Hi folks, apologies for the lack of episode 1 review today (and most likely tomorrow as well). I spent most of the weekend with family members who were visiting, and then spent the last couple of days decompressing from that. But! I did want to mention that I’ll be speaking at a local, in-person convention – Anime Fusion, which is coming up the weekend of October 22nd-24th. My spouse J.C. and I will be presenting on several topics, since there were many programming slots to fill and we were able to update a few of our older presentations.
The Anime Fusion convention staff has recently posted the full convention schedule. A few of the time slots are livestreamed (denoted by bold text), so even if you aren’t local, you may still be able to purchase a virtual registration and see what’s going on online.
Below are our scheduled panels. If there are any panel materials associated with these topics, I’ll make sure they’re posted after the presentation is over.
Friday, October 22nd
9:30pm – 10:30pm in Panel 1- “Shiny New Anime” (Livestreamed)
Our annual-ish panel focused on new anime that’s come out over the past year or so. There was a ton of great anime over the past 12 months, so I’m still not sure how we’re going to choose where to focus our efforts for the short hour’s worth of time we have to talk, but I’m glad we get to share our tastes with everyone!
Saturday, October 23rd
2:00pm – 3:00 pm in Panel 1 – “Neon Genesis Evangelion: A Retrospective” (Livestreamed)
Now that the final Eva movie is available and we’ve had time to watch it, we’d like to discuss the series as a whole (or, at least, the various animated portions of it). We’ll be talking about overall themes and what we liked/loved/had critical feelings about as it pertains to this important franchise.
11:00pm – 11:59pm in Panel 1 – “Anime About Anime 2.0” (Livestreamed)
A few years ago, I broke down series such as Shirobako and Animation Runner Kuromi and looked at what we could glean from them regarding the anime production process. In this revamp of the panel, we’ll be looking at a couple more new entries into the pantheon of “anime about anime” and move the discussion more toward how they reflect the state of the Japanese animation industry as it stands today.
Sunday, October 24th
12:00pm – 1:00pm in Panel 2 – “The Odd World of ODDTAXI”
J.C. and I talk at length about one of our favorite anime of this last year. We’ll discuss what we love about ODDTAXI, its themes, its extended universe (for example, the radio drama) and other things related to the series.
2:00pm to 3:00pm in Panel 1 – “Madoka and Homura: the Trap of Selflessness”
With the announcement of a new (final?) film in the Madoka franchise, as well as other peripheral franchise entries like Magia Record, we return to the discussion of Homura’s motivations toward Madoka, and the duality of selfless versus selfless love.
*whew* that’s definitely the most full schedule I’ve had to deal with in quite a while! Though I’m going to try not to let my general review schedule suffer too greatly, final convention prep is going to take the front seat over the next week before the convention, so apologies for any gaps that might be due to that.