Personal Note: Otakon Report (Day 2)
Jul. 23rd, 2007 09:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nebroadweOn the first day, she attended panels.
And on the second day, she continued attending panels ...
Saturday morning I was, again, up earlier than anyone else, but was joined for breakfast by a pair of my cohorts in their samurai regalia. They were hoping to make it in for the morning showing of Otomo's Steamboy, but we missed the 10:00 Metro by inches and had to wait for the 10:30 train. Which meant that they skipped the firlm, half over by the time we arrived, in favor of other things and I skedaddled into the video room showing the last four episodes of Princess Tutu in time to hear the strains of Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet suite and watch Duck and Fakir's pas de deux again. It was difficult not to sniffle audibly at several points during the final episode, but fortunately the room was not so crowded that anyone noticed. Or unfortunately: this series is so intensely charming, well-conceived and splendidly animated that I'm really surprised it hasn't made more of a splash in this neck of the woods. Sure, it takes a few episodes to get going, but any patterns it establishes it quickly moves on to tweak and explode. But I suspect I preach to the choir here ...
Next I went to find the room where Tsubasa was being shown and had a little trouble -- it was in one of the ballrooms, but it was not at all clear from the signage visible at the top of the escalator that the said ballroom had been divided in two so that something far more popular could be shown in the other half. I nearly ended up in a very long line for the wrong event, but a helpful staff volunteer put me right. I took a seat right next to the projector and had a clear view of the operator's wry grin when he was cheered for selecting the "Japanese with subtitles" option for our viewing. I cheered, too, but mostly because something seemed amiss with the sound system so that anything not being projected in the treble range disappeared into a wash of rumbly humming -- in which case, no matter what language you were listening to, subtitles would definitely help. Thank goodness, someone technical noticed it and twiddled with the speakers to eliminate it when they turned the volume up.
I'm quite enjoying the Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle manga -- I'm not so completely versed in the CLAMP oeuvre to follow all the references, but Del Rey's approach to translation includes very helpful footnotes, so I've never felt lost. I'd heard iffy reviews of the anime and must admit that it's not one of the most stellar adaptations I've seen. I spent the first fifteen minutes regretting that Bee Train had snagged the rights -- what Bones, say, would have made of this piece visually is going to haunt my daydreams for years. The animation seemed rather soft and grainy -- unlike Air or Pumpkin Scissors, it didn't expand well onto a large screen. The music never seems to let up; it's good dramatic stuff, rising nicely to fraught occasions, but doesn't diminish sufficiently in less fraught moments. The plotting is more leisurely than its source material, at least in these episodes, but I have no quarrel with that -- different media, different paces. I do fault the director for wasting seconds, however; we were made to linger over some scenes long after the "Okay, I get it!" point and then shorted on transitions between scenes. And they totally drained the emotional punch out of the opening vignette -- when the manga panels are more vivid and energetic than your storyboards, you need to hire new storyboarders. And yet ... and yet the piece grew on me as I watched: the base narrative is solid, mixing drama with comedy adequately; the character designs are facile and the voice work pleasant; and simply taken for what it is, it's no bad way to spend an hour and a half. I think my godchildren will enjoy it and I do want to see how it turns out, so I suspect I'll be picking it up.
After that I zipped all the way downstairs to the other end of the building for Seki Tomokazu's panel, which I decided to see after the good experience I had at the Mignogna/Blum panel the day before. Seki was one of the first seiyuu I learned to recognize by name, since he seemed to have a part in almost every one of the series I picked up in my first forays into collecting (Escaflowne, Cardcaptor Sakura, Fushigi Yuugi ... ). I like actors with range, and he's got range and to spare. The crowd was miniscule for the room and very polite about lining up for the microphone and most of the questions were sensible, though toward the end there were a few too many "Can you do my favorite line?" requests. Seki spoke through a translator, who did an excellent job making sure nothing got lost in the chasm between languages -- only one person attempted any more Japanese than こんにちは or ありがとう (although someone yelled out, "だいすき!" as things were getting started, to which Seki responded, "Thank you!" :-) The translator took notes as each person spoke, but clearly only to keep track of the salient points; he seemed (as far as I could tell, from what little Japanese I have available) to take pains to pass on each person's comments and questions as completely as possible, but primarily from memory.
Which is why I felt exceedingly bad both for him and the young woman who had worked up the courage to say that she admired Seki's work immensely and had found great solace in some of his characters, who had helped her to understand herself more deeply, and went on to ask some question about the technical aspects of voice work, when one of the stage lights popped loudly and flamed out.
Mild pandemonium ensued, people calling (not yelling), "Fire!" or pointing up and exclaiming, "The light's on fire!" I did so myself, turning around to see what the techies running lights and sound in the back of the room intended to do. Saunter leisurely forward and take a gander at the problem, it seemed (one of my hosts, an engineer, explained later that UL standard is for the light to simply burn itself out without harming anything around it, which is why the techies weren't fazed). Meanwhile, Seki and his translator were bewildered, since they, of course, couldn't see what was happening because the lights were focused on them. "なんですか?" asked the translator at one point.
To which Seki responded, in exact mimicry of half the crowd, "The light's on fire!"
By this time the flames had vanished, so we all laughed. Once it was determined that the show could go on and we wouldn't have to vacate the room or anything, the translator looked down at his notes, then up at the young woman still standing patiently at the microphone, and asked, with embarrassed mien, "Could you repeat your question?"
The whole room made a noise usually represented as "Ohhhhh .... " (rising inflection).
The young woman, sounding more rueful than anything else, responded, "I have to bare my soul in public -- again?"
"Ohhhhh," chorused the room (falling inflection).
The translator shrank a bit, then rallied. "No, no," he said. "I'll do my best. がんばります." And he did manage to get her question across, and the panel moved on with a round of applause for all concerned. The translator had one more bad moment later, when someone asked about Seki's BL work and all the yaoi fangirls in the room started squeeing. Seki reported that while he'd done both seme and uke roles, he prefers the latter because they require mostly reaction, which is easier than trying to get the innuendo into a seme's lines. He then proceeded to demonstrate, playing both roles (seme in an exaggerated growl, uke in an equally exaggerated squeak). Which lines, when all the squealing died down, the translator rendered in the flat, hurried tones of a man performing a duty because he's bound by contract, poor chap. It wasn't clear whether he was still translating when he ended, "And now I can't face my mother." :-)
Somewhere in here (my notes get a little confused about timing), I was able to make yet another foray into the Dealer's Room. I simply couldn't leave without purchasing something from the Kawaii Shop's booth for my offline beta, whose birthday approaches. (Katie, if you're reading this, skip this paragraph until after we've celebrated your natal day!) She's very fond of cute round plushies, so I found her a cute, round cell-phone rest with the face of a duck that I fully expect her to melt over. (Fingers crossed!) Despite my resolution not to spend any more money on myself, I did pick up three volumes of Tokyopop's translation of the Cardcaptor Sakura manga on the cheap -- I'm slowly acquiring the originals to practice my reading comprehension of Japanese with and I find it useful to check myself against a translation every now and then. Besides, it's a good story. I nearly bought a copy of the Tokyo Babylon anime twice (the second time as part of a lot with Now and Then, Here and There and the Utena movie), but managed to talk myself out of it on both occasions. There will be other opportunities, I assured myself. TheRightStuf.com keeps running those sales, after all ...
I beat feet up to the ballroom level again for a showing of Gonzo's Romeo and Juliet anime, about which I've heard quite a bit and was interested to judge for myself. A friend of mine has identified storytelling as Gonzo's biggest weakness, and I think he's right on the money; their original plots (e.g. Last Exile) are much weaker than the ones they crib from somewhere else (e.g. Gankutsuoh) and turn their world-builders loose on. Fifteen minutes after the panel's scheduled start the room had garnered a small crowd, quietly chatting amongst itself, but nothing was happening at the front of the room except one quietly frustrated call after another from the con staff to ops. After about twenty minutes, the staffer took up the mic to announce that due to scheduling conficts, the Gonzo rep was unable to make it and both panel and screening were cancelled. Everyone took it in good part (so much for the stereotypes of childish congoers!) and shuffled out; I wondered whether "scheduling conflicts" really meant "scheduling conflicts" and not "lost somewhere between his/her hotel and the Convention Center" or "dead drunk in the sports bar across the street", but I did not burden the staff with my fantasies. Guess I'll never know the real story. :-)
So, finding myself at loose ends, I decided to attend a panel on western symbolism in anime. It was scheduled following the instructional session on how to para-para, which ran long. I was in time to see the final demonstration and realized to my delight that I had passed the two gentlemen on stage in a hallway practicing their moves earlier in the day. They were very well-coordinated and energetic; one of my cohorts, who attended the session, told me later that they were good instructors, only occasionally getting ahead of their audience, and that the real problem was that too many people were crowded into the room. You need arm's-length between you and your neighbor to para-para properly and that just wasn't happening. :-) I made sure I had an end-of-row seat at the symbolism panel, having by now developed the necessary con-survival reflex which allows one to leave after fifteen minutes of boredom rather than remain for an hour of suppressed yawning. The first part of the panel was supposed to be a capsule history of Christianity in Japan, but the presenter was overwhelmed by the situation; when the audience's questions proved better expressed than her answers, I left -- though I did wonder whether I should've stuck it out for "Petrarch, Courtly Love and Marmalade Boy." I doubt anything could live up to such a title, though. :-)
Now at serious loose ends (I've found that the late afternoon/early evening Saturday programming at Otakon tends to be broadly uninteresting, as if everyone is just marking time until the masquerade), I dropped into the manga library to read volume 1 of XXXholic; took a seat at the Iron Editor contest and watched absolutely nothing happen for a good ten minutes, but I was very tired by then; caught the last of four episodes of Shakugan no Shana (dopey but kinetic, and the crowd liked it); and finally found myself back watching more 1930s-era cartoons (a legend from the early Tokugawa period and a swimming match among animals from the early Showa period). And then it was time to meet my cohorts for dinner.
We traveled back out of the city to eat at a wonderful Japanese restaurant, Hana, which serves excellent sushi and offers ice cream in both tempura and mochi style -- chocolate, vanilla, mango, green tea and red bean. Woot! I'm assured the sake was wonderful, but since I was one of the designated drivers I confined myself to non-alcoholic beverages. One of my cohorts persuaded the staff into producing some off-menu chicken katsudon, but I stuck to the on-menu fried rice (because I didn't want to decorate my face with udon in public). Our theatrical costumer's ire at badly underdressed cosplayers had not diminished; she was meditating a knee-length shirt with a drawstring hem that she could tie into Gordian knots. She was still working out what to blazon across the front, something like
Having an appointment Sunday afternoon at home, I left Sunday morning without attending any further con events (I would've liked to go to the Del Rey panel to compliment the rep on his/her company's handling of translations; must write letter instead). All in all, I had a much more varied Otakon experience this year than last and may well trot back again, if the fates are kind. Perhaps I shall actually even stay the full three days in August next year ...
And on Monday, she rested. Phew.
And on the second day, she continued attending panels ...
Saturday morning I was, again, up earlier than anyone else, but was joined for breakfast by a pair of my cohorts in their samurai regalia. They were hoping to make it in for the morning showing of Otomo's Steamboy, but we missed the 10:00 Metro by inches and had to wait for the 10:30 train. Which meant that they skipped the firlm, half over by the time we arrived, in favor of other things and I skedaddled into the video room showing the last four episodes of Princess Tutu in time to hear the strains of Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet suite and watch Duck and Fakir's pas de deux again. It was difficult not to sniffle audibly at several points during the final episode, but fortunately the room was not so crowded that anyone noticed. Or unfortunately: this series is so intensely charming, well-conceived and splendidly animated that I'm really surprised it hasn't made more of a splash in this neck of the woods. Sure, it takes a few episodes to get going, but any patterns it establishes it quickly moves on to tweak and explode. But I suspect I preach to the choir here ...
Next I went to find the room where Tsubasa was being shown and had a little trouble -- it was in one of the ballrooms, but it was not at all clear from the signage visible at the top of the escalator that the said ballroom had been divided in two so that something far more popular could be shown in the other half. I nearly ended up in a very long line for the wrong event, but a helpful staff volunteer put me right. I took a seat right next to the projector and had a clear view of the operator's wry grin when he was cheered for selecting the "Japanese with subtitles" option for our viewing. I cheered, too, but mostly because something seemed amiss with the sound system so that anything not being projected in the treble range disappeared into a wash of rumbly humming -- in which case, no matter what language you were listening to, subtitles would definitely help. Thank goodness, someone technical noticed it and twiddled with the speakers to eliminate it when they turned the volume up.
I'm quite enjoying the Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle manga -- I'm not so completely versed in the CLAMP oeuvre to follow all the references, but Del Rey's approach to translation includes very helpful footnotes, so I've never felt lost. I'd heard iffy reviews of the anime and must admit that it's not one of the most stellar adaptations I've seen. I spent the first fifteen minutes regretting that Bee Train had snagged the rights -- what Bones, say, would have made of this piece visually is going to haunt my daydreams for years. The animation seemed rather soft and grainy -- unlike Air or Pumpkin Scissors, it didn't expand well onto a large screen. The music never seems to let up; it's good dramatic stuff, rising nicely to fraught occasions, but doesn't diminish sufficiently in less fraught moments. The plotting is more leisurely than its source material, at least in these episodes, but I have no quarrel with that -- different media, different paces. I do fault the director for wasting seconds, however; we were made to linger over some scenes long after the "Okay, I get it!" point and then shorted on transitions between scenes. And they totally drained the emotional punch out of the opening vignette -- when the manga panels are more vivid and energetic than your storyboards, you need to hire new storyboarders. And yet ... and yet the piece grew on me as I watched: the base narrative is solid, mixing drama with comedy adequately; the character designs are facile and the voice work pleasant; and simply taken for what it is, it's no bad way to spend an hour and a half. I think my godchildren will enjoy it and I do want to see how it turns out, so I suspect I'll be picking it up.
After that I zipped all the way downstairs to the other end of the building for Seki Tomokazu's panel, which I decided to see after the good experience I had at the Mignogna/Blum panel the day before. Seki was one of the first seiyuu I learned to recognize by name, since he seemed to have a part in almost every one of the series I picked up in my first forays into collecting (Escaflowne, Cardcaptor Sakura, Fushigi Yuugi ... ). I like actors with range, and he's got range and to spare. The crowd was miniscule for the room and very polite about lining up for the microphone and most of the questions were sensible, though toward the end there were a few too many "Can you do my favorite line?" requests. Seki spoke through a translator, who did an excellent job making sure nothing got lost in the chasm between languages -- only one person attempted any more Japanese than こんにちは or ありがとう (although someone yelled out, "だいすき!" as things were getting started, to which Seki responded, "Thank you!" :-) The translator took notes as each person spoke, but clearly only to keep track of the salient points; he seemed (as far as I could tell, from what little Japanese I have available) to take pains to pass on each person's comments and questions as completely as possible, but primarily from memory.
Which is why I felt exceedingly bad both for him and the young woman who had worked up the courage to say that she admired Seki's work immensely and had found great solace in some of his characters, who had helped her to understand herself more deeply, and went on to ask some question about the technical aspects of voice work, when one of the stage lights popped loudly and flamed out.
Mild pandemonium ensued, people calling (not yelling), "Fire!" or pointing up and exclaiming, "The light's on fire!" I did so myself, turning around to see what the techies running lights and sound in the back of the room intended to do. Saunter leisurely forward and take a gander at the problem, it seemed (one of my hosts, an engineer, explained later that UL standard is for the light to simply burn itself out without harming anything around it, which is why the techies weren't fazed). Meanwhile, Seki and his translator were bewildered, since they, of course, couldn't see what was happening because the lights were focused on them. "なんですか?" asked the translator at one point.
To which Seki responded, in exact mimicry of half the crowd, "The light's on fire!"
By this time the flames had vanished, so we all laughed. Once it was determined that the show could go on and we wouldn't have to vacate the room or anything, the translator looked down at his notes, then up at the young woman still standing patiently at the microphone, and asked, with embarrassed mien, "Could you repeat your question?"
The whole room made a noise usually represented as "Ohhhhh .... " (rising inflection).
The young woman, sounding more rueful than anything else, responded, "I have to bare my soul in public -- again?"
"Ohhhhh," chorused the room (falling inflection).
The translator shrank a bit, then rallied. "No, no," he said. "I'll do my best. がんばります." And he did manage to get her question across, and the panel moved on with a round of applause for all concerned. The translator had one more bad moment later, when someone asked about Seki's BL work and all the yaoi fangirls in the room started squeeing. Seki reported that while he'd done both seme and uke roles, he prefers the latter because they require mostly reaction, which is easier than trying to get the innuendo into a seme's lines. He then proceeded to demonstrate, playing both roles (seme in an exaggerated growl, uke in an equally exaggerated squeak). Which lines, when all the squealing died down, the translator rendered in the flat, hurried tones of a man performing a duty because he's bound by contract, poor chap. It wasn't clear whether he was still translating when he ended, "And now I can't face my mother." :-)
Somewhere in here (my notes get a little confused about timing), I was able to make yet another foray into the Dealer's Room. I simply couldn't leave without purchasing something from the Kawaii Shop's booth for my offline beta, whose birthday approaches. (Katie, if you're reading this, skip this paragraph until after we've celebrated your natal day!) She's very fond of cute round plushies, so I found her a cute, round cell-phone rest with the face of a duck that I fully expect her to melt over. (Fingers crossed!) Despite my resolution not to spend any more money on myself, I did pick up three volumes of Tokyopop's translation of the Cardcaptor Sakura manga on the cheap -- I'm slowly acquiring the originals to practice my reading comprehension of Japanese with and I find it useful to check myself against a translation every now and then. Besides, it's a good story. I nearly bought a copy of the Tokyo Babylon anime twice (the second time as part of a lot with Now and Then, Here and There and the Utena movie), but managed to talk myself out of it on both occasions. There will be other opportunities, I assured myself. TheRightStuf.com keeps running those sales, after all ...
I beat feet up to the ballroom level again for a showing of Gonzo's Romeo and Juliet anime, about which I've heard quite a bit and was interested to judge for myself. A friend of mine has identified storytelling as Gonzo's biggest weakness, and I think he's right on the money; their original plots (e.g. Last Exile) are much weaker than the ones they crib from somewhere else (e.g. Gankutsuoh) and turn their world-builders loose on. Fifteen minutes after the panel's scheduled start the room had garnered a small crowd, quietly chatting amongst itself, but nothing was happening at the front of the room except one quietly frustrated call after another from the con staff to ops. After about twenty minutes, the staffer took up the mic to announce that due to scheduling conficts, the Gonzo rep was unable to make it and both panel and screening were cancelled. Everyone took it in good part (so much for the stereotypes of childish congoers!) and shuffled out; I wondered whether "scheduling conflicts" really meant "scheduling conflicts" and not "lost somewhere between his/her hotel and the Convention Center" or "dead drunk in the sports bar across the street", but I did not burden the staff with my fantasies. Guess I'll never know the real story. :-)
So, finding myself at loose ends, I decided to attend a panel on western symbolism in anime. It was scheduled following the instructional session on how to para-para, which ran long. I was in time to see the final demonstration and realized to my delight that I had passed the two gentlemen on stage in a hallway practicing their moves earlier in the day. They were very well-coordinated and energetic; one of my cohorts, who attended the session, told me later that they were good instructors, only occasionally getting ahead of their audience, and that the real problem was that too many people were crowded into the room. You need arm's-length between you and your neighbor to para-para properly and that just wasn't happening. :-) I made sure I had an end-of-row seat at the symbolism panel, having by now developed the necessary con-survival reflex which allows one to leave after fifteen minutes of boredom rather than remain for an hour of suppressed yawning. The first part of the panel was supposed to be a capsule history of Christianity in Japan, but the presenter was overwhelmed by the situation; when the audience's questions proved better expressed than her answers, I left -- though I did wonder whether I should've stuck it out for "Petrarch, Courtly Love and Marmalade Boy." I doubt anything could live up to such a title, though. :-)
Now at serious loose ends (I've found that the late afternoon/early evening Saturday programming at Otakon tends to be broadly uninteresting, as if everyone is just marking time until the masquerade), I dropped into the manga library to read volume 1 of XXXholic; took a seat at the Iron Editor contest and watched absolutely nothing happen for a good ten minutes, but I was very tired by then; caught the last of four episodes of Shakugan no Shana (dopey but kinetic, and the crowd liked it); and finally found myself back watching more 1930s-era cartoons (a legend from the early Tokugawa period and a swimming match among animals from the early Showa period). And then it was time to meet my cohorts for dinner.
We traveled back out of the city to eat at a wonderful Japanese restaurant, Hana, which serves excellent sushi and offers ice cream in both tempura and mochi style -- chocolate, vanilla, mango, green tea and red bean. Woot! I'm assured the sake was wonderful, but since I was one of the designated drivers I confined myself to non-alcoholic beverages. One of my cohorts persuaded the staff into producing some off-menu chicken katsudon, but I stuck to the on-menu fried rice (because I didn't want to decorate my face with udon in public). Our theatrical costumer's ire at badly underdressed cosplayers had not diminished; she was meditating a knee-length shirt with a drawstring hem that she could tie into Gordian knots. She was still working out what to blazon across the front, something like
I wasn't wearing enough today.I suggested:
No bra, no thong, no service.but we soon agreed that
No bra, no thong, fanservice.would probably sell better. My other friend, the first time con-goer, had been equally appalled by a conga line of fangirls wending its way up Pratt Street chanting, "Yaoi! Yaoi! Hentai!" and whacking random bystanders with those yaoi/yuri paddles that were so popular last year. (I didn't see half as many this year, which I count an improvement -- I found them pretty tasteless.) The theatrical costumer immediately began meditating a paddle with raised, back-printed lettering saying "IDIOT" or "NO", but, being a peaceful person, I turned the conversation away from how hard you'd need to hit someone to raise a message welt. One need not, in protest of things one considers appalling, sink to the level of the appallers.
Having an appointment Sunday afternoon at home, I left Sunday morning without attending any further con events (I would've liked to go to the Del Rey panel to compliment the rep on his/her company's handling of translations; must write letter instead). All in all, I had a much more varied Otakon experience this year than last and may well trot back again, if the fates are kind. Perhaps I shall actually even stay the full three days in August next year ...
And on Monday, she rested. Phew.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-07-24 02:09 am (UTC)I'm glad you're reading Tsubasa and XXXholic. I'm currently obsessing over them to the extent that I've been pursuing the scanlations.
:-) "Petrarch, Courtly Love and Marmalade Boy" sounds like the kind of panel we'd come up with.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-24 12:14 pm (UTC)I'm trying not to go that route, though with Tsubasa the temptation has been strong. But then I feel obligated to buy the tankoubon as well as the translation (as I'm doing for FMA), because I really don't want to do the creator out of his/her/their proper compensation. That, however, gets expensive -- and Del Rey's translations are user-friendly enough that I don't feel the need to double-dip for my own satisfaction.
I may start with XXXholic now that I've dropped Fruits Basket -- I stopped enjoying Takaya's drawing style and, from all reports, the story didn't go in a direction I'd find interesting. Ah, well. I'll always have the anime.
:-) "Petrarch, Courtly Love and Marmalade Boy" sounds like the kind of panel we'd come up with.
Yup! :-) But then I'd have to check out the Japanese courtly love tradition for reception context and reread The Tale of Genji and actually read Sei Shonagon's Pillow Book and ... um, suddenly a whole semester of research opens out before me, like a meadow (or a swamp) ...
no subject
Date: 2007-07-24 12:44 pm (UTC)I'm still reading Fruits Basket, mainly because I want to know how certain spoilers I've read will play out.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-24 03:20 am (UTC)- Nobody ever told me (head of Guest Relations) about the light catching fire. Though this does explain why Seki described his weekend as "exciting". I assumed he was just talking about the steak.
- Gonzo really did decide they couldn't make it after doing several cons in a row. They wanted to, especially with Eminence, but the hell of July cons just drained them. At least that's what they told us!
no subject
Date: 2007-07-24 10:00 am (UTC)I suppose it could have been exciting for other reasons as well, but that must have contributed. :-)
Gonzo really did decide they couldn't make it after doing several cons in a row. They wanted to, especially with Eminence, but the hell of July cons just drained them. At least that's what they told us!
I've heard a number of people lamenting the one-on-top-of-the-other scheduling of conventions this summer, so I'm not surprised that this was the reason. Wish they'd found an intern or someone to bodyguard the disk so that it could have been shown, though. Ah, well.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-24 04:05 am (UTC)As for the lack of paddles, it may be because they got too many complaints about them before. I've heard that there have been a lot of complaints (mostly from Cosplay.com) about people being able to wield those solid wood paddles when hard plastic prop weapons are disallowed. I'm personally glad they're less popular. They're tasteless and unwieldy.
Did you get any sense of the younger set of yaoi fangirls being obnoxious? I remember standing in an autograph line while a girl nearby screamed about how she was going to get the VAs to sign her yaoi manga, despite several people informing her that the VA she wanted to talk to was really uncomfortable about yaoi. Not to mention the ones that hijack Q&A panels to talk about their favorite slash pairings.
Maybe it's because they're young enough that yaoi and the like are still new and 'forbidden' enough to be titillating? Or I could be imagining it, and am just a grumpy old woman.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-24 04:51 am (UTC)As for yaoi fans being obnoxious--yes, yes they are. Not all of them, but some of the most vocal are, unfortunantely. I had a friend that was part of a popular cosplaying troupe that got invited as a guest to a con that Vic Mignogna was also a guest, and he told me a story that just made me mad...he was hanging out nearby Vic's table when he was signing autographs, and a girl came up wanting Vic to sign an EdXRoy hentai doujinshi. Vic's not really comfortable with hentai or yaoi, so he politely declined to sign the doujinshi--when he did, the girl yelled at him, saying he was a 'f---ing b-----d'. x.x;;;
(Sorry for hijacking a comment, Nebroadwe. ^^;)
no subject
Date: 2007-07-25 06:51 pm (UTC)I didn't see anyone being actively obnoxious, myself -- cluelessness, social ineptitude and mild rudeness (e.g. Waving Man or the people audibly MST3King the historic cartoons for a bit -- or, and I'd nearly forgotten them, the group of girls standing in the question line at Seki Tomokazu's panel who kept breaking into conversation while other people's questions were being asked and answered. Them I turned around and shushed; they stared blankly back at me, but complied.) Those were the worst sins anyone committed in any of the events I attended. Maybe I'm just lucky. :-) I did notice that the younger fen occasionally fell prey to the madness of crowds (to borrow yet another phrase): a group of egging itself into greater flights of enthusiasm than any of the individual members could have achieved solo. And of course there's always the so-happy-to-be-here people who cheer wildly for their favorite celebrity after every sentence, whether wild cheering is warranted or not, but that's not obnoxious until it drowns out said celebrity. The Dealer's Room was a zoo, but only because far too many people were crammed into a relatively small space -- people were downright accomodating at the booths whenever I was there, not hogging spots and making room for newcomers, and all the staff I dealt with were, if not friendly, at least polite and/or professional. My disdain for squeeage does show my age, I guess, but nobody I ran into was squeeing all the time. (
They had to breathe occasionally, after all.)Rude people are a terrible advertisement for any niche pursuit. I've always tried to be polite and sensible, if only to compensate. :-)
no subject
Date: 2007-07-25 07:36 pm (UTC)...I really do need to work on squealing less, though. XD;;
no subject
Date: 2007-07-26 02:05 pm (UTC)I noticed this morning that Gonzo has an international trailer (in English) for Romeo x Juliet up over here (http://anime.goo.ne.jp/special/gonzo/romejuli/gallery/english_cm02.html) and a subbed promotional widget here (http://anime.goo.ne.jp/special/gonzo/romejuli/gallery/english_tokuban.html). Not much more information than what's already available about the series, but the pictures are pretty.
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Date: 2007-07-26 04:02 pm (UTC)^_^ Yes! Someone on the RxJ community posted about it. I hope it really is 'coming soon'.