ACEN 2019!

[dorchadas]

This is the first time I've gone to a con on Thursday in over a decade, since the last time I went to Ohayocon. But Anime Chicago was having one of their monthly mixers at the hotel where the con was taking place, and I really didn't want to head out all the way to Rosemont on a Thursday night, hang out, go back home, then turn around and go back to the hotel the next morning. I had kind of resigned myself to it when RogueNire reached out and said I was welcome to stay Thursday night with her and zbrund in their friends' room, so I prepped for a long con weekend.

I also took Monday off. Going to need extra recovery time.

Thursday

Most of the day was work, obviously, but I left a little early to get home so I could eat a bowl of leftover veggie gyūdon, throw the last couple of things into my mostly-packed bags, and then called a Lyft to go to the hotel. The first Lyft wasn't there when I went down to the street and then charged me a no-show fee, so I called another one and contested the fee, and that one showed up with no issues.

Miraculously, I had managed to reserve a room in the Hyatt this year, and the room I was staying in was in the Hyatt too, so after I arrived I took my bags over, dropped them off with RogueNire, zbrund, and their friends, and stayed to chat a bit. One of the friends put on a meme playlist on Spotify, including classic memes like Tunak Tunak Tun, though that somewhat backfired when I said that I remembered listening to it after I graduated university and the friend said he heard it in middle school. When everyone started to order pizza, since I had already eaten dinner, I said goodbye and walked down to Red Bar to meet up with the Anime Chicago crowd.

But it didn’t work, because on the way in I was intercepted by redpikachu! She, timothy.beier, johanna.jones.127, shawn.labrassuer, AliceTheAllStar, and some others were all there, though I only got to chat with them briefly before they all left to find something to eat. Except for johanna.jones.127, who stayed and chatted with me as I ordered a drink. She was working for the com this year, driving guests around to and from food and Chicago attractions for the out-of-town guests, so we talked about that for a bit before I continued my original plan and she left to go see if the con had more work for her to do.

The Anime Chicago people were just on the other side of the bar, so I walked over and spacedragon immediately complimented me on my shirt and then Tatsuhiro_Sato gave up his seat for me (because he needed to get another beer). I sat down and listened to a conversation with two people who spoke Spanish about how Spanish dubs of anime were so much more emotional than any English dubs that weren't very recent, and had a conversation where I told spacedragon to watch Shoujo Kageki ⭐️ Revue Starlight and she told me she had gotten into Twelve Kingdoms now that it had been relicensed and rereleased. From what she said, it sounds right up my alley--political intrigue and the question of what divine right of kings means in a world where spirits literally choose the next king.

One of the new attendees also told me that her friend had been super excited to meet me, but had to stay home due to an exam on Friday.

I left at 9:30 so I could go collect my registration bag (with schedule, lanyard, etc) and when I got there, the reg hall was the emptiest I've ever seen it:

They had Shoujo Kageki ⭐️ Revue Starlight lanyards, so I made sure to grab one and then went back to Red Bar. To my surprise, people were still there when I arrived though they left soon afterwards, and I went back to RogueNire and zbrund's room. johanna.jones.127 and emojimjitsu were there too, so we all sat and chatted, I gave up some of my snacks:

johanna.jones.127: "I can't eat your special Japanese snacks."
Me: "Oh, I’m not going to eat those."

And eventually some people broke away to go to dinner, some people left for the Camp ACEN PJ Jamboree event, and I sat in the hotel lobby and people-watched for a while.

After about forty-five minutes, I decided I had enough and went down to the PJ Jamboree. When I showed up, about the half the room was playing hot potato with a roll of toilet paper and the other half was acting as the audience. I watched it, chatted with one of the people from the room, frowned slightly at the man who walked by with 東京 Tōkyō tattooed on his neck, and grinned when they started playing terrorcore and asking the players to pass on the beat. I left after the winners were declared and they switched to a jan-ken tournament. I was the first one back to the room but only by about two minutes. Pretty soon everyone showed up, and they pulled out some extras bedding for me. I wrapped myself in a blanket, put my head on a pillow, and fell asleep.

Friday

I didn’t sleep very well, not because I was sleeping on the floor, but because I was cold. When I woke up at 9 a.m., everyone was gone, so to kill time (and fill my stomach) I went down to the breakfast buffet. After filling up on hash browns, eggs, fruit, and toast, and talking to bret.thomas.391 when he unexpectedly showed up, I went to check in, since I had paid for 10 a.m. check in before RogueNire had offered me a room, but they told me the room wasn’t ready yet and that they would email me when it was, so I went back to my crash room and this time everyone was there. While people got their cosplays ready, we talked about mental health, the merit badges they were offering as part of the Camp ACEN theme, and the world premiere of the new Made In Abyss movie. I took a shower and when I got out my room was ready, so I thanked everyone for putting me up and took a picture of RogueNire and zbrund’s Kiki’s Delivery Service cosplay:

My room was ready, and they even removed the early check-in fee I had paid. After I dropped off my luggage, I went back downstairs, past a group of women in maid uniforms practicing a dance routine in the lobby (anime! ) and through the walkway to the convention center behind an NCR Ranger listening to the soothing sounds of Mr. New Vegas. I still had half an hour before the panel I wanted to attend, but getting there took some time and I didn't want to be late, so I didn't see much. A painting inspired by the song Lost Painting from Castlevania: Symphony of the Night by an artist called Pui Che, and I walked past a woman who gasped and exclaimed:

"The elven caravan!"

...but I’m pretty sure it was just a coincidence.

I left the hall, stopping to grab a picture of Link in the Breath of the Wild Sheikah armor:

And went to the panel rooms. They had been moved this year, and most of them were downstairs. I got in line for Room 8, entered, sat down, and then the panel started..."Saddest Moments in Anime," which was not the one I had been looking for! I left and checked the board outside and saw that "Great Graphic Novels You Should Be Reading" had been moved to Saturday, so I left and went back to the dealer's room.

I’m not really the target audience for most anime swag. I don't collect figurines, the only plushes I really like are Kirby ones, most of these series people are selling loot for I’ve never heard of, reading manga in English feels like cheating at this point, my walls don't have any more space for art and I can't even hang all the art that I have, I’m not a raver or a cybergoth nor do I wear kilts...the list goes on. But I do like seeing other people's excitement and window shopping. I remember the first dealer's room I went to, at ACEN 2005, and how unbelievable it all seemed then. And the Artist's Alley is still a lot of fun, so that's where I went next.

I looked for Kirby and mostly found moe, which doesn't really surprise me. Artists know what people want to buy. And like I said, I don't have that much room left on my walls. But when I walked by one booth and saw a print of this art and I burst out laughing, I knew I had to get it. A weapon to surpass Metal Gear:

I left through the other end of the Artists Alley and found that was where all the cosplay photo spaces and the video gaming area, so I grabbed a quick game of Donkey Kong and lost two lives because I mistimed a jump on the penultimate ginger, then I left. I’m pretty sure I saw staina.x just taking off a VR rig when I left, but not positive, so I didn't say anything. I went back to my room and scarfed down a quick meal of nuts, chocolate, cheese, and an energy bar--not bad, considering it was all stuff I already had at home--and then after a brief moment to rest, went downstairs to check for a line on the next event.

Also, my room was right outside the stairwell on the turret that has the skyway that connects the convention center and the other hotels. It's probably the most convenient place it could be.

There was a line, but not a long one, so I got in line and waited. After a few minutes they left us in to “JCC: Chanoyu Tea Ceremony,” set up like a presentation rather than a chakai. That was fine—I drink matcha weekly and I’ve been to multiple chakai in Japan, but I don’t actually know all that much about the way that the tea ceremony is conducted. I just drink it.

The presenter was named Asami Iba, an employee of the Japan Foundation whose job it was to introduce foreigners to Japanese culture. After a brief bio, she went into the point of the tea ceremony—hospitality and “meditation,” in the sense of being meditative, not in the sense of clearing one’s mind, and said that black tea is fermented while green tea is not, and green tea is thought to cool the body while black tea is thought to warm it. She also said that the reason the entrance to the room was so small was so that the samurai couldn’t bring their weapons into the tea room, since it was supposed to be a place of harmony and contemplation.

After committing a bit of 飯テロ (meshi tero, “Showing people pictures of delicious food when they’re hungry”) with pictures of Japanese traditional snacks, she passed out some dorayaki she bought from Mitsuwa and then started making matcha.

The presentation was a little rough, but English was her third (or possibly fourth) language, which excuses everything. She did refer to everything with the direct literal translation (和菓子 wagashi was always “Japanese sweets”), but that is probably the best path to take with most audiences that aren’t full of men of culture. 🎎

I ended up talking to a couple people in line, and afterwards I spent half an hour chatting about learning Japanese. One of the people was also studying it, though entirely on his own, and one wanted to start translating dōjinshi but didn’t even know kana yet. We talked him out of relying on rōmaji and gave him some resources for learning Japanese. He also got very interested in my Siri being in Japanese, so I demonstrated it for him:

Other Japanese learner: "I heard you use 'kure.' Isn’t that kind of, condescending, a bit?"
Me: "It’s a machine, man. You’ve got to show them their place."

After a brief stop off at my room, I went back to the dealers' room/panel area. I wandered around for a while, people-watching and listening to people's conversations, which weren't always very uplifting:

Him: "Have you showered today?"
Her: "I showered the other day."

I briefly stopped by redpikachu's booth, but only had a moment to chat about her new job and learning Japanese before I had to leave and make it to the next panel.

I was late, but "The Impact of Overseas Fans in Japan" started late, so that worked out. The presenter introduced himself as Dan Kagemitsu, a Japanese-English translator who was born and raised in Japan, then jumped into a history lesson. Most Japanese media imported back starting in the sixties were imported because it was cheap, which abated as people started to appreciate Japanese media for its own distinctive qualities later. He brought up the con scene and how at Japanese trade shows like Niconico Chōkaigi, NTT [the telephone company) and the LDP (the political party) will set up booths there to advertise. Japanese fan cons like Comikket are more focused on selling fan works, because Japanese fans don't need to travel far or organize special meetups to find each other--they can meet at high school, or bars, or whatever. The focus is more on people's own spin on well-known properties rather than just finding other people who are also interested, which is apparently common in much of East Asia.

After that, he transitioned into the impact of foreign fans. Tourism is a major focus--tourism has quadrupled just since I last lived in Japan (2008-2011), and it's only going up. The government is heavily promoting it now that they've finally gotten over their worries about all the gaijin:

Dan Kagemitsu: " 'We got all this weird stuff! They're going to hate it!' That's the reason they're coming."

He talked about how Akihabara, which had switched mostly to catering to Chinese tourists looking for cheap electronics when I first went there, has gone back to anime merchandising due to the sheer number of foreign tourists who've heard about the Akihabara of the 90s and went there hoping to find the anime holy land. He also gave some examples of foreign artists like Åsa Ekström, a Swedish artist who moved to japan to draw manga like 北欧女子オーサがみつけた日本の不思議 (Hokō Joshi Ōsa ga Mitsuketa Nihon no Fushigi, "The wonders found in Japan by Åsa, a girl from Northern Europe").

He brought up the demographic time bomb in Japan, and how many companies make half their revenue from Japan, but it's very likely that'll just go down in the future. But it might not--if the CCP bans anime in China, that's a huge market suddenly cut off. But on the other hand, shows like RWBY can create new fans and markets where none existed before. The he took questions. My favorite was probably about globalization allowing new opportunities by letting Japanese artists who wanted to make works that the domestic market wouldn't support--like a Western, say--make and sell the overseas. I also liked when he pointed out that fan dōjinshi markets can't arbitrarily change the rules on content when bowing to investor pressure the way that platforms like Tumblr and Patreon and Ko-Fi can and have, so there's still a place for physical sales even in the age of the internet.

After thirty minutes of questions, the presentation ended and I left to go back to my room and change, though I stopped when I saw a Totoro cosplayer:

Not pictured here were the group of girls on their way to prom who ran over to get a picture with Totoro.

After changing into my night clothing, I went downstairs to the Anime Chicago board game meetup. They were setting up Codenames as I arrived, which I've never played, but it was a lot of fun! Two teams, with the captains saying clues that the teams had to use to decipher which cards on the table fit the clues. Success gained points, failure lost turns, and uncovering the assassin (which never happened for us) instantly lost the game. But we still lost twice.

The board game meetup broke up early because some of the people wanted to go to the "Hentai Voiceover" event, so I went upstairs and while I was wandering around the Hyatt upstairs lobby, I saw bret.thomas.391 reaching for me, and then I realized he was standing with AliceTheAllStar, redpikachu, sassyfri, and a few others, and I willingly let them rope me into going with them to Red Bar for dinner. I immediately made sassyfri's day by telling her about the Cowboy Bebop pop-up bar in Logan Square on Sunday, and immediately made the waiter's life more difficult when I sent the teriyaki burger I ordered back for having cheese on it. But it was good when it came, and so was the Rum Punch Man drink I ordered.

We stayed for a while, and it was long enough that fiendishfanfares showed up! We chatted for a bit at dinner, and then a bunch more when we all went back to AliceTheAllStar's room to drink and sing. I filled in fiendishfanfares on everything that happened with schoolpsychnerd and that's been going on with my life, and she told me about the seven-year-long D&D game she's in that ended with her character becoming Queen of Hell and asked me if I was thinking of running another tabletop game because she wanted to play. We haven't talked like that in a while, and I didn't even know she would be coming! It was a lovely surprise and I’m so glad we had a chance to catch up.

I left as everyone else was going to a concert to go to Anime Chicago's "In Good Spirits: Japan's Finest Liquors" panel, but when I arrived it was full to capacity. So I texted fiendishfanfares again to see where everyone had gone, but when I didn't get a reply within a few minutes, I went over to the gaming area and quickly lost a game each of Asteroids, Arkanoid, and 1942. Then on the way back to my room, I ran into RogueNire and zbrund! They were heading to an 18+ panel, either "Japan's Wild Side" or "Intro to Shibari," so I tagged along and we managed to get in to "Japan's Wild Side."

After some technical difficulties, the panel got rolling. There was a brief, extremely strange AV, then they jumped into the declining birth rate, declining population figures, and a bunch of strange inventions like dakimakura or moe personal home assistants like Gatebox. And a lot of AV.

"Japan is so weird lol" memes always bother me, because they're almost always based on extremely niche examples that have nothing to do with Japanese culture as a whole. This panel wasn't really all that different, honestly. It even brought up the super fancy, extravagant love hotels that haven't been a thing for years now, since Japan changed its zoning laws and required that such things only be built in red light districts.

I can only handle so much whacky Japan, so after about forty-five minutes I left and went back to my room. After a moment to refresh myself, I made a snap decision and headed downstairs to the dance:

The DJs were a band I've heard mentioned several times called m-flo, and while I'd never heard any of their music, I knew I had made the right decision when they played a bit of a song from Detective Pikachu followed by a sampled Wind Scene from Chrono Trigger. When m-flo left and Moe Shop took the stage I thought about leaving, but I decided to get some water first, and it's a good thing I did because I ran into everyone else back there also getting water before they left. We stood around outside for a bit and talked, but nearly everyone was exhausted, me included, so I while I followed some people back to a room for a bit, I just drank a little soju before making my excuses and heading back to my room. I needed to get to sleep. There was meditation in the morning.

Saturday

After going to bed at 3 a.m. and a night of extremely strange dreams, I rolled out of bed at 8:28, two minutes before my alarm, spent a bit of time waking up, and then went downstairs to go to the “JCC: Zen Meditation” panel, along with a dozen other subdued and clearly tired participants. The presenter briefly asked us what it was that made us want to get up and meditate on a Saturday at an anime convention and then launched into the lesson.

He talked about the point of meditation as being “Grounded, relaxed awareness,” and how for much of our lives, we’re focused on specific things to the detriment of our understanding of the world around us. He demonstrated hara training (腹, “belly”), a special exercise designed to get people breathing from their belly. Most Americans breathe in their chests, using shorter breaths, and it’s no coincidence that that is the same way we breathe when we’re feeling panicked. As he said:

"We identify too much with our thoughts. And they could make us anxious."

Meditation is like cloudwatching, when the being is the sky and thoughts and physical sensations are the clouds. Let them come and go without judgement. Just experience them. People asked a few questions, mostly about the concepts he had briefly touched on but not explained like walking meditation, and then he let us go. I was much more awake and relaxed when I left that room than when I had entered it.

I went upstairs, and on the way to breakfast I ran into RogueNire and zbrund! They told me that ping816 and the others would be by later and how they saw someone who was obviously on mind-altering substances get tackled and hauled away by security, which I kind of wish I had seen. Unfortunately I couldn't stay to talk for too long, since I was on a schedule.

I ate breakfast in the hotel again at a table next to a woman who looked like Scarlett Johansson and then went back to my room to get dressed and shower. Thus refreshed, I went to the dealer's room to drop off some food for redpikachu, who had left her food bag behind somewhere and it vanished, and on the way I saw a group of Mario cosplayers:

And just past them was a Bokkurin (Eng: Hestu) cosplayer! She even made the "Kyuuuuuuu" noises that Bokkurin does when it talks!

...then I looked around for the artist that I bought the Zelda leading troops print from last year, but I couldn't find them in the fifteen minutes I had before I had to make it to my next panel, which was "Great Graphic Novels You Should Be Reading" by the proprietor of the Carolina Manga Library, which travels to cons and sets up a free library for people to read manga. After a brief bio, she launched into her recommendations: for action, Bodacious Space Pirates and Kimetsu no Yaiba; for romance, Ao Haru Ride and Snow White with the Red Hair; for horror, After School Nightmare and Mermaid Forest; for comedy, Urusei Yatsura and Midori Days; for fantasy, Magic Knight Rayearth and Ran and the Gray World; for slice of life, Space Brothers and I Hear the Sunspot; for "unique," Lost at Sea and Strawberry Seafoam, and her librarian's choice was Lore Olympus. I left when the question section turned into people offering their own manga suggestions. If your question is more of a comment, it doesn't belong at a Q&A!

I ran down to the Artists Alley and bought the matching metal prints of Link and Ganondorf to match the one of Zelda I already have, as well as one of Ganon since there was a discount for buying three. Then on the way out of the Artists Alley I found the Metroid girls:

I'm extra happy for the Justin Bailey cosplayer. That code is how I found out Samus Aran was a woman.

After getting that picture, I went back to get in line for "Let's Wakaru Revue Starlight." Since it was an industry panel with the director, assistant director, character designer, and outfit/prop designer all in attendance, I figured it would be wise to line up early. I found the somewhat-haphazard line, sat down at the end, and checked Twitter for half an hour while I waited until they finally let us in. Someone came by with a board of messages for Junna or Hikari, but I didn't identify strongly enough with either of them, so I didn't leave a message.

After brief introductions, while the assistant director drew a picture of Hikari on the right screen, the director talked about the production process. Since Shoujo Kageki ⭐️ Revue Starlight is an original concept (not based on a manga or novel), they had to develop everything themselves and couldn't rely on adaptations of ideas like most anime can. The director mentioned that the characters all introduced themselves in the first episode because they were in a theatre school, so that kind of grandstanding (so to speak) would be reasonable, and also mentioned that when Karen entered the room she went to stand on Position Zero (foreshadowing), and then when Maya entered she also went to stand on Position Zero (current...shadowing?). It's a way of using movement and physical character positioning to show power relationships and the struggle over who would be the Top Star.

We waited a bit for the assistant director to finish his drawing of Hikari, then the director said that Tōkyō Tower featured so prominently in the show because it actually exists, so it was easy to go there and take pictures as research. Also, real things stick in the viewers' minds, and if they later visit the actual location, it stands out. Then he started talking about the first action scene that Karen interrupts, how the director wanted the viewer to see Tōkyō Tower and the giraffe in the basement:

Director Tomohiro Furukawa: "Wakarimasu."

...and think that the rules were different here, and that maybe anything could happen. He also said the reason "Wakarimasu" is the giraffe's catchphrase is that it's such a frequently-used word in Japanese that it cuts against the strangeness, and helps ground things a bit after the giraffe shock.

I thought that the heavily-industrial transformation sequence was deeply symbolic, since it was all machinery making the outfits of the stage girls in the way that theatre personnel make costumes, but the director said they just wanted to do something different than the usual sparkling. And also that he was fascinated with Discovery channel shows as a child and wanted to bring some of that "the making of" aspect to the screen. Then the assistant director talked about the action, and about how they wanted to make the action scenes motion-filled since the characters were at a theatre school and were all well-versed in dance (which is also why so many of the movements in the action scenes look like dancing). He showed a storyboard of the initial Junna/Hikari fight, which was turned into a CG rough cut to get a sense of the scene in motion, then the CG was filled in, then they draw in the characters and details around it.

He also talked about framing scenes to leave out the feet or particularly detailed areas of clothing, or extend the sleeves over the hands, to reduce total complexity in order to save time.

The character designer talked about how all of his initial designs were accepted and the initial conception basically became their final form, including Nana's banana hair (Director: "Genius!"), and that he took a lot of inspiration from the Takarazuka Revue's real-life outfits. He had to push back against people who really wanted more colorful outfits because it was set in a theatre, but in the end his more realistic take won out. He also said that originally Karen's crown hair ornament was going to be worn by Junna, but it was moved to Karen because she's the protagonist.

The prop designer talked briefly about how she didn't have much information about the characters, but she conceived Karen as a kind of Viking girl, strong-willed and full of vigor, and Hikari as cool, and mysterious. Junna as unadorned, Nana as pastel and retro, Futaba as a tomboy (the prop designer said this was really hard and she had to draw inspiration from China to really even start the process). The prop designer was also the creator of a clothing line that's currently on sale.

There was a brief question period, but it was mostly about the production team's personal lives.

To the sound of thunder and rain outside, I left the room and walked into the people-choked skyway, past someone from Anime Chicago who I recognized and who recognized me but whose name I don't know, past AliceTheAllStar dressed in a punk Sailor Moon cosplay, past two people in ahegao sweaters, and back to my room where I dropped off my purchases, changed into my night clothing, and scarfed down a quick snack before leaving again. I texted ping816 to see if he was there yet, but he said he was just leaving, so I went through the skyway, now with IRT directing traffic, back to the Dealers’ Room. In the hall outside I found 蛮族の鎧 (banzoku no yoroi, "Savages' Armor", Eng: "Barbarian Armor") Link:

And Knight Artorias the Abysswalker:

Not flying around everywhere for once.

I also saw someone getting his picture taken with a couple Sailor Moon cosplayers, and I didn't realize until he posted the pic that it was the city pop DJ Van Paugam.

I spent a few minutes wandering before I spotted bret.thomas.391, and then almost immediately after AliceTheAllStar and sassyfri, buying beer, so I bought a drink and walked over to the Artists Alley with them. On the way I met RogueNire’s friend, the one who had played "Tunak Tunak Tun" and was ten years younger than me, and we commiserated over how we felt run-down at 5 p.m. on a Saturday before we even started drinking:

Him: "I don’t like this aging thing."
Me: "Let me tell you, kid. It sucks."

We spent a while wandering around the Artists Alley and Dealers Hall, But I eventually split off and went to the Japanese Cultural Center booth, where the same calligrapher who drew the calligraphy at the Chicago Japanese Matsuri drew my name. He wrote it as 部来安 buraian, meaning something like “Group for Future Security.” I can dig it.

Then it was time for the party. The terms were explicitly laid out when I arrived:

It was great! As advertised, there were both hentai and waffles, and I had a bunch of waffles, mostly with hummus to help diminish the giant container of hummus that someone had brought to spacedragon's room.

I actually blew spacedragon's mind when I finally asked her the question I've been wondering for a while: how do we know each other? Our Facebook friend anniversary is 2010, when I lived in Japan, so clearly that's not when we met. She thought it was from college, but I went to Penn and she went to Columbia. It might be a con friends connection, but we just didn't know, so we spent some time trying to piece it together and repeatedly coming up empty. It's possible that the first face-to-face conversation we ever had was when I started coming to Anime Chicago events last year.

I had a long conversation with one attendee about slice of life anime--he repeatedly recommended Sakura Quest to me--and a conversation with everyone about visiting Japan and about going to see the cherry blossoms when they bloom in Jackson Park. And a lot more. I was there for five hours, well past the 9 p.m. ending time and into the nijikai, and I ended up with a bunch of drinks in me and an invite to the Renn Faire, but I finally said my goodbyes

Me: "The waffles were delicious, the porn was scandalous."

...because I knew that klenkers was here today. When I texted he said he was in the Hyatt, so that was my next destination. And when I got there, the room was full of people I knew, including stephen_poon! I drank even more soju and chatted with people until the star guests arrived: m-flo! I didn't think that much of it, but a lot of people were star-struck. They drank together while I chatted around the perimeter and filled klenkers in on my life until m-flo left, various other people left, and the party died down. Eventually, stephen_poon, resurii, and I left in search of tacos, and while the taco truck was closed I got a chicken sandwich. I ate that while we chatted a bit more before tiredness finally overcame me and I said goodnight and went back to my room. I wanted to stay awake for longer, but I just couldn't muster up the energy.

Sunday

After another night of weird dreams, this time as part of a caravan hauling fantasy goods across a vast scrub wasteland, I woke up at 7 a.m. feeling like death, so I went back to sleep. I woke up at 9:15 a.m. feeling like death, so I went back to sleep. When I woke up at 10 a.m. I felt okay, so I showered, got dressed, checked out and dropped off my luggage at the Hyatt before heading over to the convention center.

I took a quick picture of Captain America, since other than Black Panther, that's the only Marvel movie I've seen:

Maybe the hammer means something?

And I had about five minutes to look around before I had to run to "Anime and Manga Translation," hosted by the same Dan Kagemitsu who hosted the "Impact of Overseas Fans" panel on Friday. This is obviously an area of great interest to me, since I'm translating a book right now, and I was curious if there was anything I could learn. After brushing over his bio, he talked about "agency" as a reason for manga being very popular overseas, meaning the specifically Japanese characteristics that fans like about Japanese media, and how the government has gone full-in on promoting manga when they used to look at it askance. He brought up 無国籍 (mukokuseki, "nationalitylessness"), though not by that name, as a way that manga doesn't use physical signifiers the immediately-obvious way, and someone with blonde hair and blue eyes isn't necessarily Western, and also talked about the problem of reader expectations based on how familiar they are with Japanese culture--things like whether to try to translate honorifics or just use them in the English, problems for which there's no obvious single answer for all cases.

One thing he mentioned that I found insightful was keeping a dictionary of terms, so that the same term is always translated the same way for consistency, which I'll have to remember. I also liked the story about translating some text into cuneiform for the second Evangelion rebuild movie, where Hideaki Anno asked him if the old Babylonian text would be Hebrew or Greek and Dan informed him it would be Akkadian and then contacted some university professors to get a good translation. Apparently there are separate words for wooden keys and metal keys!

Unfortunately, I could only stay for part of the panel, since halfway through I had to leave to go to "Anime Freakanomics," hosted by Anime Chicago members Tatsuhiro_Sato and JHarris! After dodging the crowd for the Tokusatsu panel I entered the room just after the introductions and just before "data" was defined. After talking about the basics of data analytics, Tatsuhiro_Sato jumped into a discussion of MyAnimeList and how to use its data to learn things about anime. He mentioned a data analysis of MAL scores vs how they're rated, and "enjoyment" is the most highly-correlated to the final score, "character" and "story" were equally important, and the technical aspects of "animation" and "sound" were the least important. Then there were examples--Dororo started off rated lower, but jumped immediately after people saw the first episode, whereas Seishun Buta Yarō wa Banīgāru Senpai no Yume o Minai was rated lower after the first episode but climbed slowly as people realized it's like Haruhi with a healthy relationship.

He brought up MALPlus (Anime.plus), a website that scrapes MAL user data for specific accounts and tells people data about their rating vs the average rating, distribution of ratings, which I'll have to check out. Then the presentation went into the top five MAL anime, all of which came out in the last few years, and that MAL data isn't necessarily representative due to a variety of biases.

Then the panel went over to JHarris, who analyzed downloaded subtitle files to see what sort of data he could get from it, though with the acknowledgment that since the subtitles were translations they were mediated through the particular translator who did the work. The first few graphs were Naruto, analyzed by word count, reading level, and positive vs. negative word associations. The immediately obvious conclusion was how it was possible to tell when fights occurred as the word count plunged and the negative vs. positive chart skewed heavily negative. The next were Violet Evergarden, where the words were surprisingly positive even in the sad parts of the series, and the episode with the least sophistication in terms of reading level was the episode with a child character. There was also an exploration of Fullmetal Alchemist Episode 7 broken down into exclamations vs questions, and how there was a large period of questions followed by a larger period of exclamations. This led to the realization that tragedy in Fullmetal Alchemist was expressed somberly, not necessarily through intense emotions.

Tatsuhiro_Sato: "He found emotions through math."
JHarris: "I've been trying for thirty years."

Apparently Crunchyroll is in the top ten streaming services by number of subscribers, and the only non-mainstream such service.

I briefly chatted with spacedragon outside the room, then went over to the Dealers Room and Artists Alley one last time. I passed bret.thomas.391, AliceTheAllStar, and sassyfri again, and we briefly chatted before going on our way. I also saw RogueNire’s friend too, and I wished him well in his recovery from the late night he obviously had.

There wasn't anything else I really wanted, so I took down a couple artists' names, went back to collect my luggage, and called a Lyft for home.


There was a lot of great cosplay I saw that I didn't have the chance to take a picture of. The NCR Ranger I mentioned up top. A group of Asian women dressed as platelets from Hataraku Saibō. A picture-perfect Violet Evergarden. A Dokukurage (Eng: Tentacruel) with a decorated parasol and ball gown to form the head and body. Solaire and a Dark Souls III Firekeeper. Banana from Revue Starlight. The Final Fantasy white mage and black mage. The various "loving father looking for missing daughter and dog" Shō Tucker cosplays. The squad of Princess Crown cosplayers with Bowsette, Booette, Tanooki Mario-ette, and Goombette who all went in separate directions just as I reached them.

ACEN is still a ton of fun, but there are definitely changes. I was talking with stephen_poon about how fewer people we know are going and it gets less and less likely that we'll run into people we know as the years progress. I didn't see ping816 or mabown or smtemp or shane.suydam at all, since mabown didn't get a room this year. I've run into theome the last few ACENs, but not this one. I hung out with all the Anime Chicago people and that was a great time, but of course it's not like it was. We are not like we were. I still see the excitement and energy I had back when I was going to Otakon in 2006 in a lot of the attendees at ACEN, but I was thirteen years younger then and I hadn't yet lived in Japan. Of course I was excited to be among my people. Now, my people are tea ceremony enthusiasts, kagura lovers, Japanese learners, and the friends I've been coming to ACEN to see for over a decade, and going to a panel that's all about how great a particular series is just doesn't appeal.

I kind of want to do a kagura panel now, but I can't imagine anyone would attend it.

Every year I gauge how I feel. At ACEN 2012 and ACEN 2014, I wasn't certain I wanted to keep coming back and only tradition kept me going. Now I’m back in the camp (ACEN) of having a great time! I’m looking forward to another great time next year, too.