DJ Comic: March Holidays Part 4

Hell yeah!  Four panels got accepted for Tekko!  I’m super nervecited and I’m not even the one running the panels!

I guess I could let Rich have one day to himself.  Just one though.

Well, at least I look good with green hair.

Ͼ-Mimi

DJ Comics: Convention Reality

I wish I really was this confident!

Ͼ-Mimi

DJ Comics: Convention Expectations

This is usually how I feel and think this will happen at the start of every convention I go to.

 

Ͼ-Mimi

DJ Comic: April Holidays Part 4

Sorry it’s late.  Tekko happened.

Ͼ-Mimi

Tekko 2014 Review: Day 2

Day 2 of Tekko 2014 began with the Women in Anime panel hosted by voice actors Caitlin Glass, who I know best as Winry Rockbell from Fullmetal Alchemist, and Brittany Karbowski, who came onto the scene after I started falling behind on watching Anime.  It was a Q&A panel and both of the ladies were interesting.  I really liked Ms. Karbowski’s story about scaring her boyfriend, which I’ll summarize for you…

She said that when her and her boyfriend lived together in a small apartment, she would get home before him and turn off all the lights, then hide in a closet somewhere in the apartment.  When her boyfriend would come home she’d giggle and say, in a very high-pitched, creepy-sounding voice, “Wanna come play with me?  Hehehe.”

She said she doesn’t do that anymore because now they own a house and it would take him forever to find her, that and it really freaks him out.  The panel was interesting, they were pretty funny and entertaining; a nice way to start the day.

After that we separated from our friend, who went to the How to Make a Steampunk Necklace workshop.  At this point we decided to finally make good on the threat to go to the lounge.  It was actually pretty cool, they had snacks and water, a bunch of tables with baskets of candy on it, and funnily enough Glass and Karbowski walked in from the back door of the café just a few moments after we came in.

They had televisions set up to watch the main stage, so we watched part of the Masquerade, hosted by Uncle Yo, a perennial guest of Tekko.  We had a snack and got re-hydrated and had a quick chat with some of the wife’s relatives who happened to be at the convention, too.  Once we were done with our rest at the lounge we headed out and went to the Traditional Theater and Anime panel.

It was hosted by a very nervous college student; he almost seemed like he was going to perk up take the bull by the horns, rack us up and knock us down.  Until his opening question, “Who’s here to see the headlining band tonight?” fell flat as only a handful of people in the room were interested.  Half the room seemed like they didn’t even know bands played at the convention.  He had good information, he just needs to work on his presentation and public speaking skills and he’ll do well in the future.

At that point we headed to the Dealer’s Room and Artist’s Alley to get an eye on the things we might be interesting in throwing money at and met back up with our friend.  We grabbed some quick dinner and headed toward the Octo Erotica panel; a panel about tentacle porn.  Unfortunately the folks hosting the panel had canceled, so we missed out on the chance to see what could have been a very interesting panel.

So, with nothing else to do we headed to the OMG WTF Did I Just See panel.  Now as you might remember, this particular panel was one of the sour moments of the last year we were there.  And you know what?  Sour point this, time, too!  It was an 18+ panel and Tekko administration had forgotten to put a staffer in charge of the door to check IDs.  They didn’t have anyone to monitor the door or set up the lines outside the door.

Two distinct lines formed, one heading east and looping in a serpentine style, the other connecting half way through that line and lopping westward.  When the staffers finally realized they had a half-full 18+ room with two lines and not a single ID checked, five minutes before the panel started, they sent a couple of folks up to handle the situation.  They started checking badges, but didn’t do much else to fix the lines and just kind of…walked away from the situation once the doors opened.

The panel had a decent slew of interesting stuff, like before; most of it coming from Japanese television shows and commercials.  If Tekko staff could realize that it’s a popular panel, every year, and put the necessary staff into handling the doors, that’d be great…

The last panel we went to had about as much care put into keeping the doors secured as the last one.  Once again we serpentined in front of the room, this time they had a staffer to check IDs for the 18+.  Unfortunately there were a few drunk guys behind us in line.  They realized that when the line started to move they could just barge straight to the door, nearly running over everyone serpentine in front of them.  The staffer at the door stopped them though…to check their IDs before letting them into the room.  So line control seems to still be weak at Tekko.

Anyway, the last panel we went to was the Is It Hentai?: RELOADED panel.  In this panel they either showed a picture or played a sound clip and then asked a volunteer if it was porn or not.  98% of the time it was porn, usually some pretty grotesque stuff, too.  They had a few tech issues because they said that Power Point had decided to crash and wipe out their original presentation so they had to rebuild it between panels.  They had a bunch of door prizes, which they explained was a car load of stuff they didn’t want when they moved so they were just getting rid of it.

By the end of the panel they were just handing out free shit, which is cool because we got a DVD box set, a Manga, and a little toy ball-in-a-cup pen that my wife played with for about a straight week.  The panel itself was funny and when a second crash halted the panel they decided to read from a really crappy fanfiction, which was hilarious in its terrible writing.  Definitely worth a lookie-loo.

And that ends Day 2.  Monday we’ll reconvene here for the final Day’s review and the ultimate review of the whole convention and how I think Tekko has managed in the interim time we’ve spent away from it.

~RCS

Okay so maybe I’m getting a little addicted to the Meme Generator thing.

Tekko 2014 Review: Day 1 (Part 2)

Last time on DickJutsu.com!

 

Bla, blah, blah…. DickJutsu.com!

Moving on we had the Anime Horrors panel which had a few tech hiccups and started awfully late. I’m still not sure what the panel was really about, they basically just showed one episode of an anime wherein a bunch of school kids summon malevolent spirits then get separated. Two of them find each other and then decide to separate again…because they are stoopeed.

Then one of them dies, while the other watches and…well…kind of accidentally helps her die. Anywho it was a pretty messed up anime. It’s one of those things that’s kind of hard to explain unless you’ve seen it. Actually it’s kind of hard to explain, even if you’d have been sitting next to us watching it.

So then we made our way to a panel titled “5 Anime You Pretend to Know, But Actually Know Nothing About”. They talked about Sailor Moon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Trigun, Madohka Magica, and Afro Samurai. It was definitely an interesting panel and was very informative, although I have to say that the Trigun section was a little lacking in flesh-out-ed-ness…err, whatever the hell word I’m grasping for. It wasn’t fleshed out well. I’m not sure if they were being clueless about it for humor, or if they really didn’t understand the plot, but they claimed a few things were unexplained in the series…which were totally explained, openly.

And we finished off the first night with a trip into the Bad Fanfiction panel. It was a group read project where a group of people were brought up and made to ‘popcorn’ read an excerpt from a handful of poorly written fanfictions.

In case you aren’t aware, fan fiction is…well, a story written about another piece of literature or a movie or TV show, generally written by, y’know…fans. It’s kind of self-explanatory, really. Of course the difference is that in America it’s generally crap and looked down upon. Well it’s looked down upon because a lot of it is crap. But in Japan it’s called Doujinshi and often times if it is done well, it will be honored by the producer of the original media.

As an example there was a Street Fighter fan fiction about two young kung fu fighters named Yun and Yang. The original producers of Street Fighter liked the story and lo and behold…Yun and Yang are playable characters in Street Fighter III.

Of course, we read a bit of Twilight fanfiction there, too. Twilight Fanfiction, in case you were curious, is proof that not all double negatives create a positive experience. Like they say, two wrongs don’t make good writing; or y’know, however it goes.

The particular Twilight fanfiction was called Master of the Universe, written by a writer going by the name “Snowqueen’s Icedragon”. Eventually she rewrote the fanfiction by changing the setting and altering the characters’ names and back story; then got it published, under the name E.L. James and Master of the Universe changed into 50 Shades of Grey.

Which gives me tons of hope to get published, because that drivel of a drivel is a Best Seller.

50 Shades of Whutt?

And that was the end of Day 1. Friday was more than over and we made our way home where we sacked the hell out in preparation for Day 2, Saturday. Sure to have more people around; but would it have more crap to deal with or did the Tekko folks fix everything? Come on by again tomorrow for part two–err, right, part three now because I was long-winded on day one. So yeah, come on by tomorrow to see if everything went perfectly smoothly or if anything went to hell.

~RCS

Of course something went to hell, what kind of reviews do you think I write here? Psh!

Tekko 2014 Review Update

Just to let everyone know I forgot to include all the links I had planned in the first Tekko review post.  That has been fixed.  Thank you for your patience and understanding.

And if you weren’t patient and understanding, then too bad because I couldn’t hear you all the way on the other side of the internet. 🙂

~RCS

Tekko 2014 Review: Day 1 (Part 1)

As you all know I was very critical of Tekkoshocon a few years back. I decided to give the convention another chance this year. And that was a good decision. A lot of the problems they had before, they had fixed. Not to say there weren’t a few hiccups, something that big always will have something go wrong, but it was much better organized this year.

So here’s my complete review of Tekkoshocon 2014, starting with Day 1. Well, actually Day 2…we didn’t go to the Thursday events, opting to utilize the day for a set up period. So we’ll call Friday Day 1, for all intents and purposes.

 

First off we hit registration somewhere after noon. We had gotten the Premium Badges again this year, but our friend who went with us just got the regular badge. This opened her to a slew of jokes about abandoning her and going to the special Premium Lounge without her all weekend.

The Registration was something I had talked about before as being pretty poor, and it usually was every year. Getting the chance to go through Otakon’s registration was a delight…

This is the Premium Line?

So the last time I talked about Tekko registration I had mentioned I didn’t have any idea how to improve registration. Well the good news is somebody else must have, because Registration was a breeze. We Preemies…err, that’s a poor choice of name for that. Uhh…we…Snobby Cocksuckers?

I almost like Preemie better.

Anyway, the Premium line was a simple process and we were done in about two minutes. Our friend didn’t even pre-register and she was still done with her regular badge in about fifteen minutes.

The last time we were at Tekko it took over half an hour for us to get through registration, and we pre-registered last time, too. So they’ve definitely hit a sweet spot with their registration set up this year. They need to keep doing whatever they did…it was over so quickly I couldn’t even be sure about what they were doing to make it go so smoothly. Ten points for Griff–Tekkoshocon 2014.

Anyway we had about an hour and a half to kill so we went to the Disney in Japan panel. The panel was basically an excuse to talk about the movie Frozen for half an hour. The first half was a lesson about Disneyland Japan from someone who had never been there; but she did have first-hand accounts from workers and visitors, so at least she knew something of what she was talking about. And she was very up front about her total lack of first-hand knowledge.

It was interesting and the last half of the panel was a comparison between American trailers and Japanese trailers for the movie Frozen, followed by a short discussion about the movie. Which I am plenty okay with; if you haven’t seen Frozen, yet, you really should. Children or not it’s a pretty awesome movie.

 

And that brings us to, what my wife calls, one of the best panels of the convention. The History Behind Sengoku Basara panel, hosted by yours truly and presented by Dickjutsu.com. Which I pointed out numerous times during the panel, because that was the whole point of the panel: To get paid to advertise this very site.

…okay, well actually that was only half of it. I really love talking about this stuff and it was a chance to get paid for talking about something that I care about deeply. Oh, and advertise the site, if I didn’t mention that already.

If I got a nickel for every time I used this picture…I’d use this picture a lot more.

For those of you who came out to see it, I thank you. I hope you enjoyed listening to me talk at you as much as I enjoyed talking about Sengoku Japan. And my wife enjoyed it because I wasn’t directing all of my nerd air at her, alone…trapped with no recourse but to listen to me nerd-out, like usual.

…and then, when Oda Nobunaga was fifteen he…

 

Intermission

Now this is the point where I’d like to talk about dinner. It was at the Sharp Edge on Penn Avenue. That means it was delicious. We brought our friend to it, and indoctrinated her. Now everyone should go eat at the Sharp Edge– Wait a minute, I should charge advertising for how much I shill for that restaurant.

Can I at least get a free pudding?

Anyway, after dinner we headed back to the convention. This is already a step up from the last time we were there when we had dinner and decided we’d rather walk around Pittsburgh, even though it smelled like hobo semen, than go back to the convention.

So Tekko’s definitely making progress.

 

Back to the Story at Hand!

When we returned to the convention we went straight on to our second panel, the History Behind Dynasty Warriors. Like I mentioned before it was getting paid to talk about something I’m very passionate about and get some free advertising for the site.

Once again…thanks to those who came and I hope you enjoyed the panel.

Immediately after my panel was the Attitudes Toward Plus Size Cosplay panel, which was actually one of the bigger issues with scheduling. Normally all the panels had a 30 minute set up/tear down period, but there was no such period between my panel and theirs. I tried to get out of their way as quickly as possible, but oh well, a minor hiccup compared to the kind of stuff that used to happen at Tekko.

We decided to stay for the next panel and that was probably a mistake. The ladies handling the panel had a good idea, their premise was to stir debate about the attitudes toward plus size cosplay; hence the title of their panel, I imagine. A good idea. But they handled it poorly, especially when the debate broke out.

A small-framed young man stood up and shattered their whole plan by actually coming up with a counter-point and calling up a moment of hypocrisy in their suggestions.

All in all I can see both sides of the coin. What they were saying was right, but what he said was also right. He lacked tact, as far as he just stood up and called hem on their bullshit instead of going at it from a more diplomatic avenue. But when they accused him of not having a viable opinion in the debate on cosplay attitudes because he wasn’t a fat woman, she showed that she had even less tact than him.

We’ll be going into more detail on this later, but we’ll leave it at that for now. This post is about Tekko as a whole, not a rant on a single panel. I will say, however, that we got disgusted by the ladies running the panel when they singled the poor guy out and made fun of him…right as they started discussion on engaging with detractors and to always ignore them and take the high road. By the way, though, ignoring those who speak out against you…not a good policy for ‘starting a debate.’

Moving on we went to the Anime Horrors panel. But I’m sure you have something productive to do right now. So we’ll take a little break here and pick this up tomorrow. Your homework for next class is to like, share, and comment on this post. Haha, and you thought I could only shill for Sharp Edge–goddamnit I do need to charge for ad time.

~RCS

Phoning It In

To all my loyal fans, yes both of you, I just wanted to let you know that my computer has been acting up like a drunk four-year-old lately. I fixed it (I think) last night and made backups of everything.
So I should be good to go soon-ish. Just in time for Tekkoshocon 2012!
Anyone who follows me, I’m going to be at Tekko again this year. I’ve sprung for the Premium badges this year, so if you see me in front of you in line…no Donkey Punches. 😉
I hope to get back in the swing of things soon. Until then, I’m forced to update this with my phone.
~RCS