FanExpo 2016 Report
So it was my first time to Fan Expo (and man is it a money sucker), but everything was pretty organized!
Guests I'll talk about:
-Horikawa Ryo (Vegeta)
-Chris Sabat (English Vegeta)
-Eric Vale (English Trunks)
There were a lot of comic artist guests, but since I don't read much besides manga, I didn't attend any of their popular sketch duel panels. It's too bad they scheduled the Archie comic guests and Jae Lee during the Dragon ball panels. Those ones I would've liked to go to! The artist alley was pretty glorious because of all these famous comic guests, but I honestly didn't have money to spend on Marvel or Archie because the autographs & photo ops were so expensive >_< I wanted to get them all out of the way on Friday, since I was expecting it to be terrible the other days, but all in all, it wasn't too bad on any day since you had to pay for everything. One of the perks of that though, is that the guest is pretty much always at his/her booth and there isn't much of a line. Most guests, you could get a selfie or an autograph, and for Horikawa, you could even get a line recording~
In terms of cosplay, it was mostly Marvel, Harry Potter and English series, but there were a lot of people wearing DB merchandise like a gi or the kame symbol. I did Kaguya from Fune wo Amu (and of course, nobody recognized it because it's an obscure title for this audience and I was in street clothes with my natural hair) and Videl (which I'm not sure Horikawa recognized since he didn't comment, but then again, I don't think Vegeta ever addresses Videl XD ah well, got my picture with him).
The first real panel I went to was Horikawa Ryo (and Chris Sabat) promoting an app called e-manga. They made it sound pretty innovative, and I suppose it is, because it's the first of it's kind, but essentially, it's 2 titles of manga with voice acted panels to follow. The catch is that there are options to read with JP text or ENG text AND JP voice or ENG voice! The shoujo title was Ameiro Cocoa, and they even played some of it for us to see. An added bonus was they played some of Shimono Hiro singing the anime's opening and also, for the first time anywhere, the ENG dub of the song by Vic Mignonga. Taking it a step further, the production team commissioned some VR engineers to create the cafe, Rainy Color, so you could see it in 3D with the VR headset. Pretty cool that you could look to different directions and the view would change to correspond! Horikawa and the develepor that was there told a story when they were playing with the VR headset at a restaurant and the waiters were like "WTF, are you guys doing something suspicious" cuz they're looking around with some crazy goggle-like device on XD After some reassurance that you can't see through the eye pieces to the other side, everyone in the restaurant was wanting to try them on ^^ I guess next time I'm in Hawaii, I'll hafta stop by Rainy Color and see it in real life~
The Dragon ball franchise is one of the few series I enjoy in English so it was pretty great attending a panel with two Vegetas and a Trunks. It's rare to see the JP and ENG voice actors interacting so much, but I guess because Horikawa's Engish is quite good, he and Chris seem to have great relationship. Poor Eric got shafted a bit by his two dads because everyone was asking the Vegetas, but we still got some funny stories out of him. The story of how he got casted was pretty awesome since he auditioned for another role in a previous arc, and Chris thought of him when they were casting for Trunks, but couldn't remember his name. He found a picture though, and showed Bulma's voice actor who recognized him! So it was thanks to Bulma that we got Eric Vale as Trunks~ Nobody asked Trunks for any lines, but since he also voices the tournament announcer, he whipped out his shades and "welcomed" us to the world martial arts tournament （＾ω＾）Of course, fans asked for the famous meme "It's over 9000!" and Horikawa was actually more willing to say it (in English) than Chris XD He was really puzzled as to why it's so popular and why they changed it from 8000 though. They both also said "Kakkarot" which was nice to compare. Someone asked for their best Goku impression and Horikawa did a really cute "Ossu ora Goku~" (＾▽＾) and Chris was just cynical XD He was asked about the Bingo song, and both of them agreed Vegeta probably never sang before. Then he gave us a "Bingo!" Someone asked what other character they'd like to play and Horikawa said he likes Piccolo. Chris plays Piccolo as well so Horikawa said it was amazing that he's Vegeta, Piccolo and Yamcha. I think Eric said Spovovitch because he has like over 200 sounds but 0 lines. When asked about getting the role at first, Horikawa thought Vegeta would die in 4-ish episodes since all the villains that fought Goku died in four weeks. That's why he went all out and made the character evil and great... which he thinks eventually got Akira Toriyama to bring him back (ᗒᗨᗕ) He also said he wants to see more of how Vegeta and Bulma got together and he's glad Vegeta killed Frieza since he was killed so many times by him XD
For the Super panel, it was just Horikawa (and they were recording and translating back everything he said in English so they'll probably be putting it up somewhere for the JP audience). Poor guy has to record by himself when he gets back because he came to the convention (;´Д｀). His favorite Super character is Whis because he's so mysterious and you can't tell how strong he actually is (and he's sort of gender neutral). His favorite arc so far was the fight with the Saiyan from the other universe since Vegeta was trying to train him to be stronger while they fought. He also appreciates the change in Vegeta's personality because in the beginning, everything he did was for himself, and now he's fighting for his family (and he's a tsundere like most Japanese men who don't voice their feelings, but Horikawa said he himself isn't like that :P). He's also proud of future Trunks for growing up to be a good kid :D Someone asked about ad-libbing, and he said all the fighting sounds are up to the actor and that part is left blank in the script. When asked if he was suprised about Black and Zamasu's story, he said he was, and Zamasu's voice actor is really cool. I wish he told us more about his interactions with the cast like MikiShin or Kusao Takeshi, but I guess he was right in not throwing out their names to a crowd that's less into anime >_< Funny things during recording were just like forgetting to go the mic because he was talking about what to eat or something and then just uttering the line away from the mic (´∀｀)
I feel like someone will upload Tom (Draco Malfoy) and Alex's (River) panel so I'm not gonna say much. They're both really friendly though (and very British with the "-love" "-darling" "-sweetie" terms when addressing fans).
Guests I'll talk about:
-Horikawa Ryo (Vegeta)
-Chris Sabat (English Vegeta)
-Eric Vale (English Trunks)
There were a lot of comic artist guests, but since I don't read much besides manga, I didn't attend any of their popular sketch duel panels. It's too bad they scheduled the Archie comic guests and Jae Lee during the Dragon ball panels. Those ones I would've liked to go to! The artist alley was pretty glorious because of all these famous comic guests, but I honestly didn't have money to spend on Marvel or Archie because the autographs & photo ops were so expensive >_< I wanted to get them all out of the way on Friday, since I was expecting it to be terrible the other days, but all in all, it wasn't too bad on any day since you had to pay for everything. One of the perks of that though, is that the guest is pretty much always at his/her booth and there isn't much of a line. Most guests, you could get a selfie or an autograph, and for Horikawa, you could even get a line recording~
In terms of cosplay, it was mostly Marvel, Harry Potter and English series, but there were a lot of people wearing DB merchandise like a gi or the kame symbol. I did Kaguya from Fune wo Amu (and of course, nobody recognized it because it's an obscure title for this audience and I was in street clothes with my natural hair) and Videl (which I'm not sure Horikawa recognized since he didn't comment, but then again, I don't think Vegeta ever addresses Videl XD ah well, got my picture with him).
The first real panel I went to was Horikawa Ryo (and Chris Sabat) promoting an app called e-manga. They made it sound pretty innovative, and I suppose it is, because it's the first of it's kind, but essentially, it's 2 titles of manga with voice acted panels to follow. The catch is that there are options to read with JP text or ENG text AND JP voice or ENG voice! The shoujo title was Ameiro Cocoa, and they even played some of it for us to see. An added bonus was they played some of Shimono Hiro singing the anime's opening and also, for the first time anywhere, the ENG dub of the song by Vic Mignonga. Taking it a step further, the production team commissioned some VR engineers to create the cafe, Rainy Color, so you could see it in 3D with the VR headset. Pretty cool that you could look to different directions and the view would change to correspond! Horikawa and the develepor that was there told a story when they were playing with the VR headset at a restaurant and the waiters were like "WTF, are you guys doing something suspicious" cuz they're looking around with some crazy goggle-like device on XD After some reassurance that you can't see through the eye pieces to the other side, everyone in the restaurant was wanting to try them on ^^ I guess next time I'm in Hawaii, I'll hafta stop by Rainy Color and see it in real life~
The Dragon ball franchise is one of the few series I enjoy in English so it was pretty great attending a panel with two Vegetas and a Trunks. It's rare to see the JP and ENG voice actors interacting so much, but I guess because Horikawa's Engish is quite good, he and Chris seem to have great relationship. Poor Eric got shafted a bit by his two dads because everyone was asking the Vegetas, but we still got some funny stories out of him. The story of how he got casted was pretty awesome since he auditioned for another role in a previous arc, and Chris thought of him when they were casting for Trunks, but couldn't remember his name. He found a picture though, and showed Bulma's voice actor who recognized him! So it was thanks to Bulma that we got Eric Vale as Trunks~ Nobody asked Trunks for any lines, but since he also voices the tournament announcer, he whipped out his shades and "welcomed" us to the world martial arts tournament （＾ω＾）Of course, fans asked for the famous meme "It's over 9000!" and Horikawa was actually more willing to say it (in English) than Chris XD He was really puzzled as to why it's so popular and why they changed it from 8000 though. They both also said "Kakkarot" which was nice to compare. Someone asked for their best Goku impression and Horikawa did a really cute "Ossu ora Goku~" (＾▽＾) and Chris was just cynical XD He was asked about the Bingo song, and both of them agreed Vegeta probably never sang before. Then he gave us a "Bingo!" Someone asked what other character they'd like to play and Horikawa said he likes Piccolo. Chris plays Piccolo as well so Horikawa said it was amazing that he's Vegeta, Piccolo and Yamcha. I think Eric said Spovovitch because he has like over 200 sounds but 0 lines. When asked about getting the role at first, Horikawa thought Vegeta would die in 4-ish episodes since all the villains that fought Goku died in four weeks. That's why he went all out and made the character evil and great... which he thinks eventually got Akira Toriyama to bring him back (ᗒᗨᗕ) He also said he wants to see more of how Vegeta and Bulma got together and he's glad Vegeta killed Frieza since he was killed so many times by him XD
For the Super panel, it was just Horikawa (and they were recording and translating back everything he said in English so they'll probably be putting it up somewhere for the JP audience). Poor guy has to record by himself when he gets back because he came to the convention (;´Д｀). His favorite Super character is Whis because he's so mysterious and you can't tell how strong he actually is (and he's sort of gender neutral). His favorite arc so far was the fight with the Saiyan from the other universe since Vegeta was trying to train him to be stronger while they fought. He also appreciates the change in Vegeta's personality because in the beginning, everything he did was for himself, and now he's fighting for his family (and he's a tsundere like most Japanese men who don't voice their feelings, but Horikawa said he himself isn't like that :P). He's also proud of future Trunks for growing up to be a good kid :D Someone asked about ad-libbing, and he said all the fighting sounds are up to the actor and that part is left blank in the script. When asked if he was suprised about Black and Zamasu's story, he said he was, and Zamasu's voice actor is really cool. I wish he told us more about his interactions with the cast like MikiShin or Kusao Takeshi, but I guess he was right in not throwing out their names to a crowd that's less into anime >_< Funny things during recording were just like forgetting to go the mic because he was talking about what to eat or something and then just uttering the line away from the mic (´∀｀)
I feel like someone will upload Tom (Draco Malfoy) and Alex's (River) panel so I'm not gonna say much. They're both really friendly though (and very British with the "-love" "-darling" "-sweetie" terms when addressing fans).