NYAF 2008 Yoshitaka Amano Panel
Time: 3pm, September 27, 2008.
Place: The first panel room on the right (”Manga Panel Room”), NYAF 2008 at the Javits Center, NYC.
Panelists: Yoshitaka Amano, Kevin Leahy (translating), NYAF guy whose name I forget as MC.
(My comments in italics, questions in bold.)
NYAF 2008 Rie Tanaka Panel
Time: ~11 AM, September 28, 2008.
Place: The first panel room to the left (”Anime Panel Room”), NYAF 2008 at the Javits Center, NYC.
Panelists: Rie Tanaka with her interpreter.
(As usual, bold for questions, italics for personal comments. You can figure the rest out yourself.)
[Originally was going to do the blogging panel, but run into a technical difficulty (aka. I think I accidentally deleted the recording on Sunday since I was in an exhausted stupor for the most of the day) so Tanaka’s panel is coming up now.]
[Edit: also, see comments for links to other interviews]
Code Geass Stops, Excited and Satisfied Kids Get Off the Rollercoaster
I’m not a big theme park person but I’ve been to a few of them. At one point in my life I used to go every year. In a way, big-budget mainstream anime are a bit like amusement park rides.
At least in the US, where land is plenty and people pay an arm and leg to go to them, theme parks attract goers through new and exciting advertisements of their new (well) attractions. They are aptly called attractions because when you see this single rail that goes up and down like a graph of the Dow Jones Industrial Average in recent years, plus those loopy things, you get this feeling of excitement. No fancy ads or viral marketing necessary.
In a way that is basically the experience of Code Geass, I think.
The first season is a well-packaged, top-of-the-line Sunrise TV anime. I think the story made sense and people liked the sporadic moments of “JUST AS PLANNED” Lulu had. The heroics and scheming were entertaining, even if hollow by more sophisticated standards. And the CLAMP characters are always the rage. The gut-wrenching plot twists towards the end of the first season gives us a taste of what kind of an experience Code Geass was set out to deliver. The non-ending, and aptly announced sequel at the time was just the period (or better, semicolon?) that punctuates the point.
For the most part the second season started out without much issues, but at some point we realized something was different. Goro Taniguchi himself, supposedly, confessed regarding the reworking of the second season due to business constraints that lead to a lot of lost labor in working on the second season. I think the fans would take kindly to that position as Code Geass R2 does look somewhat derailed from the original ride.
But as a packaged experience, in a lot of ways R2 supersedes the first season as long as you don’t look too deep. And for experienced viewers, anime of this type is more of an experience than a work in itself so we’re trained to not poke where it doesn’t look like you should be poking. Looking too deeply just makes you hate it more. It isn’t to say you ought not to analyze Code Geass or shows like that, but that was one of the main ways how R2 fell apart from the expectations viewers had from the first season. It’s safe to say many of us have mixed feeling about Code Geass R2, even if it was highly entertaining.
I guess, to go back to the Goro Taniguchi thing, things are rushed. And it clearly shows.
Unlike the typical rushed production, however, it seemed Code Geass R2 actually has a destination in mind, and a destination that isn’t made of fail. The last episode delivered a reasonable conclusion that few anime of this kind of dynamic amplitude could even hope for. What’s more, it got away with the degree of open-endedness that characterizes the usual rush job, and a fair amount of both plot hole type things and thoughtful, canonical conclusions that will give all of its riders something to think about once they step back onto the platform and head out to the parking lot, elated.
And just for the record, I could care less if Lulu is dead or alive at the end. Color me in for the “Requiem of Nunnally” camp as the heart of the second season of Code Geass, although it seemed easily that Goro wrote the story for the C.C. “good” end. Like UBW or Fate. Maybe. Meanwhile curious minds can listen to the kids as they look up at the telecast replay of their best impression of the emoticon “\o/” while walking down the ramp from the ride and towards the exit.
NYAF Day 3 - Camaraderie, Hope, Perseverance: A Story about a Rose
Despite the lofty title, it’s almost the full extent of what I will say about the fun memories I managed to escape with from NYAF 2008 day 3. Let’s just say that it’s all caught on candid video and I have to thank Mike of Anime Diet for that. Thanks Mike!
NYAF Day 2 - Less Wet, More Walking
At the last moment, most of my worries about today blew over. But it was kind of a mixed feeling when the thing you went to the con for was undermined by crappy line management, yet at the end you don’t feel so bad about spending a day at the con doing the usual stuff.
