Otakon 2009: Yamakan Panel 1 Dump
This is a straight up transcript of Yamakan’s panel’s Q&A section. If you’ve poured through Bayoab’s, this is a secondary reference for you. Mirrored here for your lols. There are places where I wasn’t sure what was said, so I filled it in. Yeah, them’s the rub. Partly why you want as many different transcripts as you can (ideally a nice audio clip, anybody)?
The panel has some promo stuff in the front but nothing important. It was short too and the bulk of the time is Q&A. So let’s get started. It has minimal proof reading because I more or less just copy and pasted from my transcription!
Oh, also, some juicy questions can be found right here, if you want most of the key takeaways.
Year in Review: She’s Going the Distance, a Great Feat of Strength
Going to mention a list of 12 lists of 12 items each. So a nested list. All 144 items. Annotated for the most part. Don’t ask me why I use these pronouns the way I do…
Year in Review: Shafting of the Shrewd
This is really a two-fer (or three-fer): ef, Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei and Hidamari Sketch; and anime as animation, doing what it is suppose to do.
Not long ago I finished the last episode of ef - a tale of memories. It’s by far the most impressive anime of 2007. Sadly that’s just my impression and not a lasting opinion tested with time, but it was hard to deny that ef was a gimmick intended to impress. Much like Zetsubo Sensei and Hidamari Sketch, ef is the product of SHAFT, the same studio and pretty close to the same production team.
Well, except Shin Oumura, the credited director. He gave ef that touch that reminded me why Makoto Shinkai’s film will probably never break into the mainstream. Akiyuki Shinbo being the “supervising” director only contributed to how some of the scenes look. Can we say red and black railroad crossings? The other two works are Shinbo’s direct results, probably, with him labeled as the director (and who can forget his happy mug in the OP for Zetsubo Sensei?).
I can also really care much less about Sunshine Sketch’s healing properties. The serendipitous 4-koma original stuff is, I’m sure, good on its own. But that’s not here or there. The TV animation series is brilliant in how it transforms your typical manga adaptation into something unexpected, clever, but all the more expressive. And the stuff it expresses are not merely words from a book or plot points in an outline, but feelings and perspectives and attitudes. And you know Sunshine Sketch is good because, I guess, what was good to the animation staff has been transmitted through the show and to your soul! L33t haxxorz they are.
In fact, with all three series there’s this kind of connection that I see with the anime and its viewer. It’s a bridge, a protocol that transmits the beyond-mere-words content of a story to its viewer. Sure, it’s not unusual for anime to achieve this, but so few bridges are so weird and daring yet charming at the same time. It was fun.
Well. That’s that. But in the context of what’s notable in 2007, we should compare these three shows with stuff like like Denno Coil and Seirei no Moribito.
Because, lol, can you say SHOESTRING BUDGET?
Zetsubo-Sensei? Say Goodbye to School Days…
I was thinking about School Days. As of episode 5 things were coming to a point where it actually fits the mold of a naive school story about stupid teenagers boning each other for whatever it’s worth. It’s so rare to see an anime about something that’s probably not at all rare in this day and age. Depends on how ghetto your high schools are, I suppose.
The funny thing is, while some people I talked with online say that Makoto (or Sekai or Kotonoha, for that matter) may be more like an average 16 year-old than we’d like to admit, just how often do we see that? Recalling my own adolescence, I came from a school that’s probably somewhat ghetto for an American suburban fare and I have certainly heard a fair share of these kind of things. But my impression was, like most people, I made my business to not mind these kind of business. I mean, what good does it do? In some ways the preliminary setup for School Days is just, well, setup for the outrageous crash that is yet to come. And it’s because of the crash that School Days is worth watching. The stuff before that is nice because it might be what you’ve experienced, maybe not, but it’s rather better for the dark subtext sewn into the puppy love story.
It’s good to wonder how much weight that appeal to personal experience one should give. Because, after thinking about it, there were more personality disorders that I’ve seen coming out of Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei that matched my own recollection of high school than just guys and girls having sex, and breaking up.
In fact, I recall one classmate who was like Fuura. A few Kaga were to be found. Definitely some Otonashi (boys more so), two Kaere, a Tsunetsuki, a Fujiyoshi, and even a Komori. I’m exaggerating a bit (or maybe Kumeta is rather?) but a lot of these personality flaws are more common than you think.
So nuts to people who had memories of casual, innocent sex in high school. They’re really missing out on the comedy.
Convention of the γΎγ£γγ GO!! Generation
Next time I blog I’ll be in Baltimore attending Otakon. The Baltimore Convention Center does not have free wifi despite a city-wide initiative. However, some of the surrounding areas do. In any event I will blog from the hotel room at the very minimum.
I pray that the mid-summer Baltimore weather will beat upon us no worse than that is necessary, and I can find time both to relax and to be excited about life, universe, and everything. It’s not just to celebrate anime with friends and share a good time, but in a conscious way to deepen my relationship with God in a familiar but shockingly strange environment, in preparation for the thing that have yet to come.
As the “straight ahead-Go” generation that we are, I think that anime fans are some of the best types that 21st century geekdom has to offer. In some ways this means that some external forces may take advantage of us more so and we’ll cause problems with our straightforward mannerisms, but on the flip side it also shows some degree of tenacity that the long-time fans possess. In any case, rain or shine, we will be there and entertaining our favorite guests at this anime convention. If you are going, I pray that you too will do it share this enthusiasm at this mutual geeking-out.
