kyburg | Anime Expo Con Report

Sorry it's late - Life had other plans once it got me back in its clutches.

You've seen Excel Saga, right?

Well, I did a wonderful imitation of Hyatt the entire weekend. Let me back up and explain -

Monday - went home sick from work.
Tuesday - was home sick.
Wednesday - went back to work in anticipation of being gone for four days - and was so tired and wrung out, the drive home was a misery. BTW, it's hot. REAL hot.

Thursday - first day of the con. Jim and I load the TV and DVD player in the car, hastily pack our bags for the weekend and get to Long Beach by 10:00 AM. Meeting up with George, we find out that Animeigo has issued us Exhibitor badges (!) and we get the AV equipment over to the dealer's room. I then explore the dealer's room with Jim, completing the tour at 3:00 PM. I've bought a really nice Inu Yasha illustration book from Crooks Nippon - but I'm about to expire.

Checking into the hotel, we find a line 1.5 hours long to check in. Jim goes home to pick up his badge for work the next day - I check in, and collapse until he wakes me up about 7:00 PM. I get room service about 8:00 PM - tasty tasty mushroom pasta, but I can hardly eat any of it and collapse again to sleep until 10:00 the next day.

That's right. I spent less than six hours total at the con Thursday.

Friday? Jim works, so I have to take him there first. I get to the con site at 11:00 - and have lunch at 11:30 at Rock Bottom. This is about all I can handle - do the shopping in the dealer's room, check out one half hour program in the video room, and go get Jim from work - and back to the hotel. We change and emerge for the AMV contest - which is cancelled at 10:00 PM. I go back to the hotel and collapse again until 10:00 the next morning. I do not feel well at all.

Saturday. We have to go home first to check on the dog as we couldn't bring her with us - and I get inside my house to find the dishes still in the sink and the house totally trashed. I clean up the dishes, but we're delayed again getting back to the convention. Jim goes off to wander - I go over to the Bandai booth, collapse into a beanbag and snooze.

Sunday. Repeat.

Overall? Any time, with one exception, that I tried to show up for a scheduled event, it was cancelled. Made it to the MPS panel (real mech - whoo hoo!) Sunday morning - that looks to firm up into something for the future - they're local and need a documentation goddess who knows XML. We'll see.

The AMV contest was unbelieveable. Such blatant disregard for reality and what it actually takes to get this sort of production together - bad, bad, bad. I can't think of a single event that could have been done ahead any better than this one - but keeping deadlines to the absolute last minute killed this event deader than hell.

After watching year after year as an overworked con staff tries to make this kind of effort come off, I have also approached the con staff year after year to offer to help. I get a strange look (if I'm lucky), a "who the hell are you?" and not much more.

I'm not bothering this year. For the record - it's real simple. You plan to have the show judged, rendered and in the can one week before the con begins. You can make technical mistakes with that kind of lead time. Shit can happen - plan on it.

You lose staff. You can lose elements. But when a staff waits until the very last to finish production -

I'm still amazed they postponed. For the people who only had one day passes, they cancelled the show on them. What could be worse than that?

Was the the worst AX I've been to? No, that would have been last year.

This year, I give them a C+. The dealer's room, albeit small, was very comfortable. Bandai gets highest marks for the best booth ever - half of it handling merch, the other half taken up with a huge screen, soft carpet and comfy beanbag chairs - and showing entire episodes, not just previews.

ADV gets a mixed review - I'm seriously bemused by their emphasis on having a ton of posters to paw through at will - and then building a inner-above into their booth to show videos in - and for throwing t-shirts from. They're loud, brassy, darwin-at-his-best, tons of energy. Why do I get the impression they hate their customers? As I said, bemused. Very bemused. Mixed messages all over the place. We love anime - keep buying stuff so we can keep our jobs. Buy now. RIGHT now.

Pioneer was plugging Hellsing. Period. They even outsourced their product sales through Wherehouse. *yawn*

Viz was its delightful best, as usual. Understated, minimalistic, not too much or too little. Present. With everything - no more, no less.

Animeigo had nothing new this year as they are still glowing from last year's issue of the restored Macross DVD box set. And remastering everything to DVD. They've also revamped their marketing channel this past year and it shows. Gorgeous work.

NewType had the best promotional gizmos. There will definitely be more english-language printed matter in the next year as they are launching a english language version, a new company is forming up (gutsoom entertainment) to issue two new manga magzines and Viz is working on issuing an english language version of Shonen Jump (whee!).

All this without sitting in a single panel.

I hear rumours of returning to Anaheim next year. That will mean smaller quarters, but I think they could stand to loose some attendence - this con is just too big to manage with volunteer help.

Keep in mind - this is my con report, and as such, is colored with my personal biases.