Bonus – Anime Weekend Atlanta 2008 Con Report

Even though the convention was back in September, here’s our con report for Anime Weekend Atlanta 2008.

Show 75 is recorded and will hopefully be posted soon, but there may be one more convention report bonus edition posted first. Three bonus recordings in a row? Man, we are lazy. Heck, one of them we didn’t even edit! We’ll upload some important pictures from the con here at some point. For now, feast your eyes upon this glorious slideshow (click any picture in the slideshow to get a full sized version):

And here’s Gerald’s version of the events including the fateful headlock with Rob Fenelon:

You will notice embedded in the show MP3 as well as within the slideshow above is a grandiose method of transport. What fiendish practitioners of kung fu treachery could be responsible for such a thing, you ask? This video has the answers:

This would have been funnier if the people in the outfits weren’t so keen on wandering into large events and then leaving in a manner that illustrated they didn’t actually care about what was going on in the room. They did spend most of their time in the halls, though. McCain’s campaign headquarters was a few minutes away, but they were closed! HOW ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO CONVINCE INUYASHA TO VOTE MCCAIN IF YOUR “VICTORY CENTER” IS CLOSED ON WEEKENDS?! No wonder he lost.

24 Replies to “Bonus – Anime Weekend Atlanta 2008 Con Report”

  1. Where is the Jojo’s bizarre adventure part 4 review you recorded for episode 74? It can’t take more than 3 weeks to edit one segment.

  2. Well, as far as trashy shounen romance goes, ToLove? is a respectable choice. Much better than, say, Rosario+Vampire. Though, the second season is kind of better, but only because it makes no sense and references Sukeban movies for no reason at all. ?

  3. Just proofing the CLOVER omnibus while listening to the AWA report. In the Dark Horse editorial conference room, surrounded by the pensive bust of Grand Moff Tarkin, the bold Katsuya Terada maquette of Hellboy, and, of course, The Big Board (in the George C. Scott sense) inexorably ticking off my deadline obligations well into 2010, the year we make contact. Taliesin Jaffe as Christopher Floyd!

    –Carl

  4. I have to know. I HAVE to know.

    Does Abdulla the Butcher’s place serve burgers? Most rib shacks also do burgers. If he does a killer burger I’ll HAVE to go there when I next am able to attend AWA…because I need a burger served by a prowres guy!

    also, Waffle House does not exist in Michigan. I was quite impressed with the timeless nature of the place. Not so much the food.

  5. I’m kind of sad I missed the toku Spider-Man. I need to find it somewhere.

    At least I got away with my The Skull Man manga.

    Also, that Mazinger gun was pretty awesome.

  6. It’s true that there are no Waffle Houses on the West Coast or in New England. It’s an urban legend that no state that voted for Kerry has a Waffle House–there are a handful in Maryland and Pennsylvania.

    The archetypal California (at least, Santa Clara and parts south) fast food place is the In N’ Out Burger, although you probably can’t get the full effect just on a con visit–to do that, you must enroll in a local college and modify their bumper sticker to read IN N’ OUT URGE , or, contrarily, N O URGE.

    –C.

  7. I would like to make mention that the waffle house exists in maryland… and it is where teenagers live as you can get an entire meal for 3$

  8. I am going to posit the hypothesis that Waffle House may exist in Kerry states, but not in Kerry counties in those states. I am willing to believe there are Waffle houses in the Alabama middle-T of PA, and in most places in MD except Baltimore. (I couldn’t believe the yokel quotient in the corner of northeastern MD I lived in for nearly a year)

    And I must loudly protest your slanderous accusation! Those are not gay porn cels! They’re straight! It’s a guy and girl about to fuck! (the collection was brought to the party mainly for the Desslok cel, and back to the con for the LoGH cels for panel purposes, not that we had much time to show them given the problems with the A/V you outlined)

    The only reason for showing ToLove? (wow, you can post kana- neat!) was that the particular clip we showed had a screamingly obvious Space Battleship Yamato reference (hence its use in “Spot the Reference”), which I can’t believe no one at the panel picked up on!

    Notwithstanding this, it’s not that we have “faith in the anime community”, so much as it is “faith in AWA attendees”. When we have done this panel at other conventions, we have not gotten nearly so high a success rate on answers as we do at AWA. That this bespeaks a higher quality of fans at AWA, or that the years of subtle indoctrination that attendees of this con have already been bathed in have paid off, I don’t know.

  9. Tell me more of this "J&B Super Squad" series of PSAs. I wish to use them at Ohayocon's Anime Hell, in addition to the "Fruity Oaty Bars" commercial easter egg from teh Serenity DVD.

  10. A few things:
    1. Yes, Darius always looks tired….except when he has some wasabi schnopps. He’s definitely cool; been working with him as an AWA Director for years [and I sometimes have a hard time finding him ^^;;; ].

    2. For scheduele changes, we do have a seperate leaflet with the scheduele, and I agree: there should have a leaflet with updates, akin to the Daily Dragon for DragonCon.

    3. Thank you for the podcast and the review for AWA XIV. I do hope you guys will be here for AWA XV.

    Regards,
    Louis Perico
    Director, Gaming Dept., AWA XV

  11. Steve Harrison said…
    also, Waffle House does not exist in Michigan. I was quite impressed with the timeless nature of the place. Not so much the food.

    Sad to hear that. Ironically, there are four locations in the Greater Toledo Area, yet I haven’t gone to one at all.

    Best I’ve ate at close by have been ‘pancake houses’ like these two that are ridiculously close together.
    http://unclejohnsusa.com/index.html
    http://www.originalpancakehouse.com/

  12. As far as the question about enjoyability of con reports goes, I must admit that I absolutely love to listen to them. Though your reports on AWA always infuriate me at the same time, since it sounds like such an awesome con, but there’s no way I’d ever be able to go. Regardless, I do enjoy them.

    And also, I’d totally kill to see Gerald and Clarissa do a doujinshi panel. I get the feeling it would be hilarious were it to happen.

  13. GODDAMN… clarissa is really skinny : / get thick please id like that

    anyway, man that must have been killer, goin into abbys rib place, did he have all his replicas in there?

  14. Yeah, Clarissa, get thick!

    On a more serious note, Waffle house has many locations in Fulton and DeKalb County which are two of the counties in Georgia that went for Kerrey. I think the Walmart vs. Starbucks continuum is the more useful political metric.

    Thank you for the name check. Also, thanks to Rob and Walter for letting me test my DVDs.

    Also, Dave and Jason have been very indulgent of me (and of C.B.) in letting us to panels on whatever we can tie to Japanese popular culture (or even to Japan). For the past few years, I’ve just kind of read a random book, tied it to something Japanese, and off I go with a panel.

    Right now, I’m reading a book on the Hell Fire Clubs, and I’m plotting to tie Enlightenment libertinism into Japanese portrayal of pre 19th Century Europe. I might get distracted by a butterfly, though.

  15. Dear Elizabeth,

    It sounds as though you have the seeds of another great panel there, but I hope fans will show up in a silver button’d coat, velvet small-cloaths, three-corner’d hat, buckled shoes, Ramillies bob wig, and of course, Steenkirk cravat. As you may know, we have the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival every year in Portland, which is itself pretty cool, but I’m always disappointed at the cosplay. You would think, knowing Lovecraft’s tastes and circumstances, that people would arrive either in Georgian attire as above, or dressed as a Depression-era writer, with a battered fedora and patched suit. Instead, it’s like, leather kilts.

    I read “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” on the advice of my managing editor, and was certainly impressed. What was terrifying is that I was otaku enough to question the accuracy of two of his references. Did you catch Diaz’s praise of Urasawa’s MONSTER in Time magazine?

    –C.

  16. That is in fact terrifying. I remember feeling a bit iffy about a Robotech reference, but I don’t remember the full context. I guess I’ll have to reread the book. When you tell me “his favorite character was Raistlin,” you speak volumes and fill me with shame. Fuck you, Diaz!

    Additionally, I was glad I’d read a somewhat sleazy biography of Porfirio Rubirosa a couple of years back because it gave me useful background information for this story.

    On a more elevated note, I find that The Beautiful Struggle by Ta-Nehisi Coates makes an excellent companion read.

    I didn’t catch his comments on Monster, I’ll have to go dig ’em up.

    To the general audience, every freaking one of you should read The Brief, Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao.

  17. Additionally, Melanie Rabon and I are discussing reviving our Rose of Versailles costumes for their ten year anniversaries at AWA XV. At AWA V, we were greeted by many people wondering why we hadn’t dressed as anime characters. I think even if most people didn’t recognize the show, fandom has developed enough sophistication to understand that we probably are from some show.

    The real question is whether CB would consent to wear his Louis XVI costume again.

  18. Dear Elizabeth,

    Some years back, I was guarding the door at the Meet the Guests reception at Fanime Con, when some guy without a ticket came up and said he wanted to meet Kunihiko Ikuhara. As the guy was dressed as Marie Antoinette, I felt that I had no right to bar the way.

    –C.

  19. Nice wrap up of the convention and thanks for the on-air plug. A minor correction though, we don’t really do music on Akihabara Renditions unless it’s important to the anime that we’re discussing or it makes a convenient bump. That said, I’m sure I could go on some nerd-rage fueled rant about how anison doesn’t equal J-Pop and how most “J-Rock” stuff is J-Pop. But, I can’t believe anyone would want to listen to that.

    The switcher boxes were kind of a pain; I ended up not using mine in our panel but instead used the mic against cranked-out laptop speakers since that’s where all the files were.

    Daryl, you may be the Donny Don’t of Anime Writers but the podcasters roundtable made me feel like the true Donny Don’t of Anime Podcasting. I enjoyed sitting on the panel with everyone with what very little I could contribute. I was also taking notes and working on making a better podcast. Hope we can do it again next year!

    Thanks again!

    – Drew Sutton
    Akihabara Renditions: Anime of the Bubble Economy and Industry News-Commentary

    “The Best Podcast You’ve Never Heard Of”

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