No-pic Onna! report
10/10/05 08:17![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
owlectomyIf you wanted to get to go, and couldn't afford to or couldn't make time, well... as far as the programming's concerned, you didn't miss all that much.
And it's entirely possible that I say this only because I have basically been on the fringes of anime fandom for the last three years at least. Sure, I read manga. I read teen novels, which I consider to be about the same thing (and there is a lot of crossover, like Lodoss War, Slayers, Fujimi Orchestra...) but obviously very few other people on the Anglophone side read. I don't watch anime. Cutting new DVDs out of my life cuts down on spending A LOT, and I still have moral qualms about digisubs (besides which, my ISP decrees that I can't use P2P programs any more, and I never find time to watch them anyway). So...I'm netflixing Trigun and Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water, and that's about it.
The overall tone was one of NARUTO!!!!!, and I haven't so much as seen an episode or read some of the manga.
I am a bitter cynical old fan. Daaang, I'm 23 and I still make the grade of bitter cynical old fan. Take everything with a grain of salt.
My sister suddenly came up with one of those brilliant-crazy theories (of the form X IS REALLY DEAD!) while re-watching some of the later eps of Utena. That was fun--we went to the panel and it got shot down, but I still can't say it's a bad theory. I have to finish watching the end of the series, as it was so long ago that I saw it and I don't think I was paying enough attention. (A lot, certainly. But Utena's one of those things you need to rewatch). I made an argument for the coherence of the movie--which I still believe in. It works, and it isn't fair to dismiss it as "cracktastic."
Most of the panels were fairly basic, and there wasn't much of an opportunity for serious discussion or learning new things. I shouldn't have expected this, but it's been 4 years since I've been to an anime convention, and the baseline I had in my head was Worldcon, which had so many good meaty discussions. The yaoi panel was an industry panel, too, which...means I didn't get to smack anyone down with honest concerns about the way "yaoi" and "shounen ai" are used in the US (though that's a lost battle anyway), or share any of my obnoxious opinions. And I'm not interested in yaoi released in English in the US. How can I rationalize reading it if it doesn't have the educational value of being written in another language?
I accidentally ended up moderating an unmoderated panel on Japanese seiyuu and singers. I shared my high esteem of Bump of Chicken and Shiina Ringo. I didn't moderate all that well although I did amuse everyone by reciting in English some of the lyrics to the "Sakana" song that was popular a couple years ago:
Fish, fish, fish. If you eat them, they make you smart.
Fish, fish, fish. If you eat them, they're good for your body.
Okay, cosplay. We did not win anything, and I cannot complain: everyone who got a craftsmanship award had a better costume than ours, and everyone who got a skit award had better skits than ours. (Or at least, skits with more dancing). The only legitimate wish that I could make is that there had been more variety in who the awards were given to; if you've already got Best in Show, you don't need two other judge's awards to prove you had a worthy costume/skit combination.
Our skit was a parody of a Beatles song. I think we overestimated the average age and musical with-it-ness of the audience, but we did get a lot of laughs.
We ended up leaving the con midway Sunday in favor of hanging around New York; we ended up with Chinese food, dessert in a Japanese bakery, and some very sober karaoke (which is not to say boring! I very rarely drink, so I was glad not to have to pay a 2-drink minimum).
And now, for the real highlight of any trip to New York: hitting the Japanese bookstores.
No pics today, I'm afraid. I can't figure out if I can FTP on my sister's Mac.
And it's entirely possible that I say this only because I have basically been on the fringes of anime fandom for the last three years at least. Sure, I read manga. I read teen novels, which I consider to be about the same thing (and there is a lot of crossover, like Lodoss War, Slayers, Fujimi Orchestra...) but obviously very few other people on the Anglophone side read. I don't watch anime. Cutting new DVDs out of my life cuts down on spending A LOT, and I still have moral qualms about digisubs (besides which, my ISP decrees that I can't use P2P programs any more, and I never find time to watch them anyway). So...I'm netflixing Trigun and Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water, and that's about it.
The overall tone was one of NARUTO!!!!!, and I haven't so much as seen an episode or read some of the manga.
I am a bitter cynical old fan. Daaang, I'm 23 and I still make the grade of bitter cynical old fan. Take everything with a grain of salt.
My sister suddenly came up with one of those brilliant-crazy theories (of the form X IS REALLY DEAD!) while re-watching some of the later eps of Utena. That was fun--we went to the panel and it got shot down, but I still can't say it's a bad theory. I have to finish watching the end of the series, as it was so long ago that I saw it and I don't think I was paying enough attention. (A lot, certainly. But Utena's one of those things you need to rewatch). I made an argument for the coherence of the movie--which I still believe in. It works, and it isn't fair to dismiss it as "cracktastic."
Most of the panels were fairly basic, and there wasn't much of an opportunity for serious discussion or learning new things. I shouldn't have expected this, but it's been 4 years since I've been to an anime convention, and the baseline I had in my head was Worldcon, which had so many good meaty discussions. The yaoi panel was an industry panel, too, which...means I didn't get to smack anyone down with honest concerns about the way "yaoi" and "shounen ai" are used in the US (though that's a lost battle anyway), or share any of my obnoxious opinions. And I'm not interested in yaoi released in English in the US. How can I rationalize reading it if it doesn't have the educational value of being written in another language?
I accidentally ended up moderating an unmoderated panel on Japanese seiyuu and singers. I shared my high esteem of Bump of Chicken and Shiina Ringo. I didn't moderate all that well although I did amuse everyone by reciting in English some of the lyrics to the "Sakana" song that was popular a couple years ago:
Fish, fish, fish. If you eat them, they make you smart.
Fish, fish, fish. If you eat them, they're good for your body.
Okay, cosplay. We did not win anything, and I cannot complain: everyone who got a craftsmanship award had a better costume than ours, and everyone who got a skit award had better skits than ours. (Or at least, skits with more dancing). The only legitimate wish that I could make is that there had been more variety in who the awards were given to; if you've already got Best in Show, you don't need two other judge's awards to prove you had a worthy costume/skit combination.
Our skit was a parody of a Beatles song. I think we overestimated the average age and musical with-it-ness of the audience, but we did get a lot of laughs.
We ended up leaving the con midway Sunday in favor of hanging around New York; we ended up with Chinese food, dessert in a Japanese bakery, and some very sober karaoke (which is not to say boring! I very rarely drink, so I was glad not to have to pay a 2-drink minimum).
And now, for the real highlight of any trip to New York: hitting the Japanese bookstores.
No pics today, I'm afraid. I can't figure out if I can FTP on my sister's Mac.
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(no subject)
10/10/05 15:17 (UTC)I knew there was a reason I found you an innately congenial person.
I'd like to hear your sister's crazy theory at some point. Utena invites them, but most people are too busy going gubba-gubba-gubba-WHAAA??? to construct them. I'm sure the movie is coherent in itself, it's just- gratuitous and obvious as well. By me it ruined some of the best parts of the anime by making them the focus of a Power Point presentation and saying 'OK, fannies, *now* do you get it?'
(no subject)
11/10/05 00:19 (UTC)We were rewatching the last few episodes in the video room but had to leave for a panel, so I'm not at all sure if it's a theory that holds up under scrutiny, but--well, especially given the movie's "Just because people look like they're alive doesn't mean that they are," is it possible that Anthy's suicide attempt at the end of ep. 37, right after the tea and cookies, is successful? The conversation Utena and Anthy have immediately afterwards has a wish-fulfilment tone to it, of the things one wishes one could have said, or the conversations one has in one's head but never voices out loud.
Aside, on only reading things of rationalizable educational value:
When in Japan, I used to not let myself buy BL manga unless I also bought something I could justify as somehow enlightening. This is how I wound up with a Japanese copy of Fermat's Enigma, which I still haven't read. In retrospect, the clerks probably thought I was more weird for that, rather than less, if they thought anything at all.