![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
back from the AN 2012
May. 28th, 2012 12:19 pmAnd we're done! Another Anime North in the bag. This one had great weather, big crowds, and only one car fire. No, seriously.
This was Friday afternoon; a car caught fire in the driveway of the Doubletree and the fire department was hosing it down, blocking all of eastbound Dixon, adding to an already horrible traffic situation. But we'd already parked and checked in and were on our way to visit the dealers room for the first time. This was the first year we'd been able to get a room in the Doubletree, the main convention hotel, and it made this year probably our most stress-free and convenient show to date.
The con had sold out of 3-day passes weeks previously, right up to their membership cap, so there were giant lines of pre-regs on Thursday and lines on Friday, what they call "pre-loading". By Saturday the reg lines had thinned out, but they were still doing a brisk trade in one-day passes. It felt just as crowded if not more so than previous years. Other observations; DVD prices in the dealers room were a lot higher than last year, when it seemed like bargains were everywhere - this year the going rate was $30. OVAs from the 90s, $30. One volume of TV episodes of recent series - $30. DVD releases of "Golgo 13 The Professional" - $30. Of course if you want the 2-disc set of uncut Cyborg 009 episodes from the 2001 series, that's going to run you $60. Or you can buy it at your local used DVD store for $5, or Amazon for $2. There really seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the pricing structure - maybe they feel like DVDs are now "collectors items". Certainly the ADV releases were priced like precious objects. I didn't buy much at the show - a little Galatt model kit, some Chinese Lensman and Orguss pamphlets. The bargain DVD hunting I spent so much time doing last year was simply not happening.
(crowds at the Nominoichi)
Anyway, Friday we set up our table at the Nominoichi and sold some of OUR stuff. I am thinking this is the last year we're going to be selling at the Nomi - we seem to have cleared out of a lot of the junk that goes to this sale, and the goal is to not replace it with more useless junk. We made the cost of the table back, but we had to do some hustling ("Hey you in the Dominion T-shirt! You need to buy this Dominion manga!") and I don't know if it's worth the hassle, especially considering it eats right into my Anime Hell prep time. Not to mention my dinner time. Still, a very popular event. Even if we don't sell next year, we'll be shopping it; you never know what you'll find.
Anime Hell started at 10. I figured I was going to run short but I wound up running a little over. I think this was my best AN show ever; the clips worked, the crowd was appreciative, there weren't any technical screwups, even the slower and more conceptual bits had their fans. The AN Hell sometimes gets over-analyzed on my part, I think- I sit around and try to come up with something clever or cutesy or topical or overly complicated to present, and it never quite works out to my satisfaction. This year it was clips, clips, clips, and it seemed to work very well.
After Hell we screened the live Space Battleship Yamato film, and as it started at midnight and is a two and a half hour long film, not everybody made it to the end of the movie. Especially concerned were the AV staffers who had been told the room would be cleared by 1:00am. Poor kids.
Saturday I had two panels, a Tezuka panel with Helen McCarthy and then Shain and I did Stupid Comics. But first we dropped in on Mike Toole's Cult Anime panel - that's right, anime produced by cults.
If you ever wanted to sing along with the Shoko Asahara song, this was the presentation for you. This was Mike's first year at Anime North and I believe he proved his worth as a con guest - staff and attendees alike stopped him in the hall to tell him how much they enjoyed his work at ANN and OUSA, and apart from a slow Friday panel (Friday is a slow afternoon at AN) his panels were well-attended and entertaining, in spite of an amusingly truncated bio in the con program book.
Helen had a wealth of biographical and personal anecdotal Tezuka information and I had a bunch of clips, and I think together we gave the crowd a good understanding of who he was and what he did and why he did it, and who appropriated his copyrights and when. Stupid Comics went perfectly. Images of comics came right off our little WD box and we amused the crowd with old favorites and horrifying new visions. I wasn't sure how popular this would be, but we had at least a hundred people in there.
Saturday is of course the big day and Shain and I spent some time just doing normal con stuff, hitting the dealers room, wandering around watching the kids goof off. This is Anime North, the kids are ambling around slowly which is annoying, but other than that they're well behaved, friendly, happy to be there, and the carnival-fun fair atmosphere is helped by the ice cream vendors, the cotton candy guy, the picnicing cosplayers on the grass, and the sidewalk chalk art.
Saturday night we walked down to St. Louis, the chain wing place, for dinner. Probably a little busier than they were used to and service was sllllllllow. We made it back to the con in time to see Neil blasting his way through the ultra-popular Totally Lame Anime.
He had tons of clips and a ton of people enjoying them. This is a terrific Saturday night fixture for Anime North; at 9pm on Saturday night every event room is full, the halls are full of people lining up for the next event, and there are waves of congoers surging from Sheraton to Doubletree to the TCC and back again.
Sunday it was sadly time to get checked out, which we did, and then I had to sit in on Mike's Dubs Time Forgot panel, which I did (whole bunch of stuff I'd never seen before) and then I did my Spooky Classic Anime panel, which went well and was again, surprisingly well attended, though I shouldn't be surprised as this panel at AWA, in roughly the same time slot, was also very well attended. Then it was time to schlep our junk home and feed the kitty. Then we got back in the car and collected Mike and Neil for some dinner and a little record shopping at Sonic Boom, and then some drinks at the Brazen Head. We have a terrible habit of dropping into the Brazen Head at times that I guess are not appropriate for good service. We walk in, there's nobody greeting us, we have to stare blankly until a server tells us to sit anywhere. Then we're ignored for a while. We get drinks, we drink them, we get more drinks, and then we're ignored for a while. We practically have to send up a flare to get our check. This is like the third time we've had this experience at the Brazen Head and by golly, I don't think we're going to be going back there any more.
As a whole I believe Anime North went very well. I did get to hear about some of the more problematic areas of the show, and was able to help out here and there merely by being in the right place at the right time with a staff badge. I do think we need to get some of the more popular panels out of the "panel" rooms and into the International rooms we're using for the Videoscope events, or anywhere with more seating. Many panels were scheduled for rooms that seated 50 or 75 people but had crowds of 200 or 300 wanting to attend. But this will all be hashed out in the year to come, and there are already plans in the works. Stay tuned...
This was Friday afternoon; a car caught fire in the driveway of the Doubletree and the fire department was hosing it down, blocking all of eastbound Dixon, adding to an already horrible traffic situation. But we'd already parked and checked in and were on our way to visit the dealers room for the first time. This was the first year we'd been able to get a room in the Doubletree, the main convention hotel, and it made this year probably our most stress-free and convenient show to date.
The con had sold out of 3-day passes weeks previously, right up to their membership cap, so there were giant lines of pre-regs on Thursday and lines on Friday, what they call "pre-loading". By Saturday the reg lines had thinned out, but they were still doing a brisk trade in one-day passes. It felt just as crowded if not more so than previous years. Other observations; DVD prices in the dealers room were a lot higher than last year, when it seemed like bargains were everywhere - this year the going rate was $30. OVAs from the 90s, $30. One volume of TV episodes of recent series - $30. DVD releases of "Golgo 13 The Professional" - $30. Of course if you want the 2-disc set of uncut Cyborg 009 episodes from the 2001 series, that's going to run you $60. Or you can buy it at your local used DVD store for $5, or Amazon for $2. There really seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the pricing structure - maybe they feel like DVDs are now "collectors items". Certainly the ADV releases were priced like precious objects. I didn't buy much at the show - a little Galatt model kit, some Chinese Lensman and Orguss pamphlets. The bargain DVD hunting I spent so much time doing last year was simply not happening.
(crowds at the Nominoichi)
Anyway, Friday we set up our table at the Nominoichi and sold some of OUR stuff. I am thinking this is the last year we're going to be selling at the Nomi - we seem to have cleared out of a lot of the junk that goes to this sale, and the goal is to not replace it with more useless junk. We made the cost of the table back, but we had to do some hustling ("Hey you in the Dominion T-shirt! You need to buy this Dominion manga!") and I don't know if it's worth the hassle, especially considering it eats right into my Anime Hell prep time. Not to mention my dinner time. Still, a very popular event. Even if we don't sell next year, we'll be shopping it; you never know what you'll find.
Anime Hell started at 10. I figured I was going to run short but I wound up running a little over. I think this was my best AN show ever; the clips worked, the crowd was appreciative, there weren't any technical screwups, even the slower and more conceptual bits had their fans. The AN Hell sometimes gets over-analyzed on my part, I think- I sit around and try to come up with something clever or cutesy or topical or overly complicated to present, and it never quite works out to my satisfaction. This year it was clips, clips, clips, and it seemed to work very well.
After Hell we screened the live Space Battleship Yamato film, and as it started at midnight and is a two and a half hour long film, not everybody made it to the end of the movie. Especially concerned were the AV staffers who had been told the room would be cleared by 1:00am. Poor kids.
Saturday I had two panels, a Tezuka panel with Helen McCarthy and then Shain and I did Stupid Comics. But first we dropped in on Mike Toole's Cult Anime panel - that's right, anime produced by cults.
If you ever wanted to sing along with the Shoko Asahara song, this was the presentation for you. This was Mike's first year at Anime North and I believe he proved his worth as a con guest - staff and attendees alike stopped him in the hall to tell him how much they enjoyed his work at ANN and OUSA, and apart from a slow Friday panel (Friday is a slow afternoon at AN) his panels were well-attended and entertaining, in spite of an amusingly truncated bio in the con program book.
Helen had a wealth of biographical and personal anecdotal Tezuka information and I had a bunch of clips, and I think together we gave the crowd a good understanding of who he was and what he did and why he did it, and who appropriated his copyrights and when. Stupid Comics went perfectly. Images of comics came right off our little WD box and we amused the crowd with old favorites and horrifying new visions. I wasn't sure how popular this would be, but we had at least a hundred people in there.
Saturday is of course the big day and Shain and I spent some time just doing normal con stuff, hitting the dealers room, wandering around watching the kids goof off. This is Anime North, the kids are ambling around slowly which is annoying, but other than that they're well behaved, friendly, happy to be there, and the carnival-fun fair atmosphere is helped by the ice cream vendors, the cotton candy guy, the picnicing cosplayers on the grass, and the sidewalk chalk art.
Saturday night we walked down to St. Louis, the chain wing place, for dinner. Probably a little busier than they were used to and service was sllllllllow. We made it back to the con in time to see Neil blasting his way through the ultra-popular Totally Lame Anime.
He had tons of clips and a ton of people enjoying them. This is a terrific Saturday night fixture for Anime North; at 9pm on Saturday night every event room is full, the halls are full of people lining up for the next event, and there are waves of congoers surging from Sheraton to Doubletree to the TCC and back again.
Sunday it was sadly time to get checked out, which we did, and then I had to sit in on Mike's Dubs Time Forgot panel, which I did (whole bunch of stuff I'd never seen before) and then I did my Spooky Classic Anime panel, which went well and was again, surprisingly well attended, though I shouldn't be surprised as this panel at AWA, in roughly the same time slot, was also very well attended. Then it was time to schlep our junk home and feed the kitty. Then we got back in the car and collected Mike and Neil for some dinner and a little record shopping at Sonic Boom, and then some drinks at the Brazen Head. We have a terrible habit of dropping into the Brazen Head at times that I guess are not appropriate for good service. We walk in, there's nobody greeting us, we have to stare blankly until a server tells us to sit anywhere. Then we're ignored for a while. We get drinks, we drink them, we get more drinks, and then we're ignored for a while. We practically have to send up a flare to get our check. This is like the third time we've had this experience at the Brazen Head and by golly, I don't think we're going to be going back there any more.
As a whole I believe Anime North went very well. I did get to hear about some of the more problematic areas of the show, and was able to help out here and there merely by being in the right place at the right time with a staff badge. I do think we need to get some of the more popular panels out of the "panel" rooms and into the International rooms we're using for the Videoscope events, or anywhere with more seating. Many panels were scheduled for rooms that seated 50 or 75 people but had crowds of 200 or 300 wanting to attend. But this will all be hashed out in the year to come, and there are already plans in the works. Stay tuned...
