My buddy Christian from the QBPL invited me to present the “Otaku Collection Development: Taking Your Collection to the Next Level” panel with him on Professional Day, Friday Feb 6th. Christian covered vintage works: darker Tezuka (MW, Ode to Kirihito), J-Horror (Drifting Classroom), and hack-and-slash Samurai stuff (Lone Wolf and Cub, Lady Snowblood). I covered accessible but under-the-radar modern manga (ala Yakitate Japan, xxxHolic, and The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya), as well as modern fringe stuff (ala Welcome to the NHK and Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei).
Personally, I thought we did dang good, although a blogger flamed us as being sexist because we didn’t talk about shojo. Ouch. In our defense, we were sandwiched between two shojo-centered panels, and we felt like more shojo on our part would have been overkill (although some people obviously don’t agree). Besides, you have to admit that something about two burly 30-something guys with huge red beards talking about comics geared to 14 year old Japanese girls comes off a little....well, creepy. Eh, whatever.
In any event, the Con itself was ok, but way more crowded than I remembered from last year; I suppose folks are in need of escapist entertainment more than even. I ran into an old manga-loving coworker, which was awesome; she had been “relived” of her job rather unfairly (at least in my opinion), so I was happy to hear that she was doing well at her new gig. Unsurprisingly, I went bat-poop crazy in the retailer section and picked up about 20 manga; the volumes were only about $4 each because I bought in bulk, so I grabbed a random selection of stuff I’d been either meaning to read, or just looked appealing…
-Comic Party #1 and #3 (Doujinshi artist-themed slapstick comedy; way weirder than the anime it spawned.)
-Neon Genesis Evangelion: Angelic Days #1 (NGE re-imagined as a school comedy/drama…an interesting idea, that’s for sure.)
-Ai Yori Aoishi #2, 6, and 8 (cloyingly sweet Love/Harem comedy. What can I say? I just can’t keep my hands off this crap.)
-Lupin III #9 (Classic seinen heist high jinks)
-Martian Successor Nadesico #1 – 4 (lighthearted space opera; the dated art and “flipped” format make it hard to get into, but I dig the series.)
-Cyborg 009 #8 (old school action/intrigue stuff with big Tezuka visual influence.)
-Samurai Executioner #3 (1970’s hack and slash Samurai action)
-Onegai Twins (dopey Harem comedy that, of course, I can’t resist)
-Iron Wok Jan #12, 14, and 23 (Chinese cooking showdown; way more dark and intense than you would imagine a cooking showdown series to be…)
-Those Who Hunt Elves #7 (action/comedy/fantasy/adventure about a man, two women, and a tank trapped in the land of elves. Raunchy plot elements but far more goofy than echi)
I also picked up ADV’s Martian Successor Nadesico box set; dated as it is in terms of it’s sci-fi theme and animation, I liked the bit that I was able to get through Netflix so I didn’t mind coughing up for copies of my own.
All in all, a dang good time – and not nearly as stinky/creepy as the NY Anime Fest!
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Otherwise, things are pretty chill here at the biblioteca publica dé Otaku. Aside from watching the excellent Toradora and the offbeat Akikan (teen boy’s soda can transforms into a beautiful girl who must battle other soda-can/girls for “can supremacy”), I’m taking a real shine to Paranoia Agent, a supremely creepy psychological/crime thriller about the manhunt for a baseball bat-wielding boy on rollerblades; expect a review of one of these series (or Comic Party) before long.
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