Tokyo International Anime Fair 2009
Uh oh! Looks like some kid broke his beautiful automail arm again.
Friday and Saturday was TAF 2009. An anime convention targeted to not only the locals but foreigners as well!
It's the best time for animation studios to present their upcoming new Spring Anime Lineups. So lots of previews and advertising to be had.
Unfortunately, I couldn't get myself to wake up early enough to manage to get any seiri-ken (the tix you need to get front row access to events or to get a seat for the special stage). Instead I slept in and showed up around 1ish and just winged it. I was too late for the 07-Ghost event and I figured trying to make the GL and any Kacky event would be futile so my main goal was to at least attend the PandoraHearts booth. PH which I started reading earlier this month is currently one of my top faves when it comes to fantasy and shounen/hybrid manga. I highly recommend it along with 07-Ghost.
Hetalia Event
Anyhow, we headed to the Media Factory booth to get a spot and luckily we made it right before the cutoff when they started sending people away. We found out that the next show would be Hetalia!! Woo Hetalia!! Thank goodness it was an anime I cared about. So we attended two public recordings for the Hetalia web radio show. One was the Italy version featuring seiyuu Namikawa Daisuke (Italy) as the main personality and Sugiyama Noriaki (England) as the guest. For the second show, they switched it up with Sugiyama as host and Namikawa as guest. One thing I learned in watching both the shows was that Sugiyama is the better host. Namikawa was amazed at how well Sugiyama led the show and kept commenting "So THIS is a radio show!" Sugiyama's amazing. He's improved so much over the years. He's much better at being a radio personality now and I think he's gotten better with being comfortable on stage. To be honest, I was a bit worried about what kind of stereotypes they might throw out there during these two shows....since this is Hetalia afterall. But luckily, they stayed pretty PC enough. They did mention about England being known for having bad food but I liked how Sugiyama was quick to defend England by stating not only stating the reason why it has that reputation but also noting that lots of popular food like steak and meat pies actually come from England. Everyone was impressed by Sugiyama's research.
Pandora Hearts event
After the Hetalia event, there was the PandoraHearts event. It was also a public broadcasting for the radio show. So the hosts were Minagawa Junko (Oz) and Toriumi Kousuke (Raven). The guest seiyuu were Kawasumi Ayako (Alice) and Hanzawa Kana (Sharon). The main goal of the broadcast was to introduce the story of PandoraHearts to the audience. So first they introduced their own characters. This was very difficult because well all Hanazawa Kana could say about Sharon was that she's a member of Pandora and all Toriumi could say about Raven is that he's also a member of Pandora who for now seems like a good guy. Both of them couldn't really explain more because any other details *whispers* Gilbert would pretty much be a spoiler.For the next segment they did a Challenge. They had to explain different Jargon from PandoraHearts but the catch was that they had to pull a paper out of a box (which was really a bag) that instructed them on how they were to give the explanation. So Kawasumi had to explain what "Abyss" was while doing monomane (an impression of someone). So she explained abyss as if she were Nakama Yukie (from Gokusen). Next, Hanazawa Kana had to explain what a "chain" was in get this---ENGLISH!! Woo! She was really nervous at first and Toriumi suddenly told her it's ok if she doesn't do it in English, she can use French or German any foreign language would be ok. But thank goodness she mustered up the courage to explain in English. Her explanation was something like "Chain is a monster. Very very dangerous." Somehow I think Toriumi would've enjoyed an English challenge because since she kinda said her English really slowly and a bit katakoto (broken)...he summed it up in one go once again in a more fluent manner.:p But kudos to Kana I think explaining any of the PH lingo takes a bit of thinking even in Japanese (thier native language). Minagawa's challenge was to explain the organization of "Pandora" in Kansai-ben. She did a good job despite being hesitant at first since she says shes really bad at Kansai-ben. Toriumi's challenge was to explain the Tragedy of Sabrié/Saburie no Higeki while adding ~nya (~meow) at the end of everything. Very cute!
Before we knew it, it was time for the show to end. But just before leaving the stage, Minagawa mentioned that the mangaka, Mochizuki Jun was in the audience. I had noticed her before because she was in the front row and had a special pass but had no idea it was sensei. It's so cool that she attended. ^o^ She seems just as excited as her fans about the anime.
I'm looking very forward to the anime!!
After the event, my sis and I walked around to the other booths for awhile before calling it a day. It was a very fun day.
PS: I apologize in advance for any typos. It's almost bedtime and I'm too exhausted to proofread. ( - . - ) zzzz