BACK TO THE INDEX.
-By Philip Wesley-
-Posted June 8, 2005-
-STUFF!-
Oklahoma Roads are not really roads at all, just randomly placed bits of concrete with little to no identification to differentiate them from other randomly placed bits of concrete. So, when you turn onto one that you think may be correct, there is a a fifty percent chance that you are absolutely wrong. Thus, traveling in Oklahoma is characterized by moving in one direction, not on one road. Driving through, we were never lost. We were just a might bewildered for almost an hour or so.
Texas roads have an interesting ability to not be on the map. I think that is because people tend to think Texas is a wild and savage land that is both un-navigatable or able to be tamed. No. Texas is just full of long and boring roads that lead into clustered and traffic heavy cities.
A-Kon was at the convention center near the Adam's Mark in Dallas, Texas again this year. The hotel is pretty good. It has elevators that make your ears pop as well as lighting which eventually forced me to use the night time setting on my camera. The Adam's Mark is connected to the convention center and to a small mall by a series of skyway bridges. Those are kind of neat. I wish I had THIS kind of closeness to E3. But, E3 closes and A-Kon goes on all night. They had a bunch of events. Some of which I did not attend. They had a definate focus on webcomics. That was something that really was not appreciated. I mean, if you have to talk a CLASS on how to be funny.. chances are: IT WON'T HELP.
One odd thing about A-Kon is how much excess swag from other conventions is represented there. For example: GameStop provided extra stuff like Dead or Alive Figurines of Kasumi, Master Chief mini figures, Tekken Art Books, Prince of Persia Art Books, as well as a ton of Atlus Cell Phone Straps, and other small hold-overs. Loads and loads of Atlus straps. More power to Atlus in that respect.
Friday was fairly dull as there really was no major conferences. The big events I went to were a bit of a Q&A with a person from Madhouse. The best quote from that was when he said that the decline of Japanese Animation and the growing popularity of Korean animation will be the death of the industry. He spoke and then a translator spoke. I can understand a little bit of Japanese, mostly basic words and phrases. So, I could understand a bit more than the translator stated. Also, a lot of Japanese people, particularly business people, have a tendency to prolong various syllables as they speak. To the effect of saying: "I would prefer toooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo maybe do this that waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay and not this way." I think this may be a regional drawl. I will have to study more. I got to ask a question and I asked if he prefered original properties to manga properties. His response is that both are equally good if both are interesting. I should have expected that as I made the mistake of asking an "AND/OR" question. When dealing with -particularly business- people from Japan, it is a good idea to keep in mind that -mostly due to the moral nature of the country- you should keep things marginal and not absolute. I should have asked: "Do you like it when you have to work within a set schedule determined by a manga?" That would have narrowed it down while keeping it ambigious. He was asked if he liked making shows set in the United States. His response was that Gungrave and Trigun are both set in the United States and that a project he can not mention right now will be set in New York and deal with the mafia. This project will be out next year in the Fall. They also showed the cartoon: 68 x 41 which is essentially a gift from Madhouse to Rintaro and Otomo. (The director's of Metropolis, X and Akira respectively.) It features characters based on their likeness racing on bicycles. He also said that Dallas, Texas had one word about it: Big. Big city, big people, and big hearts. Although, he made a motion with his hands that almost seemed to suggest big breasts, we will just assume he meant hearts. Yeah.
Went to Tofu Records conference and they spoke of their upcoming L'Arc ~en~Ciel album "Awake" as well as T.M. Revolution "Vertical Infinity" and Asian Pop Generation. Also, Yuki, and Tommy February/Tommy Heavenly. I got a few pins and a Polysics poster. The Polysics are a bit like Devo. I love their video with the bad robot that kicks children. I won a L'Arc~en~Ciel promotional single cup that was released with the release of "Ready, Set, Go." That song is the opening theme to Full Metal Alchemist. Tofu Records is hiring apparently. They are understaffed and they also need people for their street crew to pass out promotional flyers and such for their concerts, bands. Sweet deal.
The concerts were interesting, but not for what happened on stage. The first band was ZZ and they were pretty good people. I was sitting in the front row in the press pit. (Oh, yeah.) Anyways, during the first song, they kicked two beach balls into the audience and knocked out a ceiling light fixture. This promptly fell and landed on the guy behind me, shattering it in half and hitting a girl near him in the face. Part of the fixture landed in my lap. Which was surprising. The guy that got hit left the crowd leaving a trail of blood. This didn't disrupt the concert as the security had people stand back a bit and got it taken care of. This delayed the next act by a little bit as they replaced the light. The guy and girl were fine. The guy was back inside by the last concert and he sat next to me. They removed two of the chairs because of blood stains. One of the chairs was the chair I was sitting in. I was wearing my black Legend of Zelda shirt and it appears to be blood stain free. They recovered the balls very quickly from the audience. ZZ does the opening theme to a show called Samurai Gun. It is a samurai show where the samurai uses a gun instead of a sword. How... original. the band was cool, but back to the accident. The glass fixtures are about the size of a pringles container and appear to be a semi-hard plasti-glass. (Shatter proof) It hit the guy -who did not want to be named- on the side of the head, a bit above his ear. Some of the security and staff were unsure of what happened. Luckily, I wrote it down and was able to help inform the people who needed to know, what they needed to know. They blamed the injuries on moshing. Although, you and I both know that is not what happened. Pretty interesting time.
Kumiko Kato was next and she can certainly shake her hips seductively. She is a new artist and she sings Japanese Pop music. I refered to her as an Asian Lindsay Lohan. While that may seem mean, it is entirely true. She's the type of artist you would hear on Radio Disney. Frankly, there is cross-over potential here. She sang a few songs while gyrating around the stage. All in all, she's not the ultimate Gal. She's more like the kind of person who idolizes the ultimate Gal but forgot all the iron-clad rules.
The last act of the night was Dream. They sing one of the ending themes for Inuyasha. The band is a two girl band with back-up dancers. They did an encore performance of "Night of Fire." They sound like DDR artists. Frankly, I liked it for what it was: "Good fun dance music that does not offend my senses." I would go watch their concert again. The two girls in the band remind me of that pop star in Skyhigh and The Princess Blade. In fact, the band and their back up dancers (aside from the male one) remind me of the girls that were murdered in Skyhigh. Dream gaurds the Gate of Spite. Skyhigh is a pretty kick-ass movie by the director of Aragami, Azumi, and Versus. Check it out. The shocking wedding sequence is really cool. The best part of the night? The peace sign heart shirts that Dream's back up dancers wore. It looks more like "I PRETZEL WORLD" than "I HEART WORLD." That FREAKING rocks. I PRETZEL WORLD.
The conferences were really rather small this year. Here is the lowdown on them. ADV announced nothing new and said that they maybe, might, kinda sorta might, not too sure for real may make thin pack boxes for Super Gals season 1 and KaleidoStar season 1. The new thin pack boxes will be stripped of extras, ALL extras. So, they will be less discs and less price.
Bandai announced nothing at all. They did allude to PSP releases of Gundam Wing, Gundam Seed, Cowboy Bebop TV, and Vision of Escaflowne TV. There is not much else there either. I asked about PSP releases as well as how much Nintendo owns of Namco/Bandai. The person running the panel said that the PSP is not aimed at the anime audience. That was a pretty interesting statement. Bandai appears to be supporting the UMD format, but the PSP is not aimed at a general audience apparently. What he means by this is that the format has zero to few extras, quality is lower than some tv sets and DVDs, and the format is not cost effective. Funimation is currently taking a wait and see approach on the PSP. ADV is not even considering it. The reason ADV snubbed the PSP was that very few people own them and even less people would buy anime for use on them. When people tout numbers of 100,000 sell through on titles like Resident Evil 2, or House of Flying Daggers.. they forget that even grade F products of anime sell through in the 100,000 radius. There are 300 million plus people in the United States, the perspective audience for an anime title is at least a sell through of 500,000 units to be a good selling title. In other words: The UMD market is the same as the Laser Disc market. It's really not there. At Funimations conference, they announced Basalisk. There was not much anywhere, sadly. the good stuff was I won stuff.
Stuff I won:
ADV: Full Metal Panic: FUMOFFU V.1 With a box.
BANDAI: Planetes V.1 & a Scrapped Princess shirt.
FUNIMATION: Kiddy Grade V.1
That was pretty cool. The rest of the evening was reasonably consumed by just wandering around taking pictures of people with Squishy. That is why there are so many Squishy pictures. Some of them will be on A-Kon TV. In the future, they may show up on Adult Swim, Newtype, or G4 as advertisement goods. We'll see how that turns out. Thursday was pretty dry, Friday was cool aside from the killer concerts. Saturday was full of conferences and such, and Sunday was a massive drive home.
Things I bought:
Three little Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap Cell Phone Strap Figures. $2.50 each. They are awesome.
I also bought a little bit of food.
Total money spent: $15 total at the convention.
Total money spent on gas: $45+ >_<
Article by Philip Wesley
Property of DMG Ice, dmgice.com, and the original author as expressed in the by-line.