my yearly excuse

Every year for the past, oh, 17 years, I have the same excuse as to why I can’t get much of anything done in the late August-September time frame. It’s all because I helped start an anime convention in Atlanta back in 1995, and AWA has been such a blast every year that I continue to be involved.



This year is no different, I’m handling several events and panels over the course of the weekend, and preparation for same has taken up the free time I’d normally use to write Let’s Anime columns.

What’s happening this year at AWA 2011? Thursday night at 7 we do this thing called the SUPER HAPPY FUN SELL, where anime fans dig through their closets and bring out their pre-loved manga, DVDs, old VHS and laserdiscs, toys, games, plushies, model kits, prints, cassette tapes, fans, kimono, record albums, and other less identifiable items to sell to you at bargain prices. I find neat stuff at this sale every year and I predict this one will not be any different. Bring money!



Then later on Thursday it’s Dave’s Old School Classroom. I wasn’t going to do it this year, mainly because at previous shows it’s always been this late night Saturday thing and I was tired of spending my Saturday night catching-up-with-friends time in a video room showing “Legend Of Marine Snow”. So this year it’s moved to Thursday at 10pm in the Kennesaw room and I’m going to take the audience through the anime work of Shotaro Ishinomori, including little-seen gems like Sabu & Ichi’s Detective Stories and 30,000 Miles Under The Sea. You’ll need your AWA badge for these events so show up early Thursday to get squared away!



Friday night is of course Japanese Anime Hell; I’ve been doing it at AWA since 1997, a two-hour compilation of entertaining and inexplicable found video that works within the themes of Japan or animation or both. Or neither. To be honest I never thought it would become as popular as it has, but I could say that about AWA in general, which will have more than 12,000 attendees this year.



There’s a whole bunch of stuff going on at the show on Saturday but all I’m responsible for (other than a certain gathering for fans of a certain show) is a panel at 7pm titled “Stone Age Mecha”, anime and manga robots of the pre-Mazinger Z era. Expect some Mitsuteru Yokoyama action in this one.

On Sunday at 1pm I’m on a panel with representatives from other Atlanta anime conventions, and we compare and contrast our various shows, talk about dealing with hotels and vendors, and generally swap trade secrets. I don’t live in Atlanta any more, so my eligibility as an AWA representative is dubious at best, but this gives me a chance to catch up on all the gossip. And that’s important.

At 3:30 there’s a talk entitled “My Life On The Super Robot D-List”, where experts like Richard Hoelsher and Drew Sutton and me discuss various robot anime shows that never quite caught on with the public. And there were a surprising number of these near-misses, some entertaining, some terrible. Then I have to run over next door at 4pm and do a panel on “Spooky Classic Anime”, all about Shigeru Mizuki’s Ge Ge Ge no Kitaro and Akuma-Kun, other shows like Yokai Ningen Bem, Obake Q-Taro and Kaibutsu-Kun, and even some Dororon Enma-Kun thrown in for good measure. And then before you know it the con is over for another year!



Of course AWA’s packed with attractions besides my humble involvement; guests include seiyu Naoko Matsui (Dream Hunter Rem, Katsumi Liqueur in Silent Mobius), artist Yoshitoshi “Serial Experiments Lain” Abe, voice actors Todd Haberkorn, Vic Mignogna, Amy “Nova” Howard-Wilson and Brina Palencia, industry figures like Carl Horn, Neil “Totally Lame Anime” Nadelman and David Williams, animation director Tim Eldred, artist Bob DeJesus, musical acts MOON STREAM and The Suzan, among others. There’s a formal ball, the famous AMV awards, a giant artists alley, classy costume contest, karaoke, maid cafes, video games, a manga library, a huge dealers hall, RPG games, three 24 hour anime video rooms showing damn near everything, a whole programming track dealing with cosplay, Midnight anime parody Madness, several loud dances, and this year a skit event, so you can shut up about your damn skits.

AWA 2011 happens September 29-October 2 at the Cobb Galleria Convention Center/Renaissance Waverly Hotel in what’s technically Atlanta GA! See you there!

what I did on my vacation

Been a few weeks since anything new popped up on the old Let's Anime. Why is that? Huh? It's because the end of summer is traditionally a time for reflection and contemplation, a time for spiritual and philosophical renewal, and also a time to squeeze in a little vacation. Which is what we did.



So we went to Tokyo and took a lot of pictures and did some sightseeing and bought a lot of neat stuff, and that's part of why there hasn't been any new Let's Anime action here. Another reason is the upcoming Anime Weekend Atlanta, happening September 18-20 in the Cobb Galleria Center and Renaissance Waverly Hotel in what is technically the city of Atlanta!

As one of the founders and a continuing bad influence I naturally have many important duties at AWA, one of which is the late Saturday night event known as "Old School Classroom". This video-room event is basically a clip show featuring snippets of those crazy old Japanese cartoons that have all the kids excited. This year's theme is "1960s" so that means everything from Astro Boy to Tiger Mask to Cyborg Big X to Cyborg 009. That event is going to wrap up with an entire episode of "Honey Honey", even though the cartoon is technically not from the 1960s. But it's my panel and I can do whatever I want.



Another AWA event I'll be at is the Sunday afternoon extravaganza known as "Thirty Years of Star Blazers". That's right, it's been thirty years since Star Blazers first burst forth upon American television sets, and we've assembled an all-star cast of fans and pros to talk about this seminal experience, including original Nova voice actress Amy Howard Wilson, Starblazers.com webmaster and comic author Tim Eldred, and other notables.

Friday afternoon I will be holding forth on a topic near and dear to my heart, a panel about Western literature that has inspired Japanese cartoons. This doesn't just mean Nippon Animation World Masterpiece shows, either! Lots of crazy stuff you never knew existed or didn't really feel the need to know existed awaits your eyeballs.

And of course Friday night at ten PM you must not fail to attend JAPANESE ANIME HELL, the original crazy clip show highlighting the weird and wacky, the failures and the fantastics, the disturbing and the damned paraded across the screen for your entertainment.



So if you happen to be anywhere near Georgia in the next week, you owe it to yourself and to future generations to attend this year's Anime Weekend Atlanta! Once it's over I promise regular posting here at Let's Anime will resume with all possible speed. Isn't that right, Inflatable Prince Planet?

AWA next weekend

It's been light on the posting here at Let's Anime, because I've been busy getting ready for the 14th annual Anime Weekend Atlanta, which happens next weekend in, yes, Atlanta. There will be a wide variety of classic anime programming at the show for you to enjoy, including an entire video room devoted to classic anime (it's the Tyndall Room, look it up in your program book when you get to the show).

Highlights?

Peter Fernandez and Corinne Orr (Speed Racer, Trixie, Marine Boy, Ultraman, Thunderbirds 2086, etc) will be guests and doing panels and autographs, etc., throughout the weekend.



I'll be doing the Old School Classroom thing at 11pm on Saturday night in the Classic Anime room (Tyndall), which is a thing where I screen old clips and discuss their relative importance or lack thereof. This year I'm doing my Super Robots panel, which features clips from every super robot anime series from the 1970s (minus two).



Patrick (Otaku USA) and I will be doing a presentation on the 1978 film "Message From Space" on Saturday at 1pm.

I don't know if it counts as "classic" yet, but Walter Amos will be doing a panel on Legend Of Galactic Heroes at 11am on Saturday.



Ed Hill's Magical Girls panel at noon on Sunday focuses on the Studio Pierrot shows like Creamy Mami, Pelsia, and Magical Emi.



At 1pm on Sunday there's a panel about Rose of Versailles.



At 3 on Sunday Neil Nadelman and I are doing a two-hour thing called "Anime Time Machine" where we take a look at anime from 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25 years ago.

If you're an old-time anime veteran, you're welcome to drop by the "Veterans of Anime Fandom" panel on Friday at 5 and share your stories and reminisces with the crowd.

Thursday night AWA's trying something new; the SUPERHAPPYFUNSELL is a garage-sale style sale where individuals sell used and previously-loved anime DVDs, tapes, books, manga, cosplay items, you name it. So if you're at the show early, stop by and check it out.

See you at AWA!

13 YEARS OF AWA PROGRAM BOOKS

ANIME WEEKEND ATLANTA kind of, let's say, congealed out of a longrunning anime club and several intersecting groups of friends and fans all of whom swore a solemn oath that if anybody was gonna start an anime convention in Atlanta, it was gonna be THEM. Back in the mid 1990s anime cons were popping up everywhere like magic; A-Kon in Dallas, Anime America in the Bay Area, Anime East in Jersey; and in Atlanta we knew that if we didn't get our act together - and fast - some total loser would rent a hotel ballroom, sell some dealers tables, and we'd find ourselves on the wrong side of the staff badge. Which is not a good place to be.

In Atlanta fourteen or fifteen years ago THE place to have your first-year convention was the Castlegate Hotel , and that's where we went for our first show. With a few hundred dollars for deposit, the place was ours. Dank hallways, a slothful and possibly larcenous staff, and mysterious double-booked rooms didn't stop us from launching our anime con with a successful first year. But convention reminisces are a dime a dozen, what we're talking about here is reminiscing about anime con program books. Specifically, AWA's program books!

Our first program book was printed off the clock in an undisclosed location and assembled by myself and a crew of bindery novices using a balky folder and a giant foot-operated stitcher. From the start, we figured an anime-themed convention would only attract a few hundred goofballs such as ourselves, and so we could pretty much be as creative as we liked with the program book. Hence, our first year theme of "activity book" - the book included a crossword puzzle and a coloring page.



AWA 2 was held in a newer, yet more ineptly staffed facility down by the airport. Our program book continued the legal-size-folded-booklet format and the cover illustration was a photograph of AWA staffers and guests posing imposingly in front of Marietta Georgia landmark The Big Chicken, which came to be a de facto mascot for the convention, if only for its kitsch value. The visual motif was fakey ragtime-era gingerbread, with the now-usual additions of David Letterman-inspired Top Ten lists. From the start AWA's program books have always featured useful things like maps of the local area's restaurants and shops, listings for clubs and sites for post-convention contact, and a full schedule of the entire convention. A lot of other conventions don't include schedules in their program books, leaving that vital information to be dissimenated via "pocket programs" and other doubtful methods. Well, we say, if you don't put the con schedule in the program book, why have a program book in the first place?



AWA 3 moved to the Marriott North Central and the program book, still in the legal booklet size, took Communist Propaganda as its design guideline and writing style manual. The cover imagery came from the dust jacket of the Red Chinese opera "Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy", with of course a giant Big Chicken looming in the background, and the text was full of righteous indignation of the worker's proletariat towards the grasping paper-tiger claws of capitalist exploitation.



AWA 4 took the convention's success (over 1200 attendees that year) and a higher printing budget and produced what many feel is the best looking convention program book ever. Printed as a comic book, it featured a glossy cover and newsprint interior, professionally bound to resemble your typical issue of X-Men or Superman. Highlights included a fake Jack Kirby cover and fake mail-order ads in the interior. I've seen this book bagged and boarded for sale in comic shops. Go figure.



AWA 5's book was our first magazine-sized program guide, with a glossy color cover that totally destroyed the color copier where I happened to be working at the time, and black and white insides courtesy the Xerox Docutech! Theme this time was a fake Japanese cartoon based on the Big Chicken starring thinly disguised caricatures of AWA staff and guests. The con itself was held way way out in the suburbs in a hotel that was painfully too small for us. Growing pains!



AWA 6 took place at a classy hotel near a classy mall in a classy suburb a lot closer to downtown Atlanta. Hell, you could actually get to this one on public transportation! So naturally our progam book theme was punk rock. We put the cover on upside down, pasted all the text down with gluestick, made corrections with Sharpies, used found photos and drug-reference cartoons, and generally tried to imitate the D.I.Y. samizdat punk zines of our youth. As an artistic statement the program book was a tremendous success, but as a convention program book it confused and horrified its intended audience. Which was what we intended all along! Size was an 8.5 x 11 booklet, favored by small press comics creators the world over.



AWA 7 saw the convention move to a giant convention center down by the airport, and visually the convention took its cue from airline logos of the 1960s, the golden age of air travel. A modified TWA logo was the centerpiece and as nobody's sued us over it yet, I guess we got away with it. Since AWA 7 was held two weeks after the attacks of 9/11/01, I figure everybody had other things on their minds.



AWA 8 - again at the convention center down by the airport - taxed the skill of its contributing artists to the max as we asked them to work in themes as divergent as auto racing and Art Nouveau. The resulting cover is a classic, and the book - a magazine-sized book with a severe vertical trim - is one of my favorites. Guest bios were accompanied by 19th century woodcuts of bearded men or crinolined women, resulting in delicious confusion.



AWA 9 saw a dramatic move to AWA's current digs at the Waverly/Cobb Galleria Convention Center. And what design motif could say "Cobb County" better than that of a children's encyclopedia from the 1950s? Don't answer that. At any rate, some swell photo-manipulation and deadpan new descriptions for old screentoned photos turned the book into a learning experience for the entire convention.



AWA 10's visual theme was "traditional Japanese art", which meant lots of woodblock prints of geishas and a giant ideogram for "10" on the cover. Also the last of the Top Ten lists! It's fascinating to see the difference in the content as the years go by - ads for local comic shops and the upcoming gaming cons are replaced with professional full color ads for new DVD releases, on-demand anime channels, and shared-user online computer games. Some of which are even still in business!



When AWA 11 rolled around the staff got together and decided the theme they wanted was "giant monsters". CB Smith outdid himself with a fantastic manipulated cover based on the poster for "Godzilla VS The Thing" . Unfortunately, when the book went to press, the shop decided that OBVIOUSLY the photo of the Japanese woman was the REAL cover, and the fake Godzilla poster was not. So they put all the covers on inside-out. This printing company is no longer in business. Coincidence? I think not.



AWA 12's book reflected the new respectability of Japanese animation in the United States as well as the sophistication and maturity of a community that had moved from Pokemon to Card Captors to Gundam Wing to Full Metal Alchemist. The book was our first all-color, all-glossy magazine, inerringly designed to mimic a modern woman's fashion magazine. Fake horoscopes abutted fake ads for makeup and womens wear as fake advice columns dispensed fake advice. Maybe a little too contrived, but what other convention was willing to go this far for a gag? None of them, that's who.



The program book for AWA 13 was kind of a last minute rush job, and yet you would never know it, because it looks great. Gothic Lolita was the theme and from the swell cover (yes, I'm describing an illustration of some clown-makeup-smeared Gloom Cookie as "swell") to the elegant layout it was a book that gets the job done in the finest AWA tradition. Well, maybe not quite as goofy as previous. But there's always next year!

Staffing a convention is hard work, but one of the things I always enjoy is sitting down and writing copy for the program book. We always took a less-than-serious attitude towards, well, everything, and I think our cheeky and subversive style made the program guides fun to read as well as useful. Will this trend continue towards the future? There's only one way to find out - visit Anime Weekend Atlanta!

AWA 14 is happening September 19-21 at the Cobb Galleria Center / Waverly Hotel in Atlanta GA! Find out more here!!

(artwork and layout for various AWA program books by Joe Vecchio, CB Smith, Bryan Thompson, Robert DeJesus, Bruce Lewis, Sho Murase, Lewis Cox III, Steve Harrison, myself.)