Anime Boston
Good stuff:
- Having Professor Daryl Surat on hand for the proceedings
- Dubs that Time Forgot packed the joint. Sure, it was probably because they were waiting to get into the dealer's room, but they sure laughed at Robotech: The Movie, Ushio and Tora (featuring two separate dubs with the same cast!), and Lady Kishiria from Gundam getting her head blown off in two separate English versions. (The theme was anime "mulligans," so I had six or eight titles that had been dubbed multiple times.)
- Anime Eiga: 25 Years of Anime Cinema 1945-1970 semi-packed the joint. My ROOTS OF ANIME DVD did not arrive in time thanks to a power outage in Seattle, so I didn't have Momotaro's Sea Eagles, but translator extraordinaire Neil Nadelman brought Momotaro's Holy Sea Warriors AND a really nifty book of anime short and feature films from Japan. We wowed the crowd with PANDA AND THE MAGIC SERPENT, THE LITTLEST WARRIOR, GULLIVER'S SPACE TRAVELS, that pretty gnarly Cyborg 009 movie that was the first example of Toei cheaping out on theatrical animation, and of course, PUSS N' BOOTS.
- Anime Hell was a success, despite being in a little panel room. The crowd fluctuated (possibly owing to some early problems with the 3D goodies) but as you can see, the die-hards were rewarded with the ultimate in crappy big-screen gimmickry! Mike Horne brought that goodness, Daryl brought a lot of amazing stuff, and I cooked up a few new bits (including a ton of random, unsettling SUPERBOOK snippets) as well. I thoroughly enjoyed running Hell for a decent crowd (I ran a version of it at GenCon SoCal 2005, but about a dozen people showed up) and look forward to trying it again next year.
- Panel to the West almost didn't happen! See, I left my laptop cable at home that morning, so it wouldn't last the panel (my laptop is from 2005, its battery has seen better days). Fortunately, I had all of the goodies on an external hard drive, so an hour before the panel I endeavored to put them on Daryl's laptop. Well, it turns out the hard drive enclosure was broken! Good thing I noticed this-- if I'd taken the laptop cable, I probably wouldn't have, and would've had to TALK to people at the panel! One Jason-Statham-from-CRANK-esque high-speed running trip to Radio Shack later, it was all set. I kinda pulled it out of my ass (I only finished Arthur Waley and David Kherdian's two separate translations last week, and had trouble remembering some stuff), but the crowd still loved it, particularly the awesome Albarn/Hewlett BBC Olympics intro I saved for the end. Luckily for me, there was only one Chinese-speaker in the audience, and he didn't need to correct me too many times.
- The Absolute Worst of Osamu Tezuka could probably just be the CLEOPATRA panel. Sure, Daryl and I also showed bits from live-action ASTROBOY and VAMPIRE and AMBASSADOR MAGMA and PHOENIX 2772 and the live-action PHOENIX: DAWN and DORORO, but the crowd went crazy for the freakshow cartoon-heads from the intro, Ceasar looking for a urinal, ancient roman gunfights, etc.
- I also helped out on Geoff Tebbetts' Nandeyanen! Japanese comedy panel. Did a skit with him, acted like a goofball, got some laughs. Geoff did a great job on a one-man show at the end, and I'd also like to say that he should develop his rakugo skills more, that seemed interesting!
- The con itself was immense and pretty awesome. No registration line problems like last year, plenty of room, plenty of events (I finally got to play the Hokuto no Ken PS2 game), neat guests, etc. I went to my first convention swap meet, which was quite busy-- I unloaded some hentai DVDs I'd reviewed for the old HENTAI JUMP years ago and not touched since, dumped some strategy guides and crummy video games, and walked away with that pesky last KING GAINER volume (yes!) and a freaking Amuro Ray halloween mask (YES!!). Dealer's hall also had some good scores, including the new Fist of the North Star movie direct from Discotek (finally met Selby!).
All in all, it was a damn good experience. I'm hearing that pals in the other three(!!!!) huge conventions in North America last weekend had a good time as well.