Jared the Greek
The panel line up was mostly strong. There was a good mix of informative panels and comedy panels. Some of the highlights of the comedy side of things were “Anime Conspiracy Theories” and “5th Generation are Not Pokemon”. The first one featured two gals trying to unravel the huge conspiracy behind the ‘grand sponsor” of anime series. It was great hearing them connect random stuff to figure out who exactly controls anime. The Pokemon panel was a tongue in cheek look at the flaws of generation five of Pokemon. It was great seeing fans riff their series while still bringing up good points about this less popular entry. On the informative side there were panels focused on traveling to Japan, classic anime, and sports anime. The lineup was strong and even on the last day there were still some decent panels.
This year I ran three panels on the first two days of the convention. The first panel of the show was the ever popular Make Mine Mecha. This panel was one of the first panels of the day and brought in a modest audience. This was the first time I ran this panel at Fanime and it has been updated since the last time I ran the panel in NorCal. The panel was well received and several people came up after the panel to discuss mecha series and ask questions about my favorites. The evening of day one was the debut of our newest panel Call of Kawaii: Waifu Warfare. This was our panel built around military girls and we discussed various series like Girls Und Panzer, Azur Lane, and Strike Witches. This panel brought in a full crowd due to being later in the day and the huge growth in popularity of moe girls using military equipment. This was also a successful panel with the audience being very happy at the end and asking us plenty of questions after the panel. Running to successful panels was a nice way to start this year’s Fanime.
Saturday brought our last panel: “The History of Lupin the 3rd”. This panel always brings in a crowd at Fanime. This year we had a great audience that found our history and discussion of Lupin to be very entertaining. We covered the early years to the 50th anniversary and the recent death of Monkey Punch. While there weren’t as many questions after this panel we did have people come up to us afterward and complement our work. Overall, all three panels went really well this year. It’s nice to see a big audience and more importantly an audience that wants to interact with the hosts. Fanime is a great place to run panels and I hope that I can do so again next year.
