Anime Weekend Atlanta 2007

Thursday

“Noah has to eat these,” Gerald says, throwing a bag of pork rinds into my (ethnically, but not religiously) Jewish boyfriend’s hands. Gerald videotapes Noah eating the pork rinds in the passenger seat. I don’t question our driver simultaneously videotaping - I’ve seen this before on the West Side highway, and Atlanta roads are safer at 11:30 at night. The hotel shuttle and public bus have stopped running. Gerald is our fellow podcaster and hotel roommate, he’s also saving us from a $45 cab ride, which is great, because unlike last year I can’t afford to be here.

“I’ve never had pork rinds before,” Gerald laughs in his semi-creepy way. I have only eaten pork rinds twice, and these are the worst of the two, I tell him. “Noah’s going to hell, and I have it on video!” Gerald laughs.

“He might be going to hell, but that’s not why,” I say, as Noah explains that Jewish hell isn’t so bad. Apparently they roll your sins out in a reverse-Katamari scenario. Sins like rollover minutes.

“I had to run out of our interview with Rob Fenelon and Walter Amos to pick you guys up.” Gerald is one of the three hosts of Anime World Order, the internet’s most informative English-language anime podcast. Walter Amos is a NASA scientist and a fan of Legend of the Galactic Heroes. Rob Fenelon is a sandal-wearing consultant and very oldschool anime fan.

Friday

I was trying to avoid the “History of Magical Girls” panel but when I wake up on Friday I’m there in the magical pink heart of darkness. I already know about Magic Witch Sally I think bitterly, at least the Sailor Moon sitting behind me is learning something new. I think that pink haired cat girl sitting up front is about my age. Two years prior I had pink hair.

The panelist is Ed Hill¹, who Noah remembers from Akon 7 - the old days. Ed shows the crowd an impressive collection of clips from the 60’s and 70’s - not ripped from youtube but real, quality videostuff gotten through Ed’s connections. By the end of the panel I’m really enjoying myself. A clip from a 1998 show called Ako-chan has us cracking up - Ako-chan has the power of ’80’s cinema.

That’s what I’m after here at Anime Weekned Atlanta, the good stuff: crazy clips, oldschool fans, Waffle House, and a tour of Adult Swim. Cartoon Network’s Censor has lured us here with the promise of a Williams Street tour. The Censor is a Nine Inch Nails fan with an iphone and a serious vinyl toy collection. Friday we duck out of the convention to meet him.

Williams Street ranks on my top five list of cool offices, but not at number one, despite the bubble machine and fake hedge wall. It’s recently been redecorated to look “more like a cruise ship.” In one of the conference rooms someone has drawn Earthworm Jim on the markerboard and written a list of oldschool videogames. What meeting spawned this list? Was it even a meeting?

We do not get to chill with MC Chris and Space Ghost as I imagined. We do discover that the Super Deluxe conspiracy is part of Adult Swim. The Super Deluxe cubicle jungle is suspiciously empty.

The Censor gives us a tour of Turner Master Control and it is as impressive as the name implies. All of the Turner satellite video feeds are playing on one giant screen like the control room in Ghost in the Shell; Stand Alone Complex. A lone employee mans the room, and instead of watching forty or more television channels at once he’s reading the internet - truly a sign of our times.

The Censor kindly gives us a ride back to the convention, saving us another $30. Our podcaster friends have been invited to dinner with the Japanese guests, causing Daryl to skip out on the formal dance. One of his listeners had shelled out the $25 for Daryl’s “Fire and Ice Ball” ticket for a laugh, and now Daryl has botched the deal.

Anime Hell is as advertised; Hell. This is Dave Merrill’s convention, by god, and he has the best collection of weird/painful videos outside of youtube. My brain makes a snapping sound as Merrill plays an infomercial featuring children dressed as Bible characters singing Beach Boys songs with the lyrics replaced.

“It’s irritainment!” Merrill squeals during a long clip from 1970’s live action sentai (Power Rangers-style) show Lion Maru. I have only heard of Lion Maru from Otaku USA magazine. At Anime Weekend Atlanta you’ve got to know about these things in order get in with the really cool nerds.

I hope “irritainment” comes into common parlance. I madly scribble down the title Message From Space in my new Adult Swim notebook. It looks highly irritaining.

Next is the traditional “Midnight Madness” panel. Fans dub and recut anime into fanparodies. I am a fan of these works. A fan of fanparodies. Truly there is something wrong with me. What kind of depraved nerd is a fan of other, higher level nerds? Last year I missed “Fisting the North Star”. This year it’s a re-mastered edition of “Nescaflowne” by Studio Sodeki. I’ve seen it twice, but not in the last few years. It’s a reworking of the Escaflowne TV series and movie. The new plot is about coffee magnates and a girl with the ability to cause plot holes - it’s not far off from the real thing. It has a better ending.

Saturday

In the morning out hotel roommates drive us to a Waffle House where our waitress is missing her front teeth. She has a great accent.

Noah and I run the Anime World Order panel. Our podcast is the Ninja Consultant show, but AWO is busy recording a guests at another panel. Paul Chapman of the Greatest Movie Ever podcast helps us out. Daryl arrives mid-panel to make an appearance in front of his adoring fans. He introduces Noah as Gerald and says I’m Clarissa. One guy in the audience buys into it and refers to me as Clarissa for the rest of the panel. I’m too polite to stop him.

After the panel Noah and I chat with one of our listeners who we’ve only met once before, at AWA last year. A gaggle of Haruhi Suzumiya crowds the hallway as we talk. The Haruhi panel is full. I forced a nearby Haruhi to pose near the sign.

Later Noah and I catch the end of the “I [Heart] the ’70’s” panel, featuring Merrill and a friend’s kid named Ivy, who is about nine years old. Ivy vetoes Captain Harlock, calling it “stinky,” but approves of Galaxy Express 999. I make a note of it, and write down Lulu the Flower Angel.

No other anime convention has the guts to do so many oldschool panels. Anime Weekend Atlanta brings you panels devoted to a single year, panels like “Anime 1982″ and “Fandom Before Time”. When you’ve worked up a serious geek habit like I have, it’s hard to find nerd-gurus who really know what they’re talking about. The internets are overflowing with teenyboppers still debating subs versus dubs in their diapers, but at AWA I can meet the real thing - guys like Amos and Merrill and otaku gentleman Carl Gustav Horn.

At the Dark Horse Panel Carl Horn - the man himself - lays it down for the audience; this is Dark Horse’s 19th year of publishing manga. Old Boy won an Eisner, the sixth Eisner for Dark Horse.

“The future of manga is outside of Japan,” Mr. Horn says, referring to Japan’s shrinking population. Dark Horse is publishing CLAMP’s “Mangettes” which will have a simultaneous release in several countries.

Mr. Horn passes around samples of upcoming books. The hardbound Style School looks like required reading for comic artists - it covers artistic techniques in a how-to-Comikers-like-format. The Akira Club art book pulls out single panels from the Akira manga and lays them on single pages like art hanging in a gallery show. It’s an incredible book emphasizing the artistry of manga. It’s probably cheaper than buying all of the Akira manga, I decide.

CGH goes over other current and upcoming releases with very few new announcements. Dark Horse will be releasing the Blood+ manga and novels in January and March of 2008. Ghost Talker’s Daydream is a manga and anime title, the manga will come out in July of 2008. The Vampire Hunter D novels will hit shelves in November. Bride of the Water God is a manhua title set to be released on October 1st.

Two titles grab my attention: The Color of Rage is a Koike work set in the 1850’s about a Japanese guy who’s trying to get back into Japan and a shipwrecked foreigner. Japan’s closed door policy means both men will be killed if found out. Translucent is about a semi-transparent girl who can’t control her powers of partial invisibility. Volume one is available now, volume two comes out on Halloween, and volume three on January 30th, 2008. I email Katherine, who has long since taken over this Manga Recon column. Katherine is a ninja, and she’s already halfway through a review of Translucent. She’s always one step ahead…

The preview of Translucent on the Dark Horse webpage is disappointing. I was under the mistaken impression you could see through the girl’s skin and internal organs occasionally.

Outside of Carl Horn the best thing about Anime Weekend Atlanta is the Anime Music Video (AMV) contest. The AMV community turns up in droves at this con and my boyfriend is crazy for the stuff. We sit through hours and hours of the exposition videos before I can’t take it any more and set out in search of food.

A Log Home show is going on elsewhere in the convention center. I feel sorry for the poor bastards in blue polo shirts. This is too good of an opportunity and I grab a young man in a Viking outfit I recognize from a videogame and demand he stand near the “Log Home Show” sign. I take a picture. A nearby Log Home show employee looks annoyed.

The Subway in the mall food court is a scene from the End Times. Overwhelmed by hundreds of hungry costumed freaks and geeks the ice machine has broken down and ice is laid out in coolers on the floor. Cardboard boxes of straws and lids are open, sitting near the ice coolers - no time to stock the containers, only enough time to boxcutter open the crates.

I return to the AMV contest in time to see our friend dokidoki get a standing ovation for his send-up of an MPAA commercial. “Piracy is Awesome” the video concludes, and the video artist in the audience, for whom video piracy is serious hobby - are driven to their feet. The next video is an extremely detailed remake of Dire Straight’s “Money for Nothing” done with Cowboy Bebop characters in 3-D animation. It’s an impressive video - someone spent a lot of time on this - but it’s not the overall winner. The overall winner is set to a ska version of the Bumblebee Tuna theme and mixes together dozens of anime series replacing objects with cans of tuna. When it’s over the song is stuck in my head for a week and I end up buying a lot of tuna.

My fellow con-goers and I head to a steak house in the mall parking lot across the street. It’s the dead center of urban sprawl - most of America consists of Circuit Cities in a mall parking lots these days. Our waiter is a sweet young man with a soft southern accent who is blown away by our out-of-state IDs. We scare the crap out of the poor kid with our strange custom orders and New York ways.

Back at the convention hotel the moment I’ve been waiting for finally arrives; Carl Horn is having a party. Mr. Horn throws fabulous parties. Last year he projected French New Wave movies on the ceiling and a slideshow of classic art on the back wall. This year there’s a display of a Shitotsugh Lhadatt’s imperial outfit from Wings of Honneamise on a wooden semi-cross structure. Behind it is a miniature Japanese screen laid in gold and decorated with the faces of Hideki Anno and Hayao Miyazaki, photocopied from a poster of a conversation they had in 1987. Behind the screen a slide projector provides a backlight for the scene.

Mr. Horn serves Moscow Mules to each guest who walks in the door, greeting them in turn. Carl Horn is always a gentlemen, always wearing a suit, even to the Dark Horse offices where there is no dress code.² I make a poor attempt at conversation:

“I’ve only heard of Moscow Mules twice,” I begin, “Once in the book Speed Tribes; Days and Nights with Japans Youngest Generation.” Mr. Horn knows the book. Before I can go on and mention how I’ve only drank Moscow Mules in Japan, a very drunk young man approaches.

“I hear there’s real birch beer here!” the young man bellows, a little too loudly for the low-key party. The theme from Gunbuster 2 playing on a hidden ipod. The young man’s eyes are red and unfocused. Can’t he see I was trying to have a conversation here?

“Yes, birch beer,” Mr. Horn affirms, and repeats his cocktail party chatter about the history of the Moscow Mule and it’s popularization of birch beer. I’ve heard it before, since he’s gives the same spiel to everyone who walks in the door. I’m tremendously annoyed at the drunk kid, but CGH is patient with him. He’s a boddhisatva of infinite patience for fanboys.

Anime World Order and I head up to Dessloktoberfest, a different party in the hotel, dedicated to bad guy from Star Blazers (also known as Space Battleship Yamato). Last year the same party knocked my socks off - super-old fans had decorated the room with Desslok’s face (??) and served Matrix-reference red and blue punch, the red punch being non-alcoholic. I’m surprised to find it’s the same party again this year. Maybe it’s the same every year. Maybe Dessloktoberfest has been going on for all 13 Anime Weekend Altantas.

AWO is supposed to get their picture taken with Mr. Horn so we head back to the other party. My head is full of Moscow Mules, half a beer, and the blue punch but I’m still a horrible conversationalist. Mr. Horn talks a bit about Otaku USA magazine.

“I wrote that Tekkon Kinkreet article,” the words just bubble out like some sort of belch, a pathetic attempt at speech.

“I know, I read it.” Mr. Horn replies. And that’s all he says about it. He turns to Daryl Surat with a smile. Daryl idolizes Carl like a role model and Carl sees a lot of himself in Daryl. I’m jealous - or I was until I uploaded the photo:

Mr. Horn talks a bit about how much he admires Patrick Macias’s writing style. Even Carl Horn is jealous of someone else’s writing, and that makes me feel a bit better. My otaku-fu is weak. I must sit under waterfalls until my writing improves.

I am reduced to the role of camera-holder, taking pictures for everyone of Carl Horn standing with Anime Wold Order. Mr. Horn says he would’ve thrown this party in honor of Anime World Order again, like last year, except for the anniversary of Gainax and the new Evangelion movie.

Sunday

It’s 3 AM and we all go to sleep. Sunday is a horrible blur. My eyes are dry from lack of sleep. I meet some old friends for breakfast. The “Dubs Time Forgot” panel is horrible. Those dubs were best left forgotten.

Daryl is invited to sit in on Carl Horn’s annual Evangelion panel. Noah is annoyed. “The people who’ve never heard Carl Horn’s Evangelion speech before won’t get to hear it,” Noah whines. Nevertheless, the crowd enjoys Daryl’s counterpoints.

Clarissa and Gerald and Noah and Alison and I eat at P.F. Chang’s for lunch. I’ve never been to one and I’m amused to find it is exactly as parodied on South Park. We say goodbye to everyone at closing ceremonies and share a ride to the airport with Daryl Surat and a bunch of strangers, saving another $30 at least.

Noah and I lose Daryl in the impossibly long Delta security line. It’s probably the last we’ll see of him until next year at Anime Weekend Atlanta 2008.

¹ Ed Hill is the author of Carl Horn’s favorite American doujinshi, “Fairy Princess Yukio Mishima,” collected in JUKU magazine.
² I have this on good information from a former employee.