okay, here’s the thing. They don’t do the Grading On-Site.
they will accept the submissions, but they still do the grading at their facility, and send it back.
the grading prices are all available at the website.
CGC is considered the industry standard.
I don’t put much stock in graded anything (ESPECIALLY toys), but some people swear by it.
Long Beach Comic-con Oct. 2-4 anyone coming
The Central Canada Comic Con is upcoming Oct 30th-Nov 1st, 2009.
This years guests include Marv Wolfman, Adam West, Peter Mayhew, Alex Milne, Bob Layton, Howard Chaykin, Chris Chuckery, Ronda Pattison and many, many more.
Hope I get to see ya there :china:
Having an amazing time at the NY Anime Fest! The creator of Gundam Yoshiyuki Tomino does indeed hate everybody pretty much lol but DAMN he’s funny! 
Got to play the Bayonetta demo - :tup: - and the biggest highlight for me so far was being among the first to see the Neon Genesis Evangelion 1.0 movie in English! :lovin: I’ll have giant post on everything I saw and did tomorrow with pictures coming soon. Awesome con!
cool.
next week is Mid-Ohio Con.
looking forward to it.
i cannot for the life of me find a thread or mention of new york anime festival that went on this weekend. so i came here.
it was good. some good SF love. and comic-related as well, lots of joker. i think there was a batman on the day i didnt go
I saw a Batman on Saturday, he was in a costume based on the Christian Bale movies. I didn’t get a picture of him though. When I saw him I was on line for one thing or another. He took a picture with a few Jokers for some people off in the distance.
Just came back so omega long post on most of what I saw and did. Mostly gonna talk about the main floor and panels I attended.
I always wait for conventions to pick up a lot of anime I am holding off on because you can usually get them cheaper and sometimes TAX FREE! So things I got that I already seen but wanted to own were the first 2 sets of Gundam 00 and the first 26 episodes of Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple (Funimation confirmed that they will bring out the rest of the series next year, they will bill that as the second season). The only movie I picked up that I never saw before was the third live action Death Note movie ‘L Change The World.’ I enjoyed the other 2 live action flicks along with the Death Note manga and anime so it’s a sure bet I’ll like this one. They were giving the movie at the con, but I figured I’d pick it up since I own the other 2 flicks anyway.
For toys I picked up a Revoltech Saber from Fate/Stay Night and the Capcom produced Fate/Unlimited Codes game available for the PSP! I did look for a Saber Lily figure but no one had one… I DID find a Saber Lily cosplayer! Prior to taking her picture I showed her the back of my PSP which has a big Saber Lily sticker! Ah feeling the Fate love! :lovin:
One dealer had small figures of Devil May Cry 2. These are ones that come in small boxes and you don’t know which figure you get until you open it, you could get 1 of five. I ONLY wanted Dante, there were 2 different versions of Dante so either one would do. The guy behind the counter was really cool since he was going to hang out while I opened all of them until I found Dante so long as I paid while I went. I gave him 10 dollars since it was 5 a pop. I GOT DANTE ON THE FIRST TRY! He was about to give me five back but since he was so cool with letting me do this I let him keep the 10 and just grabbed another toy. When I opened the second box I THOUGHT I GOT THE SECOND DANTE! Of course later when I got home I saw that I got the same Dante twice. His arms were just posed differently in the second box. OH WELL…
Speaking of Dante kinda, Bayonetta was on the show floor and the demo was available for play. It was pretty cool but in some ways I found that… it was VERY SIMILAR TO DMC4. I know this is from the creator of DMC1 - Hideki Kamiya, but why did this keep reminding me of 4? I mean the first level is a castle and there’s an outdoor fountain, you know… JUST LIKE FORTUNA CITY IN DMC4… And that was also featured in DMC4’s demo so… I dunno, I found that odd since Kamiya claims to not have liked 4… Now, the play mechanics are wilder and I’m sure later on down the line there will be some really crazy stuff. Even with all that, it was a lot of fun to play and some of the combos are down right INSANE! I’ve had it reserved for a while now and I’ll be sure to pick it up but mostly because DMC5 prolly won’t be around for a while. :wonder:
Got 2 Random Phoenix Wright shirts. One for Miles Edgeworth and another for the Steel Samurai HA HA! I asked Delray who was at the show if they were planning on bringing more Phoenix Wright manga to the states. They said they would like to and are trying.
Someone put a Marvel vs. Capcom 2 Arcade machine on the main floor. They had mini tournaments like anyone who could win 10 games in a row would get some free stuff! Pretty huge crowd playing whenever I swung by so I didn’t mess with it. Fun to see though! :tup:
Picked up a Gurren Lagann fan art drawing and there was a guy who did freelance work for Hasbro toys and he was selling some AMAZING Transformers drawings! I got a bunch of them. Mainly Autobots from the Transformers movie and Decepticons. One of the ones I got was a white Optimus Prime, you know how Ultra Magnus looks if you don’t put all of that blue and red stuff on him. It was an actual color edit of one of the artist’s Optimus Prime drawings which I thought was really funny! Who says color edits are only for 2D fighters? 
And on to panels -
I attended two different Funimation panels. It was interesting that via downloads on next gen consoles, for series downloads they are beating everyone on PSN and Xbox Live! On Itunes they are like #5 or so. They also said that the Xbox live exclusive anime Ikki Tousen they had on has beaten the pants off of everything with South Park being #2. The announcer said “Take that Kenny!” I also wasn’t aware the Afro Samurai Resurection just won an Emmy and was the first anime to do so… :wow:
Saw a lot of trailers from Funimation too. There’s going to be a new remastered set of Dragon Ball Z which will have the original opening and ending credits from Japan and it will include marathon play like other DBZ sets. Marathon play means you put it in they show you the beginning once, it skips all of the endings, all of the ‘Next Time On Dragon Ball Z’ and ‘Last Time of Dragon Ball Z’ bits and show the ending once at the end to make for much faster viewing time. The trailer for this box set is funny because they have Vegeta’s English voice actor yelling “IT’S OVER 9,000!” to describe the new collection! :nunchuck:
Funimation is also finally bringing out the original Dragon Ball series that started it all. They didn’t bring it out for a long time because Lionsgate had the rights for the first 13 episodes and they didn’t want to start with episode 14. At an anime screening they showed the first 2 episodes and there’s no editing! Goku’s wee-wee is still there along with all of the embarrassing situations he gets into like when he peaks under Bulma’s panties and realizes that Bulma has no balls! See, that was the first time Goku ever saw a girl for those not familiar with DB/DBZ.
They have Sgt. Frog and they showed some of the episodes of that series too at the show. All of the Gundam and Macross references are still there! The show is still really funny in English! :lol:
During one panel they said they received news only an hour ago that they acquired all of Initial D and they will start showing that from the beginning. They also got the rights to X, the TV anime and OVA and they will begin redistributing that too.
For Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood they reunited most of the cast for the new dub. You can watch free subtitled eps at Funimation.com BTW, excellent show and you don’t have to watch the original or know anything about the series to enjoy. They had to make a few changes here and there regarding the English cast. For Alphonse they had to change his voice actor because the kid who was doing his voice hit puberty and he doesn’t quite sound the same. And the actor who played Scar is actually working as a villain on the TV show 24 so they couldn’t get him back. There was one more actor they replaced but I can’t recall who. Everyone else is back. Funimation wants to put Brotherhood on TV just like the original series but nothing’s confirmed yet.
They also said that they have been streaming episodes on One Piece on their website and the shows come out only one hour after airing in Japan, complete with subtitles and everything. It’s one of the things they are doing to combat piracy. Japan is of course way beyond of what we are up to but if you are all caught up with One Piece then that’s a way to go, legally and for free.
For the new movie for Neon Genesis Evangelion 1.0 they got most of the original English cast of Evangelion back. For Gendo they used the Gendo from the previous Evangelion movies. Ayanami has a new actor but it sounded the same to me. Shinji and Masato are exactly the same and everyone else sounds the same and / or similar. Since the changes made for Evangelion 1.0 and 1.01 are minimal, Funimation is just going to release 1.01 on November 17 and not 1.0. As a special treat they did screen Evangelion 1.0 for us so we are the first and ONLY people to see 1.0 in English! :party: The movie is AMAZING but I want to go into more detail later so bear with me. 
Next March Funimation will release 1.11 which has a lot of changes and that version will even have a Blu-Ray! :rock: They still haven’t gotten the rights to the proper sequel that just came out in Japan, 2.0 but chances are they will.
Funimation was asked if the passing of Shinchan’s creator (RIP) had any effect on them. They said for Japan they don’t know but since they are still way behind all of the Japanese episodes it currently doesn’t have any effect on them.
Someone asked if there was a danger of Disney purchasing Funimation lol! They said no since there is already a big company that owns Funimation. The person who asked this also mentioned that Naruto Shippuden is going to air on Disney XD, which was new to me… Wow, not on Cartoon Network anymore… REALLY? Ah well, you can see every single Naruto episode on either Hulu or Naruto.com. Shippuden is all subtitled except for a few eps. Funimation has nothing to do with Naruto, but like I said the Disney XD thing was news to me… WHOA…
I asked Funimation about Sengoku Basara, the awesome anime based on the Capcom game that they licensed. In America, the first game got the VERY LAME name Devil Kings so I wanted to know if the anime would retain the name Sengoku Basara. The answer I got was that they were not sure but chances are it will include ‘Sengoku Basara’ in the title. There’s a chance it may have a subtitle, like ‘Sengoku Basara: Devil Kings.’ It’s kind of up to Capcom though. Capcom did copyright the name ‘Sengoku Basara’ in the US and the third game is coming here in 2010 for the PS3 and Wii, so here’s hoping it will just be called ‘Sengoku Basara’ and that’s it!
Ah, I saw 2 Sengoku Basara cosplayers dressed as Date and Sanada. To get their attention I said one of Date’s very bad ‘ENGRISH’ phrases, “GET YOUR GUNS ON!” :lol: And once I took their picture I said another one of his phrases, “SHOW GUYS THAT!” The Sanada cosplayer said something in Japanese to me that I didn’t quite catch.
Another con, another Robotech panel. I’m always going to Robotech panels at these shows lol! The con was mostly about how Harmony Gold went about distributing Shadow Chronicles when it came out and we saw lots of pictures from the host, Harmony Gold’s Kevin McKeever. One of the images they showed was when they screened the movie in Toronto and Studio Udon was there! I could only make out Omar Dogan in one picture. Omar Dogan did draw the prequel comic book story to Shadow Chronicles heh!
We also saw an actual old Grind House theater, that used to show actual Grind House movies in the 70s! A funny tidbit is that this theater wasn’t able to show the Tarantino and Rodriguez movie Grind House when it was in theaters however. Robotech Shadow Chronicles screened there though.
Last year, Harmony Gold was solely focused on the upcoming live action movie from Warner Bros. so they put Robotech animation on hold. But what they have decided to do is to split things in 2 factions. Half of them will be concerned with the live action movie and the other half would be concerned with more Robotech animation. So there will be more that will continue after Shadow Chronicles, what it will be called, what will it be about, when will it come out and so on I have no idea.
About the new live action movie, at the panel I attended they said they would reveal all of the info about the movie at the next day’s panel. I didn’t attend that panel because I went to see the Neon Genesis Evangelion 1.0 flick instead. So I got nothin’ on any movie news. Just that they are still working on the script.
Kevin was giving out prizes to anyone who asked really good questions. For one person who had a good question, he held up a yellow envelope and asked the audience what was in the envelope. Most people guessed right, that it was a Robotech animation cell. I yelled that it was “THE RIGHTS TO MACROSS!” and everyone in the audience cracked up! Even Kevin McKeever turned red from laughing! Some stranger gave me five lol! 
Kevin just said “You got a big check?” Well to explain this joke to non Robotech fans, there is a huge lawsuit that’s been going on for about a decade in Japan regarding the rights to Macross, between Tatsunoko and Big West. For Harmony Gold to get out of it, they had Robotech separated from Macross a few years ago so they are not involved. Um yeah don’t expect any Macross characters in Tatsunoko vs. Capcom 2… :wonder:
The only question I asked him was if there were any plans for next gen Robotech video games since I liked the original PS2 game. Uh… once you put in all of the codes to unlock everything but I didn’t say that… Seriously how is ONE Veritech fighter supposed to defend the SDF1 what the… PUT THE GOD CODES IN… Anywho… Kevin said that the video game rights for Robotech have gone back to Harmony Gold and they are just waiting for the right people to come along and make a great game. They are also holding off a bit with a new movie coming out too, probably for mass merchandising. Kevin said that you would not believe how many phone calls they get from people who just have a laptop and are living in their mother’s basements that want to make a Robotech video game. :looney:
When asked about his job he said he loved it and one of the cool things was that they screened Transformers 2 in his building before it was in theaters for Harmony Gold. He wasn’t able to watch the movie at the time but the theater is right behind his office. So while he was working he could hear Peter Cullen’s AKA Optimus Prime’s voice all around his office! :tup: Kevin also said that it was cool that it was his job to go see the Transformers movies and G.I. Joe so that part was really sweat!
I attended another panel that compared Japanese video games to American video games. Not really a great panel and not much to note. Except God Hand got a lot of love HELL YEAH! :nunchuck: Oh and two guys who everyone thought was drunk kept yelling out “MEGA MAN!” and had most of the audience cracking up! :looney: One of them stood up to apologize for all of the outbursts and he just said Kanye West’s Beyonce line from the MTV Awards!
And finally I attended 2 Yoshiyuki Tomino panels, THE CREATOR OF GUNDAM!!! Prior to going to these panels, I have heard that Tomino hates everybody and he hates Otaku. IT’S TRUE!!! Well, hate may be a strong word. But DAMN he was SOOOO FUNNY! Some questions and answers from Tomino, to the best of my memory…
Q: What was it like working with Osamu Tezuka on Astro Boy?
A: It’s best I don’t answer that question because it would be hurtful to their company.
Q: Why did you work on ‘The New Translations’ movies for Mobile Suit Z Gundam?
A: People wanted to make money.
Q: Do you know what you’ll be working on next?
A: If I knew what I was working on next, I’d be working on it right now and couldn’t be here.
Q: Can you explain what Char was talking about at the end of Char’s Counter Attack? (I won’t spoil but please watch)
A: What do you think? That’s for the viewer to decide. (Typical non answer we KNEW we were going to get LOL!)
Q: What do you think about Gundam models and toys?
A: If I told you what I really think about Gundam models and toys I’d be eradicated from this business.
DAMN!
It wasn’t all jokes and funny answers. I will get to more serious responses.
For the second Q&A panel I saw it started off with some questions people asked from the internet. He answered 2 online questions and basically said “Forget the online questions. I’m going to answer questions from the people that are actually here.” HELL YEAH! :rock:
At a recent game conference, Tomino said that video games are evil and waste of time. When asked about this, he said he was mostly talking about computer and PC games. He said all of the time people spend playing video games they could dedicate to other things. He also said that he himself has stayed up all night playing video games.
Okay, more serious questions. Someone asked why the protagonists of his shows tend to be young men. He said that when boys are young they tend to be full of ideas and see multiple paths before them. He also feels that adults tend to be set in their ways and not as flexible in their ways of thinking. In many ways Gundam is like children vs. adults.
When asked why he used a lot of civilians fighting in his shows, he felt that this was because civilians had a higher chance of dying than soldiers did.
The question came up what was his favorite Gundam. He didn’t really answer this question, but he said that Victory Gundam (or V Gundam) had the most realistic Gundams since those were the smallest ones, only about 40 feet tall. Tomino said that if Gundams existed in real life they would be about that size. He did say that for Gundam’s 30th Anniversary they did make an actual model of that Gundam and it was 40 feet tall. Though in reality it still seemed too big. :lol:
He couldn’t answer which was his favorite series that he worked on Gundam or otherwise because he is always looking for ways to improve. Whenever he finishes a series he is filled with deep regret of all the things he couldn’t and didn’t do. However at the same time he is proud of all of his works. Tomino said the moment you think that you are happy with something it’s time to stop because you can’t grow creatively; you have to keep striving to get better.
My favorite serious answer that I heard from him was why he didn’t use any Newtypes in Turn A Gundam. His answer was that he felt everyone in the show was on their way to becoming Newtypes and that’s why they lived the way they lived. 
The second Tomino panel closed with us seeing the 4 minute CGI anime he did for Gundam’s 30th Anniversary called something like Ring Gundam as a surprise to us! :wow: It was straight up subtitles, all in Japanese but damn it was pretty awesome. Looked better than the Gundam Igloo series! There was a 16 year old blond goddess loli type in it ROFL and I heard Amuro’s name even though he himself wasn’t in it. And a Gundam space fight of course. Didn’t understand it but it looked really good! Earlier Tomino was asked if there was more of this Ring coming and he said that decision is not up to him really. GREAT WAY TO END THE PANEL! :clapdos:
I’ll talk about all of the anime I saw at the show a bit later. Enough typing for one night. Took lots of pictures but as usual give me a few days of rest and I’ll toss them up fairly soon!
going on saturday
bumblebee.
Did you see the movie Bumblebee cosplayer? That was INSANE! Didn’t get a picture of him though. I was waiting on line for something or another both times I saw him. He stood like seven feet tall and made his own costume. It was based on Bumblebee from the live action Tranformers movies. CRAZY!
If you saw a nun playing MvC2, that was me.
:3
Ah wish I did see someone from SRK there. Except for Dragon_The_Bomb who I tend to hang with at cons but he hasn’t posted here in years… More SRKers come out to the NY Comic Con though and next year the cons will be merged. It’s going to be epic!
Going to talk about all of the anime I saw at the show.
Of course with Yoshiyuki Tomino attending there was plenty of Gundam anime to watch. I saw the movie for Mobile Suit Gundam I which I haven’t seen in a few years, that took me way back. It was subtitled so that’s pretty much how I saw it back in the day, well fan subbed anyway. They also gave Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam I a New Translation: Heir to The Stars which compiled a bunch of scenes from Gundam Zeta with some new footage and songs from GAKT lol! Ah always good to see Amuro and Char again.
I mentioned Sgt. Frog before but it was REALLY FUNNY in English! All of the Gundam and Macross references are still intact! The story is about cute little alien frogs trying to take over the planet Earth and failing miserably! :lol: A hilarious part in the English version was when Fuyuki, one of the humans in the show pushed a button on the Kero Ball (an alien destruction device) and it unleashed the famous anime / manga styled Machine Gun Punch! He called it “The Fist of the North Star button!”
To even see the new Evangelion movie I had to get into the screening room for it really early. It was a small room and once you are in the room they don’t kick you out, you can basically hang there all day if you want to catch something. So this was why I missed the Robotech movie panel. There was no way I was going to catch the Evangelion movie if I didn’t secure my spot in that room really early on. By the time the movie did start the line was super long to get in so people who showed up when the movie began were plum out of luck. Actually, this happened to me at the NY Comic Con earlier this year and I couldn’t get in to see Afro Samurai Resurrection. So this time I was super ready.
On the downside the anime I had to sit through was stuff I already saw. The second episode of Dragon Ball and the first 2 episodes of Eureka Seven. However since Dragon Ball had a proper dub this time and I originally saw the episodes fan subbed it was still a treat for me and I was able to enjoy it. Eureka Seven I straight up saw on Cartoon Network way back and they were giving it in English so same ol’ same ol’ for me. Cartoon Network did fast forward through the opening and ending credits of the show so I got to watch that in full I guess. Heh I did manage to fall asleep during these episodes so there was that lol! Not that it was boring or anything since this is a really cool show and stuff. If you haven’t seen this Sci Fi mecha skate boarding show in the future you SHOULD check it out. It’s just that I normally have irregular sleep patterns on weekends and during conventions it’s 10 times worse… 
Ah well I was wide awake when Neon Genesis Evangelion 1.0 began! :tup:
This new Evangelion movie covered a lot of the original series but everything was improved and looks SO MUCH BETTER! There’s some old footage used but the backgrounds are redone and the shading is up a few notches. The buildings look amazing this time around like they came straight out of the anime movie Akira! It goes through the battles they had with the Angels 4, 5 and 6. The fight with the Fourth Angel is spectacular! It takes place at night and the green portions on Shinji’s mecha light up green to illuminate things. It looks really freaking gorgeous! Oh and you have to see what they have done with the Sixth Angel. Before he was just a big floating two sided pyramid. Now, well he’s still a floating two sided pyramid ROFL but he has some INSANE CGI transformations and… YOU GOTTA SEE IT! :tup:
One thing I read that the Japanese complained about the movie well… You’ll see it in this movie too. PRODUCT PLACEMENT! Misato’s beer is now an actual beer you can go buy! There’s a Pizza Hut sign! You can see bags of Doritos in the flick! :wow: Of course this is much worse in Japan because you can go to a store and buy a bag of Doritos with Evangelion characters on the bag… :wasted:
This is actually happening more and more in anime, seems like it’s a growing trend. For those familiar with Code Geass, in the Japanese version the character CC (AKA C2) eats Pizza Hut Pizza in the show! When they aired Code Geass on Cartoon Network, the Pizza Hut logo was removed from the Pizza boxes. Oh and there’s an ad in Japan where the anime characters of Sengoku Basara (based on the Capcom video game) are eating Pizza Hut Pizza! Never mind that the show takes place during the Warring States Period in Japan and pizza didn’t exist back then! :looney: Yeah if you watch that show it’s over the top and INSANE so I was actually hoping that there would be an episode where they were eating Pizza but OHS WELL… Hey if the Devil May Cry anime ever comes back man I better see Dante eating some Pizza Hut Pizza! They better get working on a ham and potato mix with no olives! And a Strawberry Sundae for dessert naturally! :nunchuck:
LOL well all of the merchandising seems to happen when they visit Misato’s apartment or on random street signs during uneventful moments of the film so it doesn’t distract you from the story. I’m fine with it. Of course if Shinji’s Mech dawns some Air Jordans in the sequel then we are going to have some problems.
The question remains, if you saw the original series if this is worth watching. Now that’s hard to say. Bear in mind that because it is a movie the ending is way more climactic and the battle with the last angel is much more epic then it is in the series. Pretty much everything is the same as the show, things they skipped over are very minor. There is new stuff in the film, but because this is Evangelion well… Kind of hard to tell if the new stuff is… brand spanking new or if they are just showing stuff that happened in the original story only we didn’t get to see it. Hmm this is really hard to explain without me spoiling much… They do show a preview of the next movie and it’s obvious from the word go that things are really going to switch up when that comes around so it may be worth investing in this one. (During the preview Misato even promises ‘More Fan Service!’ just like she did in the series HA HA HA!) I guess it’s still way too early in the series for them to start making super drastic changes. And we already know that the ending for this movie series is going to be different than the endings offered in the TV series or the movie series. If you were happy with either of those endings (I liked them both myself) then… I mean who can say if you will like the ending this time around more or less. Hmm.
Now if you’ve never seen Evangelion before, want to jump into this movie series and you don’t want to sit around and watch a bunch of episodes then this is pretty much right up your alley!
Myself I LOVED this movie and seeing it was definitely one of the highlights of the show for me!
Like I said before, there’s 3 versions of this film in Japan. Funimation is not going to release the version I saw, 1.0 because the difference between 1.0 and 1.01 is really minor so on November 17 they will release 1.01. Next March they will release the third version, 1.11 which will have lots of extra footage and there will be a BLU-RAY VERSION! I’m holding out for that version but only because I already saw 1.0 heh! If not I’d be knocking people over on November 17 to get my copy. STAY AWAY FROM THE ANIME SECTION IN MARCH SANO’S GONNA MOW YOU DOWN TO GET HIS COPY! :annoy: J/K.
Other things I saw at the show were Big Wind-Up which was a sports anime about Baseball. Pretty cute and went really in depth on lots of aspects of Baseball! And I saw Tsubasa, another Clamp show which featured… a bunch of characters I’ve seen before in Card Captor Sakura, Xxxholic and Magic Knight Rayearth only playing different parts… Hey typical Clamp style LOL!
But I really want to talk about seeing the Gurren Lagann movie. Just like the Gundam and Evangelion movies I mentioned this was a recap movie that takes you through the series, it covers the first 15 episodes. It’s not like Evangelion where they did new backgrounds and stuff, the reused the same exact footage from the anime. There is new footage, about 20 minutes and you get a grander ending so it works fine as a movie.
Since they were definitely cramming a lot more episodes than the Evangelion movie was they do skip over some stuff. I mean a song plays and there’s a montage where they meet a lot of the secondary characters in the show! For some characters that’s not a big problem but for Rossiu… IMHO his back-story is really important and plays a huge part in the second half of the series. In theory I suppose when the movie series catches up to the second part of the TV series they can show his part in a flashback. It’s funny because in the first 15 episodes of the series he does play a rather small part so I guess that’s why this movie didn’t focus on him as much.
I want to break away for a bit because when we saw this flick there was a major technical glitch when Kamina and Veral were having a mecha fight! The DVD froze and we saw nothing for about seven minutes! While they sorted this out we all started yelling and having a really fun time! The audience decided to act the rest of the movie out and people started making shadow puppets that you could see on the screen while others started spouting lines from the series to complete the effect! I yelled out a line from a song that always plays during the show that goes “FIGHT THE POWA!” Everybody laughed! Hey second time I cracked people up in the con! 
Ah, after goofing off for a good while the technical issues were resolved and we went right back to where we left off.
Myself I watched all of Gurren Lagann in English on the Syfy channel. I even saw the… I think it was the fourth episode that they crazy edited in its entirety because they gave it at the anime con last year. That I also saw in English. So this was my first time watching Gurren Lagann in Japanese. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good dub but for some reason the comedy was ten times funnier in Japanese! It was also really cool to see some scenes I knew from the TV show on the big screen. When you see stuff like that bigger than you are the crazy stuff seems crazier and the things you laughed at before you wind up laughing at again, similar to my experience watching the Dragon Ball TV ep on a big movie screen I guess! :wgrin:
I gotta say, when the death of you-know-who comes along (spoiler free) it was way more emotional. I don’t know if it was because I was reading subtitles instead of listening so I had a deeper connection to the plot or the Japanese voice actor played it differently, but dang when you know who died I swear there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. I heard lots of sniffing, even from men. And hell most of us knew this was going to happen from watching the show! I hardly cry at anything and even I was tearing up like a little bitch… :crybaby: Suffice it to say this is a big reason why a lot of scenes were not redone. It’s a powerful anime that will take you through the full range of human emotions and there isn’t a lot of things that need to be tweaked. Gurren Lagann really is an anime that you have to experience for yourself.
The story does continue past that death to give us a happier and way more climactic ending so all in all it works as a movie. Again, if you have seen the series it’s still kinda hard for me to recommend it because a lot of things are the same. On the flip side If you’ve never watched the series and would rather watch something that’s only a few hours long instead of 15 episodes long than it’s the way to go! Me I really enjoyed the flick and will probably pick it up whenever it drops. No idea when that will be…
And that’s all I wrote lol! Had an excellent time at the con if I haven’t stressed that enough! :clapdos: I will try to toss up all of the pictures I took on Thursday when I get a free minute! Now I will finally check out that ‘L Change The World’ movie before catching some much needed Zs.
i saw the bumblebee costume. its like he used cheat codes making that thing.
and do you guys think its not normal to cosplay street fighter at a comic con? i know udon will be there and they must be hoping someone from an SF background will be there. i cosplayed ryu at nyaf and we went to kyle heberts panel (voice of english SFIV ryu) and as soon as i walked in i heard him yelling “YEAHHHH! YEAHHH!” haha i thought they were yelling about something unrelated.
im not sure if they will really be merged next year. im in favor of it. but its not confirmed. itd be awesome if they could do NYCC, NYAF, and NYCC+AF in one year. each con would build momentum for the next one
Ha ha that’s funny! Pretty cool too. :tup:
The merging of the 2 cons does indeed seem confirmed. Big Newsarama article on it and the people behind the 2 cons have stressed it enough times if you check their blogs and sites (I posted a link on this thread before). Tickets tend to go on sale fairly early so you will know for certain in a few months anyway or early 2010 at best.
Only thing I’m not sure of is if we will get the entire space like they are saying. No con ever gets the entire space at Javitz Center, except for the Car Show in my experience. With only one real convention center in town, one show takes up one space while the other side is either preparing for another show. Or there’s another show going on in the second space. They are saying that they will get the entire space but I’m just a little doubtful.
The Convention Center is really huge and if they do get the entire space - both floors then that will really be something.
I read it more like the Anime con will be next door. The shows won’t be connected, per say, but you’ll have access to both.
That’s kind of what I meant. My apologies if I didn’t word things correctly.
Yeah I went to NYCC this year and was surprised it was mixed with a real estate expo?? At least when they close the other half off it feels less bootleg.
And even though NYCC was combined with another unrelated expo, wasnt that bigger than NYAF? I had a much better time at NYAF but I just noticed it was pretty much just one floor.
And yeah about Kyle Hebert. I kept bumping into him throughout the con, but he never said anything more to me after the “YEAHHH!!!.” Maybe he thought I was intentionally ignoring him? haha oh god. Or maybe he was nervous I might ask him questions about the game when he was just asked to provide the voice. I decided I would just go up to him to talk abit about voice acting in general, but by then he was too busy and was doing some strange yakuza deal on his phone for like 2 hrs.
Well one thing that was good about NY Anime Festival’s space was that the screening rooms and panels were right next door. Usually you have to walk quite some distance to get to that part and you have to be careful how you go back. Because if you don’t know what you are doing you could very well leave the convention space and you’d have to go back in as if you were just entering the convention center. Which isn’t a giant problem, unless there’s a big crowd waiting to get in…
NYCC had more space. They had part of the third level for gaming and performances. They also had the Ampitheater which would’ve solved the small screening room problem Evangelion had. The room where Tomino had the first Q&A and where they moved Gurren Lagann to is REALLY big though. Probably something else was going on during the Eva movie or something like that. I think that J-Pop singer (voice of Sakura in Tsubasa) had one of her performances there at the time.
NYCC attracts a lot more people though. The NYAF is still pretty crowded in its own right.
Heh, didn’t put 2 and 2 together to realize that Kyle is Ryu’s SF4 voice so never got around to seeing him. If Rueben Langdon who plays Ken, Dante and Chris Redfield showed up chances are I would’ve stalked him like a psycho… 
This sounds pretty cool! At Radio City Music Hall an orchestra is going to play all of the music for the first Lord of the Rings movie while they give the actual movie! I might go, not sure. The cheapest seat is 54 bucks. Prices range from 54 - 200+…