[Fanime ’18] As Long as You Love Me

Fireside Chat by Jared the Greek

This is a Stage Zero morning tradition where a small discussion about fandom and convention history takes place.  It is a calm and educational way to begin the morning of day two and it often draws in a large crowd.  This discussion was a bit on the rambling side as the topics shifted around from cosplay to popular anime of yester year, to old Fanime memories.  It was a nice little show and it put me in a good mood for the beginning of the day.

Love Live Gathering by Eri Kagami

There was not one, but two Love Live gatherings at Fanime! The Saturday morning Love Live gathering celebrated idols from Aqours and Muse. Not only cosplayers rolled up, but otage armed with their stuffed neso army and light pens also showed up to the fan meet up. The gathering space was large enough to accommodate all the cute! I was cosplaying as Nozomi in the constellation outfit. I took a few selfies with a few Nozomi’s at the meet up. The meet up consisted of getting cosplayers who were cosplaying as the same character – that’s 18 different characters for Love Live! It was nice to see the outfit variety in many of these cases. We also did sub units and a few pairing related shoots. The meet up was fun – A+ would do it again!

 

Console Gaming by Jared the Greek

One of the mainstays of Fanime is the quality gaming area.  This time the room had a good mix of games ranging from shooters to fighters with a few classics thrown in for good measure.  The room could get crowded and that made navigation difficult at times and some machines always had a line making it time consuming to get a playing spot.  The room was always lively and didn’t have the usual gaming room stink at the times I was there.  The gaming rea is one of the nice diversions that can be a good way to spend some time between events.

 

Kung Fu with the Knights by Jared the Greek

One of the things that really stands out at Fanime is the martial arts dojo room.  In this room there are demonstrations and instructional panels  built around various martial arts.  This panel was a basic introduction to the forms and stances of Kung Fu.  Attendees could sign up and get a short one hour lesson to expand their knowledge of one of the most iconic fighting styles in the world.  While no one from the team signed up for the class we did spectate and it was really cool watching people practice King Fu.

 

Mythology in Final Fantasy by Jared the Greek

This was the first panel I ran at Fanime and it was the one I was most excited to do.  This has been one of my best received panels and bringing it to Fanime was exciting.  There was a fully packed room and no technical problems.  The panel was an improved version of the previous run with new monsters and myths to fill the hour.  Everyone really enjoyed themselves and after the panel several people stayed behind to ask me questions about the games and mythology.  This was a great experience and there’s nothing better than running a successful panel at a convention.  I can’t wait to run the panel again with more modifications to expand people’s understanding of world mythology.

 

Dungeons and Dragon Age by Jared the Greek

This panel was one of the bad choices made during my panel hopping adventures.  This panel had a vague description, but turned out to be a poorly run ask a character type panel.  It was obvious that the only people who showed up were friends of the panelists and the sheer amount of in-jokes and empty conversation made this panel a drag to sit through.  This was one of the prime examples why these types of panels need to stop.  They aren’t fun to watch, they do not draw in an audience, and they offer nothing to the overall gestalt of a convention.

 

Nerd Rage: The Great Debates by Jared the Greek

This panel was a nice surprise.  It featured two teams getting different weird nerdy topics and trying to win over the audience with their arguments.  This panel was designed to go a little blue so some of the dirtier answers got big laughs from the audience.  This took the normally bland argument panels and added a nice twist to make them far more entertaining, but some people got uncomfortable with how ‘adult’ some of the topics got.  While this won’t be for everyone it is one of the better evening panels and it adds a little more flavor to the panel lineup.

 

MGS 20th Anniversary Fan Panel by Jared the Greek

This panel brought in one of the biggest audiences of any panel we saw at the convention.  The panelists took everyone on a journey through Hideo Kojima’s career and the overall history of Metal Gear.  Then the fun part began with TV ads, Easter eggs, and even some exploration into some of the movie references made in the games.  This was a great panel and it was fun having a mass of Metal Gear fans get together to celebrate their favorite franchise.  While it seemed odd that this was a late panel, it was well worth staying up late to watch.  This was one of the highlights of the whole convention.

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