My final write up of NYCC 2013 is now about everything else that I did at the convention. You know, the other panels I went to, the dealers room, the artist alley…etc. This may be positive or negative.
Remaining Panels
(+) Light Novel to Anime/Manga Panel
I give this a + despite the fact that this panel was probably about as simplistic as a panel about LN to Anime/Manga could be (or maybe I think it could have been more). The Representative Director & Senior Managing Director of Kadokawa, Shinichiro Inoue basically just talked about LNs, what they are, and highlighted some well known examples (Gundam, Slayers, Record of Lodoss War, Haruhi Suzumiya, Sword Art Online). What you should probably glean from it:
- Light Novels are like YA Fiction, and considered along the same lines as Twilight, Hunger Games, and Divergent.
- Target audience is for Teenagers & people in their 20′s (hence why some LN’s seem a bit…childish)
- LN’s are supposed to be for entertainment; general genres are YA, Mystery, Sci-Fi, and Fantasy, with a mix of one, or two, or all.
- LN’s half existed back in the Heian/Edo Period of Japan, but were known as Koudan, a style of Japanese storytelling.
- Generally LN’s go from one form of media to another. Ex: Slayers: Went from LN to anime to manga to a videogame.
- One thing that did surprise me was how creative they were in trying to advertise the Haruhi Suzumiya series…as in, they ended up using people in their commercials…and even made it about as close to the series as possible. I don’t think they do this that often anymore, so, as Inoue said, they tried to be a bit more creative back then.
- Time for a bit of depression. Now, I took these numbers that these were from Kadokawa’s line, and not any other company, and I already gathered this as a trend anyways. But these numbers are still depressing:
From 2011 to 2013 for LN: 42, 40, and 56%
From 2011 to 2013 for Comics: 50, 40, and 33%
From 2011 to 2013 for Novels: 0, 20, and 11%
- This is the rate of what medium gets turned into an anime. As you can tell, LN’s went way up in 2013, and generally are adapted into anime well more than a novel does. Comics turned into anime has gone down since 2011. Again, this is from Kadokawa’s line, and I don’t know if their manga line is quite as strong as, say, Kodansha’s, but what I can gather from this is that it’s apparently easier to turn a LN into an anime because it’s easier entertainment.
- The general span for a LN to be turned into an anime is 3 yrs. At that point there’s 7 to 8 novels in the series.
- Now yeah, I had two questions I wanted to ask. The first was about how much of the LN an anime studio tends to adapt, as I’ve seen most throw around they only adapt the first volume, or generally the first volume of a LN, then the rest is kind of fillerish. I couldn’t unfortunately think of the best way to word it.
- Second question was to ask what’s with the obscenely long LN titles that Japan keeps churning out there. I didn’t get to ask this question during the Q & A, but I did get the answer when it was over, and Inoue basically said what I (and probably you) figured: it’s to attract the reader’s attention. But…he admits he thinks it’s starting to bore the readers. This might be a sign that this trend will die down in the near future. And…I hope it does!
- So yeah, I wish I could have worded the anime studio to LN a bit better, and maybe some other information could have been shared. But this was still probably the best panel I went to at NYCC, since I still learned a decent amount.
(-) Masters of Animanga/Wikia Live Panel
Masao Maruyama. So cool.
- You’d think I’d just give this a + based on three things: one, that Kazuo Koike announced he is working on a new manga series (which we now know as Deku~ BLOCKHEAD~); two, Masao Maruyama, the creator of Mappa and formerly oversaw a ton of stuff at Madhouse, admitted publicly that he is a pedophile; and three, that despite what we thought might have been the biggest problem in getting The Dreaming Machine (money), that isn’t the problem…it’s finding a Director capable of handling Satoshi Kon’s final project. Maruyama said that as long as he is alive, The Dreaming Machine will be finished. That alone should be excellent news, and along with the other two (ok maybe not the pedo part, that was a joke), this should be a slam dunk excellent panel. Buttt…
- As it turned out, I’m not very interested in the overall Animanga Wikia Live project. I mean, it seems to have some cool JP people helping out (along with Masao and Koike, the creator of Afro Samurai, Takashi Okazaki was there, and Shinichi Hiremoto, who’s worked on some Dark Horse comics, was there as well), but the idea of having a lot of people write a paragraph of a story online didn’t exactly appeal to me. I guess I needed to research a bit more before heading to the panel, because the Q & A was the only good part for me. They showed a trailer of the Wikia Live stories, then the moderator (Eric Morel) asked his questions, and some things were interesting, like how working on this type of story was different since you’re writing with a bunch of other people, but overall, I’ll probably just remember the top three things I pointed out.
- By the way, in 30 days, there were 528 contributors and at that point the word count was over 66,000 words. I guess that’s not too bad.
- Just one haunting reminder for those who want to be a manga artist: you have to be fluent in Japanese. I think that bears repeating.
Everything Else
(+) Meeting people
You’d think with such a large crowd, panels, getting lunch, etc, that there’d be no time to see and hang out with people you know. Well, so much for that, since I ran into a ton of people I’ve…seen before and already know. Ended up meeting Linda (@Animemiz), Tony (@MangaTherapy), Sean (@toukochan) Cassian (@Cassian_Eaves), Deb (@debaoki) Judge (@Moarpowah), and Delf (@AddictedtoRamen). Ended up meeting new people, like Charlene (@tristencitrine) and Xan (@Spiraken). I even got to see L.C again! At some point, talks were had, embarrassment ensued (at Linda’s expense), and good times were had for the most part. Still missed out on a few people, and as always, talked to people like Ed Chavez, Scott McGuire, Ben Applegate, etc, so just seeing some familiar people can always make a down convention uplifting.
(-) Artist Alley
Way, way too far for me to go…and unlike last year where Toshio Maeda was there, didn’t seem to have anyone of consequence. Or maybe I just got wrapped up in other events to stalk the entire Artist Alley. I did go through two sections, meant to go to the last few rows, never did. But there’s a lot of pro artists there, and none to do with what I’m mostly interested in.
(+) Dealers Room
An obvious negative is the crowd, and one more negative needs to be thrown out to a dealer who, shockingly, did not bring their stack of cheap manga to the convention. Was told they didn’t do all that well at NYCC, and was too much effort to bring them, so they only brought anime DVDs.
Well, It’s Not Like I Needed To Add To My Bookshelf Or Anything!!!
But aside from that, can’t really complain about the dealers room since I ended up buying some stuff/getting free stuff. Generally this won’t ever be a problem. Honest.
(+) Food
I didn’t have to buy a single ounce of food inside the convention center. I don’t know about you, but I think that counts as a win in my book.
Lastly, The Swag
Yeah, I know you want to know exactly what I ended up getting at the con. Well there you go. Lots of stuff. Unfortunately no anime this time (yeah, I know, I know). But maybe next year. Let’s go over what I got:
- Free: 2 Attack on Titan Posters (Funimation booth)
- Paid: Sherlock Bones Vol 1 (Kodansha)
- Free: 1 Attack on Titan Vol 1 poster (Kodansha)
- Paid: Attack on Titan Vol 7 & Vol 8 (Kodansha)
- Free: 2 Vinland Saga posters (Yeah, I took 2 by accident, but oh well/Kodansha)
- Paid: Summer Wars, Part 1 (Vertical)
- Free: 1 One Piece Strong World Poster (Funimation)
- Paid: Wolfsmund Vol 2 (Vertical/Expect a review of it next week)
- Free: Neon Alley T-Shirt (Viz Panel)
- Free: Daisuki T-Shirt (Daisuki Panel)
- Free: Ranma 1/2 Poster (Viz Booth)
- Free: Fairy Tail movie poster (Funimation)
- Free: Gundam UC Poster (Daisuki)
So yeah, I think that about wraps up what I have to say about NYCC. I will work on one more NYCC specific Reference Resource Mondays, but that’ll be it from me. Let’s hope NYCC 2014 is superior to NYCC 2013 in every single way.
This is where I have my discs, table, and TV at. Just something to look up to while I’m doing stuff!
