1) This con was small. The Jacob Javits Center is huge. There may have been a Magic: The Gathering tournament going alongside it, but I hope to see more panels, more rooms, more everything next year
2) Guests were good, not great, but I enjoyed the panels I went to immensely (except for the cosplay competition)
3) Unicorn Table was awesome. Also I picked up all of Votoms for 66% off. Also I got an Anime World Order T-Shirt from Daryl Surat.
I’ve come to realize that a lot of what I would consider to be the best scenes in anime cannot stand alone, or at least have a difficult time doing so. They require prior knowledge of everything that has happened beforehand and to have proper empathy for the characters on-screen.
The best scenes are payoff, and this is often why when one shows their favorite anime scenes to someone unfamiliar with the show, it won’t have nearly the impact.
There are exceptions of course. My favorite being the following scene from Macross.
Misa: Your baby’s so cute! May I hold her?
Miria: I made this baby. If you want to hold a baby, go make your own.
I guess it’s better to say that dramatic moments are better with context.
I got to the New York Anime Festival at around 5pm, and went to see if there was any Ogiue doujin in the dealer’s room.
Apparently it all sold out in the morning.
You bastards.
Speaks loudly and randomly in a foreign language. Has no sense of personal space. Difficult to predict and kind of disturbing at times.
Now, am I describing Sue, or am I describing Kuchiki?
I mean, I like Sue (and Angela as well), but I have to wonder how much she gets away with in the eyes of us Genshiken fans on account of her being female.
Also, yes, I am looking forward to upcoming episodes. Ogiue and Sue are an incredible comedy duo.
BONUS GAME: Picture the conversations Kuchiki and Sue would have while on a date.
Answer: Because he uses Hokuto Lacan Geki.
Sasahara Keiko, sister of Sasahara Kanji, is non-existent in the anime Genshiken 2.
Essentially, they’ve turned Kuchiki into a surrogate Keiko, giving modified lines that she would have been delivering to Kuchiki instead. I think this is really a shame because Keiko becomes a pretty good character in the second half of the Genshiken manga and that while the overall effect for the sake of the plot is the same, their wildly different character types result in two wildly different deliveries of the same information. Keiko fills a role that Saki can’t, being both normal (if you consider ko-gal to be normal) AND unreliable, and she gets quite a few good lines and even a chapter devoted to her. Probably the best example of Keiko goodness is in Volume 9 of the manga with her interactions with both Ogiue and Ohno.
All this considered, I’m not exactly sure why they’ve done this, seeing as Keiko has appeared as late as the third OVA episode. There are a number of possibilites though. Maybe Keiko’s voice actor, Shimizu Kaori, was unable to fulfill the role. Maybe they figured Keiko wouldn’t be a popular character. Maybe they thought the cast would have gotten too cluttered. Maybe they really like Kuchiki. It’s all speculation though.
At the very least though, I can say that reading the manga and watching the anime are two similar but different experiences. I, of course, recommend doing both.
I’d like to see a show where every the origins of every character’s moe facets are explored and shown on screen.
You would get to see the entire childhood friendship from day one to day they’re no longer kids. You’d get to see the exact environment that would turn someone tsun and dere. It wouldn’t just be a part of their personality from day one.
Basically, I think, the result would be that you get to see more of the characters’ parents, which is perhaps not something that happens often in this sort of anime.
I think at some point, I stopped watching new anime purely because it lined up with my own sense of aesthetics and storytelling, and began watching it more so that I could see how anime is doing. I still enjoy it though, so don’t get the wrong idea.
I’ve found that few shows ever violate my standards of taste, and I think the reason is that I’m treating it less as entertainment and more as friends with whom I can keep up. “How are you doing, magical girl genre? Oh, you’re marketing to older men now! Ahahaha you crazy card.”
It’s a strange place to be.
OGIUE MANIAX 