clearly eager to participate and ate it all up, cheering at every trope which came up along the way.

Anime’s Deadliest Warrior:  In which a couple of panelists, who have done “Physics in Anime” panels before, tried their hand at a “Who Would Win in a Fight” series of encounters.  This was notable for the eclectic nature of the matchups, which pitted the likes of Gilgamesh from “Fate” and Dio from “Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure” against each other as opposed to something like Goku vs. Naruto.  It was entertaining… in fits and spurts. The panelists couldn’t get a good rhythm going over the course of the hour and they seemed to realize it as well, saying that they probably wouldn’t do this again.

I Sunk Your Waifu:  This was the first year I was able to take in all that Monday had to offer and what did I see first?  A panel on the immensely popular mobile game (which also spawned an anime) “Kantai Collection.” In case you’re not familiar with it, the game anthropomorphizes famous WWII battleships as cute girls.  I’m not into it at all, but the title was clever and I thought the concept of finding out how these shipgirls were sunk in real life was interesting. To be fair to the panelists, they delivered on that promise.  Did they deliver anything else beyond that? Nope.

Make Anime Great Again:  Fortunately I was able to close out my con experience on a high note with this panel, hosted by a couple of trolls who billed themselves as “The Society for the Preservation of Gen 1 Pokemon.”  They were operating here under the premise that Anime was at its best in the late 90’s/early 00’s and has just been utter crap since then. The panel consisted of them identifying the reasons for this which ranged from terrible fandom to gay sports anime, all of which you should take with a certain amount of salt.  While I can see how some people would be offended by their humor, those people are likely not to be big enough fans to realize when they’re being trolled by the panelists. For everyone who realized how ridiculous these guys were intending to be — which was everyone in the audience — they were rewarded with a great time.  As for me, I’ll have to check these guys out if they’re back for next year.