Aqua and Terra are confusing the non-otaku!
So what is an anime and manga nerd doing at a convention focusing on mostly western comics and pop culture? Well, the short and simple answer is that while anime and manga are a LARGE part of my nerd diet, I do read western comics, watch movies that aren’t anime and play video games that are not made by NISA. I’m sure a lot of us do! But what is interesting to the otaku community is that many of the companies that publish and release the content we crave are making a very big effort to have their part of the spotlight that is San Diego Comic-Con. And they would be silly not to! With an estimated annual attendance of one hundred and thirty thousand, twice that of AX this year, it makes sense. This year several panels were presented by Viz, Funimation, Kodansha USA, Yen Press and Udon Publishing to name a few. Below, I’ll give a run down of what I saw heard and experienced at this “small nerd city” over the course of four days that relates to manga, anime and video games. I will apologize now for the lack of photos. My camera was not behaving and I had to use my iPhone to take many of my photos during the weekend.
Thursday
After surviving the terror that was Preview Night (I still see crazed Star Wars fans when I close my eyes), I finally made it to my first panel – the VIZ Media Panel. Aside from the glassy-eyed looks from other reporters covering the same panel, everyone else seemed rather excited to be there and there were quiet a number of One Piece and Naruto fans in attendance awaiting news of their favorite series. Kicking off the event, we were treated to a fairly quick run down of upcoming titles, most of them were announced at Anime Expo. But for those who missed the news:
Magi – The Labrynth of Magic
Voice Over
Sweet Rein
Midnight Secretary
Then representatives of Viz went over some of the print acquisitions (that were also announced at AX) including their recent acquisition of the The Art of Princess Mononoke as well as the Hayao Miyazaki book, Starting Point and Turning Point.
Finally getting to the Comic-Con exclusive announcements, first up was All You Need Is Kill, an adaptation of the Hiroshi Sakurazaka sci-fi novel that will be illustrated by Lee Ferguson and adapted to graphic novel form by Nick Marnatas. The original material is the inspiration behind the upcoming big budget science fiction film called Edge of Tomorrow, which is due out next summer. Next up, Viz announced they would be releasing Battle Royale by Koushun Takami. This exciting release includes an all-new cover illustration and all new translation. This will be released simultaneously with The Battle Royale Slam Book, which will include a selection of essays about Battle Royale.
Last and not least, Viz representatives talked about their digital manga division. Those who like reading their manga in digital form will be happy to know that Bleach, Psyren and Blue Exorcist are available for e-readers as well as classics like Case Closed. Finally, everyone in attendance was encouraged to check out the Weekly Shonen Jump anthology that readers can subscribe to through most e-reader services as well as the VIZ application. This anthology is available to those outside of Japan, the same day they are released in Japan.
Finishing up the Viz Media panel, I slowly made my way down the hall to a room with a man in a mask and a very polite woman sitting next to him. Somehow, I knew I was in the right place.
Yup, totally normal panel. Totally.
I had arrived at the Kodansha Comics panel which had many excited fans in attendance! Attack on Titan, Sailor Moon of course were on tap but so much more. Oh so much more. Like Dallas Middaugh (Random House, who publishes Kodansha in the US) and Kana Koide (who oversees Kodansha imprint in the US.). For those of you who don’t follow me on Twitter (and you should) this was one of three panels that I was actually able to keep up and live tweet. But I’ll go over the highlights just for you:
- Attack on Titan is going to be published every month, starting in August! Middaugh told a great story about when Attack on Titan first launched in the US, it didn’t do so well here; in fact, stores had started to send unsold copies of the series back to the publisher. And then the anime debuted on Crunchyroll. That boosted sales so much that Kodansha is going back to print with the first volumes and plan to release new volumes every month, starting in August.
- Haru Yoshida’s My Little Monster is coming to the US starting March 2014, much to the cheers of many manga fans I know and the internet in general. Hiro Mashima’s Monster Soul will be released in the US in March 2014. xxxHolic: Rei will be available later this year and was a new announcement at the SDCC panel. Tsubasa and xxxHolic will be coming to the US in 3-in-1 format and will be available Summer 2014.
- And of course, you can’t have a Kodansha panel without talking about Sailor Moon. While taking attendee questions, many people commented on the unfortunate translation errors that were seen in this current release of Sailor Moon. It seemed as those comments and letters have really connected with the staff at Kodansha because they will be reprinting the earlier editions of the manga with corrections later this year. In other Sailor Moon news – we will be receiving an Sailor Moon Art Book. There still isn’t a confirmed release date, but they hope to have it ready for a 2014 release. On the rumor that there will be bonus material for the art book Middaugh didn’t give up much in his response, “I will confirm the rumor and that’s all I can say.” Middaugh himself has seen some of the early work for the new cover and says “it’s beautiful, from what I’ve seen.”
Also expect re-releases of many titles for e-readers. Unfortunately this does not include Sailor Moon. Kodansha is abandoning it’s own application in favor of just releasing through more streamlined channels like Amazon’s Kindle store and iTunes.
People then begged for more pictures of Middaugh in the Titan mask and, like a good sport, he obliged. I dragged myself through the exhibit’s hall one last time before heading to the bar and a hot tub. (I’m old, OK!?)
Friday
Bright eyed and semi bushy tailed, I woke up on Friday knowing that this would be a busy day and I should get some coffee in me and such before everyone else. Of course, it seemed that everyone else had my idea and I was greeted to a 30-person deep line for Starbucks. Which I relented on and dragged myself straight to the convention center. First up on my schedule? Viz Anime featuring Neon Alley. I hate to sound like I was bored but…well, I was. Bleach and Naruto were, of course, talked about but mostly the panel seemed to serve as a platform for gathering interest and support for Neon Alley - Viz’s foray into online streaming. Already confirmed for the PS3 and Playstation Network, Viz announced that it will also be coming to PC and Mac computers.
I quietly left the room, hoping to make it into the Future of Fighting Games Panel but unfortunately, everyone else beat me to it. Luckily, I was able to make it to the Street Fighter Panel. Jumping right in, Capcom started talking Ultra Street Fighter IV. I know what you’re thinking – “What? Another one?!” But I have to admit that they made it really enticing. One of the best announcements of the panel – If you already own Street Fighter IV, you can digitally upgrade to the Ultra edition for $14.99. If you haven’t bought the game or you want the disc, it will be priced around $40. The 4 new characters were confirmed at EVO Championship series the previous week. Three of the characters are not new to the Street Fighter franchise, the fourth characters has yet to be revealed. **insert mysterious sounds** They then jumped into an exclusive look at the Japanese Street Fighter Ultra IV trailer, showcasing the new characters as well as some scenes from the 25th Anniversary tournament that was held last year. We then moved into a very fun “Mr. and Ms. Street Fighter Pageant” which was pretty fun to watch. The costumes and the presentation were just phenomenal! If you are interested in checking out the panel itself as well as the pageant, you can view the panel at Gamespot.
So I admit that sometimes I think I’m superhuman…and can live without food. For all those fans of UDON Press (including myself), I apologize because I missed their panel (this is why a certain editor needs to send another writer with me next year. hehehe.). I returned from scarfing down overpriced hotel food to find out that the Yen Press Panel had been cancelled which I was rather bummed about as I expected some sneak peeks into the Kingdom Hearts manga reprints but alas – it was not meant to be.
Saturday
Somehow this was already a pretty light day on my work schedule so I spent most of my time waiting in line to play PlayStation 4 games and stalking respectfully admiring my comic book heroes. Unfortunately, I misjudged how long it would take someone to make iced coffee and thus was unable to get into the Weekly Shonen Jump Podcast Recording: Live Recording panel, which made me agitated that it was in such a small room and even more so at the barista. I walked myself through my “thou shalt not murder a barista” meditation for most of the day, and made my way to The Best and Worst Manga of 2013. This panel was hosted by several industry journalists, including Deb Aoki, who covered manga for About.com (now has her new site Manga Comics Manga). Attendees consisted of manga fans, the curious, and press people like myself who were just eager to hear someone else give their opinion on what is worth reading. Interestingly enough, I agreed with most of their picks except some of their “worst manga” picks seemed kinda harsh. Bleach was mentioned in the “worst” group and while I agree that sometimes rabid fandoms are annoying, more people buying manga usually means more manga being put out for us to read which is a good thing. Attack on Titan was also listed in the “worst” group and I very much disagreed with that pick. Their list of manga that they wish would be licensed in the US – Silver Spoon, What Did You Eat Yesterday?, Morning Attack and Chihayafuru – all seemed to fall in line with the opinions of those attending the panel. To look at the panel’s list of best and worst manga, you can find it here. If you’re interested in listening to the panel, you can find a full recording here.
Sunday
So I somehow made it to the final day of Comic-Con. Hungover Tired and weary, I made my way to the convention center for one last panel that was worth any pain I was in – Ducktales: Remastered.
I am of a certain age, some where between thirty-three and thirty-two years old. So if you know anything about video game history, I was very much the target demographic when the original Ducktales came out. I lived, breathed and dreamed just about everything Disney Afternoon (a cartoon back on Disney, back when they showed good cartoons.) DuckTales was special in that it was the first game of it’s kind to incorporate so much of the creative force of a company like Disney and put it into digital form – which I was oblivious to as a child. What made it special for me was how fracking hard it was. It was “call the special two dollar a minute hotline for help” kind of hard. And it was the first game that I played all the way through with my brother.
So entering the panel, many in the room were tired and exhausted but you could tell that everyone there was so excited. Starting out the panel like they did at PAX East a few months earlier, they cued up the promo trailer for an all inclusive sing-a-long and somehow everyone in the room remembered all the words. Once the song was done, they got down to the details about recreating the game, starting with the redesign of the Scrooge McDuck sprite that was in the original game. Listening to the engineering and graphics people talk about the trouble of moving from an eight byte character to a more fully rendered character made me really appreciate the work that they did – which consisted many forms of movement and graphic analysis but also just walking through the halls of Wayforward (the studio producing the game) with a cane, which we were treated to a video of that as well. Moving on, the music of the original game has been loving remixed and recreated by the team at Wayforward including the cult favorite – “Moon Theme.” For those of you have haven’t heard the live rendition of this song that was performed by Jake Kaufman of Wayforward, please do yourself a favor and hear it now. You can find a link to the performance here and a link to the full panel here.
OK, so I’ll admit that I MAY have spent way too much time in the money pit.
Great costume AND she was giving out free cards.
Final Thoughts
The relationship between anime culture and San Diego Comic Con has always been temped at best. This changes as trends and acceptance of Asian pop culture exports into “mainstream” culture waxes and wanes in popularity. Judging from the big displays from Viz, FUNimation and Capcom – the anime, manga and gaming industries are as eager as ever to be embraced by those of us who live on this side of the world. Similarly, gauging the panels put on by industry insiders and major companies themselves, I would say that the attendees of SDCC are quickly warming up to the idea these companies being a part of a huge convention that is focused on western pop culture as many of these panels were packed and turning people away. And as someone who works on multiple sides of pop culture, I feel that the continued collaboration and support between East and West (like Marvel and Japanese companies like Madhouse in 2010) can only strengthen the stories and the characters that all of us love. At the end of the day, we are all drawn to these stories because they resonate with us. This holds true for whatever it is your drawn to, no matter what language that story is written. It may sound “hokey” but it’s these shared passions and excitement that I feel help us bridge the gap and bring us closer together and nothing displays that more than walking around and seeing the smiles of everyone – anime fans, manga fans, gamers and comic book nerds alike – during San Diego Comic-Con.
