Fanime, a 14-year old convention which had been jumping from place to place all over the bay area until settling in San Jose for a second run a few years back, is one of the top 10 anime/manga cons in America. Well, attendance wise that is. Oh and of course, it means in turn that it’s one of the biggest cons in the world. People in San Jose and its neighbor cities as well as other places look forward to this event every year. Though this is the first time I covered Fanime or any con for that matter, you have to remember that I went to my first con 8 years ago in Fanime.

Day 0

This day didn’t do much overall. I just got my badge and I talked with old and new friends. Prior to the badge pick up, I went over notes for the con. I mentioned to some people that I would do some hard task. After some talking, I just headed out.

Day 1

Early on, I managed to get a ticket for the An Cafe concert shortly after the closing time thanks to the press pass of mine and I went to the gaming room. You’d figure that I would spend a lot of time here overall seeing that I run the up to date games column. Surprisingly, I only played two games, “Espgaluda II” and “Bug Princess Pair” (”Mushihime-sama Futari”), and I didn’t get far in either of them. I pretty much talked with heads or staff people here and elsewhere just to make sure that we’re on the same page. As unusual as it seems, I took a little bit of time out of my busy schedule to help out the e-gaming staff because they were short on staff. I even talked with the operator of the arcade machines seeing that I know who he is.

Afterwards, I headed to the dealers room, I looked for a brief moment and I took note of a certain booth. I went to the opening ceremonies shortly and the surprising part was that 45 people from the “Gurren Lagan” staff (yes, 45) showed up. (No con has ever done something like this before.) There was even a taiko show. Some sort of event followed up the ceremonies, but I left quickly to attend my first panel.

The first panel I went to was Bandai Entertainment’s and unfortunately, because it was running at the same time as Gainax’s, I had to choose one or the other, but I sticked with my commitment anyway. Robert Napton, the director of marketing, had a bunch of announcements. Obviously, they will bring over “Gundam 00″, but not much else has been revealed. Some series that will be released within the next couple months are “AIka R-16: Virgin Mission” - 6/3, “Gundam Seed Destiny TV Movie” - 6/17, and “To Terra” (”Terra e”) - 7/15 with a 3 X 8 set (meaning that it’s a three-disc set with each disc having 8 episodes). Seeing that Gainax was here too, “Gurren Lagann” will have a 3 X 9 set with each disc being out every month starting at some point in July. The latest acquisition was “Sword of the Stranger” (”Stranger - Muko Hada”) and the date for the theatrical release is 7/18 followed by a DVD and Blu-ray disc release. Unfortunately, there is no word on the “Lucky Star OVA”, the “Gurren-Lagann” movies or the opportunity to pick up Geneon titles. This panel ended my day.

Day 2

I met up with a friend that I only see twice a year at most. After a long conversation, I went to host the panel, but only ten people or so at most showed up at the panel. I still went with the panel and did my business anyway. Outside of news, I pretty much gave away Hikaru Utada’s latest album, “Heart Station”, and I gave away cute collectible cards if people asked questions. Of course, I couldn’t forget about the issues of China and Burma and I told people to donate if they have not done so. At least I did set up the anniversary tournament of “Project Justice” (”Moero! Justice Gakuen”) prior to the panel.

Broccoli’s panel, hosted by another marketing director in John Kung, was the next event and so much went on. Of course, “My Dearest Devil Princess” (”Hakoiri Devil Princess”) was mentioned, but in regards of new releases, there are none and there are no 2009 titles either at this point. “Love Cupid” (”Koi Cupid”) will be out in less than two weeks due to printer problems and “World of Disgaea 2″ will be out at that time also. “Sola” will be out at the same time as Anime Expo and shortly after will be the debut of “Cosmode USA”, a cosplay magazine. There are still some series on hiatus like “Leave it to Piyoko” (”Piyoko ni Omakase Pyo!”) mainly because of the shortage of staff. One issue John brought forth was release timing and I mentioned that I would rather wait for my releases to come out with editing done the right way. I used to be a fan sub editor/side staff member (quality check and the like) and I used to edit game guides for people, meaning that editing is a bigger issue for me now than ever, especially since I work with a serious news site. Oh and of course, there were suggestions of titles that needed to be licensed like “Detroit Metal City”. I got two prizes, one for asking a question and the other for winning the matching Jankenpon game, but I have decided to give those to charity.

I conducted my tournament, which is a single elimination tournament, right after Broccoli’s panel and it went out alright even though only 10 people signed up. Unfortunately, I did see a lot of mistakes, but then again, lots of people have not seen the game in years. The funny thing was that prior to this day, I only practiced earlier in the week and what? A month ago or so? I didn’t get a lot of practice in overall, but I did win the whole tournament and I won the “Turnabout Trials” games as a result as well as a little surprise.

A note to keep in mind is that I won all of my bouts with different teams and because I used this approach, this made people’s research go to waste. For my first round of play, the second round, I picked Akira, Zaki and Yurika and this was actually my hardest one because my opponent wouldn’t stop blocking. Even though someone thought that I had a very good Zaki, I had trouble in that first round. The semifinal round, the round in which I picked Daigo, Gan and Edge, was probably my least stressful match, as I didn’t lose there thankfully. The finals, the time in which I picked Kyoko, Hideo and Hayato, was supposed to be dramatic, especially since both my opponent and I never lost a bout, but my Kyoko was too good. One of the players said that Kyoko is very easy to play as and you may think so, especially since I rolled with her here quickly and in my practice session, but the truth is that she is not because her move set is more complicated than most of the characters. People said that I should bring this game again next year, but one, I don’t have an idea of what my prizes should be if I host a tournament again, and two, I’m already carrying a lot of materials with me (the big reason why I highly doubt I’ll bring the game again next year).

I didn’t do much during the evening. I just talked with random people and they pretty much wondered what went wrong at the masquerade event, though they still love going to Fanime. What I really was doing was waiting for my friend from earlier because he was pretty much idle and we decided to go to a karaoke box outside of the city.

Day 3

I bought some toys at that noteworthy store, Japan Video Games if you’re interested, and I went straight to Maika Netsu’s panel who is the artist of “My Dearest Devil Princess”. She explains how she brings forth manga for various formats. For starters, she uses blue ink in rough drafts so that the ink’s not shown. Afterwards, she uses a mechanical pencil and a special pen. Scenes are brought out on different sizes of paper. If she performs a mistake, she will use a white liquid (which is sort of like the white out liquid). Her other works were discussed, but most of the time, she displayed how she creates an image from scratch. Unlike the Broccoli panel, I didn’t win the Jankenpon game here.

Seeing that I knew that people would line up early, I went to the line of the An Cafe concert. Should have done it sooner, but at least it was a better position than what many people went through. Ramen & Rice, a popular violin and cello duo, performed a bunch of anime and game songs, though Father Time has caught up with me because I only recognized two or three songs at most. Oh and of course, An Cafe rocked the auditorium.

If you had to pick a day to go to Fanime, this was it. The concert and the Maika Netsu panel were good enough reasons. Of course, the day and Saturday were the most expensive days, but the events on this day made up for it.

Day 4 - The Final Day

Outside of hanging out with local friends, I attended An Cafe’s panel. The band loves coming to America, especially San Jose. A lot of people had questions, but there’s no way they’re going to answer every question in an hour.

I managed to conduct the personal interview with An Cafe. Unfortunately, I had to miss the closing ceremonies, but there was nothing I could do. After the interview, the con came to an end and people started going home or they had some post-con event going on elsewhere.

Epilogue

The official attendance count at this year’s Fanime was more than 13,000 people according to what was mentioned at the closing ceremonies. The hard task I mentioned earlier was having a budget and I went under. On a side note, the way I dressed during all of Fanime felt like I was about to be attending some important dinner banquet rather than I was a con attendee and I remember one person saying that he liked my hat. I also remember another person knowing that I went to Clover, a bakery not far from the con, for lunch. I misplaced one of my meals, but it really wasn’t a big deal.

Oh! The charity. Most of the items I’m giving away are small, but the big item is Aya Matsura’s “Double Rainbow”. I’m giving the items to people in the Philippines as I am giving back to the unprivileged. (China and Burma could have used the prizes too, but I figured that they need money more than the prizes.)

What were the good parts about Fanime? There are more resources to work with unlike in the past. All of a sudden, I became a fan of An Cafe and like I said, they love coming to San Jose, my city. I’m glad I became a new fan because I generally miss out on the next great music artists. Also, it’s good that I got to see a sight that no other con has done in hosting 45 people from a popular company.

Of course, knowing my personality, I need to be severely harsh and give out the flaws, especially since I need to show that I don’t have any bias at all. This is San Jose, one of the biggest cities in the world. You need to show that you can’t just put out only one good act and a real big example is that An Cafe’s the only band from Japan. You need to bring out at least one more grand artist from Japan here seeing that it’s a big city and it’s one of the few cities in the world to have a Japan Town. (It can be any artist.) You can’t be like Gainax all the time, as in fiddle around with the budget all the time and get away with it.

The other big flaw deals with one word: execution. If it wasn’t for my press pass, I wouldn’t have received that ticket to the An Cafe concert and because of the way the tickets were distributed, there were plenty of spare tickets left. Keeping the tickets in the booth was a good idea (which is unusual because people didn’t like this idea at all), but the schedule planning was a horrible idea. I also need to mention that towards the end of the con, there was an area off limits to people. Guess what? One of the entrances to the area was left so wide open that I could have launched a Shine Knuckle attack to scare people not only in that area, but in the con overall. Don’t take little matters like this for granted and set a guard for every entrance. I still am really more irked by this than the staff members in that area to be honest, which is not a good sign. (I can’t think of a good reason why this would happen.)

Overall, I managed to do my work with ease for the most part even though the critical flaw I mention in the last paragraph irritates me. The staff members did what they could and I thank the ones who worked hard, though it’s a shame many couldn’t get a lot of play time in. I thank the staff for not only making sure people, including myself, were safe, but also making sure that people had fun. A con isn’t much if it doesn’t have the attendees and that’s what matters. If all goes well, I’ll see you at Fanime again next year.