Anime Boston 2011: Fan Panels and just Recapping them…

Audience from Anime Intros and Endings

With conventions, other than social or main events, there’s always the fan panels that can be well attended or not as well attended. I happened to make it a point to attend as much panels that I know panelists from, since I believe they would have something interesting to say. Friday became a day of panel hopping as I had to leave a panel to cover to concert. At events such as a convention, things get scheduled to the point where people had to pick and choose between panels to attend.

Friday (Before you guys end up reading how I attended three panels hosted by Alex Leavitt, let’s just say that I am pretty interested by what he had covered from NYCC, so I ended with going to his entire Friday panel schedule.)

Fanthropologies

Fanthropologies: Participation in Anime Fandom – as an academic panel on the study of fan culture. This panel was by Alex Leavitt, Charles Dunbar, and Jennifer Fu. This was a very interesting panel to a pretty large and packed room. The panelists gave a very interesting discussion on academic/anthropological area on studying fan culture. What books to read…Who/What make it tick, and how Fandom can be considered a religious experience (annual trek, reverence for fans etc.)

Anime Intros and Endings

Anime Intro & Ending Themes: This was hosted by Alex Leavitt to a full house, as what the image above is like. Also the picture for this is my photo shot of Alex taking a picture of the audience. Since I am an immense fan of anime openings and endings. I definitely included this into my schedule of panels. With time constraints, Alex only showed samples. Some of the openings was also visually noisy with one side the actual anime, and on the same screen’s opposite side, there was a possible humorous clip playing alongside. I asked Alex about this afterward, and he did cite fair usage for not incurring copy infringement possibilities. Definitely many of the clips shown were of a classic variety as Alex discussed trends and similarities. There weren’t as much dubbed intros as I had imagined there would be, but seeing the Vision of Escaflowne opening definitely reminded me of when I started on my own road of appreciating anime intros and endings. While I never watched the anime, just hearing the anime opening was a good thing. Cutey Honey openings were always a cool thing to look at, same opening song – but variations as remakes were done.

Experts on Fan Controversy

Experts on Fan Controversy: Hosted by Alex Leavitt with expert panelists from – Chris Beveridge, Ed Chavez, Jennifer Fu , Clarissa Graffeo of AWO Podcast and Ada Palmer. This was an intelligent and well thought out panel, with comments on fan controversies such as the piracy issue, or the aspects of dub vs. subs. As soon as there would be video or audio from that panel, this part will be updated. I ended up leaving this panel early to rush over to Mari Iijima’s Concert.

Saturday

Satoshi Kon Panel

Remembering Satoshi Kon: With Daryl Surat of AWO Pdcast and Evan Minto of Ani Gamers, this was a panel on remembering the work history and inspirations for the late and great Satoshi Kon. I mentioned to Evan afterward how I didn’t understand the reference point of the dubbed Gundam joke. Overall this panel was a good one. Daryl did mention that because there were way too much to cover of Kon’s life, that they didn’t get into as much of discussing the fantastic music that Kon used. But I always found it to be an interesting point to see that he occasionally refers back to his past works, especially toward his last several movies. This panel mentions a point on the Dream Machine to never be completed, because even though there are notes that Kon left behind, the genius who is behind the movies is no longer here to complete it.

Superflat Panel

“What is Super-Flat”: Where Anime fits in Post-Modern Culture: Panelists were Sam Kusek and Eric Shorey of Damage->MP, and they had an interesting presentation on how society, culture, and art has become quite two-dimensional, where humans and objects had reached a point where it was not meant to be a reality anymore. Hello Kitty, or Haruki Murakami artwork examples were mentioned as examples of what post modernism artwork looks like.

Death Like Shinigami-111

Dead Like Us: Shinigami, Death Lore and Japanese Media: Hosted by Charles Dunbar, this was a full room where it became a standing room panel. Charles spent the time he had, explaining and talking about the background and folklore of different Shinigami or youkai, how media portrayed them, and what was Japanese death culture. He basically had to run through points pretty fast, but it was a pretty interesting 101 perspective on what is considered to be folklore and superstition for a culture.

Con Horror Stories: This followed straight after Dead Like Us, and was run by Eric Stehmer of toonzone.net and Charles Dunbar. Since there was once again no more room, somehow I found myself on the panelist side of things, looking down on the packed room. I did make a position on what possible con horror stories I had, but yes the more experienced ones on con horrors were the hosts, so this was an interesting turn of events. To avoid experiencing con horror is to know con survival.

Sunday

The Visions of Akira Kurosawa: I randomly found myself in this panel pretty early in the morning. In spite of how much I like Japanese entertainment, I never seen an Akira Kurosawa movie in its entirety, with the exception of Tora, Tora Tora (as what I researched later to also be a Kurosawa work). It seem like the audience in this panel was also on the same boat as I was. So the gist of this panel was to go and rent to see Rashomon and The Seven Samurai if possible.

Super Heros Panel

From East to West: the Superheroes of Japan & America: This was a panel that was run by Sam Kusek, Ken Haley, and Michael Ferreira. This panel introduced the audience to superheros in comics/anime or Sentai for both American and Japanese cultures. Eventually the panel quickly past, and Sam ended the panel with asking the audience to run to the front of the room, to ask questions, and gain give away gifts.

So it looks like I attended about eight and a half fan panels in three days. I definitely enjoyed attending these panels, and while they weren’t done by well known people, but they are done by panelists that enjoyed a specific aspect of anime, that would get their panels completed. I am sure if you have gone to anime conventions then this is just one of the many activities that you could have done.

I believe that after this entry, I may have one to two more entries about Anime Boston up my sleeve. Also do be sure to check out Anime Diet’s Flickr for more images from this convention.

Haruki Murakami

Author: Linda

Linda is a life long fan of anime, and dabbles in a lot of things. She writes with a tentative neutral voice.. and as for that three year anime blogging mark, she tries to defy that as she is gaining a voice in other mediums ie: Twitter. Find her at other places online. "They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance." -Terry Pratchett

5 thoughts on “Anime Boston 2011: Fan Panels and just Recapping them…

  1. Wow, it seemed really fun! Interesting panels. I would have attended “What’s super-flat” panel. Very intriguing subject. I wanted to participate in the discussion about 2-D.

    I went to flickr and saw Iijima Mari’s photos! Despite her age, she’s really good looking. She’s still in shape!

    1. Definitely, I am sure you have interesting panels to attend when you go to a anime convention? I was pretty surprised by how interesting the Superflat panel is. Since I have been an anime fan for a long time. I don’t need to go to any of the anime 101 panels. So it is a bit off putting when I saw people not having seen much of the classics.

      Isn’t she? Japanese has great genes! I just wished that my lens weren’t acting as much this weekend. I am going to have to replace the lens quite soon.

  2. What part of the “Dream Machine” will never be completed? Now that I mention it, WHEN will “Dream Machine” be completed? And will we get to see it?

    1. That was the thing, what I recalled from the panel from what Daryl and Evan discussed, that with the style of Satoshi Kon of doing everything for himself, that there is fears that even with his notes, staff won’t be able to do the movie justice. What a pity. So the question fans should question and hope for is on the ability of the staff to be able to carry out a Kon Project, even though the master is not there. Thank you for the comment.

Comments are closed.