The debut of the Anime Rest Stop online! Recap of Anime USA 2011!

Hi, everyone!  Welcome to the blog.  As the co-creator and one of many contributors to the site, I hope to bring some interesting views to the mix when it comes to the world of anime fandom and overall geek culture.  However, I want to make one thing clear to everyone before we begin: This is not a bitch box.  Although there are tons of things wrong within the fandom and industries that help perpetuate said fandom, we want to focus on some of the positive things occurring around us.  I hope that most who come to this blog spot find something remotely meaningful in the posts to come.

For now, I will give you a recap of Anime USA 2011 held in Crystal City, VA.  This was my fifth time attending this particular convention and my very first tenure as a panelist.  The programming staff was quite helpful and the tech ops did their best to maintain stability of the projectors throughout the event.  Prior to the first panel, The Histories of Capcom, SNK, and Arc System Works, we waited in line to get our associate badges for the event.  While waiting, I ran into Charles Dunbar of The Study of Anime and had a brief conversation with him.   All in all, cool guy.  Also, a lovely cosplayer dressed as Asuka from Evangelion walked past us with her yellow dress and nice heels.  Sadly, a hellish odor emerged from that very direction, and as she walked away, it became stronger. It wasn't typical con funk of legend; it was flatulence.  Although the old saying is, "Whoever smelt it, dealt it," this certainly wasn't one of those times.  All of us in line agreed it was her.  I'm sorry, miss, but everyone has that kind of day.  

Anyway, we started our panel run with Capcom, SNK, and Arc System Works.  Sadly, technical difficulties with the projector and the laptop battery cost us an hour of what was scheduled to be a three hour extravaganza.  Nevertheless, my team, consisting of The Harvester and Mr. Awesomeness, ventured forward and actually engaged the crowd with some pretty sound rhetoric before we were up and running.  We brought the true history of these three companies into play by showing clips from Vulgus, Garou: Mark of the Wolves, and the very first Guilty Gear (GG: The Missing Link) to show our seriousness.  We even previewed Darkstalkers (which got a re-release last week on PSN) and Tech Romancer before hitting the movie and animated adaptations.  Everyone cringed in unison when we showed the opening for Street Fighter: The Animated Series.
  The biggest surprise to me was that God Hand, a little gem Capcom made back when Clover Studios had their blessing, got a major ovation from the crowd.  (This title is also on PSN).

Our second panel, The Anime Rest Stop: Con Stories & Fan Glory, ran into a few surprising hurdles.  No technical difficulties happened during the course of this panel.  Our panel, consisting of Vash the Stampede and The Harvester at the time, made light of a few things while telling stories from days long ago in the wide world of fandom.  We discussed everything from Ideon to Tokyopop.  But the crowd seemed more into sharing their stories with us.  The panel had an older fan (mid 40s or so) in attendance who seemed fascinated by the Space Battleship Yamato film (which, ironically, was airing the same time as our panel).  I brought up the fact it was playing at the con, but I had no idea it was scheduled at the same time.  Our lovable humanoid typhoon helped point that out, and with little to no help, the old guy vanished from the room.  Afterwards, the crowd seemed to die down as we got further with comparisons of the U.S. comic book industry and the anime and manga industries respectively.  I learned a few things: U.S. Comics haven't crossed over for a long time to get young people, and the anime fandom is extremely dedicated to its material that only a few things will cause them to diverge.  The most controversial of our panel dealt with Dub vs. Sub.  I knew it was a touchy topic, but a certain Bakura cosplayer informed us with such ferocity that Angel Beats had a terrible dub.  The Harvester did not approve of such.  His eyes narrowed suspiciously before he asked her what her problem was with the translation before he heard the pleas of, "It's not like the Japanese."  I had to quickly intervene in the matter.  From there, Toppa Tengen Gurren Lagann's dub was brought into the mix and got another member of the audience jeering its performance, citing the American voice actor's lack of depth.  Once again, another skirmish I had to breakup.  When asked if I agreed with the weeaboos in attendance, I simply shook my head and thought, "Be glad I'm saving your asses from this slaughter."

If you prefer subtitles over dubs, that is fine.  But please respect other people's wishes to watch something in English.  Besides, the discs come with language options!

After averting the geeky version of the Cuban Missile Crisis, we checked out a few panels such as Con Horror Stories and ran into Aaron Clark of Eva Monkey.  Mr. Awesomeness scoped out Cosplay Burlesque while The Harvester and I went to The Video Game Room, which seemed more like the FPS (First Person Shooter) and DDR (Dance Dance Revolution) hub.  However, considering the fact that Dress to Impress the Rave panel was a huge draw, it shows the target market of today.  I ran into some amazing people in the Dealer's Room (old friends and new alike) and saw a very odd guy dressed in skin tight fetish that revealed too much.  As Mr. Awesomeness puts it, "Popcorn shrimp."

Finally, the third panel was the major hit of the weekend.  With a team consisting of The Harvester, Mr. Awesomeness, Our Vash cosplayer (now out of costume), El Shameless (as he prefers to call himself nowadays) and myself, we brought the heat with convention stories of love, lust, and lunacy.  Compared to the other panels over the weekend, it drew a packed house, rivaling Hentai vs. Porn panel, The Rave, and Anime Parliament.  The crowd was hot even when my footage wasn't at times.  The Rapeman, Agent Aika, and Dark Love had the crowd laughing, curious, and gasping for more respectively.  Then, we decided to play chicken with a loyal, but sound fan who begged us not to show Berserk's final episode.  We did, and the female fans wept and walked out.  However, they didn't walk out during the worms in the ass in Dark Love--They laughed during Rapeman.  I'm still laughing about that experience today.      

My first time hosting panels was quite thrilling and I hope to be able to return to it in the near future.   This concludes the first entry in the blog of the Anime Rest Stop!  Keep on trucking, everyone!