dejana | Anime North 2007 - Sunday (Reply)

Normally I think I'll eventually regret wasting so much time and money on fandom, but this morning, it hit me that someday I'm going to look back and realize that these were the best years of my life. When I've finally turned into a career person, with a mortgage, six kids (God forbid) and a dog, I'm going to think wistfully of the days when I was single and free and traveling around the continent to meet long-distance loved ones...

Of course, that was before a conversation with my coworker today reminded me that I don't have any local friends to call when I feel like hanging out with someone. Not even one. -_-

But anyway... continuing my tradition of procrastinating on my con reports for obscene amounts of time... the last day of Anime North. This will probably be pretty brief, since I don't remember a lot of the details now.

Ahh, the pleasures of not having to check out of the hotel on Sunday. It was so nice being able to sleep in and relax while the rest of the con was packing up and figuring out what to do with their stuff. Reservations that last through Monday are win. I'm pretty sure the first thing we did was go to the "Women in the Anime Industry" panel at 1 PM, which I was pretty set on attending. Tiffany Grant and Corinne Orr were the panelists, and it started late since they were coming from autograph sessions. Normally I'm not too nuts about guest panels, but there wasn't much else going on, and I figured it might be an interesting topic since anime seems to be a male-dominated realm (although you wouldn't know it anymore to look at the fandom).

It turned out to be a pretty general panel about voice acting, which was still nice since I'd never been to one of those before. It was interesting to hear what it's like to work in the business. There was a good balance between the panelists, too - Corinne was a bit of the eccentric dramatic type, which was a bit off-putting (^^;;), but she's been in the business a long time and was able to offer a view of the changes in voice acting over the years, and Tiffany was a really down-to-earth casual person, newer to the business but more experienced in anime. And there's no sexism in voice acting, apparently. :)

As a bonus for the panel attendees, they did autographs and photos afterwards. I decided what I'm going to do with the blank space I have left on the anti-ego sword and shield - I'm going to fill it with autographs. I don't do Linecon, so it'll take a while, but I figure then I can smite fandom ego with the actual deserved ego of real professionals in the industry. ^_~ So I got their signatures on the sword, and a photo of them.

The anti-ego gear again, showing the autographs:

I do have to record a little gripe. This panel was in Main Programming, and the audience was pretty small, so the room was really big and empty. The tech crew was on hand hanging out in their tech area on one of the side walls... and through about half the panel they were merrily chatting away amongst themselves. At one point they got so loud and so distracting that the guests actually had to ask them to stop. And then, although they quieted down, they didn't offer any apology, they just laughed it off. Really unprofessional. In hindsight I could've taken that as an omen of things to come... but more about that in due time.

After that we had a final trip across the street to the dealer's room and the artist alley. I went on my what is hopefully going to become customary quest for original comics by the artists in the Alley. There were surprisingly few compared to Anime Boston. I think the AN artists know which side their bread is buttered on. I don't know if I mentioned this before, but there was supposed to be a writer's section of the Alley this year, and I didn't find it. Maybe there were a couple of booths in there somewhere and they released the others to artists, I don't know. So that was unfortunate. But even so, if they have the Writer's Way again next year, I'd like to put together a fanzine of stories by .moon writers.

kats_kradle and I have hit on a plan to distribute artwork as part of the fanzine as well. :3

I suppose now is as good of a time as any to go over... THE LOOT! (the warrant! the... yeah. ^^;;)

Items! What original comics there were on the left, plus a little L keychain from the Alley. And I found one of those adorable L plushies like the one I saw at

tmchiba's cosplay court case event at Anime Boston! :D (my sister keeps stealing him... grrr...) And a pig pillow thingy from the Alley that I got for my sister since again I couldn't find any Cubees, and a Death Note artbook I spent way too much on when I could've gotten it for half as much across the room. Sigh. -_- Plus a Sailor Moon button

kats_kradle got for me in the Alley, and then... the most prized item.

MAYAA!

He's SO CUTE! *is ded from teh cuteness* I almost rolled on the floor with him, he's so adorable xD And really expensive, which sucked, since he's an actual UFO catcher prize from Japan and a rather high-quality one at that. I almost passed him by due to the price, but I had to have him. And I was really glad I caved in. omgtehcuteness

(I thought it would be Mayaa my sister would want to steal, but no. She's obsessed with L. What is it with her and plushies of characters she's totally unfamiliar with? First Alphonse and now L...)

Moving on, we went to a plot development panel next, which I'm afraid I don't remember anything about, and we left early to get to the Fanboys reading on time. The reading was at 4:00, at the very end of the con, so the crowd was sadly small, but they got a room with a stage so they were able to make it more of a production than a reading, which went VERY well. There were props and a soundtrack involved, and the fic was hilarious of course, and even when something went wrong they made it funny. Very nicely done. And I saved a good chunk of my camera's memory for it. :3

Essentially the story was, Chaos finally tried to get it through to Hysteria that she's an obnoxious fangirl and not cute, and Hysteria responded by throwing her own con stuffed with an abundance of cuteness and aided by the power of a Death Note.

Some of the Fanboys (they had awesome NERV-parody shirts this year):

Some of them on stage during the reading:

KAWAII CON OF DOOM OHNOES

The other half of the Fanboys... and a dead Narrator who offended the Death Note-toting Hysteria:

(The Fanboys later revived the late Narrator (Sean Gaffney) with a large 1UP mushroom.)

Unfortunately for the second year in a row I didn't get to hear how the story ended, because doom happened. Ranting time part II.

The Fanboys were scheduled for the end of the con because they'd requested two hours and the prog staff didn't want to give out two-hour time slots. They were told if they were at the end of the con they could run as long as they wanted to since nobody would be after them. But around 5:20, a staff member poked her head in the door and pointed impatiently at her watch. (Now that I think about it, she'd probably been waiting outside a while expecting them to wrap up at any time.) The Fanboys kept going, and a couple of other staffers came in and quietly went around to talk to Chaos and Mel who were off to the side and not on stage at the moment, nothing wrong with that. But after a few more minutes the watch-pointing lady came back in and started loudly complaining to some of her fellow staffers that the panel was supposed to be over and they had things to do bla bla bla. She obviously couldn't have cared less about how disruptive she was being, and proceeded to loudly start stacking up chairs in the back of the room while continuing to gripe about the Fanboys running over their scheduled time.

I had never been so disgusted in my life. Clearly there was a scheduling mixup, and if the Fanboys needed to stop, fine, but there was NO CALL for that sort of behavior from a member of staff. There was no excuse for that level of rudeness. As a con staffer myself, I understand these things happen, but you don't bust into a panel with that kind of passive-aggressive BS and treat panelists that way. Especially the Fanboys, who have been supporting Anime North in many ways for years and years. I was absolutely appalled, and as soon as I've finished my con reports I'm sending a formal complaint to Anime North about that woman. That was inexcusable.

So that, and the con, ended on a rather sour note, unfortunately. But overall it was a great time. And now some more pictures.