But in the meantime, here’s an update of projects I’ve been working on:

- Recently attended Otakon in Baltimore, MD. I gave two talks — What’s the Point of Anime Opening & Ending Themes? and Experiments in the Anime Industry: noitaminA — and moderated another Anime in Academia panel. All three went amazingly well and they were well-received. You can even check out a write-up of my noitaminA panel over at Anime News Network (here).

- I wrote an article for the second issue of the Animerca fanzine! My essay focuses on how Toonami was influential in shaping a very new and different generation of anime fans within the United States. You can read more about the magazine here. And double bonus: it will be sold at Summer Comiket 78!

- This is unofficial, but will be announced soon: I’m working on an English translation and international distribution of the Animerca fanzine! More details to come soon.

- And I haven’t put any work into mediaflo.ws, but I am hoping to begin work on that in September or October.

So, that’s about it. I’m really looking forward to New York Anime Festival in October! And in the meantime, please be on the lookout for some more analytical articles in addition to actual anime reviews and some audio podcasts as well!

Anime Boston is almost upon us! If you’re coming up to the city for a weekend at the Hynes, be sure to drop by one or more of my panels to say Hello!

Update (Thursday 18 March 11:30 pm): Time for “Hentai Manga” panel has been moved later into the night.

Update 2 (Monday 22 March 9:30 am): Location for “Anime Themes” panel changed. Also, time for “Cowboy Bebop” panel moved earlier in the afternoon.

Update 3 (Monday 29 March 11:10 pm): Time for “Intro and Ending Themes” panel has been moved earlier in the day.

Friday 12:00 pm noon (Panel 302) – Introduction to Anime Intro and Ending Themes

Friday: 5:30 pm (Panel 306) – After Cowboy Bebop: The Works of Shinichiro Watanabe

Friday/Saturday 1:30 am (Panel 202) – Chains, Trains, and Happy Endings: Japan’s Underground Sex Culture (18+)

Saturday 6:00 pm (107 Panel 6) – On the Road for Anime Pilgrimages

Saturday 10:00 pm (Panel 202) – Impact of Evangelion

Saturday/Sunday 1:30 am (Panel 202) – Hentai Manga: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (18+)

Sunday 1:00 pm (Panel 202) – From Antisocial Loser to Economic Hero: The History of Otakudom

Sunday 2:00 pm (Panel 202) – Anime in Academia

The problem:

Anime con schedules guests, panels, events. Anime con prints schedule one month to two weeks before con. Two weeks before con, schedule changes drastically: panels are added or dropped, events are moved, guests are canceled.

The solution:

Google Docs.

Anime fandom at conventions has changed drastically in the past three years with the mass adoption of mobile technologies (ie., smart phones). Numerous conventions have utilized Twitter for updates and made multiple changes to the designs and interfaces of their websites to push the constant activity of fans on Web-enabled phones into a better comprehension of how the convention works (eg., maps, food, hotels, and particularly schedules). However the latter of this list still proves difficult.

Last year, Otakon experimented with an online personal schedule system, so that each con-goer could manipulate the schedule with highlights of his or her favorite events. Ultimately, it was a good idea with poor execution. Near the main entrance, staffers placed two wide-screen television sets projecting the schedule, which ended up being too big to see the three days in their entirety. Also, with the lack of Internet* in the Baltimore Convention Center, along with not-so-great cell phone reception inside the building, the online schedule was pretty inaccessible.

* This seriously needs to be changed. Too many anime fans rely on the Internet for communication. Anime Boston, at least, has stepped up in the past few years by providing free wireless.

Let me reiterate: We can solve the con schedule problem with Google Docs.

1) Con staffer creates master schedule in Google Spreadsheet. Staffer publishes document as public webpage.

2) Con attendee can download document via phone (after installing appropriate and frequently free app). Attendee can manipulate document via Save As.

3) When necessary, con staffer can update Speadsheet with necessary changes and highlight in yellow. Update then tweeted to convention public.

4) Con attendee can notes changes via Twitter message and download new version of document.

It’s easy. It’s free. It’s scalable (zoom in and out). The staffer can even include a second page on the Spreadsheet with the panel descriptions.

So why aren’t we seeing more convention innovations like this?

This was an actual error message I got many years ago…

Well, due to personal issues, I didn’t make any updates last week. Sorry! I’m still dealing with life at the moment, but I’ll try to put some kind of content up soon.

In other news, I’m applying to law school. I decided to トップをねらえ! and take the LSAT this September. The exam will interfere with New York Anime Festival, but I’m willing to make the sacrifice.

Also, if you sent me an email about Otakon, panels, etc. recently, it may have been added to my Spam collection and subsequently deleted. If you did send me a message recently, please be so kind as to resend it! Thanks.

So, now that our staff at the Department of Alchemy has returned from their much-needed period of hibernation, we’ll be bringing a lot more content to the blog in the next few weeks. Said content will most likely be encapsulated by the following three categories:

First, now that the summer convention season has (for the most part) ended on the East Coast, we’ll be presenting retrospectives on Katsucon, Anime Boston, Anime Expo, and Otakon as well as a few critical thoughts and theories on the contemporary fandom.

Second: audio. We’ve been recording a lot of panel content, which will slowly be thrown into an mp3 format for your listening pleasure.

Finally, and more experimentally, Alex has decided to compose reminiscent articles about his four-month experience living in Kyoto (since he never wrote them while in Japan). Many stories about delicious food, impromptu trips to rural temples via ママチャリ, and of course thousands of photographs.

Have a keen interest in any of these topics? Shout-outs in the comments are certainly welcome. ]]> http://doalchemy.org/2009/07/%e6%ac%a1%e3%81%ae%e3%81%93%e3%81%a8%e3%81%af%e3%80%82%e3%80%82%e3%80%82/feed/ 0 http://doalchemy.org/2009/07/otakon-2009-success-2/ http://doalchemy.org/2009/07/otakon-2009-success-2/#comments Tue, 21 Jul 2009 20:07:34 +0000 Alex Leavitt http://doalchemy.org/?p=657 Continue reading →]]>
Otakon, aka. Animation Fastival 2009

The Department of Alchemy met with another great success at Otakon 2009 this past weekend. We had large audiences come out for all of our panels: Impact of Evangelion (Saturday morning), Anime/Manga Studies (Saturday late morning), The Problem with Otaku (Saturday evening), and Without Watching the Anime: Opening & Ending Themes (Sunday morning).

Our immense audience on Sunday, albeit a poorly compiled image. Click to enlarge.

We may take it easy for the next week, since Otakon ends our summer convention circuit (until September), but look forward to a lot of analytical articles in the next few weeks, as well as many MBs of podcast fodder for the newly-named Department of Alchemy Audio Archive. Thanks to everyone that attended our panels, and it was great to meet a lot of new people down in Baltimore!

No, really, I love Yutaka Yamamoto-san to death.

So, if you’re going down to Otakon this weekend, you might as well stop by a Department of Alchemy panel! As of about 10 minutes ago, one more of our panels has been added to the official schedule. Our new program looks like this:

The Impact of Evangelion – Saturday at 9:00 am in Panel 1

Anime & Manga Studies – Saturday at 11:30 am in Panel 1

The Problem with Otaku – Saturday at 7:00 pm in Panel 5

Without Watching the Anime: Opening and Ending Themes – Sunday at 10:15 am in Panel 3

I’ve received a lot of positive feedback from fans that attended my panels at Anime Expo 2009. Thanks again to everyone that attended!

If you didn’t get to attend, there may be more content available online in the near future. I was approached by Anime News Network, Patrick Macias, and a few other blogs/shows about interviews, so we’ll see where those go.

Also, the Anime Instrumentality Blog has published three articles covering the Without Watching the Anime: Opening & Ending Themes panel. While the trilogy doesn’t cover every detail of the panel, and forgets one or two of the smaller points I wanted to stress (or just show an opening for humor), it’s definitely a thorough reproduction of the panel for those that couldn’t make it out to Los Angeles. The articles are: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

Once again, thank you everyone for attending the four panels on which I spoke at Anime Expo 2009. If you’ll be at Otakon next weekend, check out my panels there!

Anime Expo was awesome, hands down. If I have panels accepted next year, I will make an effort to return, definitely. And there are many critical comments I can make about Anime Expo, such as the relationship between industry and fans, or the large size of the convention as justification for its importance (though in my opinion it shouldn’t have to be). Today, I’m going to focus on the Anime Expo dealers’ room.

Anime Expo’s dealers’ room is gigantic. If you’ve ever been limited to East Coast conventions, I would estimate its size to be slightly bigger than that of Otakon. For illustration, it took me a half-hour to browse through one-third of the floor, and I only stopped at two booths for a maximum of three minutes each.

Because Anime Expo is an industry convention (versus a “by fans for fans” convention), the dealers’ room also somewhat resembles Japanese industry conventions, such as Tokyo Game Show. A lot of booths exist just to advertise wares, such as this Astroy Boy movie booth. Still, while a small number of booths boasted walls of gigantic placards, Anime Expo’s room is littered with ordinary booths that hawk anime, manga, and cat ears.

I’m honestly not one of those junkies who stalk out the dealers’ room on the first day of the con, constantly returning to check up on discounted prices, lurking in the shadows to pounce on that ultra rare figure that I hid in the back corner to elude the price-sniffing of others. I buy a lot of my anime and manga online. In the past, I made minimal effort to visit Tokyo Kid, the anime store in Harvard Square. Usually, I know what I want, and I go online to find it cheaply.

Of course, nowadays with the price of DVDs and books on the decline (you can find videos on RightStuf.com for $10 or less, or books on Amazon for at least 25% off), dealer’s rooms are trying to keep up. On most Sundays the dealers scream at the top of their lungs to make sure every fan becomes aware of their “Buy 1 manga, get 5 free!” bargain. Still, after paying $50+ dollars for the convention (though I haven’t done that in a few years, due to panels), I honestly don’t want to waste a few hours in the dealer’s room only to realize that they don’t have what I want to read. Once in a while, I’ll find a great deal (like all twelve volumes of Tezuka’s “Phoenix” manga for $100 at Anime Boston), but otherwise, why can’t I just find things I want online? I’m not into serendipitous buying sprees after all.

At Anime Expo, I bought only one thing in the dealers’ room (besides an omiyage poster in the Artists’ Alley): a copy of Tezuka’s “Swallowing the Earth,” published recently by Digital Manga. Truthfully, I only grabbed it because I got an in-the-last-15-minutes discount of $20. Otherwise, I looked around at every booth, but bought nothing.

However, I came home with a lot of anime-related booty. The cause? Book Off.

I wrote in an article last week about my experiences at the Book Off in New York City and how it’s easy to find manga on the cheap, usually for $1 per volume. While at Anime Expo, I had the privilege of staying with the illustrious Deb Aoki, writer and reviewer of the About.com manga section. On Saturday afternoon, she drove me and a few writers over at Japanator.com to one of the Book Offs in Los Angeles. While not as large as the NY Book Off, I still picked up a number of intriguing items (all of them in Japanese).

First, I found two not-so-expensive “Groundwork of Evangelion” art books. As you can see from the scanned images, they were Volumes 2 and 3, and I’m not so sure where I should pick up Volume 1, but (again, looking at the scans) I only spent $12.50 and $15.00 respectively. Awesome! Especially when the MSRP of these two books is ¥2500 and ¥3000 (about $25 and $30, though these would easily sell in the dealer’s room for $45+). The books are practically new — only the edges are slightly rough — and the images inside (all production sketches with a few color illustrations in the front) will make any Eva fanboy cream his pants.

The rest of the books I picked up were only $1 each. Pretty awesome finds.

First, I picked up some manga. As I mentioned in that previous article, buying manga at Book Off is a bit difficult, not only because it’s hard to find the comics by their publisher, but also if you haven’t done any research into the comics, you’re not necessarily sure with what reading level you’re challenging yourself. However, browsing through the titles, I happened upon School Rumble, a series that I’ve never read or seen, but one that has been constantly pimped to me by a number of reliable friends. After examining the content, I decided to pick up the first four volumes (there were about a dozen there, but #5 was missing).

Next, hidden among the art book section, I found Katsuhiro Otomo’s early works Anthology. The 250-page, large-size book features about a half-dozen of Otomo’s shorter stories that were never published in English (and, according to Deb, never will be, because Otomo doesn’t like his works localized, apparently). The art is amazing, and while I’ve been looking for good copies of the English translations of the Akira manga for months, it’s certainly a nice supplement.

Finally, also among the art books, I found this $1 piece of curated information on the history and development of anime in Japan. The title reads, “The New Conquering the World Japanese Culture: Japan’s Anime.” This is pretty much the book that needs to be published in America, because it’s a really interesting primer (with hundreds of large, color images!) for any type of anime fan that doesn’t know the basic history of Japanese animation. The text covers a lot of the major players, including Miyazaki, Tezuka, Otomo, Oshii, and Anno, and also provides good context for the commercial markets of kids’ anime and toys. One chapter focuses dually on the evolution of robots and cute girls in anime. The section that convinced me to purchase the book (besides the $1 price tag), though, was the end of the compilation, which provides a lot of information on the history of anime from 1917 to 2003 (the publication date), the digital creation of anime, and particularly the relationship between anime and the television studios that produced them. The last few pages present a nice timeline of anime on television starting with Astro Boy in 1963. The opportunity to look at anime history graphically really hits home the fact that, OMG, there’s a lot of anime out there.

If I have the time in the near future, I’m going to upload a LOT of scans from this book and attempt to translate what I can.

In total, I spent less than $40 at Book Off. Of course, you need to know Japanese to purchase these and actually comprehend them, but still… $40 for 5 volumes of manga and 3 rather impressive texts. And so I return to the thought imposed on the beginning of this article: Is there a future for anime and manga in convention dealers’ rooms? Basically, the answer will always be Yes. But it may be true that the stronghold that dealers’ rooms had on fans in conventions from the 1990s has almost certainly weakened today. Some of this might be attributed to fans not purchasing series after they watch fansubs or read scanlations, but also, with Netflix, Amazon, and other cheap alternatives, fans can own media for much less than in the past. No wonder the American industry is slipping. And with streaming websites that provide free episodes to fans online… Really, how many fans are going to buy the DVDs after they watch it once? Perhaps the real question might be: What kind of value are fans assigning to the media the consume? Where does the line of rewatchability exist for modern anime fans that do not possess knowledge of “anime greats,” like Oshii and Kon, like Anno and Ishiguro? And what might the breakdown be between the consumption of anime and manga versus other things, like cat ears, figurines, and other merchandise being sold in modern exhibition halls?