The Panels of Otakon 2010

Being largely terrified of social gatherings, and thus the stereotypical nerd with little grasp of social protocol, I hermited away in panel rooms all weekend. In previous years I’d gotten better with it, but I’ve regressed somewhat. Still, this year I had a good time at the panels and was invited to become a panelist for a Japanese figures and toys discussion, which was fun.

This got real long, so I just talk about those panels where I have something to say beyond a recap.

Panel Room Sizes

Here is the list of panel rooms ordered in the number of seats, according to a staffer over on the Otakon boards:

Panel 4 – 165 seats
Panel 1 – 200
Panel 5 – 370
Panel 2 – 580
Panel 6 – 680
Panel 3 – 1700

Panel three is on the top floor, next to the HD theater. This room basically doubled in size from last year as they combined it with what was then an adjacent video room into this mega panel room. They actually did need a panel room that large for more than one panel/event.

Japanese Figures

I was invited by VManOfMana to join him with Colette and Pedro from Tomopop for a Japanese figures panel. It was scheduled for Sunday at 12:30 in panel 4. We were kind of nervous to see how many people would actually show up, since by that time most people are looking to get the hell out of Balitmore. I guess that the room was at around 75% capacity (every row with somebody and some spaces here and there between people), so it was a strong turnout, exceeded my expectations. There’s video of it here. I had fun talking about figures, but wish I could come up with more to have said. On the drive home, I kept thinking oh I could have said this, or that! Oh well, I did enjoy the experience, so I’m happy about that.

It was good to see some people who just came to the panel out of curiosity and with any luck get them into the hobby. Someone asked about gunpla (Gundam models), and I guess it made me realize that in the English speaking world at least, the figure and gunpla enthusiasts don’t visibly interact that much, like if you look at AnimeNano there’s a number of figure blogs, but I don’t remember any gunpla blogs or seeing gunpla in other people’s blogrolls. This kind of mirrors the segregation of anime fandom in general, at least amongst bloggers, I guess. Of course, having to actually build a gunpla might explain for the lower visibility since figure blogging is pretty instant, take it out of the box and go sort of thing.

I brought Triggerheart Exelica and Etna with me.

Michael Sinterniklaas About the Industry Panel

I’ve been to dozens of voice actor panels, which are among my favorite panels to attend. This one was different from the typical voice actor panel in that it was more about the production of English dubs and anime in general. For those who aren’t familiar, Michael Sinterniklaas is the owner of NYAV Post, a production company, a director, and an actor. In addition to his anime credits, he’s also the voice of Dean Venture in The Venture Brothers.

It was structured as a Q&A. Sinterniklaas gave in-depth answers to questions asked (many of which were very good questions, real questions), taking the time to fully answer those questions. What’s great is Sinterniklaas has the ability to explain industry and production issues without talking down to anyone. He is someone who gets it. Industry needs to adapt to the way people want to get their stuff, just figuring out how to do it is the problem (nobody has figured it out yet) — it’s not the fans who are a problem. A lot of insight into licensing and production, even just scratching the surface revealed factors fans overlook when they talk about licensing properties. Again, no talking down, but I felt a much greater understanding of what goes on and the factors involved as to why some things do or don’t get licensed and the way that hands are forced. I’ve been to panels that have discussed these things before, but I think Sinterniklaas has a unique perspective, as a fan and due to how many facets of the industry that he’s been involved in, to be able to tie them all together in ways others can’t do as well.

I particularly enjoyed his take on why the Japanese “group loop” style of voice over is prohibitive in the US industry. His response to this question probably deserves its own post. Since he works all angles of the voice over industry his answer held a lot of insight on both the creative end and the production end of the answer.

Not to put words in his mouth, but while he would love to record something using the group loop method, the benefits are dwarfed by the risks. Tradition plays a large role. In Japan it’s how they do things and how they’re trained to work. In the US, that is not the tradition, so it would significantly limit the pool of actors he can cast. It’s more than just blocking time to get everyone in the room at once. He would have trouble filling the room with exactly what he wants for the characters. This is significant, since casting is so important if you want to precisely create the character vs. just getting the character close enough for the English version. Many actors would require extra work/time to group loop. Lip flap adherence also comes into play. Japan doesn’t care that much about it and in the US flap adherence is important, which makes the group loop style prohibitive to employ. Combine this with the financial considerations of having actors who can’t group loop at full speed, which slows down those who can, making the dub even more expensive. Most successful dub actors are those who can give the best cold reads and match flaps very quickly. What seemingly is a minor booking issue to attempt a group loop, really isn’t as trivial a process shift as some might think.

It makes sense to me. It would have been tried already if it were as simple as gathering a bunch of people in a room at the same time instead of scheduling actors one by one. I mean it sort of was attempted when ADV dubbed Godannar, but they did it in pilot pairs, rather than a true whole cast Japanese style group loop. Each of the actors was in different booths rather than recording in the same room a la Japan, because that’s how ADV’s recording studios were are setup, for individual recording. Sure, tradition and established work flow are not insurmountable obstacles and probably minor if money were absent of the equation, but money will never be absent of the equation, particularly in tight times. I imagine, Disney could logistically pull off a group loop with their Ghibli dubs, since they have recording facilities for group work like they use for their pre-lays on original titles, but then most of the time Disney uses Hollywood types with little dubbing experience and in that scenario one by one is probably more efficient. From what I’ve seen of BangZoom!’s setup, they could probably do a group recording session too.

As the first panel I attended at Otakon, it really got me psyched for the rest of the convention. I’d easily attend this panel again.

Dub Actors After Dark

I always attend this 18+ panel. Sometimes mind-blowing awesome and sometimes just mildly entertaining. The room for this gets progressively larger each year with it in the 1,700 seat panel 3 for 2010. While on the one hand this means a lot more people can attend and I don’t have to get into line 2-3 hours before it starts just to get in, the panel loses a lot of the casual face-to-face feeling that it had when it was in the 140-seat panel 1, before Otakon realized just how popular this panel would be. This year was very hit and miss, so somewhere in the middle of all the after dark panels I’ve seen, but I had a good time.

One trend I’ve noticed is each year the questions people ask are less and less dirty anime related and now almost exclusively ask normal dirty questions. For example, instead of asking the VA who played Ryūji Takasu to say the nastiest thing Ryūji Takasu would do with Taiga Aisaka if his character were turned into a tentacle monster in a hentai doujin (and say it in character), people would now just ask the VA what’s the nastiest thing they’ve done in bed (as in real life).

Cosplay Burlesque

This was an 18+ event on Saturday night. It’s striptease in cosplay, but more of the art of the tease you get with old school burlesque than the unceremonious disrobing for a buck at your standard “gentleman’s club,” which was nice. They had both male and female characters in the act for a packed panel hall 3 (seats 1,700), so it wasn’t just for the guys. It was a great idea, but I was kind of bored. Part of it was where I was told to sit. For the first half hour mostly what I saw was other con-goers walking in front of me to get to their seats, so I couldn’t see a whole lot of the show.

The show itself had some issues that made it less interesting than it could have been. Almost every character cosplayed was old, with the most recent character being Chii from Chobits (I didn’t stay to the end, but saw most of it). It would have been more fun to see more recent characters on stage. The other problem was they could have used more performers instead of using the same few over and over again. Each of the performers was quite nice, but seeing them a third and fourth time broke the illusion of the cosplay somewhat.

If the catwalk stage were a bit higher it would also help. I couldn’t see any of the ground work.

Welcome to the Space Show Q&A

A pretty standard non-actor/non-musician Japanese guest panel, which meant large room (panel 5 – 370 seats), small crowd. It’s sad, but usually true.

These non-actor/non-musician guest panels should be put into small panel rooms to make it feel a little more intimate and face-to-face, rather than having the backdrop of the entire panel be the depressing sight of three-hundred empty chairs. While I can’t get into the guests’ heads, it must be deflating to talk to what looks like an empty room, whereas that same number of people would be cozy in the 165-seat panel 4 and maybe open the guests up a little to give interesting answers. Planning these things aren’t as easy as it sounds (especially when it comes to guests), but it just feels like this type of typically low-turnout panel is booked into a room that’s too large and the panel suffers a little for it. I often feel these panels are painful because of the empty seat backdrop.