Moon Prism Poptarts Return by Victoria

For the past year and a half, Scarlet Rhapsody has hosted Moon Prism Poptarts, a panel and discussion on the history of Sailor Moon in North America. The panel discusses the history behind domesticating Sailor Moon, early days of the Sailor Moon fandom, and a clip show of infamous moments from the DiC and Cloverway dub. We had two hours to fill up. We had a really good group of moonies in the audience.

One thing we did on the fly was reading tweets from Sailor Moon Obsession. Anime North was going on the same weekend. Terri Hawkes (Sailor Moon's second voice actress) was an official guest of honor at the con. Terri Hawkes' focus panel was going on at the same time. I was reading the live tweets from her focus panel courtesy of Sailor Moon Obsession.

As a result of this panel, the audience requested I create the "Make Naoko Takeuchi a GoH" Ffacebook page to encourage conventions to bring Naoko Takeuchi as a guest of honor at stateside anime events.

Maid Cafe by Victoria

The Fanime Maid Café is another one of those "must-see" events at Fanime Con. The maid café is much like a traditional Akihabara café where patrons have their personal maid for conversation, tea treats, and games. I picked up a set of rich chocolate truffles and chocolate covered strawberries for this visit. We had two maids, Cherry Tea and Bunny. In addition to talking about ups and downs about Fanime, we talked about cosplay plans and our favorite anime. One of my favorite things about the maid café are games. Each table has a different party type game going on. We had the beehive game in which we had to remove sticks from a beehive to release the bees. Whomever collects the most bees wins. Our maid, Cherry Tea, won the game. Even from a lady's perspective, I really do enjoy the maid café. It is nice to feel a little pampered by your personal maid.

Kia Asamiya Focus Panel by Jared

One of the most popular Japanese guests of honor to appear at Fanime 2012 was Kia Asamiya (Martian Successor Nadesico, Silent Mobius). He began his panel with a slide show made up of some of his personal art that can be found on his website (www.tron.co.jp). The majority of the panel consisted of Q and A with the audience. Kia Asamiya had the opportunity to answer my question if he enjoys Initial D or Gunsmith Cats. He replied that he does not keep up with those stories, but does enjoy the series "Long Gone Midnight" and Kamen Rider (which he does monster designs for). He also revealed that one of his influences for Nadesico was Star Trek in addition to the various anime titles that are also referenced in the series (Getter Robo, Space Battleship Yamamoto).

In addition, Kia revealed that he must listen to music while drawing his current favorite bands include Girl's Generation, Kara, and various K-pop. Kia Asamiya reluctantly admitted that he prefers drawing cars over drawing pretty women and that when doing work for X-Men he preferred drawing the big guys like Juggernaut. One of the last questions was on how he gets the inspiration to draw the various beautiful women that are iconic to his art. Kia Asamiya replied by saying that if he sees a beautiful woman at any time he will make a mental note of what she looked like then translate that into his art when he has the chance.

The panel was fun and despite some minor technical difficulties at the beginning of the panel everything went smoothly. If you ever have the opportunity to see Kia Asamiya at a convention you should do so. Between his humorous answers to questions and exclusive art it is a fun experience.

Kia Asamiya Autographs by Jared

In addition to attending the Kia Asamiya panel I also wanted to get his autograph for my first edition Nadesico TPB. I got in line shortly before the session was to begin and I was surprised at how short the line was. As the autograph session began we were told that Kia Asamiya would also draw a sketch if you wanted. They then divided the line for those who just wanted a quick autograph. Those people were slowly taken care of, but the sketch line barely moved. After forty minutes we were told no more sketches would be done, but if you wanted an autograph Kia Asamiya would stay to do that. I switched lines for the guaranteed autograph and after standing in line for five minutes we were told that Kia was ending the session early to go off to an interview. All in total only about nine people got autographs and those who waited in line for an hour or more were very upset.

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