Anime Expo Day 3: The Drawing
We managed to successfully restart our TV and connect it to the app. It still doesn't get along with the remote, but since the app is working consistently (for now), it looks like we probably have a while before we have to buy a new TV. Our Trollhunters viewing continues uninterrupted.
But we still have our Anime Expo grand finale to report on! It turned out way better than we ever expected! ...But maybe not all that interesting. See for yourselves!
We lined up for the Nakaba Suzuki Live Drawing and Q&A panel...and there were surprisingly few people in line with us. There were still lots of people in the waiting area, though. They were all waiting for the panel after the live drawing, which was the DanDaDan premiere. (They weren't clearing rooms between panels most of the time, but the DanDaDan premiere was for ages 18 and up, so they had to make sure to get all the minors out.)
I was just like, "Don't these people know that a legendary manga artist is going to be drawing right in front of us? I could watch stuff like that for hours. (In fact, we have. We didn't mean to watch all four hours of Hiro Mashima drawing sketches for fans around the world back in 2020, but it was just so fascinating, we couldn't pull ourselves away.) On the other hand, since sketches are often given to audience members at panels like this, the low turnout raised our odds of getting one considerably, so for that reason, we couldn't complain too much.
The panel itself was great! I mean, obviously it was already full of a manga artist drawing sketches, which would have been peak entertainment in and of itself, but there was also an interview! This time, it focused on getting to know Suzuki-sensei and his career. Like, he was asked what he would be doing if he wasn't a manga artist, and he said probably nothing. He wanted to be a manga artist since he was four years old, so he hadn't considered any other career. He spent all his time at school drawing manga, to the point where his teachers were like, "Dude." His parents didn't really support him in it, either, although they're fine with it now that he's successful.
(We know a little bit about what that's like. Our mother always thought this anime thing was a phase, too. But to her credit, when we got to college, she tried to guide us to a career path that acknowledged our obsession with Japanese pop culture. Our brains just would not process computer science, so making video games was not really an option for us.)
Early in the interview, the interviewer mentioned to Suzuki-sensei that she'd heard he had a reputation for drawing very very fast. He confirmed that that's true, and in fact he has never missed a deadline (good news for his chances of getting to see that final voice recording session). Then she said they wanted to see how many sketches he could do by the time the interview was over, and he was like, "Let's do it!" Rolled up his sleeves, and everything. That's when he started pulling out manga manuscript paper and just kept drawing. There was a camera trained over the drawing area so we could all watch, and it was the best. ...It also may have distracted me from the questions a little bit, so let's see if I can remember any others of them.
He talked about his career path some more. At one point one of his teachers said, "You keep saying you're going to be a manga artist, so prove it. Win some awards." (That one of the ways to get to be a manga artist in Japan--you submit manga to competitions and if you win the competition, you get a contract to draw manga.) So he won, and it was great...but then things kind of went downhill from there, so everybody thought it was a fluke. Eventually, he made it, though! (As we all know.)
He was asked what manga artists influenced his art, and Athena and I were like, "If you haven't already guessed Akira Toriyama..." Sure enough, Toriyama-sensei was on the list. Suzuki-sensei said he got to meet Toriyama-sensei once and got some encouragement from him, so that's pretty neat. ...I also remember Suzuki-sensei saying that he really likes to draw muscles (as you can tell from Meliodas's twelve-pack). I think that was when he mentioned being influenced by Kinnikuman...
The interviewer also mentioned that she noticed that, while Suzuki-sensei was doing autograph sessions, he was keeping a tally of which characters people were asking for, so she asked who the most popular were. This is where his editor had to come running on stage, because it's really the editors who keep track of all that stuff. If I remember correctly, the first day, Ban was the most popular, the second day it was Ban and Meliodas, and the third day...I forgot. I'm really not surprised that Ban is the most popular character in the US, though. Even the English dub voice of Meliodas says his favorite character is Ban.
You may be wondering if answering questions slowed Suzuki-sensei down at his drawing, and as a matter of fact it did, but I don't think for the normal reason. At first, talking while drawing didn't seem to affect him at all, but at one point (fairly early on), the interviewer told him he needed to slow down with the drawing, so sometimes he would just stop while he told a story or whatever. It was very annoying to me, because I wanted to watch him draw!
We soon found out the reason why, though. The interviewer was indeed planning to give the sketches to lucky members of the audience, to be determined by trivia questions! The interview was about half an hour long, so she had prepared three questions (for three sketches). I don't know what a reasonable expectation would have been, but the final count was nine. And then Suzuki-sensei was like, "I like ten. Let's draw another one." So he did. XD This was the best panel.
The drawings were: Percival saying I ♥ LA, Meliodas, Arthur (fie!), Ban and family♥, Hawk eating scraps with Meliodas looking on exasperated, Escanor, Tristan (with a thought bubble that had Elizabeth and a heart), Galland... They stopped Suzuki-sensei while he was drawing King dreaming about being big fat King, and the tenth drawing was of Diane, Elizabeth, and Merlin. We suspect he started adding more characters and drawing characters with more lines (like Escanor's muscles (obviously he was shirtless) and Galland's...Galland-ness) after the interviewer told him to slow down.
The interviewer was at a bit of a loss as to how to give away all these drawings with only three questions. Suzuki-sensei didn't even bat an eye, he was all, "Just give away two or three to whoever answers right." The other problem was that the questions were all multiple choice, which makes them way too easy for such fabulous prizes. We told her, "Just don't show us the choices!" So that's what we did. And people answered the questions easily anyway.
The first person to answer a question took the Ban and Escanor sketches. The second person was a Meliodas cosplayer, so naturally they took Meliodas, and Arthur for some reason. (We didn't get a good look at her, but we think there's a possibility she was the one cosplaying Arthur the day before.) The third person took Tristan and Hawk.
Now there were still four sketches left and no more questions, so we turned to the usual anime convention problem solver: the almighty janken. (People were like, "What?" So the interviewer was like, "Oh, you don't know janken? It's rock paper scissors.") This was pretty nerve-wracking because the crowd was pretty small, so we thought there was a good chance one of us could win, but janken is so...janken. It gives you so much time to second- and third- and fourth- guess yourself. You have to just not think, and throw out whatever. And also pray.
I was out after the second round, I think. But Athena managed to stay in! There were only seven people left, so they all went up to the front. One of the women who stood next to Athena was like, "I've literally never made it this far, in twenty years of conventions." And Athena was all, "I know, right!?" They did another round. Athena lost.
But there were only two people left! And four sketches! So they took the two winners to the side, and then they did another round with the five remaining people! And Athena did it! She won!
The first two winners took the sketches of the girls and Galland. Now King and Percival were the only ones left, and Athena liked both of them, so she gestured to the other guy to go ahead, but he actually said out loud, "Go ahead." So she chose Percival, and I think she made the right choice, because Percival was the first one that he drew, he's the main character of Four Knights of the Apocalypse, I think he's adorable, and he was saying I ♥ LA, which makes the sketch extremely unique. (Athena says she absolutely would have taken Meliodas if there was a sketch of him left.) But the best part is! we didn't see it before, because it was outside the range of the camera, but at Percival's feet, there was Sin! Eeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!! Sin/Lancelot is my favorite character, so I was very excited to notice that.
The sketches were all distributed, and the crowd was dismissed, but everyone who got a sketch was invited back to the stage to get it autographed. That's when Suzuki-sensei finally got a good look at Meliodas's friend who was cosplaying Escanor. When Athena handed him the sketch, before signing it, he went ahead and added a few more details. XD
And that was the grand finale of a lovely Anime Expo. Before the panel, the plan was to go to the panel and then get some shaved ice. But after the panel, we remembered the state of the eating area, and we were like, "There is no way we are taking this precious drawing anywhere near that area!" So we decided to go straight home.
Meanwhile, in case anyone was wondering about our friends that we abandoned. I got a message before the panel started that they couldn't get in to see Look Back, because people had been camping out in that room all day, and when the previous panel got out, only thirty people left. Yet another failed attempt at panel attendance. But the good news is that I was able to tell them that people were already camping out for DanDaDan, which is the one thing they mentioned being really excited about. They were able to get in line, which was great, because as we were leaving the panel, we ran into an overflow line outside the hotel. Cecille messaged me afterwards letting us know that the premiere was amazing, and exceeded her already high expectations, so I'm really glad their day ended on a high note, too.
And now here we are, with a really cool sketch of Percival (and Sin♥), tucked away on a shelf, waiting for us to get a frame for it. And we are very pleased with this year's Anime Expo experience.
Today I'm thankful for getting to use our TV, getting to watch Nakaba Suzuki draw a bunch of cool sketches, getting to take one of those sketches home with us, our friends making it in to the DanDaDan premiere, and another fun Anime Expo.
But we still have our Anime Expo grand finale to report on! It turned out way better than we ever expected! ...But maybe not all that interesting. See for yourselves!
We lined up for the Nakaba Suzuki Live Drawing and Q&A panel...and there were surprisingly few people in line with us. There were still lots of people in the waiting area, though. They were all waiting for the panel after the live drawing, which was the DanDaDan premiere. (They weren't clearing rooms between panels most of the time, but the DanDaDan premiere was for ages 18 and up, so they had to make sure to get all the minors out.)
I was just like, "Don't these people know that a legendary manga artist is going to be drawing right in front of us? I could watch stuff like that for hours. (In fact, we have. We didn't mean to watch all four hours of Hiro Mashima drawing sketches for fans around the world back in 2020, but it was just so fascinating, we couldn't pull ourselves away.) On the other hand, since sketches are often given to audience members at panels like this, the low turnout raised our odds of getting one considerably, so for that reason, we couldn't complain too much.
The panel itself was great! I mean, obviously it was already full of a manga artist drawing sketches, which would have been peak entertainment in and of itself, but there was also an interview! This time, it focused on getting to know Suzuki-sensei and his career. Like, he was asked what he would be doing if he wasn't a manga artist, and he said probably nothing. He wanted to be a manga artist since he was four years old, so he hadn't considered any other career. He spent all his time at school drawing manga, to the point where his teachers were like, "Dude." His parents didn't really support him in it, either, although they're fine with it now that he's successful.
(We know a little bit about what that's like. Our mother always thought this anime thing was a phase, too. But to her credit, when we got to college, she tried to guide us to a career path that acknowledged our obsession with Japanese pop culture. Our brains just would not process computer science, so making video games was not really an option for us.)
Early in the interview, the interviewer mentioned to Suzuki-sensei that she'd heard he had a reputation for drawing very very fast. He confirmed that that's true, and in fact he has never missed a deadline (good news for his chances of getting to see that final voice recording session). Then she said they wanted to see how many sketches he could do by the time the interview was over, and he was like, "Let's do it!" Rolled up his sleeves, and everything. That's when he started pulling out manga manuscript paper and just kept drawing. There was a camera trained over the drawing area so we could all watch, and it was the best. ...It also may have distracted me from the questions a little bit, so let's see if I can remember any others of them.
He talked about his career path some more. At one point one of his teachers said, "You keep saying you're going to be a manga artist, so prove it. Win some awards." (That one of the ways to get to be a manga artist in Japan--you submit manga to competitions and if you win the competition, you get a contract to draw manga.) So he won, and it was great...but then things kind of went downhill from there, so everybody thought it was a fluke. Eventually, he made it, though! (As we all know.)
He was asked what manga artists influenced his art, and Athena and I were like, "If you haven't already guessed Akira Toriyama..." Sure enough, Toriyama-sensei was on the list. Suzuki-sensei said he got to meet Toriyama-sensei once and got some encouragement from him, so that's pretty neat. ...I also remember Suzuki-sensei saying that he really likes to draw muscles (as you can tell from Meliodas's twelve-pack). I think that was when he mentioned being influenced by Kinnikuman...
The interviewer also mentioned that she noticed that, while Suzuki-sensei was doing autograph sessions, he was keeping a tally of which characters people were asking for, so she asked who the most popular were. This is where his editor had to come running on stage, because it's really the editors who keep track of all that stuff. If I remember correctly, the first day, Ban was the most popular, the second day it was Ban and Meliodas, and the third day...I forgot. I'm really not surprised that Ban is the most popular character in the US, though. Even the English dub voice of Meliodas says his favorite character is Ban.
You may be wondering if answering questions slowed Suzuki-sensei down at his drawing, and as a matter of fact it did, but I don't think for the normal reason. At first, talking while drawing didn't seem to affect him at all, but at one point (fairly early on), the interviewer told him he needed to slow down with the drawing, so sometimes he would just stop while he told a story or whatever. It was very annoying to me, because I wanted to watch him draw!
We soon found out the reason why, though. The interviewer was indeed planning to give the sketches to lucky members of the audience, to be determined by trivia questions! The interview was about half an hour long, so she had prepared three questions (for three sketches). I don't know what a reasonable expectation would have been, but the final count was nine. And then Suzuki-sensei was like, "I like ten. Let's draw another one." So he did. XD This was the best panel.
The drawings were: Percival saying I ♥ LA, Meliodas, Arthur (fie!), Ban and family♥, Hawk eating scraps with Meliodas looking on exasperated, Escanor, Tristan (with a thought bubble that had Elizabeth and a heart), Galland... They stopped Suzuki-sensei while he was drawing King dreaming about being big fat King, and the tenth drawing was of Diane, Elizabeth, and Merlin. We suspect he started adding more characters and drawing characters with more lines (like Escanor's muscles (obviously he was shirtless) and Galland's...Galland-ness) after the interviewer told him to slow down.
The interviewer was at a bit of a loss as to how to give away all these drawings with only three questions. Suzuki-sensei didn't even bat an eye, he was all, "Just give away two or three to whoever answers right." The other problem was that the questions were all multiple choice, which makes them way too easy for such fabulous prizes. We told her, "Just don't show us the choices!" So that's what we did. And people answered the questions easily anyway.
The first person to answer a question took the Ban and Escanor sketches. The second person was a Meliodas cosplayer, so naturally they took Meliodas, and Arthur for some reason. (We didn't get a good look at her, but we think there's a possibility she was the one cosplaying Arthur the day before.) The third person took Tristan and Hawk.
Now there were still four sketches left and no more questions, so we turned to the usual anime convention problem solver: the almighty janken. (People were like, "What?" So the interviewer was like, "Oh, you don't know janken? It's rock paper scissors.") This was pretty nerve-wracking because the crowd was pretty small, so we thought there was a good chance one of us could win, but janken is so...janken. It gives you so much time to second- and third- and fourth- guess yourself. You have to just not think, and throw out whatever. And also pray.
I was out after the second round, I think. But Athena managed to stay in! There were only seven people left, so they all went up to the front. One of the women who stood next to Athena was like, "I've literally never made it this far, in twenty years of conventions." And Athena was all, "I know, right!?" They did another round. Athena lost.
But there were only two people left! And four sketches! So they took the two winners to the side, and then they did another round with the five remaining people! And Athena did it! She won!
The first two winners took the sketches of the girls and Galland. Now King and Percival were the only ones left, and Athena liked both of them, so she gestured to the other guy to go ahead, but he actually said out loud, "Go ahead." So she chose Percival, and I think she made the right choice, because Percival was the first one that he drew, he's the main character of Four Knights of the Apocalypse, I think he's adorable, and he was saying I ♥ LA, which makes the sketch extremely unique. (Athena says she absolutely would have taken Meliodas if there was a sketch of him left.) But the best part is! we didn't see it before, because it was outside the range of the camera, but at Percival's feet, there was Sin! Eeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!! Sin/Lancelot is my favorite character, so I was very excited to notice that.
The sketches were all distributed, and the crowd was dismissed, but everyone who got a sketch was invited back to the stage to get it autographed. That's when Suzuki-sensei finally got a good look at Meliodas's friend who was cosplaying Escanor. When Athena handed him the sketch, before signing it, he went ahead and added a few more details. XD
And that was the grand finale of a lovely Anime Expo. Before the panel, the plan was to go to the panel and then get some shaved ice. But after the panel, we remembered the state of the eating area, and we were like, "There is no way we are taking this precious drawing anywhere near that area!" So we decided to go straight home.
Meanwhile, in case anyone was wondering about our friends that we abandoned. I got a message before the panel started that they couldn't get in to see Look Back, because people had been camping out in that room all day, and when the previous panel got out, only thirty people left. Yet another failed attempt at panel attendance. But the good news is that I was able to tell them that people were already camping out for DanDaDan, which is the one thing they mentioned being really excited about. They were able to get in line, which was great, because as we were leaving the panel, we ran into an overflow line outside the hotel. Cecille messaged me afterwards letting us know that the premiere was amazing, and exceeded her already high expectations, so I'm really glad their day ended on a high note, too.
And now here we are, with a really cool sketch of Percival (and Sin♥), tucked away on a shelf, waiting for us to get a frame for it. And we are very pleased with this year's Anime Expo experience.
Today I'm thankful for getting to use our TV, getting to watch Nakaba Suzuki draw a bunch of cool sketches, getting to take one of those sketches home with us, our friends making it in to the DanDaDan premiere, and another fun Anime Expo.