Anime Central 2016 Convention Report

Another year, another Anime Central. This time was a little different for me, however, since there really weren't any guests I was excited about. Usually there's one or two scholars, directors, or voice actors I'm interested in, but much of the effort this time seemed to be spent on staff from visual novel company VisualArt's. That's cool, just not my thing. As a result, my schedule was more up in the air than ever before.

I ended up attending fewer anime-based panels than initially planned. Line and programming issues prevented me from attending some of those “bad anime” panels I love, but at least there were some good substitutes, like “weird video game” or “martial arts” panels. I learned some new things, and that's always cool. Still, it would be cool if the staff could be a little more uniform in how they police the lines; some people clearly didn't care until the “line” was a knotted mass, then arbitrarily selected who was in the line and who could suck it. Not so cool. At least by Saturday afternoon I got a better idea of how early I needed to line up, and even got into a “hilarious hentai dubs” panel I'd missed the year before.

Some of the more enjoyable panels: As I said before, the “hentai dubs” panel was a treat. The guy running it was charismatic and professional; check out his work at https://www.facebook.com/vitaminhofficial. “Great anime directors” was another good panel, and you can see an overview at https://mentalmultiverse.com/, along with other panels I missed. It was also interesting to hear from Ed Chavez, marketing director of Vertical Inc, about his little corner of the manga/LN industry.

The dealers' room was a highlight for me, of course, because I'm a mindless pop culture-addicted media zombie. Though I probably spent about the same as previous years on DVDs, I think I was a little smarter with my purchasing. Almost everything at the Discotek booth was $5-10 cheaper than anywhere else, so I loaded up on Go Nagai titles I haven't seen; last year's purchase of Devilman inspired me to check out more of his worlds online, so I look forward to watching Getter Robo Armageddon and Shin Getter Robo vs. Neo Getter Robo. I already know Mazinkaiser and Mazinkaiser SKL are awesome. The Phoenix anime was another good find, since I love the manga yet haven't heard much about the seemingly ambitous anime series. The crown jewel (and main expense) was a 21-disc set of the whole Fist of the North Star TV series. An ambitious undertaking at 152 episodes, but one I'm eager to tackle since it is an anime staple.

And that's my experience, such as it was! A lot of unexpected situations with panels and guests turned into a fun time overall, just like usual.  Sorry for the lack of updates lately, but that's what happens when your Internet dies right after recovering from convention fatigue.  Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a huge fucking backlog to plow through. If you don't hear from me in two months, call the cops.