Tekko 2016 Review: Saturday

We’ve talked about Friday at Tekko 2016, but what about Saturday?  Well that’s what we’re talking about, today!

Saturday started around noon for us, after checking in with Con Ops we hit the lounge to fuel up for the day. We caught the better part of Nancy Kepner’s “How to Explain Anime to Your Parents”. One of the funniest selections from her routine was talking about her conservative religious aunt telling her, “Your Grandmother would be so ashamed of what you’re doing!” because in her song ‘Sexy Asians Dancing’ she uses the line, “Oh my God, sexy Asians!”

So once we were done fueling up and Nancy’s show was over, we headed to our home away from home, the Tekkou Gakkou room for our final panel of the weekend: Samurai Mythconceptions. In it we discussed the common tropes of the modern media portrayal of a samurai as well as various myths associated with samurai. If you were there for that and liked any part of it, you will definitely enjoy our Samurai Gaiden series on YouTube.

Once that was all said and done we dropped off our gear since we were done running panels and we hit Jimmy Johns again, but unlike the first time…this time they were packed. The line wound around the interior of the building and you had to pass the line in order to get to the end of it.

But Jimmy Johns is incredibly fast and we were trough the line and had our food within ten or so minutes. We headed back to the convention center and ate in the Premium Lounge, watching the opening portion of the masquerade on the lounge’s closed-circuit TVs. We got to see the fantastic Castiel cosplay that the young lady with the extendable wings; that was pretty cool to see. Aaron Fristik of Snap-Fit Comedy’s final Masquerade stand-up was about the last thing we saw before heading out from the lounge and headed to the what would be our first panel that we planned to attend and only the second panel of the weekend we attended.

What panel was it? Games to Film: Issues of Adaptation run by the guys who do the Inciting Incident podcast. They recorded the panel live and you can find it on their podcast here (the panels starts at the 32 minute mark). They discussed some interesting points and were pretty entertaining; seemed to know what they were talking about as well.

I really enjoyed their deconstruction of the old Super Mario Brothers movie and how they were able to look at it with an entertaining way and deduced the problems that created it. One thing that was interesting was how they were able to critically cite the flaws and issues with various video games movies, even though they liked them (their comments on Street Fighter is a great example).

We then went to the Game Room and watched a few people play some pachinko and arcade games before checking out the table games on the other side of the room. It was nice that they expanded the game room this year; I can’t wait to see what it looks like next year with even more stuff to fill the room.

The wife enjoyed watching some of the Japanese games that looked flashy, even though she couldn’t read enough of it to have any idea what the game was or what the hell was going on. She did get a kick out of the Taiko Drumming game. But we didn’t stick around long enough to play anything and never made it back to the room with everything else going on.

The final panel we attended was the Japanese Mythology in Anime and Games 101. They had some interesting information, although the girl leading the panel had a problem with her countenance at first. When the panel started out she was clearly trying to hide how nervous she was, because she couldn’t complete a sentence without stammering and repeating herself. She would start the sentence…she would start the sentence and then stammer…she would start the sentence and then stammer a bit before being able to finish her thought.

But to her credit she seemed to smooth the problem out by the mid-way point of the panel and was able to talk in a more confident style and the panel improved a bit there. They had a few bits of trivia that I’d argue were incorrect, but the overall information was good.

Unfortunately at that point we hadn’t eaten in about five hours and couldn’t contain ourselves for the rest of the panel and headed out to scrounge up some food. We spent the rest of the night sitting around, watching the Sleeping Samurai stuff and chatting with the guy who owned it while he was making a foam sword.

~RCS

Tekko 2016 Four Classic Novels Part 2 Live!

Once again, with the coming of this fine day we have now released the second part of the Four Classic Chinese Novels panel from Tekko 2016.  Enjoy!

~RCS

Tekko 2016 Review: Friday Part 2

So the other day we talked about what we did on the first half of Friday at Tekko 2016. Today we’ll talk about the second half of Friday. After the East vs. West panel we went out to grab some food at the local Jimmy Johns around the corner to the convention center. That is very convenient! Good food, fast service…perfect for a place attached to the convention center!

Anyway after food we lounged a bit again to get ready for the next panel and then we headed to our destination. This would prove to be the hardest panel for us to do: How to Write Dirty Stuff. It was hard because it wasn’t history related, like all the other ones were. I’m a history nerd, so it’s much easier to talk about history than explaining to people how to effectively write sex scenes.

Unfortunately given the material and the fact that the entire panel was just commenting on porn gifs, we didn’t bother to record it…Youtube wouldn’t have let us upload that, sorry.

We are extra sorry about that one, because just as we were finishing up…a gentleman came in saying that he had really hoped to attend the panel, but got caught up at work and left too late to make it. We felt so bad, but if there’s a lot of interest we will definitely bring it or something close to it back next year. I do have some semblance of experience in the topic, what with my book, Escort being a dirty book.

Subtle, no?

With a little bit of time to kill before our next panel we headed into the dealer’s room to check it out. It was a much bigger space than previous years, which was definitely a cool thing. There were still a few places to get hung up on in tight alleys, but overall it was much easier to get around.

We got a chocolate covered marshmallow thing from the fudge shop in the middle; that was pretty tasty. Then we headed back to the Tekko Gakkou room for our final panel of Friday night: Four Classic Novels: China’s Literary Effect on Japanese Anime and Games.

Below you can see the first video for that panel and the second one will go up tomorrow.

After that panel we were exhausted and headed home.  Set to be back by early Saturday afternoon for our final panel!  We were so excited we barely slept…no just kidding, we trudged home and sacked out after grabbing some dinner.

And where did we grab dinner from on the way home?  You know where…

It’s almost a tradition at this point.

~RCS

Tekko 2016 Update

Hey folks, just wanted to let you know what we’re up to what with all this quiet!

Ice cream of course; it’s warm out again around here.

I am in the process of editing the panel videos and they should be up somewhere within the week…ish.  I figure in the next few days I will start uploading them, then within a week or two they should all be up. The full written review should be up around that time, as well.

That’s…really all I had to say. Just wanted to give everyone a head’s up on that. Sorry everything’s taking so long.

~RCS

DJ Comics: Convention Reality

I wish I really was this confident!

Ͼ-Mimi

Tekko 2015 Wrap-Up

All right folks, unfortunately Tekkoshocon 2015 is over.  But fortunately it was pretty good this year.  We did two panels this year (How To Avoid Bad Writing and History of Sengoku Japan) and, to be honest, I was worried about the turnout since we were on Friday and the largest number of attendees comes in on Saturday.

But both rooms were super-packed!

 

Okay, so…maybe it wasn’t that packed.  But still, the rooms were way more full than I was expecting.  Thanks, again for showing up.  I should have my full review and my merchandise review (i.e. a list of the stuff we bought) in a few days.  I’ve got some time off this week, so I should be able to get them done in a timely fashion (for once).

As always, thanks for coming folks.  And not just to my panels, but thanks everyone for showing up to the con as a whole.  It was a fantastic year.  It seems like each year Tekko has fewer and fewer hiccups, this year was no exception.  Well, except for the surprise fire drill, but that’s another story.  I should also have some video up on the Youtube channel before too super long.

~RCS

Tekko Review Update!

Thanks to everyone who came out to see us Tekkoshocon this year!  I hope you enjoyed our panels and, if you were one of the lucky few, our door prizes!

As it stands right now we intend to have a few more panels next year, overall we enjoyed Tekko this time, a lot of stuff I was critical about the last time we were there were fixed.

I intend to have a full review up in the coming week or so.

In the meantime, I’m also catching up on DotMs, so expect the September Dick of the Month tomorrow morning!

~RCS

Otakon, 2013 Review: Full (And Finally)!

This is long overdue, but unfortunately I just don’t really have anything to tell you all.  Otakon 2013 was pleasant, if not overwhelming.  As you know my last convention review, Tekkoshocon Pittsburgh 2012, was relatively negative.  Otakon didn’t have any real serious issues to bring up.

Everything went fairly smoothly, the only real issues were a few line-building issues around the panels based in the attached Hotel; which the Otakon people really had no control over.  All of the line issues were architectural, too; the wall where the line had to be formed had a double door every ten feet so the line was broken up twelve times before it wrapped around the corner.

Other than that, though, the only real problem was that there were over 30,000 people traipsing about so it was crowded from time to time in the hallways.  And once again the biggest choke point was the corridor between the convention center and the hotel where a few panels were being held.

Highlights were the Voice Actors After Dark panel, of course, and the Cosplay Burlesque was actually pretty cool to watch, too.  The VA After Dark panel was comprised of Todd Haberkorn, Mike McFarland, Jad Saxton (pronounced like Jade, a recurring joke was calling her something akin to Chad), Cristina Vee, and Kyle Hebert.  This was the second time we’ve seen Todd Haberkorn and he was entertaining, and a little creepy, as usual.  Mike McFarland was very entertaining as Seth MacFarlane since he did several very good impressions of the man’s characters (Peter, Stewie, and Brian Griffin).  Cristina Vee and Jad Saxton were both a little too cutesy and seemed out of their element for much of the dirty humor contained within the panel, but they got a few good lines nonetheless.  Kyle Hebert walked in half way through the panel and jumped right into things as if he’d been there the whole time; definitely a natural to the dirty mind platform the panel required.

But the real star of the VA After Dark show was the Sign Language guy, Semaj, who just made the whole experience twice as fun as it already was.  He was a spectacular sport, especially considering the dirty things they made him sign.

Another highlight was Crispin Freeman’s Mythology in Anime panel.  On his website he lists a few similar types of panels he runs and I think, honestly, you could just have a Crispin Mythcon and enjoy it.  Just Crispin Freeman lecturing for two days straight; he’s entertaining, informative, and he puts complex philosophical points in a very simple context that even laymen can understand.  Trust me, I understood it all, so a regular person should be fine.

That hair is mythological enough.

We saw Vic Mignogna, pleasant as always although he can get a little preachy at times and some of the things he says makes it seem like he lives in a bubble, but he’s still a very nice man and is probably one of the most fan-dedicated Voice Actors I’ve ever had the pleasure of listening to (I’m really not sure how he has time to record anything, he’s at just about every con I’ve ever been to).  His main drawback, more so than the preachiness, is that he refuses to share the location of his fountain of youth.

Seriously!  Look at him…he’s in his fifties!

I’m still not sure entirely how, but we managed to miss every one of Maile Flanagan’s panels, if you can believe it.  Just bad timing on our parts.

And what seems to be a regular motif with any of my convention reviews…

Our favorite place to eat while in Baltimore was Mount Vernon Pizza.  It was right down the street from our hotel, the staff was friendly, and the food was really good.  Some pretty good coupon deals, too.

~RCS