Sakuracon 2017

As I mentioned previously, this year I went to Sakuracon. I hadn’t planned to, but my friend from out of the country decided to visit Seattle last weekend, so why not?

Friday

I stayed with Marina and kwoo (thanks for hosting me!). We arrived at the convention around 10, and waited in line an hour and a half to register. It sucked but it was way better than my only other anime convention, Anime Expo. I don’t get why this is so hard.

We wandered around and looked at everything. At some point we went to the Hiroshi Nagahama panel, the director of Mushishi. I had planned to gather information to better argue why Mushishi sucks and all my friends’ favorite anime is shit. However, the day before he had gone shopping at a Seattle comics store, and he spent the hour long panel telling us all about his loot. It was quite interesting. The guy is a bigger nerd than pretty much anyone at the convention. See Marina’s post for details.

I met up with more people the rest of the day. kwoo tried to buy a great Megumin figure but it was sold out. I bought some lovely art to decorate my home, drawn by Anguiculus.

Then we went home, had some tasty eel, and played card games.

Saturday

I had some minor excitement in the morning when I witnessed Marina’s dog barf. Poor dog. We got there around 10 and I met up with my friend from Singapore.

Then we went to the Yasuhiro Irie Live Drawing. He’s the director of FMA Brotherhood, and had key roles in some of my favorites Escaflowne, Rahxephon, Gunparade March, and more. It was quite impressive watching him draw and answer questions at the same time. He managed to animate almost thirty seconds in the span of two hours while answering questions from the audience the entire time. Highlights included seeing illegenes ask an excellent follow-up question to the stoner with a southern drawl who got booed out of the hall, seeing Yasuhiro Irie flirt with his models and sing part of Les Miz, and watching satchiikoma ask a question about his sweat fetish and being rewarded with the addition of sweat to the live animation. Two hours was a bit long, so the questions did dry up towards the end and people started nodding off. But it was a very interesting panel. See Marina’s post for more details.

In the afternoon I ate lunch and met up with more people, until the Thunderbolt Fantasy panel. It was awesome. It started with two puppeteers running around the hall with the puppets, and then we all watched the first episode. Afterwards, the puppet people, the Good Smile Company president, Urobuchi Gen and a few others all explained the process of making the show and answered questions. Some of the highlights included learning that the puppet people in Taiwan weren’t able to meet the Japanese demands of puppets with enormous eyes, long bangs, and having one eye remain visible through see-through bangs. They were very particular about the bangs. Also, Urobuchi Gen confirmed that he starts with how the characters will die and writes the rest from there. And yes, he does look a little bit like a serial killer. They introduced two characters from the upcoming second season. One is an evil glasses guy who I’m looking forward to. The other is a cute girl who of course the audience was much more interested in, based on a scorpion. Great panel, hte second season should be good too.

Then we went home! We were all exhausted.

Sunday

I skipped the convention and went home in the evening.

Conclusions

The few panels I went to were good, a lot better than Anime Expo. Of course the size makes some things possible, I remember there being a lot more artists and exhibitors at Anime Expo.  And unfortunately all the panels from anitwitter were scheduled at the same time as the biggest guests… To conclude, thanks to everyone I got to meet, who made the trip so great! Feel like I’m forgetting somebody too…

2 thoughts on “Sakuracon 2017

  1. It was great to have you stay with us, and I had a lot of fun remembering how to play Munchkin. Sorry for firing on you throughout the whole game! We never did try out the Hololens…
    But yeah, we need to come down to visit you next time. I also want to go to Fanime. Good luck finding a new place, all your own!

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