Anime Weekend Atlanta XII

[James D.]

This weekend will be my seventh time attending AWA; I've been to each one since AWA 4 save for AWA 7 (away at college). I'm planning on doing another review of the convention for the mainpage as I did last year. Hopefully, I can think of something to add to it to make it stand out from last year's piece. I still want to do the Top 5 costumes and some pics with the guests of honor. Also, I think I might do a recap of the VG tourneys I will enter (Soulcalibur III and Melty Blood). Is there anything else you guys would like me to talk about?

EDIT: Oh, and I am going to try and stay up for 36 hours straight to take in as much as I can. (Don't worry--I'll run home for showers. I have no desire to smell like the video game rooms after 12 hours of crowdedness, you know.)

[Missy]

What about an audio summary à la the Wizard World Philly, Wizard World Chicago and HorrorFind recaps?

[Kscriv]

Don't forget Ai-kon

[James D.]

What about an audio summary à la the Wizard World Philly, Wizard World Chicago and HorrorFind recaps?

Problem is, I'm a much better writer than I am a speaker. But, I might as well keep suit with those before me. :happy:

[Missy]

You could, of course, do both.

Kellen: Sorry I forgot to mention Ai-Kon.

[Kscriv]

*shakes fist at Yoda*

Yeah, both would probably be awesome, do the Best of... as a written piece and the general recap as the podcast piece.

[James D.]

Due to circumstances within and beyond my control, I am almost certain I won't be doing a written column this year. The audio review for the The Show is still likely, though. I forgot my camera today and generally had a shitty day in the VG rooms, which put me in a bad mood until I went and watched Hell Girl. Kellen, that show is FUCKED UP. But, I will seek it out on eBay because it was so damn creepy.

I had all kinds of problems buying stuff. I bought two figurines which I THOUGHT were going to be Tidus from FFX and Vincent from FFVII: AC (since, ya know, the little sticky notes SAID that's what they were), but when I opened the boxes, they were Zidane from FFIX (which is still okay, but it's the principle of the thing) and the guy in the wheelchair in Advent Children. Then, I bought the Onegai Teacher series set and I open it up and the first disc is out of the holder and has scratches all over it. NOT a karmically positive day for me in the Dealer's Room or in the Soulcalibur tourney. I practiced SCIII all day and generally did alright. However, in the double elimination brackets, I (of course) had to face the ONLY TWO GUYS who really handed me my ass all day in practice. So, I won a grand total of one round out of 6 in the tourney. I'm quite pissed off.

I actually did have a lot of fun at Midnight Madness/Japanese Anime Hell, though (as I always do), though. Midnight Madness' main movie this year was an Escaflowne fandub parody entitled "Nescaflowne" and it was all about coffee, relationship problems, and Hitomi's inner power to control and utilize plotholes. Needless to say, it was fucking hysterical.

[Kscriv]

Nescaflowne, good shit.

See Hell Girl does rule, Anticipation on it coming soon.

Man I got to get myself to a real anime con one of these days, Ai-kon is fun but stuff like this blows it away

EDIT: Just got this off ANN:

At Anime Weekend Atlanta today, Funimation announced that they have acquired the license for the 25-episode Peach Girl tv series. They plan to release the first volume in the first half of 2007, it will be a 6 disc release (5/4/4/4/4/4)

Dude I hated that last episdoe but I may have to shill for this.

[James D.]

The hell?? Funimation cancelled their panel, I thought. Unless they had a second one elsewhere (which is entirely possible).

Today, I went to a Dark Horse Manga panel first. The guy who was representing DH was one of their editors and he passed out some copies of titles they are about to release and at least two of them are ones I will be IMMEDIATELY buying when they hit shelves. The one I'm most excited about is about this group of people who can communicate with the dead. However, the reason that they can communicate with certain dead people is because these dead bodies/souls cannot pass on to the next life for some reason. They died carrying a grudge, or had feeling of revenge not achieved, or guilt, or remorse, whatever. So, the dead persons hire this group of people to investigate something for them that will help them resolve their unfinished business and allow them to go to the afterlife in exchange for whatever they can give as payment--be it jewelry they were buried with, the winning lottery numbers for next Friday, whatever. It's very cool and I think it has tons of potential.

But the gentleman mainly spoke about why manga is so popular in America and why it [manga as a medium] isn't as big a deal over in Japan as it is here. Definitely an interesting hour-long panel. Would have been better if this fucknut in back of me hadn't talked on her phone for about five minutes WHILE the man from DH was talking. :grumble:

From 6:00 to 8:00pm, I went to the "Iron Editor" AMV Contest. Basically, they pit two extremely successful AMV creators (i.e., guys who've won several AMV contests), give them 2 hours, and they have to create an AMV that contains at least three of the five animes they supply them with plus a "secret ingredient". To give you an idea of how wacky the "secret ingredient" can be, one year the secret ingredient was "Pryde of the X-Men". So, while the two guys worked on their videos, they did contests and stuff to give away DVD's. When the two guys were done, they showed their finished products and the video that won was one of the funniest things I've ever seen in my life. I wish I had Adobe Premiere.

I went and watched the entire first and second episodes of Hellsing Ultimate, later on. The line to get into the movie room to see it was insane. I had to stand outside the room for 40 minutes just to get an actual seat inside. But it was well worth it because I hadn't seen the entire first or second episodes yet and they were fantastic. ARGH, I WANT HELLSING NOW DAMMIT.

At 12:30am, I went and watched some hentai. Now, I didn't want to (for reasons that should be pretty obvious), but as I walked by the room where they were showing it, there was laughter filling the entire hallway from inside the closed doors. So, it occurred to me that, given how incredibly cheesy and awful hentai "plots" are, it would make for some great late-night comedy with some fellow anime fans. And ooooohhhhh was it ever. (We had a DS Pictochat going during the movies, too.) The one I watched had this guy who was a porn manga writer and he was trying to write this porn manga anthology, so to get all the work done within a month, he had this ridiculous pseudo-transformation sequence called "Hyper Erection Mode" where he spun around and did goofy-ass poses (with no nudity, thank heaven) and got him in the mood to write erotic fiction. It happened so many times in the movie that a group of guys sitting a few rows away from me stood up and acted it out every time it happened. That shit was even better than the morbidly bad dialogue. :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

All in all, a pretty amusing day.

[Shinmaru]

Today, I went to a Dark Horse Manga panel first. The guy who was representing DH was one of their editors and he passed out some copies of titles they are about to release and at least two of them are ones I will be IMMEDIATELY buying when they hit shelves. The one I'm most excited about is about this group of people who can communicate with the dead. However, the reason that they can communicate with certain dead people is because these dead bodies/souls cannot pass on to the next life for some reason. They died carrying a grudge, or had feeling of revenge not achieved, or guilt, or remorse, whatever. So, the dead persons hire this group of people to investigate something for them that will help them resolve their unfinished business and allow them to go to the afterlife in exchange for whatever they can give as payment--be it jewelry they were buried with, the winning lottery numbers for next Friday, whatever. It's very cool and I think it has tons of potential.

What's the title of that one? It does sound pretty interesting, and I'd like to keep an eye out for it.

At 12:30am, I went and watched some hentai. Now, I didn't want to (for reasons that should be pretty obvious), but as I walked by the room where they were showing it, there was laughter filling the entire hallway from inside the closed doors. So, it occurred to me that, given how incredibly cheesy and awful hentai "plots" are, it would make for some great late-night comedy with some fellow anime fans. And ooooohhhhh was it ever. (We had a DS Pictochat going during the movies, too.) The one I watched had this guy who was a porn manga writer and he was trying to write this porn manga anthology, so to get all the work done within a month, he had this ridiculous pseudo-transformation sequence called "Hyper Erection Mode" where he spun around and did goofy-ass poses (with no nudity, thank heaven) and got him in the mood to write erotic fiction. It happened so many times in the movie that a group of guys sitting a few rows away from me stood up and acted it out every time it happened. That shit was even better than the morbidly bad dialogue. :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

Ha, you don't get stuff like that at Anime Expo. If we did, I probably would have watched it for the sheer bizarreness of it. Still, there was plenty of amusement to be found by scouring the hentai DVDs in the dealer's room. The sheer hilarity of some of those covers was glorious, really. Hentai is just something else, haha.

[James D.]

Today, I went to a Dark Horse Manga panel first. The guy who was representing DH was one of their editors and he passed out some copies of titles they are about to release and at least two of them are ones I will be IMMEDIATELY buying when they hit shelves. The one I'm most excited about is about this group of people who can communicate with the dead. However, the reason that they can communicate with certain dead people is because these dead bodies/souls cannot pass on to the next life for some reason. They died carrying a grudge, or had feeling of revenge not achieved, or guilt, or remorse, whatever. So, the dead persons hire this group of people to investigate something for them that will help them resolve their unfinished business and allow them to go to the afterlife in exchange for whatever they can give as payment--be it jewelry they were buried with, the winning lottery numbers for next Friday, whatever. It's very cool and I think it has tons of potential.

What's the title of that one? It does sound pretty interesting, and I'd like to keep an eye out for it.

For the life of me, I cannot remember. I'd know immediately it if I saw it, though. It's a relatively long and unique title and if I remember it, I'll post it here.