[Anime Expo ’24] It’s Nice to Have a Friend (Ramses’ Version)

 This is the first question I asked to Scarlet and Stan when I got to Anime Expo 2024:

“When was that World Cup when Germany obliterated Brazil?”

The answer was 2014.
7 to 1, a thrashing so legendary that we still talk about 10 years later.
That’s also the last time I went to Anime Expo! Funny how things work.

So full disclosure before we start: unlike Scarlet who did have issues with programming and had issues getting stuff cleared, I was lucky to have two of my panels approved: The World of Masami Kurumada, and Saint Seiya: The Best Anime You Never Heard Of (which got a quick title change to “Saint Seiya: the best anime you need to see”), and I worked VERY hard on both panel with my team on the Saint Seiya Cosmocast, but I still felt very bad that my friends where struggling, so they went in as my co-host and moderator for the panel. I told them I’d get them into the con, no matter what, and I did. Mission Accomplished by me. Give me all the head pats and tell me I’m a good boy, now.

In all seriousness, I’m forever blessed to have two amazing people be my “wingmen” for the con and blessed that both of my dumb panel ideas where approved.

Both panels were at the crack of (for convention) dawn at 10am, so we had to be out the door by 8 to beat traffic and to make sure things worked out. At first our badges didn’t work as the con too didn’t know what to do. We did get some assistance and were escorted into the room by staff, something I did not expect and was welcomed as my first Anime Expo in 2000 was met with the same thing, just not under possessive pretenses.

The first of the panels was the Masami Kurumada panel and it went well. I felt like it was a practice run more than anything because we had so much going against us at the time that I felt this was more of a “Mulligan” run. More on that at SDCC.

Soon after, I went to the Novo check out the Batman Ninja: Yakuza announcement, and screening of the first episode of Suicide Squad Isekai in English, with a performance by Mori Calliope for the ending them to Suicide Squad Isekai. I went in at the tail end of the Batman Ninja announcement as they were discussing behind the scenes stuff. I knew they’d put the trailer up on the internet soon after, so I felt like I didn’t miss much. The Suicide Squad Isekai screening was fun, the dub was very well made and I forgot they had Peacemaker in the roster, so we now have an anime John Cena. The Mori Calliope performance was pretty cool! I have never seen a Vtuber perform in person, but they had her out as a hologram and she did an entire performance of the ending theme. Really cool stuff! Even if you don’t know or care about the big corpo Vtubers, seeing what goes into a performance like that was very fascinating to see live.

The rest of the day went without a hitch, we saw the Shoji Kawamori panel and I wanted to ask him a question about his involvement with Thunderbirds Are Go with his design of Thunderbird Shadow, if there were issues or complications with the design from the Gerry Anderson estate and what-not, but questions where cut off. Overall, stressful, but fun day at the end.

With not much to do that day, I decided to take on the dealers hall and south hall to see what was going on at each. What caught my attention is how late the South Hall is opened. We where still at the south hall doing stuff around 8pm, which is kinda insane to be honest. As far as what I did, I sat down on two panels: the Viz media panel and the Terminator Zero panel. The Viz media panel was alright, nothing of interest that caught my eye, but they did have Robbie Daymond on stage for a few minutes discussing his role in the new Bleach dub and reminded me of the last time I was at Anime Expo and how it was his first time at the con for the new dub of Sailor Moon… and then I crumbled into dust when he mentioned 10 years.

Terminator Zero on the other hand was a VERY interesting panel to sit through. The panel was just show runner Mattson Tomlin (writer, Project Power, The Batman) and a host as they discussed the show and what they showed was VERY interesting and promising after many botched attempts at bringing back Terminator over the years. Tomlin discussed his influences with stuff like Akira and Ghost and the Shell, plus the original 1984 Terminator, and usually I get weary when I hear stuff like that since a lot of times when people say that… they never really did get the idea about why those animes worked at the time and fumble the ball in embarrassing ways, ether they just get a few shots from those animes and copy it, or just have characters vaguely look like the same from the animes they mention.. but what they showed proved that he aint feeding us bull, at least not yet. The scene they showed was a 5 minute scene, but it was VERY well made: no music, little to no sound, the tense atmosphere of an unkillable machine chasing our main character… very much in the vein of what I loved about Terminator (1984); Also proving they did a good job matching the kinds of animation vibes of the late 80s and early 90s, without wholesale using them directly.

Day starts with me visiting the main hall and trying out some viddya games! I tried out Dragon Ball Sparking Zero…which is not my kind of game sadly, but I can see people gravitating towards this game. It’s your Anime Arena Fighter and you know what… not everything HAS to be Dragon Ball FighterZ, so having an alternative like Sparking Zero is very good, a game where you stuff the game to the gills with fan favorites and fan service to please even the hardcore of fans. I then played Gundam Breaker 4 and to be honest, I had more customizing and painting as I would learn from the Network Beta than the actual combat. The gameplay is fun, but I can see where the game can fall apart for many, but for me, I was there for the customization and it was great! I’m willing to grind for stuff to get to spend hours on end painting and customizing my perfect unit, so while I cannot recommend this game to everyone, if you’re one of those guys who spends hours on end customizing characters in games, this game is heaven. I also tried the new Uma Musume  Party Dash game and to be honest… the game COULD be fun in the right environment and the right people. I also played a bit of the new english version of the mobile game and i’ll get it when it drops sometime later this year.

Now comes the bad news!
SO! The big thing I wanted to check out was the new Kinnikuman anime and they where going to have a screening of both Episode Zero and One, plus bringing in Mamoru Miyano for Q and A.. Now, before I go on, I have to explain something: at Anime Expo, to accommodate the lines and prevent COVID breakouts, they have lines outside the building where they’d wave in people once the room is ready to bring in more people.

The previous panel before the Kinnikuman panel was the perfect example of “Genshin Ate My Balls” syndrome that Scarlet was describing as it was a TWO HOUR PANEL ABOUT ROASTING YOUR GENSHIN IMPACT ACCOUNT And somehow no one got the memo that the panel had ended early, and a bad game of telephone started in that no one knew what to do. Made worst that the waiting area was directly at the sun, so I waited for 2 hours in the Los Angeles heat, and no one to tell us what’s going on or let us in. I had to ask someone else to help and I got a “but the panel had already started” and a “Oh no!” from the staff after they found out we’d been waiting in the sun for too long, whereas other waiting areas had fans and shade. Needless to say I was not happy, in one of the few times where I showed my anger when I addressed this to the staff.. At this point, I was damaged goods, but I was more worried about the others still waiting in line who were still stuck in the sun. Didn’t help that a few minutes after addressing this to the con staff, I went to get water, and nearly slipped… only for a small kid a minute later to fall and slip in that same puddle. I found out too this is where they had a “quiet area” and chilled there to calm my nerves down.

Anime Expo, please, ALL of this could have been prevented with better management and better communication between the staff on all ends, so please, i’m begging you, not for me, but for others that read this and are afraid of attending the show, to please fix this.This was beyond unacceptable and downright dangerous if things got worse.

 

Sunburned, tired, and already stressing out from the day before, I did the Saint Seiya panel, and to be honest, it went WAY better than the Masami Kurumada panel I did earlier in the week. Another added plus is that the room was nearly full, something I did not expect AT ALL, so it made me very happy to see people happy about the panel. I did my shopping, but there wasn’t much to get by Day 4 of the con, so I bought 4 model kits, split from the Bandai’s Gundam storefront and their Bandai Hobby storefront. Another cool thing they had was they had in the South Hall the official Bandai Gatachapon machines and spent some cash there too to get some Saint Seiya gashapons we’d been talking about on my show. I was also given some as well by listener of the podcast Alice, so I came away with 8 out of the 12 gold saints, so 4 more to go to finish a set. Soon after, I hung out around the con till closing and that was the end of the Anime Expo experience for me.

So, what did I think of Anime Expo overall?
The con itself was a mismanaged mess that they have to address and fix. Not telling and rejecting panels before price hikes was already bad enough, informing many panelist that they are compensated a one day pass instead of a full weekend pass, not getting badges prepped for panelists, plus how they handled some of the lines with people such as myself stuck in the sun for hours on end was VERY reckless and downright dangerous in the Los Angeles heat.

If it weren’t for Stan and Scarlet being with me all weekend, I would have just broken down and tried to go back home by day 3. That’s the only and best saving grace that saved this from being a total disaster: having friends with me; that’s something I can count on at the end of the day: Hanging out with the people that care for me and see that they cared too. My recommendation if you are going is to get your tickets early, go with a group of friends, stay at a hotel nearby, that way, if things go south, at least you have some sort of support and a place to calm down at. But for all the downer stuff that the con has done, there were genuine moments that I absolutely love and am very grateful for the opportunity to do these things with people, and that I guess is something you can’t replace: The people. It’s the people you hang out with, it’s the people you play versus or play together in a new game, it’s the people you interact in line with, or the people your waiting for the panel for, it all comes down to the people, and when you can share the same love and passion for something, all the problems that your having at that moment just disappear, for a bit.

You can find me talking into a mic about Saint Seiya or anything Masami Kurumada on the Saint Seiya Cosmocast, about fandom on the Saturday Morning Squadron, and putting my digital hand up a digital PNG puppet up on my twitch stream as Professor Ramses where I make model kits, reacts to old tv shows, streams podcast recordings, and plays games.