A Tale of Two Conventions

We attended two conventions in November, and they were polar opposites of each other.

The first was Anime Vegas 2011, held November 11-13 in Las Vegas, Nevada. I had attended two other Anime Vegas conventions, and this one was the best run by far. The con was filled with young people, many in costumes; the masquerade was robust and full of entries; and the event vibrated with youth and enthusiasm. In particular, this Anime Vegas was energized by the revival of the license for the Hellsing Ultimate anime, which has been moribund in the U.S. for the last three years. The entire principal English dub cast for Hellsing Ultimate gathered in Las Vegas to promote the soon-to-be-released balance of the Hellsing Ultimate videos. We attended as fans, as enthusiastic as anyone else there.

The second convention was Loscon 38, held over Thanksgiving Weekend. This was a science fiction convention, rather than an anime con (although, in a convention tradition, anime was shown in a video room throughout the con). As is now the tradition with SF conventions, the attendees tended to be older than those who go to Anime Vegas and other anime cons; indeed, many attendees had been going to conventions for 40-50 years or more. The masquerade, alas, was anemic -- only nine entries, little in the way of MC-ing, and judges who were not even introduced until the awards were announced.

We attended this con as dealers (Amy's embroidery business, Heart of the Star, had a table in the dealer's room). That is a fun way to attend a convention, and we had a good time talking to folks from behind the table and selling Amy's wares (which were quite popular with the crowd). But keeping the table running meant that we had to carefully parse the con activities we attended during the show. I attended one panel during the con, as did Amy. (That one panel was a fantastic one, however -- a talk given by Nicholas Meyer, author of The Seven-Percent Solution and director of Time after Time, The Day After, and two of the best Star Trek films. And although there were folks in costume, far fewer costumes filled the halls than those on view at Anime Vegas.

As much as we enjoyed Loscon, however, we wondered how the energy, youth, and enthusiasm of an anime con such as Anime Vegas could be brought to an SF con such as Loscon. After all, many anime fans enjoy the same literary and cinematic SF and fantasy as Loscon attendees. Yet SF conventions such as Loscon don't register on the radar of anime fans. We hope that more young fans find Loscon and conventions of its ilk to their taste; otherwise, SF conventions may be in danger of eventually disappearing.

Lest I end this post on a negative note, I will point out one of the coolest aspects of this year's Anime Vegas. Amy, who is a big Hellsing fan, painted a cardboard coffin a few years ago to match the one shown in the Hellsing manga and anime. She took the opportunity of this reunion of Hellsing cast members to get the coffin autographed by the cast members; and I captured the autographing on video. Here are the video highlights.

Here, voice actress Victoria Harwood (who plays Integra in Hellsing) and ADR director/adaptor Taliesin Jaffe sign the coffin.



Ralph Lister, who plays Walter, signs the coffin:

As does Patrick Seitz, the voice of Luke Valentine and one of the scripters for the English dub of Hellsing Ultimate:

K.T. Gray, who voices Seras in the English Dub, signs the sinister sepulchre:

And finally, Crispin Freeman, the English voice of Alucard in Hellsing, signs on.

We folded the fully executed coffin flat, and transported it to its final resting place.

Hellsing Ultimate Vol. 5: London Calling

On Friday, we watched the Japanese DVD of HELLSING ULTIMATE VOL. V. This will eventually be released in the US in a dual-language edition by Funimation; but since we wanted to see it ASAP, we watched it in pure, unsubtitled Japanese.

If you haven't seen it, or the stories on which it is based, here's a SPOILER WARNING for you.

As reported in previous posts, this is a slavishly-faithful adaptation of Kouta Hirano's manga series. To up the stakes for the series, Hirano stranded his protagonist, the vampire-killing-vampire Alucard, on an aircraft carrier in the middle of the Atlantic, while incredibly nasty Nazi vampires (yes, Nazi vampires) invaded England in a massive zeppelin and, well, ate London. Since the manga was published on a monthly basis, that meant Alucard was missing from the action for about two years of manga stories (which occupied just a few hours of story time). That means that Alucard just appears in a couple of framing sequences in this volume of the DVD series; the balance is made up of beautifully animated yet nightmarishly horrific scenes of the Nazi vampires wreaking apocalyptic revenge upon London for the Allies' triumph in WWII.

(Plus, as Hirano has stated in US convention appearances, he once visited London and had a lousy time. So he decided to destroy it in his story.)

It's not all doom-and-gloom. As adventure fiction demands, the secondary players step up to the plate in the star's absence, and battle on. The truly spectacular battles will be on the volumes to come.

Anime Expo: This Year in Long Beach; Next Year in LA

From Friday through Monday, I took off time from work and participated in Anime Expo, the largest anime convention in America (44,000 attendees this year!) and the main one here in California. After a few years in Anaheim, the Expo returned to the Long Beach Convention Center, where it was last held in 2002.

I have bad memories of that 2002 Expo. We went one day -- the last day of the event -- and only went to the dealer's room (which they call the "Exhibit Hall." I miss the days when a convention's dealer's room was called the "huckster's room."). We waited in the hot sun for an hour to get into the room, then could only spend a few hours before the Expo closed.

This time was much more fun. The Expo had the entire convention center, including the outbuildings -- the Terrace Theatre, and the 6,000-seat Arena (the big round building with the whales painted on it). There were numerous restaurants around, particularly across the street at The Pike shopping center. I even found cheap open-air parking ($5 all day).

Another fun part was that this was the first Expo where we knew several attendees. Amy has been contacting fellow fans of her favorite anime/manga, Hellsing, on the Cosplay.com forum; and some of them have even come to LA and visited our house. We therefore had pals (in addition to our old friends Don and Pam) to go to events and meals with. Shout outs go to Christie, Natalie, Laurid, Logan, Brandy, Sarah, and a bunch of other people.

Amy's activities (and thus to a great extent mine) centered on various costuming events concerning Hellsing. There were photo shoot gatherings of folks in Hellsing costumes on Friday and Sunday. Amy was particularly instrumental in setting up a morning gathering on Sunday, held at the Starbucks in the Renaissance Hotel. There is an outdoor patio there, so Amy brought her Kawasaki Motorcycle for people to pose on; and several of the costumes, including Amy's that morning, revolved around a "Hellsing's Angels" theme. As my photos show, the motorcycle was a big hit.

Geneon, which is releasing the Hellsing Ultimate OVA DVDs in Japan and the US, helped the festivities with a marathon showing of the three OVAs which have been released (including a subtitled version of Volume III, which was released in Japan just three months before); a panel of the American voice actors; and a fantastic booth, made up with the giant chair the main Hellsing character, Alucard, lounges in during the second OVA's opening scenes.

Another nice part of the Long Beach location was its proximity to the Queen Mary and its hotel. Amy and I stayed two nights in a stateroom at the QM, which was okay as a hotel but terrific as an historical location.

Problems with the change in venue included unfamiliarity among the staff on the convention center's layout; often uncooperative hired security; delays in events that sometimes lasted several hours; and a terrible screw up with the anime music videos event that resulted in only seven out of 35 AMVs being shown -- after people waited over two hours to get in. (The remainder were purportedly purloined from the MC's laptop bag. Backups would have been a good idea.)

Next year's Anime Expo will be held at the LA Convention Center. That's great for us, since it's just a clear shot down the freeway. But it won't be so good for out of towners, who'll have a choice of the somewhat run-down Holiday Inn across the street from the center; the Wilshire Grand, four blocks away (posh, but one hopes they will have a convention rate); and other hotels that aren't within driving distance.

A link to my other photos will be up shortly.

Moving Hellsing

Here's the result of an experiment using my new Pure Digital cheapo video cam and Photobucket's video feature: Video of yesterday's Hellsing Ultimate panel at Sakura Con, from the front row.

The first video is an intro of the panel participants. When the editor of Young King Ours was introduced, Amy held up her copy of the most recent YKO, which she got through her subscription at an LA Japanese bookstore. You'll see the editor look surprised, and bow in appreciation.


In the second video, Trigun creator Yasuhiro Nightow has joined the panel, and he fields questions along with his fellow Young King Ours manga creator Kouta Hirano.