CmdrTaco's Journal: AnimeNext

This has been a year of firsts for me, and not the least of these was my first Anime Convention. For those who know me, I'm an anime junkie. I have watched thousands of hours of anime. I have a giant wall of DVDs. I have many gigs of fansubs. I eat this stuff up. And I always thought I was pretty informed. It was just flat out strange to be put into my place at a convention where I was simply average. Humbling perhaps, but very fun.

All in all, AnimeNext is one of the best shows I have ever attended. I have gone to a great many tech shows around the world in the last 5 years, but rarely have I been treated so nicely by the show staff. I was only speaking on 3 panels, but I was treated better than at shows where I was the keynote speaker. That's the sort of thing that really sticks in my memory. The friendliness, the helpfulness, and just the flat out caring that was displayed towards my wife & I was truly a rarity. So to everyone who put on the show, pat yourselves on the back. You earned a fan.

Of course since this was my first anime con I had many new things to witness... not the least of which was the cosplay. I found this absolutely fascinating. The photos you find on the net don't do justice to the attention to detail that many of these kids put into their outfits. But it's really the volume of costumes that boggled my mind. There are hundreds of people dressed up. They are everywhere. You walk down a haul and see Naruto talking to Faye, and being interrupted by Witch Hunter Robin. The costumes run the gamut from the obvious Toonami stuff, all the way to obscure old stuff, and even bleeding edge stuff that has yet to washup on American shores. Very cool.

I also enjoyed the anime music videos. Some very skilled people put together some quite amazing videos. OF course some of it was absolute crap, where it looks like a 9 year old with iMovie just strung together a bunch of shots, but some videos were shockingly professional, and very clever. In Particular, the video for 'I Wish I was a Lesbian' was pretty amazing. It was perfeclty lipsycned with shots from FLCL, and mixed together comical sequences from several favs including Eva, His & Her Circumstances, and Bebop, and was really well done.

So in short I had a great time, and hope to find myself at more Anime conventions in the future. Kathleen has decided to construct some Persocom ears for herself so she doesn't stick out in the future... of course, I was pushing for Faye, but I'll take what I can get. At least it's not a full sized Ebichu costume ;)