Posts Tagged ‘anime’
17 items.
This weekend I spent in the gracious company of Alan Evans (Rival Angels) at Anime Milwaukee. Leaving work on Thursday, I hopped a bus up to the city where Alan picked me up and took me back to his humble abode. Alan and I have been friends for years now, and through those years I’ve never before met his wife or cats – who are all awesome! But I digress.
Thursday was a restful night of lounging around the house and catching up, since Alan and I haven’t hung out since Mid-Ohio last year. We talked about the con, our goals, comic stuff, and basic nerdy topics. It was great catching up and talking shop with Alan. One of the best parts of conventions is the camaraderie with your fellow creators and lovers of comics and anime.
Friday we headed out in the morning to get the to con, even though Artist Alley didn’t open until 1pm. Alan and I set up, got our badges and gear, and made signs to announce our panels for the weekend. Alan has a great sign for his book, and even bought out the cover 4 ad (that’s back cover, for anyone who doesn’t know) in the brochure for the show, which looked great. The entire weekend he was getting recognition from the ad, and hopefully he gets a lot of web traffic from it as well.
Around 1pm the show really picked up. Our table was at the end of the L-shaped artist alley, and people seemed to enjoy walking around a blue circle of tiles that sent them away from our table, but towards the vendor room. Alan and I kept making fun of the situation, calling it “the blue ring of death.”
Friday went pretty slow sales wise, but towards the end of the day I had two panels back-to-back: Crafting Fictional Worlds at 3pm, and Writing Comics at 4pm. The trick was that I went over by a few minutes at the first panel, so I had to bum-rush to the second panel. Attendance for the panels was pretty strong, and the audience had questions throughout the panel and after.
When the panels were done, I went back to the table and waited out the remaining hours with Alan.
After the show, we got dinner and went back to his place to watch Zombieland with his wife. The flick was HILARIOUS. You know you’re in good company when everyone can laugh at jokes about Bill Murry, and also add more jokes into the mix.
Saturday was the big day of the con, but Alan and I had Making Webcomics panel about an hour after the show started. Not even bothering to fully unpack, we grabbed some items and went to the panel. Alan counted a good number of attendance, and we gave out our knowledge and experience. After the panel, Alan and I were invited to move to a new table location in the center of Artist Alley. This was a great chance for us, since we were no longer affected by the blue ring of death. We also met our awesome neighbors. Sales picked up for Alan and I as the day progressed, but we did have a few slow spots – mostly around the time that the voice actors were giving their panels.
Alan and I ended the day and headed back to his place, where his wife made a delicious chili. Alan and I watched Jurassic Park 1 and 2 while working on comics – probably the greatest creative / productivity / nerd night I’ve had in ages! Seriously, I’ve missed having creative nights like that, and it was exactly what I needed to help charge the batteries for the final day of Anime Milwaukee.
Sunday was the final day of the con, and also the day of Daylight Savings Time. Alan and I set up the table and started selling our tails off. Alan sold a few prints and books early off, and I had a slower morning. At 3pm (the last hour of the con) was my panel for @$$hole!, to which I had been promoting all weekend in the hopes that people would show. And they did. A decent sized group of people for the last panel of the convention, and I was very humbled that the audience wanted to spend their last hour of the con listening to my stories about @$$hole!. I put my all into it, telling stories about what inspired the comic and even acting out some of the scenes from it on stage. I answered questions, I told touching and humorous tales of the world that exists in my demented little mind – and everyone seemed to love it.
In the end, I thanked them all for spending their last hour of the con with me, and hope to see them all again soon.
After the panel the show ended, Alan and I broke down our table and said our goodbyes to the people we had met. Alan took me to a local gyro place, and then we headed to the train station so I could get back to Chicago.
It was a fun weekend spent in great company. I had a blast, and I look forward to doing it again next year.
…and if people from the con are reading this, please send me some pictures from the convention. My camera is broken and Alan’s ran out of batteries. 
Anime Milwaukee is next weekend (March 12-14), and I’ll be sharing a table with Alan Evans of Rival Angels. The two of us will have several panels. I’ll be speaking on the following topics:
-Panel Name: The Art of Crafting Your World
-Date: Friday
-Time: 3-4 PM
-Panel Name: Writing for Comics
-Date: Friday
-Time: 4-5 PM
-Panel Name: @$$hole!
-Date: Sunday
-Time: 3-4 PM
Be sure to stop by and say hi, buy a book and hang out. We’re cool guys. We being Alan and I.
Also, if you check out the guest list over at ACEN, you may see a certain bald man is listed as a guest of honor…. 
Be sure to show up for that show, too. It’s probably the coolest con you’ll attend all year!
Movie Review: Evangelion 01 – You Are (Not) Alone
Director: Masayuki, Kazuya Tsurumaki
Official Website
Plot: In the not-too-distant future, 14 year-old Shinji Ikari has been summoned to Tokyo-3 by his estranged father who he has not seen for many years. Upon arriving, he finds the city under siege by a giant monster called an “Angel.” Picked up by a young woman who works for Shinji’s father’s organization called Nerv, she drives him to their underground base (a giant geo-front) and orders him to pilot a humanoid mechanized unit called Evangelion. When Shinji refuses, realizing that his father only summoned him here because he had a use for him, his father orders another 14 year-old pilot into the cockpit. However, this pilot, Rei, is severely injured from a previous experiment activating a previous Eva Unit, and can barely stand.
As the Angel attacks from above, the base begins to shake and Rei is thrust from her medical bed, blood leaking through her bandages. Shinji agrees to pilot the Eva, and is projected to the surface face to face with the monstrous Angel. However, not having any previous experience with the Evas before, he can’t even walk and the Angel attacks without mercy. Breaking his wrist and cracking his helmet armor, Eva Unit 01 is rendered broken and in the silence the human race watches as they are about to be wiped out from all existence by Third Impact.
Suddenly, Eva Unit 01 reactivates and goes berserk. It attacks the Angel with a ferocity and forces the Angel to blow itself up in an attempt to take Shinji with it. However, Shinji walks away with some minor physical wounds…but a whole lot of psychological trauma to deal with.
And this is only the first 20 minutes of the movie….
Those familiar with the popular (and highly controversial) anime series will see this as a rehash of the original footage. Let me put your fears to rest by saying that while there is a lot of footage from the original series and the beginning of the flick is a very sped up version of the first two episodes of the series (re-edited), the footage has been cleaned up to an amazing degree! There’s also new footage throughout, and while it’s mostly b-roll (stuff happening in the background or during voice overs), they do start to add more and more as the movie progresses. The battle with the 6th Angel is almost completely different, in fact. They’ve even added digital effects to many of the Eva and Angel sequences, and even some new conversations to help bring the audience up to speed.
For those of you not familiar with the series, you’re probably going to be completely lost watching this movie. But, like those of us who experienced the series, that’s part of the fun of it. Evangelion is brutal with it’s question asking, and not for forgiving with the giving of the answers. But, like modern TV shows like LOST, that’s part of the fun of it. For fans of the original series, they introduce some elements earlier on, making me think that later installments of this 4 movie series are going to be much much different. I also question if they’re going to follow more to the manga series (which has yet to finish, to my knowledge) which establishes more of the character relationships (specifically between Shinji and Rei), and builds Shinji more as a character instead of diminishing him like the series did.
I won’t go into the spoilers from the series, but in the movie they certainly lay the groundwork for a lot of the questions that many fans are still asking themselves after the conclusion of the series and the two movies that “finished it all off.” It is not a requirement for you to have seen the series to watch this movie; as I started before the beginning of the flick is the first two episodes in fast forward, and it just builds from there at a steady pace. The theatrical version of the movie that I watched was dubbed, and while I hate dubbed anime, this was tolerable to me because 1) new voice recording, so the voices are slightly less obnoxious, and 2) I was just so damn excited to watch this movie it wasn’t even funny.
Walking away from the theater, I just want to pop in the series again and start from the very beginning.
Shinji’s journey is a difficult one, as he not only has to deal with being a 14 year-old kid with all of the social skills of a mute, but also because the fate of the human race literally rests on his shoulders. And he’s not your regular hero. Shinji is incredibly flawed, and that helps make his journey that much more interesting to watch. At the end of the movie, in fact, the desperation of his struggle is made all the more clear by a speech given to him by an adult about the world that they live in. The audience feels the weight of his burden as they watch the drama unfold, and his last-ditch effort to save humanity from the onslaught of Angels barreling down on Tokyo-3.
If you loved the series, you should totally watch this movie. If you have never heard of Evangelion but enjoy anime, then you HAVE to watch this movie. Then go out and get the series and thank Lilith that you didn’t have to wait for them to come out like the rest of us. If you don’t like anime and have never heard of Evangelion (but enjoy shows that ask you questions, like LOST) then you could probably get into this series.
From the opening sequence described above to the dramatic conclusion of the final battle against the 6th Angel, this movie is loaded with everything you love (or will love) about this series. And a closing song by Utada Hikaru (who did the theme song to Kingdom Hearts, for those of you unfamiliar with Japanese singers), and this movie is definitely going into my DVD collection. It may be a scam to get more money out of me years after the series has ended, but you know what – it worked, and I don’t mind at all. And the promise of things to come in the next installment (stay until after the credits for a teaser), and I’d say that a new generation of anime lovers is going to get hooked – and the previous generation will get hooked again.
I’ll leave you now with the closing credits song by Utada Hikaru, entitled “Beautiful World.” I have to dust off my DVD box set of Evangelion now and go nerd out….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OGncC04dRI
So I found out that a movie I’ve been waiting to be released in the US for two years has finally hit our shores in a limited (and unfortunately dubbed) release at a local theater called Music Box.
I guess they play all kinds of classic films, currently playing Wizard of Oz and Rashomon – and it looks like they play The Rock Horror Picture Show around this time of year!
So I want to review this flick, and I’ll be watching the flick at some point this week. I’ll try to put my bias towards dubbing and love of the original series to the back of my mind when I do the review.
If you don’t know anything about this series (and shame on you if you don’t), be sure to check out the wikipedia page and catch up on what people have called one of the most controversial anime series of all time (so much so that people are still talking about the series 15 years after it finished…and are now making 4 new movies about it).
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On a side note, I want to apologize to everyone for the lack of blog updates on Tuesdays and Thursday lately. I pride myself on updating the website blog every day during the week, but haphazards in life and work have prevented me from having the time to do that. My job is somewhat seasonal in it’s “busy season,” or “planning season” as we call it, and that time is right now. This means that I’m in the office for about 12 hours every day. Add into that the commute time of about 40 minutes one way, and the fact that I need to cook food and clean dishes, and there’s barely enough time to sleep, much less go to the movies or pop in a video game and review it.
And currently, I have house guests visiting from Texas and we’re working diligently on the next @$$hole! story arc based on the very popular Drunk Duck Awards presentations that we’ve put together for two years (2008 and 2009) in a row. People have been begging me to do something with this, so Amanda and Jess were kind enough to take a vacation and come visit me for a week so we could take pictures (and they could do some things for my story that they wouldn’t normally do).
So be sure to be on the lookout for that.
Until later, I’ll hopefully be able to blog some more as planning season starts to slow a bit (but it doesn’t often end before February of the next year). I’m working on putting together my con appearances for 2010, though, so it’s going to be an exciting year!