Worry vs. Donuts

(originally posted on ANN)

Special guest message: Around lunchtime, I found myself reading Shokotan Blog, the extremely popular blog of AX Guest of Honor Nakagawa “Shokotan” Shoko. Unfortunately, the blog’s top post at the time yielded a bit of bad news: Shokotan was unable to give any kind of opening greeting at the Opening Ceremonies this morning. This afternoon, we did an interview with her for an upcoming ANNTV segment (coming soon!). Since I felt bad that she wasn’t able to say her greetings this morning, I let her open the interview with them. Here’s a bit of what she had to say:

“I’m giza excited to be here in California among all these anime fans for Anime Expo! My first live show in the USA is Saturday, so please come watch the performance!”

As a side note, in case you’re wondering…

GIZA: “Giza” means “very.” Example sentence: “This is giza cheap!” Shokotan hopes that this word can become a slang term in the USA as well, so there you have it. Practice it, use it, tell your friends.

Times I was almost killed with a buster sword today: Only once! That, plus the generous width of all the hallways, may be the best fringe benefit of AX moving to the LA Convention Center. Sure, there are still people that insist on stopping to take pictures in the middle of doorways, but for the most part, the convention has struck a good balance between “empty” and “crowded.”

But what do the fans think? That’s the question I posed to a few groups of fans I met in the hallways. There seems to be a general consensus about one major thing: the space is a whole lot better. “There’s more stuff to do this year,” remarked one fan, while another mentioned how thankful he is that the dance, the arcade, the karaoke, and all the video rooms are in the same place instead of strewn through multiple hotels. However, while there’s ample appreciation for the LA Convention Center, LA itself isn’t that popular among the attendees. One Pokemon card player was quick to criticize the area: “My friends have been harassed by bums. In Anaheim, people could hang around outside and mingle. We’re stuck indoors here.” Other fans were a bit more forgiving; one girl cosplaying with her friends remarked on how the city seems safer than she expected it to be. 

Beyond the venue: Aside from venue-related comments, the registration process continued to be mentioned as a reason fans are happier with the convention this year. I have yet to meet anyone who says they waited in line for more than 10 minutes. 

Show some love: Every convention, I head into the Artist Alley in search of talented artists that will take my cash and give me nice looking art in return. Although there is a fantastic amount of talent in the North American fan community, it’s far more difficult to find someone to publish your work here than it is in Japan. So, for your viewing pleasure, here’s a look at some of the artists in this year’s alley:

One week after launching a new non-deviantArt site and original art gallery, Finni and partner-in-crime Zimmay have seen a good deal of traffic at their table to buy buttons and other cute stuff. Across the alley, Bryan Wong and Studio Constancy Roman have taken matters into their own hands: they’re on their third self-published volume, a collection of the comic Seasons of Constancy. Aside from working on fanart and other stuff for AX, Agnes Wiguna has some new color stills up from her short film Layang-Layang. If a softer colors and tones are your thing, you might want to check out the work of Lisa Tao. Finally, Vivian Lai has some shaded L stills for the Death Note fans.

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A look back at the Wednesday before Anime Expo 2008:

So far so good? Perhaps. After chatting with a handful of fans who hit the registration lines on Wednesday, I’ve heard comments that are both good and bad. The good: lines moved quickly and the convention didn’t close things down early as they have in previous years. The bad: the badge printing system had a few errors, a few duplicate badges were printed, and some badges had information missing. The real test for the system begins tomorrow, as both pre-registered fans and “at the door” fans rush to fill the…

Gigantic Event Hall: The LA Convention Center looks as if it could fit the entirety of the Long Beach Convention Center inside it three times over. This should help fix a lot of the space and line issues fans experienced last year, but I can’t help but feel that the amount of space may wind up feeling a little excessive. 

AMVs: One event I expect will be a whole lot better this year is the Anime Music Video contest. Last year’s errors, not the least of which was most of the show vanishing along with the laptop of the person in charge of things last year, left a lot of AMV fans feeling burned. This was one of the things that AX marketing guru Chase Wang specifically mentioned would run smoothly this year. Considering the growth and popularity of the contest (not to mention the vocal fanbase), I would be extremely shocked if it has the kind of problems it did last year. 

Artist Alley: Last year, Anime Expo caught a little flak for putting the Artist Alley in… well, an alley of traffic. Reflecting that, the convention has moved the alley into a separate room this year and is encouraging the artists to avoid sit down sketches and to keep traffic moving. Hopefully the wide open spaces of the convention center will help with space issues, but I still expect things to be crowded. After all, it took less than five minutes for Anime Expo to sell out the Alley this year. 

I’ll be back tomorrow with a report from Day 1!

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