Panel Feedback 2023

[Krabstarr 54]

The thus begins the Panel Feedback thread for Otakon 2023.

Leave your thoughts on panels you attended and let the presenters know how they did. 

[Nate A.M. 1]

Oh man, I was so busy this year. I had a press badge for artistunknown.info and prioritized any guest panel that seemed like it might be relevant to the site, so I'm afraid I missed out on a lot of fan panels. I actually have a lot to say about fan programming at Otakon, but that belongs in its own post – to be written after I get all our coverage up on the site. In any case, since I'll be writing about some of these guest panels for artistunknown at length, I'll try to keep it brief.

MACROSS Creators and BIGWEST Industry Panel: Kawamori and Tenjin are such bros. It's clear they enjoy being on stage, and they're good at it too. I had to skip out on most of their segment of the panel to go to an interview, but before I left, Kawamori was giving his usual spiel about his engineering-centric design mindset and the origins of Macross. It's nothing I hadn't heard before – especially since he's been doing the press circuit lately – but I don't think I can fault him. When I returned about an hour later, Kimura Yoshinari was just starting to shill Bandai Spirits, and from there on out the panel was just one long advertisement. Admittedly, that chougoukin YF-21 looks awesome and I made sure to stop by the dealer's room to grab a pin and a shirt. Mission Successful for the seisakuiinkai I guess! Ultimately I get that companies don't send guests to the other side of the globe for shits and giggles, but I do wonder how much programming-as-advertisement should we be willing to accept in turn for getting such an admittedly incredible lineup.

The Quintessential Quintuplets Special Premiere and Q&A: Informative and fun – and the special itself was pretty good too. Nagata Hiroto's OP kicked ass. As press, I was a bit disappointed I had to interview these guys before I got to see the special and not afterwards, but that's neither here nor there. Incidentally, you never know what you're going to get with "producer" guests from production committee members, but I have to hand it to Tanaka Junichirou for not just having a solid stage presence but for seeming engaged with the realities of anime production.

The Sound of Anime: Hey, an actual fan panel! JP's presentation focused on the fundamentals of audio editing, SFX, foley (they're different!), and many things besides, using examples from anime but not getting too into anything that might be specific to the anime industry. A valid approach imo. JP's style is low energy, but quite charismatic. Again, I wish I could pull that off without having to be a tryhard all the time. Probably the best fan panel I saw this Otakon.

How to Create Ambiance for an Anime: Another interesting panel about anime production – no additional feedback. I really wish I could've seen the Tunnel to Summer premiere the next day because it seems like a neat movie with an unusual production, but goddamn I was busy. Full credit for them not even once mentioning Miyazaki's name when talking about how they use color scripts, I know that must've been hard.

Live Drawing by Studio Trigger: Trigger's live drawing panels are always fun. I'm glad the audience was as interested as I was to hear from the young animators from the Fukuoka branch. I imagine it helped that bringing them over was easier for Trigger than finding time in Imaishi or Yoshinari (You) or Amemiya's schedule. The lesson for Otakon is that if Trigger says "hey can we bring these two guys you probably haven't heard of before this year," you're safe saying "yes."

Anime Director Yuji Yanase Q&A: Some of the best guests sometimes end up being people like Yanase, who don't necessarily have the most interesting CVs but do have long careers and many stories.

Mecha Video Games with Mecha Designers and Mecha Game Designers: A powerful lineup that was…maybe a bit too powerful for its own good actually. There were some fun tidbits here and there, but I feel with so many guests the thrust of the panel was pretty unfocused. I'd have to think about whether there's anything that Barder could've done differently as MC (and I didn't take notes on this one), but I don't envy the challenge.

Differences in Sci-Fi between the East and West with Seiyuu Haruna Ikezawa: A good but not truly great panel about the very basics of Japanese literary SF in 2023. Ikezawa focused on introducing some recent anthologies and serials, which seems like a valid approach, although I haven't checked whether any of them are available in English. Still, I felt like this was a surface-level flyover of a subject about which Ikezawa was clearly quite erudite. Her American counterpart – a long time Otakon staffer whose name I forget but I've seen around since I first started coming – simply didn't have an equivalent knowledge of contemporary English language literary SF to really elevate the discussion, but did his best.

The strangest part of the panel was the beginning, when Ikezawa asked the audience for examples of Japanese SF, and the audience predictably gave almost entirely anime examples. I was cringing the whole way. Like c'mon, of course we're illiterate in Japanese literary SF, of course we're weeaboos, that's why we're at the panel, don't make us embarrass ourselves too. I (slowly) read Japanese, and even I've only read like two or three stories which didn't also have anime adaptations – and one of them started as essentially a Love Live crackfic. Ikezawa clearly didn't mean it in a mean spirited way, but it seemed like a big waste of precious panel time. Audience interaction is great, but use it wisely.

Incidentally, Ikezawa's slide deck was very cute.

Orange Presents: Trigun Stampede Stories & Animation: Came in a half hour late, but it seemed like a good time – no real feedback. I've got nothing but respect for Watanabe and Orange. Incidentally, the stack of Wolfwood cosplayer crosses in the far corner straight out of 2003 was hilarious.

ADR, Production & Direction: Anime from Old School to New Cool: This was…Justin Cook and Megan Shipman fielding random questions from the audience – absolutely nothing to do with the ostensive topic except that Cook happens to have been in the industry for a long time. There's value in that too, but if it's just going to be someone asking the "how can I become a voice actor in the US industry" question for about the thousandth time at a US con, please at least shoot Otakon a message so they can update the guidebook description. I bounced after a half hour.

All Aboard: The Trains of Galaxy Railways and Galaxy Express 999: Despite overlapping interests, I think this is the first time I've been to one of James' panels, though I seem to remember him coming to a few of mine. It was a pretty fun run through a bunch of cool trains, some of them very much in the Leijiverse, others very much asspull excuses (affectionate) for James to talk about a cool locomotive. Since trains represent a notable gap in my mecha knowledge despite being a big railfan as a little kid, I learned a lot despite it being fairly basic (but not entirely wikipediable) info about some relatively famous trains. This definitely felt like the first run of a panel – James' delivery lacked a certain energy and there were a few digressions that I think could be profitably excised or at least sharpened – but I think his storytelling instincts are fundamentally pretty good. Nothing fancy here, just a solid listicle. Could've done with a Sources or Further Reading section though.

What it's Like to Work on Anime with Takaharu Ozaki and Shinya Tsuruoka: I did not expect this to be a screening of the BASTARD!! ONA's first episode, but that's fine by me (granted it's frankly one of Ozaki's lesser works). The HDMI adapter for the MacBook running it was clearly dying on them and I very nearly went up to lend them mine, but thought better of it. In any case, Ozaki is an interesting director, but I feel this panel only partly got at that because he kept his statements and answers quite general. A little more specificity about what he meant by, for instance, "I got to revisit what it means to be mature with BASTARD!!" might've gone a long way. A shame.

Q&A With Trigger's President and Animators: Since everyone already knows what these are like, I'd like to open discussion on the best practices for taking questions from the audience. Having everyone stand in line for the microphone gives a pretty significant advantage to anyone near the front and on the isle. This selects for people who know how Trigger panels work and are willing to get there early enough to position themselves ahead of time – at least in theory, but this doesn't actually seem to correlate strongly with question quality. Taking the mic around the room is potentially more random, but less efficient, meaning less questions get answered overall, which imo isn't a good trade. You could theoretically have people take numbers and call up tranches of like five at a time with RNG, but does the added equability really justify the effort? Part of me even likes the idea that if I really want Yoshinari You to confirm his cuts for Shin Eva as a member of the general public, I can give myself pretty good odds of making it happen.

Orange Presents: Innovating Ways of Animation: A really interesting panel that Watanabe intended as a roundtable between Kiyomiya, Kiyotaka, and himself. Did Watanabe's experiment work? From my point of view, not really: the onus of interpreting simply makes having a genuine roundtable a lot harder. The result wasn't notably different from an ordinary question-response-followup style guest panel. I'd be interested to hear Watanabe's own reflections, since he himself said that he puts a lot of thought into what sort of programming is best suited for an anime convention versus any other format.

Quartz Revolution: How Japan Upended and Rebuilt the Watch Industry: A solid history panel that with better delivery and micro-level organization could be great. Élan is needed here, and a sharper focus on the connective tissue – the causal elements being explored. This is a panel with a well-defined thesis about what happened to the Swiss and Japanese watch industries in the post war period, so it should really argue that thesis. As is, this is really about a half hour's worth of material presented over the span of an hour. That's not to say the panel was poorly paced or dull, just that there's a lot of room to work with.

Edited August 1, 2023 by Nate A.M.

[Brainchild 1]

Quote

• Differences in Sci-Fi between the East and West with Seiyuu Haruna Ikezawa: A good but not truly great panel about the very basics of Japanese literary SF in 2023. Ikezawa focused on introducing some recent anthologies and serials, which seems like a valid approach, although I haven't checked whether any of them are available in English. Still, I felt like this was a surface-level flyover of a subject about which Ikezawa was clearly quite erudite. Her American counterpart – a long time Otakon staffer whose name I forget but I've seen around since I first started coming – simply didn't have an equivalent knowledge of contemporary English language literary SF to really elevate the discussion, but did his best.
  
•  

Some of my roommates went to this panel and said something very similar, that the translator was clearly not familiar with sci-fi lit and terminology, even when the author was clearly name-dropping people like Octavia Butler and Ursula le Guin.

I also want to note that based on my own observed experience and those from my roommates, sound issues seemed to be a common issue with panels this year, particularly with those early in the mornings.  I get that there are only so many sound techs to go around, but it was a mildly frustrating thing for the panelists and audience alike.

That being said, I did get to a fair few fan panels.

An Otaku's Guide to Donghua - this was not my first time seeing this (the panelist had performed it previously for this year's Anime Lockdown), but it was a solid overview of some of the Chinese animated works out there with a decent variety as far as genre and whatnot.

History and Influence of Shojo Manga - As someone who's done a fair bit of research (and even a panel or two) on shojo manga history, a lot of this was familiar territory for me.  Still, it was a good, breezy overview of the genre covering the Meiji era all the way to the 2000s.  Also, it turns out that part of the reason some of this material felt familiar was that the panelist cited an Anime Feminist piece I had done on old shojo manga as one of her references, which was kind of flattering and novel in its own way.

Telemundo! Anime in Latin America - This was a simple Q&A style panel, but the questions were decent and it's one of the few times where I didn't feel dread when attendees asked the panelist questions in their native language.  Mario Castaneda in particular was really charming and won over the whole room, even those who didn't grow up listening to him play Goku.

Anime In the Philippines - This was done by the same panelist who did Otaku's Guide to Donghua, and I think this one was even better.  She had to cover a lot of ground - not just some of the shows that were popular or some of the Filipino co-pros that have been made, but also a lot of cultural stuff and overviews of some of the specific channels that aired anime there.  I do like that she noted not just where these shows were available in English but also where some of the Filipino-made dubs could be found online.

Animation Cels at Work: The Life and Death of Cel Animation - Easily the best fan panel I watched this weekend.  The presenter had a very casual style, but he was clearly very engaged with the material and the panel itself was well-researched and structured, covering not just the history but the production of cels as well as some of the complications of collecting and caring for them.  The only issue was that his laptop battery briefly died towards the end, which left him with not enough time to look over some cels from his own collection with the audience.

The Enduring Fandom of The Rose of Versailles - This one was just OK.  It was more of an overview of the franchise than anything else, and it didn't engage me as much as I would have wished.  I ended up bouncing halfway through to...

AnimEigo - I get that all the Macross content at the con made this a perfect opportunity to remind people about their upcoming Macross II Kickstarter, but there was barely 10 minutes of material here.  Woodhead et al. could have at least shown off more footage of the new remaster - he played the OP before it started and it looked absolutely gorgeous.  This panel basically could have been an email, or at least a brief stream.

Official AMVs - A nice curated selection of music videos featuring footage from anime or animated by notable anime creatives.  The highlight for many (including the panelist) was showing Chaga and Aska's On Your Mark, which was famously made by Studio Ghibli.  The only downside were a couple of groups sitting near me who were talking through most of the panel just loudly enough to be annoying.  I suspect they might have been drunk, considering this was a late-night Saturday panel

Isekai Like It's 1999 - A no-frills overview of 80s/90s isekai titles, with a fairly even split between anime and manga titles.

Orange Presents: Ways of Making Anime - This was way more low-key than I expected.  I was expecting something closer to what their Trigun panel was or what they've done at Otakon in the past, where they get more into the technical side of how they make their shows.  The self Q&A thing and the emphasis on the philosophy behind their work and studio was an interesting idea in theory but I must confess there were a few times where I started to doze off.

Hot Springs Episode: An Introduction to Japanese Onsen - A solid overview of some of the culture, anime and tropes around Japanese bathing.  Could have done with more clips from some of the anime featured, although considering the subject matter I suspect they would have had to retool it to make it 18+ to pull that off.

[CarolineAndJustine 3]

In chronological order:

 

Thinking About Anime 102: The Basis of Textual Criticism - I was a bit nervous going into this one, but it was great. The presenter clearly knew his stuff and walked the audience through various angles of criticism in an easy to follow manner that also wasn't boring for people with more existing knowledge in the area. (It was also easy to follow even if you weren't familiar with the series he was using for examples). Fun and informative.

 

The History of Magical Girls - I didn't end up staying very long at this one. It felt disorganized and more like a list of shows organized chronologically than an actual history. The panelist was also just reading directly off his slides for the most part. (He also opened the panel with a joke that absolutely did not land, which isn't really his fault but I think threw him off his game.) 

 

Pyramid Head Has a Point: Feminine Horror in Silent Hill - possibly the best panel I went to all weekend. I'm friends with the panelists so I'm biased of course, but it was extremely well thought out and presented, plus they did a good job using humor to lighten the mood when discussion got too heavy. (It was definitely the funniest panel I saw, which I did not expect going in.)

 

Isekai Prevention 101: First Aid & CPR - Exactly what it said on the tin. The presenter (a firefighter) did a great job presenting basic first aid information in an easy to follow way, with lots of anime jokes and reference images throughout. Also my vote for best panel title.

 

Myths and Mortals: Fantasy in Japan and the English Speaking World - this one was middle of the road. It's a great concept, but I felt it was too narrowly applied - the panelist only focused on one classic fantasy story from each culture (King Arthur and Journey to the West respectively), and once she was done abruptly jumped several hundred years forward to WWII era literature without any kind of transition. It was definitely interesting and I learned a lot, but it felt like I wasn't getting the full picture either.

I also co-ran Sword Lesbians in Anime (again) and Dressing for the Weather: Summer Cosplay 101. I felt those went pretty well but I'd definitely like to hear feedback if people have any.

[xenoglossy 1]

@CarolineAndJustine and I went to the same panels and I don't have much to add, other than that another issue I had with History of Magical Girls was that the presenter was frequently looking down at the desk when he spoke (rather than directing his voice into the mic and/or out toward the audience) and I had trouble hearing him. But I did want to also mention AMVs on the Gaydar, which I enjoyed a lot! There was a good variety of different source material, and the overall quality of the vids was high. The presenters mentioned (when we ran into them later, elsewhere at the con) that they had considered cutting one video so they could talk a bit in between, and I think that would be fun if they wanted to do it in the future, but I did have a great time nonetheless!

[esw01407 3]

ADR, Production & Direction: Anime from Old School to New Cool - Not to dogpile, but this panel based on the description was a huge miss. It was only a voice actor QA that I stayed for briefly. Some basic panel work and this could have been something.

Telemundo! Anime in Latin America - It might have only been a voice actor QA, but it was one of the best I've seen in years. Quiet best panel of the con. All the people up there rocked it and were interesting.

Sword Lesbians in Anime - Two good presenters, good PowerPoint, worked around some tech issues. I'm not an expert in this area, but it felt they lost some focus mid panel. Still, I'd see other panels they do, as the overall presentation was good. 

This Panel is (About) Crap: Japanese Innovations in Plumbing  - I got to see this panel before at another convention, but my friend wanted to see it, and I love the oddness of the topic. Panel is well researched and presented. 

My friend attended Hey Spidey, Get in the Robot! and Pyramid Head Has a Point: Feminine Horror in Silent Hill  and said both were solid. 

[xenoglossy 1]

48 minutes ago, esw01407 said:

Sword Lesbians in Anime - Two good presenters, good PowerPoint, worked around some tech issues. I'm not an expert in this area, but it felt they lost some focus mid panel. Still, I'd see other panels they do, as the overall presentation was good.  

Thank you! Out of curiosity, was it that jumping back to explain the influence of the Takarazuka in the middle before going back to talking about anime didn't work for you, or did you feel we did a less good job explaining the significance/influence of the later series?

[esw01407 3]

5 minutes ago, xenoglossy said:

Thank you! Out of curiosity, was it that jumping back to explain the influence of the Takarazuka in the middle before going back to talking about anime didn't work for you, or did you feel we did a less good job explaining the significance/influence of the later series?

It was the influence of Takarazuka part, I got a little lost there. 

[alabaster 0]

14 hours ago, Nate A.M. said:

Differences in Sci-Fi between the East and West with Seiyuu Haruna Ikezawa: A good but not truly great panel about the very basics of Japanese literary SF in 2023. Ikezawa focused on introducing some recent anthologies and serials, which seems like a valid approach, although I haven't checked whether any of them are available in English. Still, I felt like this was a surface-level flyover of a subject about which Ikezawa was clearly quite erudite. Her American counterpart – a long time Otakon staffer whose name I forget but I've seen around since I first started coming – simply didn't have an equivalent knowledge of contemporary English language literary SF to really elevate the discussion, but did his best.

The strangest part of the panel was the beginning, when Ikezawa asked the audience for examples of Japanese SF, and the audience predictably gave almost entirely anime examples. I was cringing the whole way. Like c'mon, of course we're illiterate in Japanese literary SF, of course we're weeaboos, that's why we're at the panel, don't make us embarrass ourselves too. I (slowly) read Japanese, and even I've only read like two or three stories which didn't also have anime adaptations – and one of them started as essentially a Love Live crackfic. Ikezawa clearly didn't mean it in a mean spirited way, but it seemed like a big waste of precious panel time. Audience interaction is great, but use it wisely.

Incidentally, Ikezawa's slide deck was very cute.

What it's Like to Work on Anime with Takaharu Ozaki and Shinya Tsuruoka: I did not expect this to be a screening of the BASTARD!! ONA's first episode, but that's fine by me (granted it's frankly one of Ozaki's lesser works). The HDMI adapter for the MacBook running it was clearly dying on them and I very nearly went up to lend them mine, but thought better of it. In any case, Ozaki is an interesting director, but I feel this panel only partly got at that because he kept his statements and answers quite general. A little more specificity about what he meant by, for instance, "I got to revisit what it means to be mature with BASTARD!!" might've gone a long way. A shame.

 

These were both panels where I was MC, so I'll give a little insight. 

For Ikezawa:  Typically, I'm able to meet with the people on the J-guest panels I do, and we both go over the scripted parts and talk about how things will go.  Unfortunately, they arrived a bit late because of weather and I had to deal with a last minute thing, and we got interrupted a few times, so I didn't know she was going to put me on the spot quite so much; I'd have prepared differently if I had.  We've chatted since, and I'll pass along your feedback; I think having some deliberately chosen SF for the west would have helped.  (I'm looking forward to working with her at some point again as we got along pretty well, and I have a little feedback of my own to share with her, at her request.)

For "What it's like...": The word "Mature" was omitted from the description in some places. That didn't help set the stage.  The industry rep came prepared with a script and the plan to show the anime, but we didn't realize that until they arrived.  In Japan, these sorts of events tend to be pretty formal and stiff, if I'm honest, with minimal Q&A and some talking points.  Now that they've experienced the little nudge toward a more western approach, and now that Trigger and Orange and a few others have become more savvy to engaging the western otaku audiences, we may see more loosening up.   (It's also possible that the clearance from Netflix had strings attached, but I wasn't involved in securing that.)

 

 

[Attendee7000 18]

I won't bother doing feedback for Guest Q&A since that mostly has to do with the guest and the nature of their visit, rather than panel content. But for some of the panels I attended:

 

Manly Battleships: Gameshow Impossiburu

I went largely based on the group (Many Battleships) since they've done pretty good panels in the past. This one was no exception (although I suppose it was more of a interactive game than a panel)

 

Animation Cels at Work:

This turned out to be a really good panel. The presenter had good energy and knowledge on it so he could keep it moving. It was also well organized. I've been an off and on cel collector and it was interesting to find out some of the details about some of the cels I had that I didn't even know I wanted to learn about until I did.

 

Haibane Renmei: Questions with No Answer

I was a big fan of this show and it's good to see it still getting some love 20 years later. I'd have liked a little bit more in insights on the show though, it was mostly a run through of the story and characters.

 

Myths and Mortals: Fantasy in Japan and the English Speaking World

This one seemed to go really deep into the weeds, something more like you'd see at a literary convention than an anime convention. But it was Sunday afternoon and I had to leave halfway through so I could get out of the garage in time.

[alabaster 0]

5 hours ago, Brainchild said:

Some of my roommates went to this panel and said something very similar, that the translator was clearly not familiar with sci-fi lit and terminology, even when the author was clearly name-dropping people like Octavia Butler and Ursula le Guin.

I also want to note that based on my own observed experience and those from my roommates, sound issues seemed to be a common issue with panels this year, particularly with those early in the mornings.  I get that there are only so many sound techs to go around, but it was a mildly frustrating thing for the panelists and audience alike.

 

We had a new contractor for A/V this year.  There were some growing pains that I feel reasonably certain will be addressed.  I've already passed along my own annoyance at certain setup issues.  In specific, putting screens behind the panel tables needs to stop, and we never had enough working mics.  But they had an adapter -- it just decided to conk out.  I had the same exact adapter and sometime earlier this year it started getting dodgy with me too. 

If I hadn't had my own spare USB-C dongle, the BASTARD mature anime panel would have been a mess.  

Typically, we arrive and do a pre-panel test; the failing dongle was really nobody's fault, but I'm going to ask they have a spare for every room.

[Revan 38]

When i write these, I try not to ding the presentations as they are contributing more than I am to the con. I wish I could find the paper where I had some notes, but it's somewhere in the vacation stuff I haven't sorted yet. That being said...

Anime Reboots, Understanding the Brotherhood Effect - Looked at reasons why series are being rebooted years, even decades after the original run, for better and for worse. Some of them being the same reasons why Hollywood keeps constantly bringing back properties.

Demon Slayer Traditions: Exploring the translation of traditional art and music into anime - This was a neat presentation about how music from traditional Japanese instruments is in the soundtrack of Demon Slayer, and how different art styles are included in the designs and background of the show.

Tea-riffic - I love tea, and I try to go to these panels because people share my enjoyment of it. There wasn't much I hadn't already heard, but I liked the presentation. (The puns on each slide of the powerpoint presentation were cute.)

You will be at my panel -  history of the Yandere - I sort of stopped in this one because I needed a spot to sit and eat, but it wasn't a bad panel. They classified Yandere on a scale of danger - 'mostly' harmless to 'this person will kill you', and examples of different characters who are and aren't yandere.

Hell on a Cel: Best anime fight scenes - Another primarily clip show, but there were some fun scenes in there, including when characters fight dirty.

Greatest Asses of Japanese History - A comedy panel about people and things from Japanese history that were either gender flipped or anthropomorphized (the battleship Yamato?!) into anime characters. The presenters gave an actual history of the subjects, and finished each one with a rating of their posteriors. This one started off with a capacity crowd (and beyond), and there was a steady exodus of people who left. Maybe it was because the presenters spent too long on the history, maybe it was because they were hard to hear, or maybe, like me, there's only so many times you can watch the same joke before you tire of it.

Weirdest Japanese Commercials / Japanese Commercials to make you laugh, cry, and think - These are for all intents and purposes the same panel - minimal commentary from the presenter, mostly just showing commercials. Not that I'm complaining about that, as I've been to both of these before and will try to attend again in the future.

City Pop: The golden age of Japanese music - I love going to panels about music (the panel on jazz in Japan back in 2021 is a personal favorite), but this one was actually rather disappointing. The presenter did give a thorough history of the genre and the performers, but TBH, I wanted more music in a panel on the 'golden age' of music.

I'm not old! Anime characters over 30 - This one really appealed to me, mainly because I have Otakon badges that are almost 30, much less myself. 🥰 A discussion of different characters who are in their 3rd decade of life and beyond. Fun stuff.

Differences in Sci-Fi... - I can't really add much that hasn't already been said above, except to echo that I thought it would be more about how the two different types of science fiction developed, and examples of these differences.

Kia Asayama - This was something I did because I didn't really have any other plans, and I'm glad I did. It was fun hearing about how he - in some ways - lucked into a career as a mangaka, trying to draw a manga adaption of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace without actually being given proper reference material, and other stories.

Japanese religion in anime and pop culture - Talked about the history of religion in Japan, and how religions from Hinduism to Christianity have influence to this day. I like this panel, and really want to see Saint Young Men now.

Hey Spidey, get in the robot! A history of Marvel in Japan - Looked at Mavel's collaborations with Japanese companies over the decades, from animated and manga adaptions of Marvel series to Marvel's attempts to emulate the artistic styles of Japan (e.g. the Marvel Mangaverse line).

Sword Lesbians in Anime - This was a bit of irony for this panel and me. I remembered  a panel last year on Phantom Thieves, and thought if the same presenters did this one I would enjoy it. After a few minutes in, I realized that I actually went to this panel last year, but didn't recall it until then. Something that made me laugh was when 3 people came in to the panel, one mentioned not knowing what the panel was about but expected it to be about fan service. I wonder if they were disappointed.

Best of Otakon AMVs: Comedy - I've been to every AMV contest, but there are some of these that I cannot remember. There were one or two that made me wonder what the other entries were like if these were the winners,

 

 

[Clutch 66]

I rarely attend panels, but did go to Animation Cels at Work: The Life and Death of Cel Animation. I think the presenter's laptop went to sleep about 3/4 of the way through. It is easy to imagine presenters running on battery instead of plugging in, and laptops do funny things on battery when deciding to save power.

That made me curious if there is a staff person assigned to panels to nudge the panelists along during set-up to avoid technical glitches. The presenter should be doing a connection check and microphone level check, before getting started.

[F00LY 36]

1 hour ago, alabaster said:

We had a new contractor for A/V this year.  There were some growing pains that I feel reasonably certain will be addressed.  I've already passed along my own annoyance at certain setup issues.  In specific, putting screens behind the panel tables needs to stop, and we never had enough working mics.  But they had an adapter -- it just decided to conk out.  I had the same exact adapter and sometime earlier this year it started getting dodgy with me too. 

If I hadn't had my own spare USB-C dongle, the BASTARD mature anime panel would have been a mess.  

Typically, we arrive and do a pre-panel test; the failing dongle was really nobody's fault, but I'm going to ask they have a spare for every room.

Plan to review panels here later, but seeing this contractor post wanted to post my thoughts before I forget.

1. Every room should have 2 projectors.  Its awful getting into a panel you're hyped for, getting delegated to the side of the room where you just simply have no angle of the sole screen at all.

2. I feel like if this isn't a thing, a piece of paper should be at ever panel on how to connect to the mics/speakers and how to troubleshoot common issues. In multiple panels I experienced audience members playing IT support on how to check basic, basic things (basic IT wise, I dont expect "normies" to tech to know)

3. Most of the rooms projectors should've been a solid 12 inches higher.  This is a convention that lives and dies by subtitles.  In almost every panel I was at, if you werent in the front row or in my girlfriends case are relatively short, you're never reading a subtitle ever, especially if (1) is true and you only had one screen to try and read it on.

4. This is less A/V, but related. In the cases where mics or presenters are quiet, I wish whoever was in charge of the room would tell audience members to stfu.  This year was by far the rudest audience I have ever seen between heckling, calling out jokes constantly as if they are part of the panel, and in most cases just plain talking to their friend loudly through it.  I had some panels where right before the start the staff told everyone things were about to start to settle in and quiet down and it was the only panels that didnt have this issue as predominantly.

[xenoglossy 1]

1 hour ago, Clutch said:

That made me curious if there is a staff person assigned to panels to nudge the panelists along during set-up to avoid technical glitches. The presenter should be doing a connection check and microphone level check, before getting started.

There are AV people doing this, but I noticed they did seem a little scarce this year compared to previous years (as in, showed up later and checked in more briefly). I wonder if they were a bit short-staffed.

Edited August 1, 2023 by xenoglossy

[Nate A.M. 1]

1 hour ago, alabaster said:

These were both panels where I was MC, so I'll give a little insight. 

For Ikezawa:  Typically, I'm able to meet with the people on the J-guest panels I do, and we both go over the scripted parts and talk about how things will go.  Unfortunately, they arrived a bit late because of weather and I had to deal with a last minute thing, and we got interrupted a few times, so I didn't know she was going to put me on the spot quite so much; I'd have prepared differently if I had.  We've chatted since, and I'll pass along your feedback; I think having some deliberately chosen SF for the west would have helped.  (I'm looking forward to working with her at some point again as we got along pretty well, and I have a little feedback of my own to share with her, at her request.)

For "What it's like...": The word "Mature" was omitted from the description in some places. That didn't help set the stage.  The industry rep came prepared with a script and the plan to show the anime, but we didn't realize that until they arrived.  In Japan, these sorts of events tend to be pretty formal and stiff, if I'm honest, with minimal Q&A and some talking points.  Now that they've experienced the little nudge toward a more western approach, and now that Trigger and Orange and a few others have become more savvy to engaging the western otaku audiences, we may see more loosening up.   (It's also possible that the clearance from Netflix had strings attached, but I wasn't involved in securing that.)

Wow I'm on a roll not recognizing you – first online and now irl too!

Yeah, I was kinda curious how Ikezawa's panel was arranged. Definitely a difficult proposition. I'm glad that you guys have plans to work on something again in the future – she really is an interesting figure. As for Ozaki's panel, my first Otakon was in 2015, and things really have come along since the "Pony Canyon drags a director out to the US the producer to ask them canned questions about a show" days. I've seen reports from Japanese promotional talk events, and I can definitely appreciate the difficulties there.

43 minutes ago, Clutch said:

I rarely attend panels, but did go to Animation Cels at Work: The Life and Death of Cel Animation. I think the presenter's laptop went to sleep about 3/4 of the way through. It is easy to imagine presenters running on battery instead of plugging in, and laptops do funny things on battery when deciding to save power.

That made me curious if there is a staff person assigned to panels to nudge the panelists along during set-up to avoid technical glitches. The presenter should be doing a connection check and microphone level check, before getting started.

Xenoglossy ninja'd me, but yeah, the answer has been "yes" for Otakon during previous years, but usually "no" at other cons. Honestly if you haven't had to start up and troubleshoot a completely cold A/V system five minutes before a panel, have you really done anime con programming before?

[cyborg_synapse 0]

This year I saw many panels, and none that I didn't enjoy or learn from. It was a really good slate. Industry-wise, the Mecha Design panels with Shoji Kawamori, Shinji Aramaki et al was very interesting, as. was the panel with voice actors who worked in Spanish. 

The very best fan panels I saw were:

Anime in The Philippines 

This was a well-researched panel that taught me lots about the Philippines in general. I'm very interested in the ways that different shows and movie gain popularity differently in different places, and this panel was thorough and informative while having some nice moments of absurdity and humor.

Hell on A Cel

This was a blast. The presenter had a great format that flowed from element to element, scene to scene, in a fun way that kept everyone laughing and engaged. At the same time, I actually got excited about some titles I hadn't known much about before, or even heard of. I'm about halfway through Akudama Drive now because of this panel. 

 

[CarolineAndJustine 3]

On 8/1/2023 at 5:07 PM, Revan said:

Sword Lesbians in Anime - This was a bit of irony for this panel and me. I remembered  a panel last year on Phantom Thieves, and thought if the same presenters did this one I would enjoy it. After a few minutes in, I realized that I actually went to this panel last year, but didn't recall it until then. Something that made me laugh was when 3 people came in to the panel, one mentioned not knowing what the panel was about but expected it to be about fan service. I wonder if they were disappointed.

We had a higher than usual number of people walk out in the first ten minutes of the panel, probably because of this reason! That said, I don't think our Guidebook description was misleading so I suspect these people just didn't read it. 

I hope you enjoyed the panel even if it's not significantly different from last year.

🤷‍♀️

Edited August 7, 2023 by CarolineAndJustine
Cannot remove this emoji misfire...

[justsomegoober 0]

enjoyed alot of the panels and the only ones I was critical of were the ones that shared my topic, fitness. I did the Fitness in Japan and Anime: Redux, Do We Even Lift Now panel and I only plan on doing it one more time so i want the other people who do these panels to heed this advice:

Anime's Impact in the Field of Fitness: I was really disappointed in this panel, but I see alot of potential from the three presenters. My big issue was that the panel was at best tangential to fitness and anime and ended up being an unfocused fitness discussion which turned into a 45 minute Q&A. If that was what you were going for that is fine, but the entire thing came off as low energy, unfocused, and unrelated to anime. I would suggest doing at minimum a power point and then actually discussing the impact anime ahs had on the fitness community. You can bring up how Japanese/Asian cuisine seen in anime has expanded what body builders/gym rats eat, how different anime characters inspire various looks people want to emulate, which training montages/regimens people use now because of anime and the pros and cons of those plans, and you can review and do deep dive on how anime influences Japan (i.e. how sports manga appeals to Japanese interest in communal sports and exercise versus weight lifting). I think you guys have alot of experience and knowledge, and if you focus on your presentation style, content, and energy I think you will really be able to motivate and inspire people to make those healthy changes.

Beginner's Guide to Fitness through Anime: I really enjoyed your presentation style, you were informative and kept to the topic of fitness and anime. your brand of humor (being seriously, then cracking a joke) was solid and the info your presented was on point. I really liked how you broke down how different exercise routines, how your diet works for you, and how to maintain motivation. My only gripe was your slide deck, i come from the school of pictures > words. i think if you replace alot of your words with GIFs and images and have people more focus on what you are saying and less reading the notes on the screen you will get better engagement. Still though loved your panel and hope to see you again next year. 

every other panel I saw i really enjoyed and i hope the current of fitness panels continues to grow and improve over time. 

Fitness in Japan and Anime: Redux, Do We Even Lift Now: this was my panel that i got shut down because i have reptile brain and cursed too much. I will in the future make sure i practice my panel more before hand because i think  a big part of my screw up was I was usuing filler words. Alot of my filler words are four letter words. So I played myself. I also think i need to cut back my info unless somehow I can get a longer time block because I can talk about fitness and shoot jokes till for two hours i bet. Either way i would love any critical feedback on my panel if anyone attended, and plan on improving/streamlining it for next year since i only got to slide 20 out of 45. Also as an aside, is there a more professional version of PowerPoint out there people can recommend. I wanna add like proper background music and some other stuff when i present and idk if power point can do that.

[Nate A.M. 1]

On 8/8/2023 at 11:31 AM, justsomegoober said:

Also as an aside, is there a more professional version of PowerPoint out there people can recommend. I wanna add like proper background music and some other stuff when i present and idk if power point can do that.

PowerPoint is pretty much the professional version of PowerPoint. You can add proper BG music like this.

Damn, there were a lot of fitness panels this year huh.