Hello everyone!  Marina and Danny here with a new blog post on New York Comic Con / Anime Festival 2011~!

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COMIC CON!!!!!

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As you can all see, Danny had a great time and he’s very exci-

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ANIME FESTIVAL~!!!!!

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…Let’s just get started, shall we?

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AHHYOOOOREDIIIIIII???

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This year’s Comic Con/Anime Festival was held once more at the Jacob Javits Center in New York City on October 13-16 2011  As you can see, this year’s convention lasted 4 days instead of last year’s 3 so of course, Danny got a 4 day pass!  Thursday was only open to the press, professionals, VIPs and 4 day pass holders from 4-7 pm.  This meant room to shop and first dibs on everything without fear of stuff running out!

The first thing I did was run over to the Yes Anime booth and picked up “The OVA Black Rock Shooter Art Collection Book Special Limited Version” (yes, that’s the actual name according to the yes anime website).  This is an art book featuring genga or production drawings from the OVA.  It also came with a color pamphlet of character designs plus a t-shirt!  This is a very rare book even in Japan because it can only be sold at limited events.  In fact, since only 100 were sold at NYCC, it means there’s only a 100 of these in the US!  Cho rare!

 

You’re quite the sucker for limited edition things huh?

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Fufufu… A true fan can immediately pick out the limited and rare items!  I’ve developed the policy of buying quality over quantity, so you know anything I get will be ultra special!

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Hmmm so how do you pick out which items are better than others?

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Well there are no better or worse items.  A true fan treasures all of the things related to a series he loves!

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So which one is it?

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 Thursday is also the day I picked up the most swag, but we’ll save that gallery for the end of the post~

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Swag (Stuff We All Get) refers to the promotional materials given out for free at conventions or events such as pamphlets, posters, pins or even free comic books!

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Moving onto Friday!  The day began very early for me, as I arrived at the convention center at 6 am to get an autograph ticket for Junko Takeuchi (竹内 順子), the seiyuu (voice actress) for Naruto Uzumaki!

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6 am…

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Naruto’s been a favorite series of mine for a very long time and meeting Takeuchi-san was an opportunity I just couldn’t pass up!

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You must really love this series to wake up so early for it!  Is it in your top 10 or something?

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A true fan loves ALL series equally!

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I never get your logic…

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I also bought a Sixh shirt at the h.Naoto booth this day!  h.Naoto is a famous punk and gothic lolita designer from Tokyo with the brand “Sixh” being a subset created by designers IBI and MINT.  Check it out below!

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It’s certainly different from your average shirt.  And it’s about time you updated your wardrobe to better clothes!

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…!

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As the first full day of the con everything was now out in full force, from fans to guests, from exhibits to cosplay.  There was even a remote controlled R2D2! (the man behind R2D2 has his hand in his bag, remotely controlling it).

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This was actually right before the doors opened right?

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 Yup.  The doors opened at 10 am, but right before that, something else happened.  Good Day New York stopped by and filmed a quick report on the lines, and guess who you can see in the background?

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Uh-oh…

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I guess the cameras just have a way of finding me huh?

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Already gone to his head… and they didn’t even interview him…  Anyway let’s just move on to Friday’s panels.

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PANEL DATTEBAYO~!

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Danny went to two panels on Friday, the first one was Junko Takeuchi’s panel discussion!  We have here the entire panel, as recorded by Danny.  Enjoy!

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And after the panel, there was a private signing where I got Junko Takeuchi’s autographhhhhh~  It’s always an incredible experience to meet the people behind the characters you love so much!  Thank you Takeuchi-san!  竹内さんありがとうございます！

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Thank you very much Takeuchi-san!  Next, Danny headed over to the Street Fighter x Tekken panel, where Street Fighter producer Yoshinori Ono was in attendance!

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Not really sure how it happened, but I ended up sitting in the very first row, right in front of Ono!  I took some videos of the panel, but John, the guy sitting to my right, recorded the whole thing with a tripod, so I decided to ask if I could just embed his videos.  Turns out he works for an awesome site called TheGamersHub, check them out!

credits to TheGamersHub

The third picture is from Yoshinori Ono’s official twitter account when he takes the photo at 18:40 of the second video.  You can clearly see Danny sitting in the front row!

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How’s everyone doing so far, we’re still only halfway with the best yet to come!  Onto Saturday!

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Saturday started out with the football match that Ono mentioned in Friday’s panel between Street Fighter and Tekken with both producers as the quarterbacks!  They picked a few members from the crowd to be on each team and even had a punishment for the losing producer, the winning one would get to punt a football into his butt!  Here’s a video showing all the fun from youtube!

credits to SoSaysNatal

I think Ono and Harada are really approaching this game with the right attitude, which is just to have fun.  It’s very refreshing to see two companies mutually helping each other out and having fun in the process.

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But even after a whole football game, the day’s only started!  Here’s Saturday’s pics!

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 Let’s get to the panel already! MAKOTO SHINKAI~!!

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So next we have Makoto Shinkai’s panel discussion.  Danny is a very big fan of Makoto Shinkai in case you couldn’t tell…  Can you tell us real quick why?

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Simply put, he’s my biggest inspiration in animation!  Besides creating incredibly beautiful aesthetics both visually and musically, he’s also truly inspired me as an artist creating independent films.  I’d like to create animation tha-

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Aaand I’m gonna cut you off because you’re going to just keep going.  Being the huge Shinkai fan that he is, it’s no surprise he lined up early enough to get a front and center seat!  Enjoy the panel!

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-nd that really moved me!  I hope one day my films are half as good!

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Were you talking that entire time…?  Let’s move onto the last bit of Saturday.

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Ah yes, among the booths this year, there were 2 interesting ones, the NicoNico booth and the Crunchyroll booth!  If anyone out there has never been on NicoNicoDouga before, it’s a Japanese video sharing site where the comments move across the screen allowing for a unique viewing experience quite different from youtube, and when you take live streaming at an event like this, creates a very cool experience.  Both NicoNico and Crunchyroll had similar set ups with webcams on big screen tvs.  I stopped by both and had a nice conversation with all the users.  Hello to anyone reading this from Nico or Crunchyroll!  Here’s a quick clip from when I stopped by Crunchyroll.  Right before pressing record I said, “Say hi everyone!”

 Well, that now brings us to Sunday, the final day of Comic Con!

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Sunday was my personal favorite of all four days!  I talked to Shinkai-san briefly after the panel since I was all the way up front but was quickly surrounded by everyone else in the room.  But on Sunday… well, let’s start from the beginning shall we?  The day started early again, securing a Makoto Shinkai autograph with a ticket at 6 am.

I know I should expect this from you, but it always amazes me the lengths you go for anime…

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A true fan goes to any le-

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True fan, right right.

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Sunday started off with quite a start!  Hardly 5 minutes pass after getting inside when who passes by me on the stairs?  None other than Harada, the producer of Tekken!  So I quickly ran back down the stairs and asked for a pic!  Other than that, the rest of the Sunday gallery is pretty small since I took pictures of most stuff on earlier days and I was  saving memory for the videos you’re about to see!

The videos Danny is referring to is of course all of the events with Makoto Shinkai!  The first is the New York premiere of his new film, “Children Who Chase Lost Voices from Deep Below” or “星を追う子ども” (Hoshi o Ou Kodomo).  Before the film began, Shinkai-san came out on stage to introduce the film and afterwards came out to answer questions from the audience.  Obviously we won’t show the actual movie, but instead we’ll substitute a trailer instead.  Enjoy!

If you get the chance, definitely watch the film, it’s amazing!

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Right after the screening, Danny had his public signing with Makoto Shinkai!  This was held at the bandai booth on the main showfloor.  Danny has a video of his signing as well as a photo with Shinkai-san!

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I was really nervous meeting him of course, but I managed to speak to him in stuttered Japanese, although I switched to English at times because I was so nervous…  But as many things as I wanted to tell him, I kept it short since I could tell him more at the VIP signing afterwards.

While waiting in line for the premiere of the new film, Danny landed VIP tickets from some of the new friends he met there!  This VIP signing was held afterwards in a separate room, so it was nice and quiet and gave each person more time to talk!

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Wow, it must’ve been amazing to meet and talk to such a big hero of yours!  What did you guys talk about?

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Um… Danny?

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I shook his hand…

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I-I’ll just answer for him… Danny told him that he’s an independent animator and it’s really because of Shinkai-san that he’s able to be that today.  He also gave him his card and asked that once his new film is completed, to please watch it!

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I got to meet MAKOTO SHINKAI~

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Eh?  Danny??

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 I GOT TO MEET MAKOTOFOSDJ FSJODF

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D-Danny get a hold of y-

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BBBBBLLBLBLBLLBLBLBLB

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F-foaming at the mouth!!!?!?!

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Danny’s still passed out but thanks for reading, we hope you enjoyed it!

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