The video game room (an area I usually neglect due to all my press work) was massive, leading to amusing wide spaces between the different play areas (see this post's image). I managed to sneak in a game of Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, as I've never gotten a chance to play it, though I got handily beaten by a guy who had just started playing today!

Then it was off to Sam Kusek, Ken Haley, and Mike Ferreira's "From East to West: the Superheroes of Japan & America." Like Sam's previous panel ("Super-Flat"), it was very fast-paced, to-the-point, and well researched, and the three hosts bounced off each other well. Plus, I learned a lot about the history and influences of Japanese tokusatsu (special effects) shows, as well as some classic American comics like Superman and Captain America, all of which are topics I am woefully uneducated on.

Afterward I checked out the Dealer's Room again, this time with Sam and his buddies. After vacillating over the purchase of some old-school imported Japanese magazines at the Comicopia booth, I ended up buying a $2 Japanese children's book "Heidi, Girl of the Alps," featuring anime-style art but apparently having nothing to do with the Isao Takahata anime TV series of the same name. Naturally, this was from the same dealer (Mugen Toys) who sold me the Kosaku Shima books the day before! Then Sam, his friends, and I grabbed some great Asian food at a nearby Teriyaki restaurant, and I headed back to the hotel to catch our bus back to RPI.

My experience at Anime Boston was honestly one of the better ones I've ever had at a con, despite a few frustrating setbacks along the way. The wide range of panels and panelists opened up some great avenues of discussion, and I was able to cram in a wide breadth of events (panels and otherwise) in my time at the con. I'll write more about my specific high and low points in my upcoming con report, but let's just say that my long-awaited reunion with the city of Boston and its resident anime con was a very positive one.

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I stopped in for a bit at Anime World Order's Gerald and Clarissa's "Tezuka 101," which was an appropriately introductory panel that followed much of the information provided in Helen McCarthy's excellent The Art of Osamu Tezuka: God of Manga. There wasn't really anything for an amateur Tezuka scholar like myself to learn, but it was quite in-depth for people new to the artist.

"It's a Rumic World," a presumably informative panel about Rumiko Takahashi, was basically just a fan-gushing session, not too appropriate for people trying to learn about the prolific manga artist. Soon after, I checked out "The State of the Industry," which featured ONLY Adam and Rojas from FUNimation. In fact, the Anime Boston-designated moderator never showed up, so Gia Manry (of Anime News Network) served as moderator for what ended up being a pregame FUNimation panel, albeit with more industry insight and less blatant marketing. (I recorded the whole thing, and may post it up.)

One of the highlights of my day was "Remembering Satoshi Kon," Daryl Surat's panel about the late director, which I served as co-panelist on. We packed the room, and after some tripping over each other's feet, we developed a pretty good rapport.

Sam Kusek and Eric Shorey ran a fantastic panel called "'What is Super-Flat': Where Anime fits in Post-Modern Culture," which was a very academic look at post-modernism with nods to Japanese artists like Murakami and anime like Paranoia Agent. I'm considering doing a write-up of the panel, as it brought up a lot of interesting ideas.

Gerald Rathkolb's "The Sane Fan's Guide to Mecha Anime" was a pretty thorough yet basic introduction to mecha, though he occasionally lapsed into more in-depth stuff before reeling it back. Proving his point that mecha fans can be totally obnoxious, some guys in Legend of the Galactic Heroes costumes ran into the room and screamed "Sig Zeon!" (a reference to original Gundam).

After grabbing a quick dinner, I headed over to the absurd clipshow that is Anime Hell, hosted by Mike Toole, Daryl Surat, and Mike Horne. It featured a lot of Daryl's clips from his Genericon presentation of "The Panel of Doom," so I had already seen a lot of it, and Daryl's laptop had a bunch of technical problems, but it was still a hilarious night.

And during a quick trip to the dealer's room, I managed to find some Kodansha Bilingual Comics Editions of volumes 1, 2, and 3 of business manga Section Chief Kosaku Shima, which I bought for $2 each at the Mugen Toys booth! Quite a find, apparently, though I didn't realize just how rare they were when I bought them.

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"Fanthropologies," a panel run by the indomitable Charles Dunbar and featuring Alex Leavitt and Jennifer Fu as guests, was ostensibly about the study of fandom, both in terms of anime and other media, but it quickly turned into a much more broad discussion about copyright and fan ethics. I'm considering writing a full post on it, as a lot of the ideas that they brought up were really very enlightening.

Right after that, I had to rush to my Greg Ayres interview, only to be held up by a string of staff confusions and rescheduling that resulted in at least 45 minutes of idle time. Nevertheless, once the valiant Press Relations guy Jamison got Greg into the room with me, we had a great interview, talking over his views on the current state of fansubs and the industry.

After a trip to the oddly empty Dealer's Room with Anime World Order's Daryl Surat, I headed to Experts of Fan Controversy, which looked like it was going to be a fiery debate between some of the smartest minds in the industry, moderated by panelist extraordinaire Alex Leavitt. Instead it ended up being a totally respectful, insightful discussion between the panelists (which included AnimeOnDVD's Chris Beveridge, Vertical's Ed Chavez, MIT's Jennifer Fuu, Anime World Order's Clarissa Graffeo, and Tezuka In English's Ada Palmer), punctuated by some funny moments and Alex's wacky scoring system. I recorded the panel in its entirety, so you might hear that in podcast form very soon.

Then... not much, con-wise. We had a sort of "State of the Manga Industry" dinner that ended up being more of an informal night at a local Indian restaurant, and I was denied entry (again) to Daryl's "Anime's Craziest Deaths" panel since it was already jam-packed. (I'll save my full-length misgivings about this situation for the con report.)

Finally, I ended up just bouncing around to a couple of video rooms, settling on Golgo 13 TV, where I met two teenage girls who were loving the show. I recommended they check out the 1983 movie, the OAV, and the manga (and pointed out that most of them are available in the Dealer's Room at the con). It was one of the stand-out moments of my day — they seemed so excited, filled with the kind of exploratory attitude that we need more of as a fandom. Plus, who would've thought that teenage girls would be enjoying Golgo 13 that much? The show is for Japanese salarymen!

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EDIT 1: Modified my list a little after realizing that I missed a few panels.