January 30th – February 5th, 2022 Week-in-Review

Hi everyone, it’s that time again – time to wish that I’d written more over the past week. To be honest, I did have quite a bit of other stuff to take care of this week, because we’re getting to the point in the convention cycle for the anime convention I’m a part of where schedules are actually being put together. We spent a good portion of the day yesterday scheduling our panel submissions, which is always a major task – we not only take into account the time restrictions people have when submitting their prospective panels, but we also have to try to predict how popular they might be (so they get into an appropriately-sized panel room) and not schedule too many similar things up against one-another. It’s a lot of work, but it’s also one of my favorite things to do as part of being convention staff, so I suppose it all works out!

I’ve also been doing a lot of knitting and crocheting lately – two things that can be very variable in how mentally taxing they are. I’m working on a shawl currently that has a lot of striping and back-and-forth patterning that must be observed, so it’s not exactly the mindless task that some knitting can be.

I’m still chipping away at a couple of longer-form reviews at the moment, as well as finishing off the last couple of first impressions that are left to do. With that said, going forward I’m going to be putting in some work freshening up the panel material I’ll be putting on for Anime Detour mid-March, so I expect in addition to some reduced work here I may come up with some more ideas for the future.

Below are posts from this past week:

• Winter 2022 First Impressions – Tokyo 24th Ward – I had some misgivings about this sci-fi-flavored tale about characters being provided some knowledge of the future, and since watching the first episode I’ve heard extremely disparate things about it. One thing that my spouse and I have found is that it’s sometimes the most controversial pieces of media – films with a Rotten Tomatoes rating around 50%, for example – that often make for the most interesting viewing experiences. So I’m a little more interested in watching more of the series now.
• Winter 2022 First Impressions – Fantasia Sango: Realm of Legends – This fantasy series, based more around Chinese-style fantasy than Japanese or Western fantasy, seems to have the distinction of being at the same time both extremely straightforward as well as impenetrable. I have an interest in broadening my horizons into more Chinese and Taiwanese animation (it’s helpful that there’s more available now), but the quality of this particular series didn’t draw me in.

That’s all this week for posts. I’m hoping this next week to dive into The Orbital Children; as a huge mega-fan of Iso’s previous work, Dennou Coil, I feel a little ashamed that I didn’t come right home the Friday it was released and watch the entire thing. I think I’m afraid that I may have built it up to some unachievable level in my mind, and I’m afraid of being disappointed in spite of the fact that everything I’ve (accidentally) read about it has been glowing. Ah, well. As long as I get it watched before the convention, I suppose that will have to do.

I hope everyone has had a good week, and as always, feel free to share what you’ve been watching to pass the time in the comments.