A weekly look into American otaku culture

I was going to wait until I had more pictures of her to show… but I just couldn’t hold it in any longer! (^_^) Just take a look at my cosplaying cutie! This was her first time doing it, but she was wonderful! She every fanboy’s dream come true, and she’s all mine!

See? Didn’t I tell you I love cute things? Now you see which cute thing I love the most!!!!

Well, so much for reporting “on the spot”, huh? It turns out that the convention center has a good lock on the wireless network there, and I didn’t want to pay any money to use it. So that just means that you get to hear about it a day later. That’s okay, I’ve got some things that the other guys didn’t tell you.

FUNimation

I really gained a lot more respect for this company this year. They really seem like a bunch of fans that really love good quality anime. I mentioned before how fun the Kodacha dub premiere was with candy and toy hammers, but I didn’t mention just how awesome the show is. It used to be the most popular fansub, but this was the first time I saw it. I must say, it’s no surprise why fans love it so much. Underneath is your typical good girl / bad boy shojo plot, but then it’s wrapped up with so much wackiness that you can’t help but to get excited and happy over it. I’m really looking forward to seeing more of it in the future.

On Saturday morning they showed a sample of the Tenchi OVA Season 3 dub. The only voice actress that was changed in this version was Ryoko, but she sounded more like the original then any other cast member! She did a perfect job imitating the voice, and you will not notice any difference. If anything, I would have thought that Tenchi or Ayeka voices were completely different.

And the reps from FUNimation were completely cool when I talked to them afterwards about this blog. They liked my idea of merging the fansub and R1 communities, and said they were all for supporting me. I should get an email from them in the next couple of weeks. (^_^)

Geneon

Geneon always seemed like odd one out of the US companies. They seemed to be this separate entity that was untouchable by the fans. When I started my anime club, I tried my best to get in contact with them to get screening permissions for our meetings. Yet they were completely un-reachable, so we never shown anything from Geneon this whole year. Well before the panel, I met up with the rep, Stephen Tang, and talked about the issues I had with their company and club relations. He gave me his business card and told me to email him with requests. So, in case anyone finds this page on a google search, to get screening permissions from Geneon Entertainment, please email stephen.tang@geneon-ent.com.

But poor Stephen was so disorganized with his panel. I wonder if it was his first time or just didn’t know that he was supposed to run it this year. He started off with a bunch of trailers, and I must say, Geneon is the company that knows what I like. First, I got all excited with seeing DearS pop up on the big screen. Then it was shortly followed by the OP for the first season of Girls Bravo. These two were my first favorite fansubs, and I’m really looking forward to seeing them on DVD soon. But then I realized that Geneon really goes for the good shounen romance titles. Ai Yori Aoshi… Chobits… these guys are awesome. I really hope that I get to work more with them in the future, because I really think they’re worth a little more respect.

I did ask one question and got an answer that is very important in the fansub community. The 2nd season of Girls Bravo is NOT licensed! I hope they do license it soon, though, cause it looks like it was a lot better then the first season. But still, now I can finally watch those episodes.

Bandai

Jerry Chu is my bitch. Well, actually, he’s the bitch of a friend of my girlfriend. At least that’s what was said at last year’s convention. We ran into him last year, and he really hit of off with my girlfriend’s friend. Maybe he was flirting… who knows? But he hung out with us this year, so we were looking forward to seeing him again this year. Well, he seemed to be a lot busier this time around selling stuff at the Bandai booth, but he still remembered us and talked to us a little about what he’s been up to lately.

But the guy knows how are to run a panel. He’s such a smart-ass, and he cracks some of the funniest lines about anime fandom. Nothing really big to report, but he did bring up some interesting points about DVD costs these days. I’ll talk about that more in Day 3’s report.

ADV

Nothing really going on here either. The suck bunny was present, but really didn’t effect the panel to much. The only interesting note I can think of would be that they really want to get the Anime Network on the satellite providers. They think this will have anime fans “switch” over from cable to satellite, and thus make more cable companies want it. Hey, the reason way my house switched over to satellite was because our cable didn’t carry the Yankee baseball network. So I think they might be on to something there.

Anyway, time for me to unpack my stuff now and get ready for class tomorrow. I’ll talk more about some fun panels and the current state of the industry tomorrow.