Hi all! I’m about a week out from Anime Detour 2024, which is my “home” anime convention in Minneapolis. I’m sure there are those of you who have sought out this post for my panel materials and such, so without further ado they’re linked below:
Shiny New Anime: PowerPoint Presentation (please note: this presentation requires a full version of PowerPoint because of the embedded videos. If you’re using the online viewer, please download the clips separately if you want to see them).
Shiny New Anime: Hand Out
Shiny New Anime: Clips
AMV Contest: YouTube Playlist (note that not all entrants list their AMVs on a streaming site and it’s not an entry requirement for them to do so, and sometimes if they do they will wait to “premiere” them until the conventions they’ve entered them in have occurred. This playlist includes entries that were available when I put the playlist together, which is the majority of them but not all).
Now, read below for more of my thoughts and reactions to this year’s convention!
This was a year that was marked by many transitions. For one, my spouse and I had a baby around the end of last July which meant that my normal anime-watching workflow got disrupted until around January of this year. I did have time to do an October blogging event (of my own making) during which I wrote a post each day, but that wasn’t necessarily a return to regularity but more a way to maintain my own sanity and sense of self and purpose when I felt that those things were particularly suffering. I also didn’t have to watch anything new to create the posts, which is really what allowed me the time to complete them. Now that I’ve got a slightly better handle on parenthood and a more regular schedule (he goes to bed at a regular time!), I feel like a more solid sense of anime-fandom normalcy may be just around the corner. I was also able to carve out some viewing time of my own – lunch breaks at work, pump breaks at work, waking up early to pump and eat breakfast, and right before bed (yes, also pumping – I can’t wait until that’s over and I’m literally counting down the weeks until baby is a year old and I can stop). In any case, aided somewhat by Crunchyroll’s and Netflix’s built in functionality to skip OPs, EDs, and next episode previews, I was able to cram in a lot of anime watching into the limited time I had available, allowing me to assemble the panel I care the most about, Shiny New Anime.
There were also other transitions and challenges happening in addition to just my personal ones. A long-time programming staffer and friend of mine retired from staff and while this obviously doesn’t affect the friendship part of the equation it’s the kind of “change” that tends to affect me emotionally a little more than I think I typically let on (although I completely understand – helping plan an event that entertains close to 9k people and growing is a second job unto itself). We also had some scheduling issues with certain convention events, which I think is a factor of being large enough that we’re on the cusp of outgrowing the one hotel we’re in for the event, but not quite being large enough (with the ability to absorb the expense) to expand into a neighboring one. It sucks having to tell people “no” (it’s a skill that not everyone has) and with more people than ever before approaching us to run panels or put on performances, it’s gotten difficult to work it all out.
Aside from that (and the previously-discussed issue not really being a direct issue for me personally), I had a good year. As I alluded, we reduced our personal panel/event volume from like 13-ish to 6, 3 of which were my AMV Contest stuff (which doesn’t require a lot of work at-con, just some pre-work beforehand and a small amount of talking). 2 of which were games, which also only require some amount of pre-work and then people to play them. And then Shiny New Anime, which requires me to write a hand-out and cut some clips, but I’ve been doing it for so long at this point that actually making the clips doesn’t really require a ton of work (when I’m watching anime, I’ll often make a mental note of scenes that would “make a good clip” so I can return to that point specifically later on).
Shiny New Anime is a panel that I didn’t originate – it was a friend of mine who made it up and I’ve done the panel with a few rotating “crew members” over the years, but I think I’ve been the only constant the entire time and took it over in earnest when I started writing episode 1 reviews somewhere around 2007. It’s my other baby (in addition to my actual human child). I know there were a couple of additional anime recommendation panels at the convention this year, and I’m a little sad that I didn’t get the opportunity to attend them (I always believe that there’s something to learn from others no matter how long you’ve been doing something), partly because I would like to know where I overlap with the panelists – I tend to think that if people with varying tastes all like one particular thing, that particular thing is probably pretty good. Maybe next year.
Anyway, it’s gotten to the point where there are convention friends that I literally only really see immediately before, during, and after that panel every year (or on occasion when I run it at other conventions, but that’s been on hold since I was pregnant) and I really look forward to it. I’ve made a lot of meaningful connections with people that way. I got a comment from someone that she’s been coming to the panel with her dad since she was in the 5th grade, which is humbling. I don’t think I really do anything that special other than try to maintain a positive atmosphere, pick out anime series that might be less familiar to folks, and show some good/fun clips, but if I can continue things this way for a long time, I’ll be happy.
Other than that, I made it to the dealer’s room and artist alley, which are basic convention requirements for me to have a good time (I didn’t buy anything in the former, but bought several things in the latter). It’s interesting to gauge what’s considered popular in fandom from these two places. The dealer’s room nowadays is mostly stuff that I think are considered “safe bets” – Jujutsu Kaisen, various Shounen Jump properties, Sailor Moon, some Gundam, etc. – so not necessarily stuff I really need but I might be able to find one or two things I’m interested in if I’m really dedicated to looking (it was kind of crowded and I only went in once this year, so not much time to poke around). Artist alley tends to have a few more things I’m interested, because while the artists there are still going to have a lot of safe bets (nowadays some artists treat it as a job so they need to be able to have some predictable sales) they also tend to have items from their own personal fandoms and things that are a little bit “second-tier” as far as popularity goes. I was happy to purchase a couple of Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury charms, a Ranking of Kings charm, a cute beret with a frog and mushrooms on it (no fandom but it was cute) and some Mario and Animal Crossing earrings. A friend of mine was tabling and she even had some Yami no Matsuei art (I’ve put a moratorium on buying prints because we don’t have the wall space for the ones we already have, or otherwise I might have bought one).
Some other things that brought me joy – another member of programming staff brought back the convention’s charity auction in a limited capacity this year. The convention previously had an auction (this was some time pre-COVID) that brought it something like $30K every year, but it got dropped after obtaining donated auction material got to be more difficult. If I recall correctly, there was one person heading the effort and she rightfully elected to stop doing it because it was quite a bit of work. This year we were able to pull together some donations and get some autographs from the attending guests with one of our programming staffers acting as MC. I’m hoping that it will become its own thing again, but it will take more resources to run it than Programming really has at the moment (it used to be its own department).
The only other thing that kind of frustrated me this year, and it’s nothing new, is that people (meaning staff people) don’t seem to know that I run the AMV contest. I tend to think I run it decently, we get a lot of excellent entries, and I put together the finalist show myself every year. I’ve been doing it for quite a while and I think people like going to it. But we also have a long-time AMV guest (who is a great person who does a lot of great programming for us and we really appreciate him, don’t get me wrong) but people still assume that he does the contest. And it bums me out! But I don’t want to come across as salty or ungrateful, so I just deal with it on a year-by-year basis.
So yeah, as usual there were ups and downs, but I had a good time. It was the first time we’ve been away from our baby for more than a few hours (he was happily staying with local relatives for the weekend and judging by updates and photos he was having a great time) and it was nice to just feel like myself for a little bit. It gave me a chance to miss him and look forward to seeing him again (not that I don’t at other times, but… I’m tired, y’all).
Now that the madness of convention prep is in the rear-view, I’m hoping to use some of my time to write up thoughts on some of the many series that I watched (and to watch some more of the shows and movies I couldn’t get around to in time), so look forward to that.