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 Review: Friday Part 1

Another year has come and another Tekko has come to pass. The following two days will be our standard post-convention review; this time for Tekko 2016! We generally have too much setting up and preparation to do to attend the first day of Tekko, Thursday, which is generally just a video day. So we’ll be discussing Friday, Saturday, and Sunday’s affairs both fun and not-so-fun.

We had some panels to run this year and our first one was 3:30pm on Friday, so we planned to get there by 2:00pm to make sure we had time to register, meet with Con Ops to get set up and get to the panel room in time to set up and get the first set of jittery nerves out of the way.

We actually wound up being exhausted from Thursday’s work and I managed to pull a muscle in my back after the vacuum cleaner broke while trying to vacuum the steps. So…we went to bed early Thursday evening and wound up waking up super early Friday, so we actually got in around noon. We got our badges; we preregistered so it took about five minutes to get through.

We did the Premium Badge again this year and one thing I have to say is that the Premium goody bag…kind of sucked. It had a nifty little portable speaker in it, but other than that it was just some marketing materials from Funimation in a DBZ bag…and the bag was about an inch too short because the posters in the bag cut the hell out of my fingers while trying to carry the bag. No treats or anything like that.

‘Bluetooth’ is not a state of mind.

The speaker was a nifty little toy, much like the battery backup devices they doled out last year, but the whole thing just seemed so half-assed compared to last year. Especially since it was downright fraudulent in its labeling. The box says “Bluetooth Speaker”, but it’s not Bluetooth; it’s not even remotely wireless. The directions clearly say you have to plug the silly thing into the device you want to play from. The only thing ‘wireless’ about it was that you can plug it in and charge it and then play from it on battery power; but it’s certainly not Bluetooth.

At least it looks cool…shame it’s almost useless to me.

I don’t know if this year’s stuff was sucky or last year’s was just that awesome. Either way, we were disappointed in the goody bag.

So on to actually getting into the convention. We roamed around a bit and tried to gain our bearing and figure out how the building was set up this year. We checked in with Con Ops and took a sweep through the Premium Lounge.

Allow me to digress for a moment. A few years ago when we looked at getting the Premium badges, we saw that one of the features was access to the ‘Premium Lounge’. A little place where Premium badge holders could go to sit around and waste away the time.

We thought that was just the stupidest little idea. Who would go to a con just to sit around and maybe watch a live-feed of whatever was going on in the main event stage? Is that worth the extra money? No way.

Fast-forward to the first time we got the Premium badges after the lounge was founded…

…god damn do we spend a lot of time in that lounge, now. It’s a great little place to unwind in between things. Got a panel at 7 and another at 9? Hit the lounge from 8-8:30 to unwind and stock up on complimentary bottles of water; you’ll need ’em for all that talking in the panel.

Anyway, back to the review at hand! We figured that we had some time to kill so we watched the first Nancy Kepner show in the lounge. Nancy can be a little awkward at times, but she’s a nerd musician in a room full of nerds; she was probably the least awkward person in that room. Nancy’s sweet and adorable, though, and she’s got some hilarious songs. The wife really enjoys her Yaoi Song and her Crossplay Song. I always enjoy the Weeabo Song and this year every time the wife and I passed the J-Pop Music vendors in the Dealer’s Room we would turn to each other and sing the chorus of her Sexy Asian’s Dancing Song.

Once the show was over we headed to the Tekkou Gakkou room where our first panel would be…in about an hour or two. We sat in on the Sides of the Spectrum: LGBT in Anime panel. They discussed a few anime we weren’t familiar with, but didn’t flood it with spoilers, so that was nice.

The opening of the panel was informative and I’m sure we could have gotten more out of it if we were more familiar with the anime they referenced. We got the Madohka and Sailor Moon references, but many of the other references were lost on us. Our fault, not theirs, really.

Click me to watch the East vs. West Panel Main video!

The next thing we did was set up for our own panel, East vs. West: Arms, Armor, and Lifestyles of the Knights of Europe and Samurai of Japan.

With this first review post we will begin debuting the videos of our panels. There are 5 videos in total, we decided to split them into 2 parts: Panel Main and Q&A, rather than split them into 10-minute mini-vids and then a full-on panel video as well. The exception is the final video which is about an hour long, but only has 8 minutes of Q&A, we just put the whole thing together in one video.

As this review is up here on Sunday, we will be releasing a video every day this week, culminating with the May Samurai Gaiden video ending the week on Friday. This month we’ll be talking about one of the guys I mentioned in the Samurai Mythconception panel and going a little more in-depth with his life. Come back again every day this coming week for more Tekko 2016 videos and reviews.

~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

Tekko 2016 Schedule

So I’ve been talking about it a lot on Social Media, but I just realized I haven’t really said much about it on the site, here.

I’ll be attending Tekkoshocon this year, or just plain ‘ol Tekko as they’re calling it now. I will be presenting 4 panels, total: 3 on Friday and 1 on Saturday.

I know, I’m excited and surprised, too!

-Friday-

East vs West: Arms, Armor, and Lifestyles of the Samurai of Japan and the Knights of Europe

3:30pm in the Tekko Gakkou Room

-We will be discussing a comparison between the European Knight and the Japanese Samurai. The respective warrior classes of the Western and Eastern worlds. If you like swords, spears, court politics, and non-magical ponies, come join us!

I’m not sure I want to know what flavor that is.

How To Write Dirty Stuff (18+)

7:00pm in Panel Room 5

-Whether you’re writing erotica, just a regular sex scene, or outright porn and hentai you need to know the delicacies of dirty writing. Join author Richard C. Shaffer as he discusses how to plan, frame, word, and publish some sexy scenes.

The Four Classic Novels: China’s Literary Effect on Japanese Anime and Games

9:30pm in Tekkou Gakkou Room

-Dragon Ball, Saiyuki, Ikki Tousen, Dynasty Warriors, and the Suikoden series. What do they all have in common? They’re all based on classic Chinese novels. Come learn how these novels shape many of the anime we watch and the games we play from Japan.

-Saturday-

“Outta the way, I gotta see this panel!”

Samurai Misconceptions: Learn the Truths of the Legendary Japanese Warrior

1:30pm in Tekkou Gakkou Room

-Armed with his katana, an unbeatable weapon of razor-sharp, high quality steel, the legendary samurai warrior fought one-on-one to victory or death in each battle. Or…maybe that’s just in the movies? Learn the real history of the Samurai from Heian courts to Sengoku battlefields and beyond!

Hope to see some of your folks there!

~RCS

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

Tekko 2015 Video Upload Schedule

Hey folks, as promised the videos of our panels are going up across the next two weeks!  Starting tomorrow with the upload of Part 1 of my How To Avoid Bad Writing panel.  And ultimately it will culminate in the premiere of our new feature on YouTube: Samurai Gaiden!

Based on the feedback from the History of Sengoku Japan we have decided to start a new series on YouTube.  Each episode will concentrate on a particular person or event and highlight anecdotes in an educational and interesting way.

Because of the battery issue we had that cut the recording off in the middle of Ashikaga Yoshiteru’s story, he will be our first choice.  At any time feel free to comment on the Samurai Gaiden videos (once they start) and suggest someone or something you want to hear about.

We may also put in a few interesting ‘special features’ of some sorts, like talking about weapons or armor of the Samurai or maybe lifestyle…y’know whatever you folks are interested in hearing and I’m interested in telling you.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves!  The first video goes up tomorrow morning!

~RCS

Tekko 2015 Merch Post

The wife’s been keeping the site going with her nifty comics while I finished the videos and this stuff.  This should be the last official post on Tekko 2015.

So as has become the norm after a convention, I’m putting up all the nifty stuff we got this year.  First of all, a quick rundown of the things we got Far East Boutique in its going-out-of-business sale.  We got an awesome wall fan (it takes up half the couch in the photo), two samurai statues, a bag of assorted bento box parts, a nifty coin-purse kind of bag, and a cute kitty bag to go along with the kitty clutch purse the wife got last year from them.

 

Next up are a few cute little chibi post-card style pictures made by Lily Cernak.

Castiel because we’re huge Supernatural fans, Dr. Horrible because that’s one of the best short series I’ve ever seen, and Loki because he arouses my wife. 😉

And from the same booth as Lily was Alan Cernak.  I’m not sure which one did the following pictures, but they aren’t listed on Lily’s deviant art so I’ll just assume it was Alan for now.  Either way, I like the old woodblock-style art of the latter two a lot.

 

Here’s a Fluttershy scarf from Nightengale Needles.  They caught our eye because they had some pride stuff on their stall and then the wife looked at the scarves.  It’s long enough that you can actually wrap it around you and make the ends hang at your hips like a cutey mark.

 

And here we have, clockwise from top-left, the Goddesses of Eternity, Death, Moon, Remembrance, Sun, and Rebirth by Carriations.

 

And when we passed Miho Studios she was having a sale on prints, buy two get two free.  So we got four prints.  The wife wanted the Jack Frost one because she got insta-horny looking at it.  She keeps asking to put it in a glass frame so she can kiss it without ruining the picture.  And of course, Thor and Loki holding hands in the first picture.

Those were the two we bought, then the free two were Queen Elsa from Frozen and Sailor Moon.

 

The last store we hit was Knights of the Classroom.  They make all things chainmail and have a pretty cool presentation available, too.  When the wife was working with the Boy Scouts she got to witness one of their educational shows.  We bought a set of earrings and a new stretch-chainmail bracelet for the wife.

 

At that point we ran out of money, so we left the Exhibition Hall before we could try to buy anything else.

So that’s everything we bought this year.  Walked away with some nifty art and an armload of oriental knickknacks, so the merch was definitely a good end to the weekend.

~RCS

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

Tekko 2015: Day 3, Sunday and Final Overview

Sunday did not start anywhere near as early as Saturday.  Thank God in Heaven!

Praise the Merciful Lord of Flighty Deliciousness!

We got in around noon, maybe a little later.  There weren’t in particular panels we were gunning to see but we always wait until Sunday to hit the dealer’s room.  We headed straight for the dealer’s room and picked up all the merch we had been eying up the day before, which we quickly hauled back to the van.

Unfortunately one of the places we frequent for purchases, Far East Boutique, has decided to go out of business.  They decided it was just too much and they were getting too old for the convention circuit.  So we went back closer to closing time and got some huge deals from them.  On the one hand it sucked that they were closing down, on the other hand…we got bunch of stuff for way less than we normally would have.  And I finally got the statues they’ve been selling for years that I figured were too expensive.  Yay, me!

So, what did we do while we were waiting for things to get a little nearer to closing time?

Yup, just lounged around in the Premium…well, Lounge.  While we were in there a local act, a lady by the name of Nancy Kepner, was going on.  We’ve heard about her and one of our friends actually has a huge crush on her and wanted to ask her out a few years ago, but he backed out of hitting on her at the last-minute.  Needless to say, we’ve never actually managed to make it to one of her shows.

She was rather amusing, a bunch of humorous songs.  I think my favorite was her song about filler episodes with the awesome line about, “…following a ninja ostrich up a hill…” but she had a bunch of great songs in her repertoire.  Highly suggest giving her a listen if you have any interest in Anime, Humor, and/or Music.

And that was pretty much Sunday for us.  I always like Sunday being kind of an easy-going day to recuperate and ease out of the convention atmosphere.

So that brings us to the overall review of Tekko 2015!

Ultimately it was pretty cool.  There was a limited number of panels we were interested in, but that was mostly our own fault.  We are so far behind on watching new anime that we couldn’t go to half of the panels because they were about shows we haven’t seen, yet.  Like Attack on Titan, Madoka Magica (which are watching right now to fix that issue), or Kill la Kill.  Hell, we just finally watched Death Note like three months ago.

The panels we did attend were done well, there weren’t any crap-panels and the only panel that seemed to have any unaddressed tech issues was the one we watched at 9:00 am when the staff was trying to get everything else fixed up.

Actually our main problem was that the Premium Lounge didn’t seem to be stocked properly.  Almost every time we went there for a snack or a drink it was empty, especially if you were looking for a bottle of water.  So, since our biggest complaint was that the Premium Lounge was poorly stocked, I think the folks at Tekko have definitely improved greatly from what they were just a few short years ago.

The staff seemed professional and helpful.  I had an issue with my first panel on Friday that I needed a staffer to answer a question.  The issue was whether or not each panel room had separately registered lighting; you see the last year there was some issues that Panel Room 2 would try to lower their lights for a video presentation and the lights in Panel Room 1 would shut off.  I wanted to make my presentation easier to view, but didn’t want to shut the lights off on other panelists.

They had already learned from last year’s kerfluffle and each room had their lights separated.  The wife went to Con Ops while I was setting everything up and they had a staffer there to help me out in a matter of minutes.  Much better than I’d seen in past years.  The staffer knew what he was talking about, too; that’s always nice.

So yeah, overall only superficial issues.  I hope that Tekko continues to remain at this level in coming years.  I really can’t even think of anything for them to improve upon for next year, except for a better system of keeping the Premium Lounge well-stocked with victuals for the foppish pricks full of first-world problems like myself.

So, that’s it.  We enjoyed the convention immensely this year and can’t wait for next year.  The videos and the merch post will begin going up some time this coming week.

Thanks, again all!

~RCS