I’m back at Fanime again this year. My latest kick is “take less photos and thus spend less time in photoshop, and thus be able to post in a reasonable time.”
Click to go to the gallery on Flickr…
Anime I watched that I want to see the rest of…
I also watched a few episodes of Science Ninja Team Gatchaman, which was a show I watched in Elementary school in its bastardized^W westernized version as “Battle of the Planets.” Man, those 70′s haircuts and clothes!
I woke up this morning absolutely exhausted. I had my breakfast, and went so far as to lie back down in bed before I decided “No, I don’t want to go back to sleep – I want to go to day 4 of Fanime.
Today’s viewings from the fansub room:
And, of course, more photos. I managed to edit about another 30 and add them to the gallery on flickr – I also changed the order so the newest ones are first.
I forgot to mention… Yesterday, seeing as the plaza in front of the convention center was full of people dressed up in costumes, some religious nut decided to bring his “worship Jesus or go to hell” sign and preach. The best part was, though, that we had a guy at the convention dressed up as Jesus, who went over and stood over said kook; the kook failed to fall down on his knees :)
I didn’t manage to get up in time to make it to the Clannad marathon, which was my other must-see of the weekend. But, seeing as it was a marathon that ran from 5:30 AM to 1 PM, I still managed to catch two episodes. In hindsight, it’s probably for the best: Clannad was made by the same studio as Air,, which was the saddest thing I’d ever seen. From what I did see of Clannad, if I’d watched the whole marathon, I would have been curled up in a corner crying for the rest of the day. If Studio Key’s motto isn’t “We’ll rip your heart out and feed it to you – repeatedly,” it probably should be.
If I’m going to be completely incapacitated for a day (or more, if it’s anything like Air was,) I think I’d rather do it at home that at a convention.
The highlight of the day was seeing two episodes of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensi 2, which was completely bizzare and absolutely hilarious. I also enjoyed Fullmetal Alchemist: The Movie. And remember how I said I didn’t find Prince of Tennis that interesting? Then why did I end up back in the fansub room watching more of it? :)
At 7:00, they had a Black and White Dance. Of course I brought my tuxedo. I even found a woman who knew how to Lindy Hop. Apparently, this is the second year they’ve had a formal dance, and this year the room was twice as big as last. And it was still too small; when I left at 9:00, there were about 200 people lined up to get in.
Photos: 250 today, but I’m having problems reading them into my computer right now – please please please don’t let the CF card be corrupted!
Update: Managed to get all but three photos off the card. Only took five hard reboots. Into the trash with you, evil CF card of epic failure!
I am really tired. Unfortunately for me, it’s only 8 PM. But the second “must see” on my list starts at 5:30 AM tomorrow morning.
I spent most of the day in the fansub rooms, where they were showing two or three episodes of a given series. Really brief notes:
Since I was already in the dealer room, I figured I had to do my part to help the economy; that is, other than by donating my tax dollars to bailing out real estate speculators and investment banks. I bought The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, which I’ve wanted for a while but have never been able to find all four DVDs together at the same store. Now perhaps I can learn that dang dance properly. :)
I started in on working on photos of today’s cosplayers, but didn’t get too far – I need to go to bed. Seven new photos on the Flickr page; many more to come.
Today was the first day of Fanime 2008, San Jose’s big annual Anime convention.
This is my first anime con; it runs for four days, with seven rooms showing different anime and Japanese movies. I have two things on my “must see” lists, and about six things on my “try real hard to see” list. Today, the only thing on the lists was Rebuild of Evangelion 01, yet another version of Neon Genesis Evangelion.
So how was it? Well… I found it quite uneven. I was reminded of the hue and cry when George Lucas re-edited the Star Wars movies from my childhood. In fact, I was quite tempted to yell out “Han shot first!” It seems the plot is about 90% the same as the original Evangelion, and 10% is new, but because there’s only 90 minutes to tell the story of the first six episodes, a lot of things just jump out with no explanation.
The animation seems to be largely from the original anime, with some segments re-animated where the plot changed, and a lot move “movement” shots done with computer graphics. Again, uneven… Misato’s appearance is significantly different in the new sequences, and when they’re juxtaposed right next to the original animation, it’s quite obvious. Most of the graphics in NERV HQ have been replaced with computer graphics, but in a few places they still use the original graphics animation. Shinji is still whiny, but there were one or two places where I thought I saw positive character development… Then it was back to whining.
Overall, not as good as I’d hoped; but there’s enough new that I’ll undoubtedly watch the next three parts when they come out.
Other stuff I watched: Part of Karas (very nice looking but not really my preferred genre,) and a bit of the Shakugan no Shana marathon (again, not really my type.)
Most of the rest of the day, I was wandering around with my camera taking pictures of Cosplayers. Some photos are up on my Flickr page.
