BACK TO THE ENTER INDEX.
-By Philip Wesley-
-This article contains frank discussion on well... everything.. including some adult subject matter.-
-Posted June 27, 2006-
PLEASE BE AWARE THAT SOME LANGUAGE MAY BE INVOLVED IN THIS ARTICLE.
Well, I slept through both Kristine Sa, and Kotoko's performances; but I did get to catch a lot of cosplayers, and a lot of pretty much nothing else. Wandered around the over-priced and over-hyped dealer's room. The real joy starts on Saturdays here at A-Kon. Helped out at the door to the Yaoi Fest. That was really fun, and I honestly feel that I would like to do more security related or volunteer stuff at the next A-Kon. While, I like attending events and conferences; the chance to help at some of the more awesome events of A-Kon (Concerts, Yaoi Fest, Rocky Horror Picture Show, and HENTAI FEST! WOOO!) would be fun and amusing. I also drank a great deal that day and I honestly HATE the elevator rides with an unbridled passionate HATRED of pure HATING HATEFUL HATE.
I also got a really good deal on the Pia Carrot box set in the Dealer's Room. $15 for three 30-Minute DVDs of an extremely plot extensive Hentai show? Sign me up! Sure it has some nookie; but it is really a lot less scandalous than -say- Desperate Housewives. Yeah, animated nudity and short sex sequences with not too much explicitness. I'll review it later in an "Animosity" article in next issues surprise. Then I attended a panel on "Sex at Conventions." It was pretty much about approaching people and talking/interacting with people without appearing to be a crazed, idiot stalker. Aside from a rather loud, noisy asshole to my right who kept saying he was bringing up a relevant point; the panel went really well. Lots of fun and lots of free condoms, lube, and pop rocks. The most hilarious part was when the lady giving the lecture explained what pop rocks are really for. Well, DUH! ORAL SEX. All I can say about that would be my best Skexis impression: "HMMmmmmmmmmmm!" Also, pick up lines were a big thing. I think a pick up line works when you give it with confidence. This girl came up and showed us an awesome on. She put her hands in her front pockets, then said: "Ever kissed a bunny between the ears?" Then she pulled the linings of her pockets out and said: "Would you like to?"
I have to say that would probably work on me.
The other best pick up line was this: "Do you know how much a polar bear weighs?" "Enough to break the ice."
Also, on the first day, I saw a panel on Robotech. All I can truly say about it? We saw some of the holy grail: Shadow Cronicles. Oh, yes. I can sum up the entire panel in three words: "Shadow Chronicles, bitch!" But I digress, Shadow Chronicles will take place AFTER the TV continuity. In fact, the last battle of the TV series is part of the opening episode of the series. So good. Sooooooo goooooooooooood.
But back to "Sex at Conventions." There was a huge line for it, because the title is so exploitive. But a lot of people left when they realized it was NOT a very scandalous panel. In fact, this was more of a heavy PG-13 than an R. The panel was some great fun, and the whole stress on cleanliness, polite conversation, and more was completely lost on way too many people.
The next day, there were some good panels to go to. The first one I went to was "New Generation Pictures." This is a Translation, Subtitling, Dubbing, and Localization studio. They did Hellsing, Read Or Die TV, Gun x Sword, Haibane Renmai, Ergo Proxy, the Play Station games Valkeryie Profile, Paranoia Agent, Niea Under 7, and dozens of more titles. Their latest are Gun x Sword, and Kamichu. Kamichu is AWESOME and Gun x Sword is pretty neat too. Gun x Sword reminds me a bit of Grenadier. Ergo Proxy is what they are currently working on for Geneon. I won the first volume of Gun x Sword in a heated Rock, Paper, Scissors Match.
The next panel was Manga Entertainment and they had nothing new to announce aside from confirming the buy out from Liberty Media. Here's a bit of neat factoids for those who truly care! Which means, these are factoids I CARE ABOUT, therefore.. you just have to deal with it.
The Read Or Die OVA will be on PSP UMD and it will be bilingual. The Evangelion movies will end up on PSP UMD as well Street Fighter Alpha Generations, and the uncut, uncensored Street Fighter II movie. May (possibly) 2007 is the date they are shooting for when it comes to the new Street Fighter movie. This animated film will be a tournament film, so a lot of characters will appear. They are also hoping to have A NEW CHALLENGER debut in the movie. Karas part 2 hits in November, and the new buying outs have placed a ton of horror films in their grasp! Including some damn evil new Takeshi Miike Masters of Horror stuff. How evil? When he was signed up for the show, he was told: "Do whatever you want! No restrictions!" When he turned in his final work, he was told: "Holy crap. We CAN'T air that!" Is that not awesome or what? It would also seem that Manga Entertainment may be the ONLY company to say that the UMD format has been pretty kind to them. None of their titles have sold out a run; but they haven't lost money on their titles. I think this is because Manga and Anchor Bay only buy a certain amount of UMDs per run. When pressed, we discovered that there may be some more Dead Leaves in the future, and by future... we mean 2008 or 2009, maybe. They are currently in talks with Sony on how to handle to Blood+ series. Mostly on packaging and such. Manga isn't the company releasing it; but they hope to have some sort of nice deal like what happened with the R.O.D. The TV box set that Geneon put out. They may have thin pack sets in the future. The biggest contenders for that would be Macross Plus, and any long form series they may aquire in the future. Manga is co-producing a lot of new anime to cut down on piracy and to virtually lock in titles for aquisition. The big news is, that with the aquisitions presented by Liberty Media and Anchor Bay. Manga wants to be the "death, blood, and carnage" anime company again. Horray! This panel did not feature swag. Sad panda bear. However, there were some sweet Karas buttons and posters at their booth. If you have not bought Karas yet, SHAME ON YOU.
Funimation was pretty decent this year. The big new announcement was Black Cat, and they showed off some new box sets. The Trinity Blood box was especially delicious. The box opens up in half and seems to be really well made. The Negima box was pretty nice looking and that series will be lots of fun. The main story for Negima is that it centers around a young (like 10 years old) boy magician who is assaigned to teach a home room at an all girls school. The story moves forward on his day to day life as he deals with the insane problems of his students, and continually (and accidentally) humiliates this one particular student. They really just spent most of their time rolling trailers. The trailers were (in order): Full Metal Alchemist The Movie, Funimation Channel, Mr. Stain on Junk Alley, Desert Punk Volume 2, Full Metal Alchemist Volume 10 (with tin), Deset Punk Volume 3, Kiddy Grade Box set (which includes ALL of the cards), Speed Grapher, Negima (YAY!), Basilisk, Moon Phase, Trinity Blood, Beck, Full Metal Panic: The Second Raid, and their new license: Black Cat. The swag bit was awesome this year. I walked away with Spiral Volume 1, Burst Angel Volume 2 (already had volume 1), and Samurai 7 Volume 1. This brings up total swag value to $120. Add in the batch of free shirts I also got and the total swag value is MSRP $150+ or so. Not bad! Funimation is repackaging GTO; but that's all they can say for now. The third day, I signed up at Funimation's booth and won volume 4 of Burst Angel. Not bad! Now I just need volumes 3, 5, and 6 to finish it off. Woo! After A-Kon, I found 3 and 5 for $10 apiece at Best Buy. This is going to be one of the quickest series to finish!
Media Blasters had a panel as well. They did not have any swag; but they DID have a strangely enlightening panel. A few things from the panel:
1. They hope to get the second season and the extra episodes of Oh My Goddess; but that is a bit up in the air right now. They expect to break even on sales of the series.
2. Their big non-anime release this year will be Voltron, GaoGaiget will be their side arm this year.
3. The new A Kite ova will be more sci-fi like Mezzo Forte is and will be a side story of sorts. They expect it by June 2007 and it will be from 45 to 60 minutes in length.
4. Their biggest seller ever was Invader Zim, they were surprised by the sales of Mouse and Weiss Kruez. Especially since the person doing the panel commented that "Mouse is pure crap; but it sold well." I have to agree with him on that one.
5. There will be no plans for a Bible Black box set anytime soon; because it already sells way too well on its own. They did get the game, apparently. FEAR THAT!
6. Logo and various other "gay" channels want Yaoi like Sukisho and Loveless for their line ups. (Good choices, both of those. I'm not gay; but I liked those series.)
7. They bought the rights to the GBA game for Kio and were unable to secure rights from Nintendo on publishing it. The reasoning may have to do with the amount of porn/hentai that Media Blasters owns the rights to.
8. They pursued the rights to put the Ruroni Kenshin games out on the PS2 and discovered that Sony is even more hard nosed in the USA than Nintendo is when it comes to games.
9. Video game companies in Japan let you put EVERYTHING on their systems; but the USA iterations of those same companies are way more tough on it.
10. Futanari = AVOID LIKE HELL.
11. Voltron is out in September and after the full release of it, they will release the shows it is made out of: Go! Lions, and Daruga.
12. More stuff from Toho is coming up and it will be good. It's not Godzilla or Mothra; but it will be good.
That's it for now, except for this quick SWAG-O-METER!
SWAG O METER!
- Samurai 7 Volume 1 (MSRP: $30)
- Spiral Volume 1 (MSRP: $30)
- Burst Angel Volume 2 (MSRP: $30)
- Burst Angel Volume 4 (MSRP: $30)
- GunxSword Volume 1 (MSRP: $30)
- 8 packs of Karas Buttons/ Poster (MSRP: $5 each minimum)
- 8 "Exit Reality" T-Shirts for that new Stephen King series (MSRP: $10 each minimum)
TOTAL TRIP COST (GAS): $40
TOTAL TRIP COST (HOTEL): $90
TOTAL NET PROFIT: $140
Prayer spoken and transcribed by Philip Wesley
Property of DMG Ice, dmgice.com, and the original author as expressed in the by-line.