Otakon 2011

Yes, I know, it's a week later, but I had work pretty much everyday last week.

News, news, news! I asked a great deal of questions when I was at panels for Japanese directors in particular I tried my best to ask good questions. You can actually see one on Anime News Network's coverage of Otakon 2011 in the Madoka panel (http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/convention/2011/otakon/8). Iwakami and those asking questions were great about the fact that we had to go through a translator to get all our questions answered. I was pretty glad to have made Iwakami smile just by mentioning Bakemonogatari, as the show didn't take off quite as much in the States as Madoka has. Essentially I asked him if he used his experience from working on Bakemono to work on Madoka, and he said that they did. He also confessed that the witches' labyrinth was not how it was originally planned, but there was originally a tentacle monster. And we've all seen enough hentai to know what that means.

I also attended the Who Wants to Be a Voice Actor panel, and it was pretty gosh darn fantastic, I was glad to have gotten in! For auditions they essentially picked three people at random, had them read a part (females read the female role, males the male) and they would deliberate. Then one winner was picked for each part and the scene was read. As luck would have it I did get picked and it was for the scene that was filmed. You can watch me make voices you wouldn't expect right here:

For those of you who ever wondered how to cute, cute, that's it. There were a lot of announcements that were made at industry panels, but for those I would take a look at ANN's coverage, since they did a great job.

Panel wise I would say this year was a little disappointing. Out of all those I attended (OC Remix and Voice Actors After Dark included), I would say Akira after dark was the most entertaining. From what I can gather Anime: Myths and Legends was not the same panelist as last year and was very disappointing, which is a shame. It's a little strange that Otakon cut so many Acafan panels, considering last year offered a lot of entertainment. The lines were also a bit frustrating as for the panels I did attend I waited in line for a maximum of an hour. Yes, otaku are professional queuers, but even we have our limits. That's all I have to say about that.

AAO Signing off!