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I'm going to try to post my notes from the panels I attended with the Guests of Honor at Fanime 2006, for those who might not have been able to attend them, but were interested in the material covered.  If phpbb has too-stringent posting length limitations, this might not work out--but it's worth a shot.  ^_^;

printing out flyers after you get there?  Pricey and rushed.

Rushed, maybe, but the convention center is very close to some college campus.  There's got to be student-priced copy centers somewhere nearby.

yes there is a little college.  It just happens to be the oldest public univeristy west of the mississippi called Sam Jose State Univeristy aka State or CSU San Jose.  Although it would be quite a walk (five blocks) and no there isn't a student priced copy center near.  Kinko's is not student priced.

And, had you tried to use Kinko's this year, you would have discovered that the copy machines were *very* busy dealing with Fanime publications already.  Fluffy, we curse thee!  ^_^;

On a different note, I have a new favorite for late, late night Fanime food; Pita Pit!  Open until 3am, and the cooks at the grill know their anime series!  Was cool watching them chat with cosplayers about their characters while grilling up the pitas.  Plus, they had $1 off coupons in the Fanime registration area, and they're only 2 blocks from the convention center, so it's an easy trip to grab food you can bring back to eat.  :)

- Emergency Cosplay Repair Kit (sewing stuff, scissors, safety pins)
- gaff tape
~~ Remember, gaffer tape is like the Force. There's a dark side and a light side and it holds the universe together. ~~

And just remember, don't use the tape on any surface that doesn't belong to you--especially don't use it on convention center walls, tables, chairs, floors, hotel walls, etc.  Fanime staff keep getting yelled at about tape being used on  walls to hold up signs, etc.

Tape on non-people surfaces bad.   Makes staff get yelled at.    ^_^;

Tape on people surfaces good.  Tape on cute cosplaying people surfaces even better.  :)

OK.  It's almost 4am.  Clearly I need to go to sleep now.  ^_^;;

My cameras ran out of room to take cosplay pics of...i've taken over 250 pics on my digital camcorder and my digital camera could only take 10...and sadly I didn't had the other memory card with me...

Hm.  Given that we had free WiFi this year, and an Internet Lounge, I wonder if it would make sense for the staff to set up a computer in the Internet Lounge with a built-in flash card reader, so that people could upload their pictures to Flickr or other online photo sharing sites--that way, if their flash card gets full, they could upload their pictures to their online account, then empty their flashcard and go back to taking more photos.

Or would that just open up too many potential liability issues?

Two things kinda sucked:
2) Wanted to go to Rick myers panel on Sunday night, but it got moved around or something, so I wasn't able to see it. LOSE!

I'll be posting my transcripts of the panels I attended to a new thread tomorrow after work; one of the panels I took notes for was the Ric Meyers panel.  I know it's not as good as actually getting to see it, but at least you'll have an idea of the material he covered.  ^_^;

I really enjoyed Masako's perfomance during the Masquerade intermission. I just felt bad for her because she (as well as Eugene and JC) was really great, but not many people were paying attention.. which is fine because it was an intermission, but I think they deserve some kind of timeslot or situation where they can have a fully attentive audience!

This was probably the most bizarre thing that happened to me while running Fanime's Masquerade. There was NEVER intended to be an "intermission" -- none -- we were introducing the next performance, a set by Maiyu and Luno (her band) and it took a few moments to set up her equipment. Everyone on my staff was in absolute shock when everyone started standing up, talking, walking around, etc.... right in the middle of the performance. We were honestly horrified. I was running around the theater myself trying to get people to sit back down, especially the cosplayers who were wandering around with non-peace-bonded equipment which was completely prohibited and against various violations. When I went to go ask the union staff to bring the house lights down to indicate that this was not an intermission, I discovered the lighting/sound union theater staff had disappeared on a break-- they figured since everyone else was getting up that it was a scheduled break (even though it was not in our script or our program).

I remember Brian saying something about 'and now we'll take a bit of a break to listen to some music by Mayuu'--I don't remember exactly how he said it, but I'm pretty sure I remember him using the word "break" in her introdution.  I'm sure he meant it as a break from the cosplay skits, but I think it was ambiguous enough that the audience took it to mean a literal break.  I do agree that it really does disrupt the flow of the show to have a break in the middle, with all the noise and chaos it creates.

One thing I think would help in the future is making a note in the program guide about what the food  policy is for Masquerade--going from 6-11pm goes right through dinnertime for most people, and I know by the end I was *soooo* glad I'd smuggled a bag of saki ika in with me and a bottle of water.  I would have been *much* happier to have brought something a bit more substantial to eat if it were openly allowed, so that the performers didn't keep getting drowned out by the rumbling in my stomach.  ^_^;

Thank goodness for Pita Pit afterwards--good, cheap food, open to 3am, and the cooks are into anime as well, discussing their favorite shows with the cosplayers who came in after the Masquerade.  I wish I'd know about it in previous years!

On the whole, excellent job with the Masquerade this year!  :)

The unfortunate truth is that pretty much every reputable establishment in Santa Clara County closes at about 9:30PM :p

Hydration cafe is out the front door of the convention center, and to
the right by 3 blocks; a little walk, to be sure, but they're open until
midnight, and server pearl drinks, coconut toast, coffee, and other
delectable snacks well past the 9:30pm hour.  ^_^

http://www.jatbar.com/detail.asp?num=549

How about Monkey Punch or Go Nagai?

Hm. Go Nagai would have made a wonderful tie-in this year with the release of the live-action Cutey Honey movie.  I think having a panel trio with Anno-san and Go-san after a showing of the movie would have been very impressive.  :)  Of course, Yamaga-san could join in, just for grins since he always adds wonderful historical background to just about any panel.  ^_^

Likewise, doing a Lupin showing, followed by a Q&A session with Monkey Punch would be very cool.

I wonder how many years it will be until Fanime takes up the entire convention center.  :?

(posted March 6, 2005)

Wow, that didn't take long, did it?  :D (May 27th, 2005...fanime takes over the entire SJCC)

Another vote for KareKano (anime over the manga) as all time favorite (not that you couldn't guess that, seeing the jacket. ^_^;; )

Kodocha is pretty high up there, as is Fruits Basket.
Actually, pretty much anything Daichi does ranks pretty high as well.  :D

Ayashi no Ceres

I also liked Nadesico, Trigun, though I think both of them could have been trimmed back a bit--perhaps 'distilled' would be a better word.

Slayers, purely for the comedy.

Sohryuden, for cute guys with drama.  :D

Alien nine for its overall '"let's go in a completely unexpected direction now" sense

And Boys Be, simply for being the first fansub I spent time working on and gaining a true appreciation for just how frickin' painstaking doing good fansubbing really is.  ^_^;;

Small but not flat.  ^_^;;

Just did a quick count on the shelves in the living room; bottom shelf has
55 DVDs across, there's six shelves mostly full, so call it nearly 300 DVDs
most of which are from rightstuf sales.  In general, I have a $10 limit per
DVD, or $2.50 per episode rule to make sure we don't spend too much;
it's worked out pretty well, because it means we wait for the special
sales at rightstuf.com and get series for reasonable prices.   Generally,
when possible we get box sets that fit within that price requirement, as
we like the convenience of the box sets, as well as having the pretty
boxes is nice.  :)

Embarrassingly enough, we purchased our first DVD box set more than
a year before having any kind of DVD player to play it on.  When we
got our PS2, we popped the first disk in, and discovered it wasn't the
series we thought it was!  ^_^;;  Learned quickly the distinction between
"Record of Lodoss War" and "Record of Lodoss War TV"  :D

*sigh*  now if only I could learn to take more time away from work to
actually watch the DVDs.   Most are still shrink wrapped and unopened.  :(

... There was a local cable channel that I used to watch that played Evangelion, Key the Metal Idol, Lum and Please Save the Earth <-- title was something like that:? I'm not sure it's been a couple of years since I watched that channel.

Ah, that would be KTEH, or in your area, KCAH.  I am still very, very
impressed with them; they took the lead in broadcasting uncut, unedited
anime well before the demographics showed that it was the right direction
for a TV station to go.  In some ways, I think they helped *prove* that there
was enough demand for anime for it to be worth procuring licenses and
showing it on broadcast TV.  I volunteered during a pledge drive when
they were showing Dirty Pair Flash, and noted that they set the pledge
goals considerably higher during the anime block than they did for the
adjacent block--and they still met their pledge goal.  ^_^  It's amusing
for me to find out that KTEH could broadcast Evangelion now, when in
Japan Yamaga-san said that due to increased restrictions, the original
station that showed Eva no longer would be allowed to air it, due to the
content.

KTEH was able to get broadcast licenses for series like PSME, Tenchi,
Key the Metal Idol, and Evangelion because at the time nobody thought
there would be a real audience for the shows; once they demonstrated
that there *was* an audience, and that audience was willing to put real
pledge money down when anime was being shown, the licensors woke
up and started to smell money.  After being successful at obtaining
broadcast licenses for some of Takahashi's works (Ranma movies,
Urusei Yatsura) from Viz, KTEH found that when they went back to
license Inuyasha, Viz was no longer interested in working with them,
instead wanting to hold out for licensing deals with larger networks.
And now, the licensing costs for series have gone up with the increasing
popularity of anime to the point where the small independent stations
like KTEH can't afford them anymore.  :(  It's part and parcel of the process
of becoming a mainstream product, I know--but I still like to give kudos
to KTEH for helping prove that there was money to be made in showing
anime on TV.   ^_^

But as far as my particular gateway series, that would have to be
Robotech back in high school... biking home quickly so I could get to
see each episode (I didn't know what the opening was for the first whole
season, as I couldn't make it home in time to see the opening--but for
the second season, they moved it half an hour later.  :D )  At the time
I didn't even know it was "anime"--I just knew it was different from the
repetitious "Tom and Jerry" style of cartoons that took up the rest of the
timeslots.

1998 ? Sheraton, Sunnyvale, CA, 1700

Correction: Foothill College

Oh!  Thank you!!  (That makes a whole lot more sense.)  I wonder why the Fanime 2002 booklet said the Sheraton then...?  (Or did I read that wrong?)

I'm glad someone corrected you on that already.  :)  I remember
1998 -- other than the hills,   ^_^;; the Foothill site was a lot of fun
for a con.  The rooms were all generally theatre style seating,
which was really cool--you never had to worry about being able
to see the subtitles.   :D  I'm trying to remember if that was the
year I ended up with badge number '666'...
Ah...*goes all natsukashii for a bit*