Return to Anime Lockdown
Apr. 17th, 2023 09:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerThrough some stroke of luck I managed to see notices the “Anime Lockdown” “online convention” would be putting on another streaming presentation. Things have changed since the first of them or even the one a year later (although I’m very conscious of certain continued warnings things haven’t changed as much as a lot of people have shrugged themselves to the point of supposing, and certain insistences precautions can and should be taken at the conventions that are being held in person again). With the whole personal wrinkle of not having scraped together the courage and/or motivation to make a day trip to an area anime convention until 2019, though, I suppose I can think “watching panels via video streaming is both healthier and more convenient.” I saved a schedule and a link and counted the days to the one-day presentation.
The first panel I watched had the somewhat provocative title “Schrödinger’s Robot: Observing the Paradoxical State of Mecha Anime.” It turned out to be presented by someone from Indonesia, and despite apologies for being in a second language that’s more than I can manage. More than that, too, the panel made a definite effort to be positive. It mentioned Granbelm as “trying something different” and Shinkalion as “making a pitch for younger viewers,” although in the end it did get to the point of cautioning “are certain problems some are very ready to identify in mecha anime production issues affecting all of anime?”
I stayed with the subject but stepped back in time for a panel about the “history of mecha” in the 1980s, from a group that had made online presentations before. It happened to get to the point of explaining how the genre had just about slid off the air near the close of that decade until Gunbuster and Patlabor were invoked. (My own perspective back then had been limited to “it’s been years now since Robotech was on TV anyway; having its novels is something” anyway.)
To get a bit closer to the present day I took in a panel titled “That 2008 Feeling: Exploring the Era of the 2000s Anime Bubble.” Not only did I live through it, some of my early posts on this journal had to deal with the bust. The panel is by someone writing a book about English-language anime fandom, although the chronicle presented in the panel was more “this happened, and then this happened.” There were certain points mentioned I did realise “oh yes; I’d forgotten them until now,” though.
Getting back to mecha once again, I finished off my merely personal online convention experience with a panel offering an overview of Macross. It was enthusiastic to the point of never quite dismissing franchise entries altogether (including the one I never quite got around to in these later days of supposing “mecha series don’t get a fair shake”), but the audio of one presenter was glitching, which sometimes made points hard to follow. There are times when I tell myself “finding and watching some online videos might be just about like an ‘online convention,’” but in some ways the more casual, less edited presentations here feel more appealing. Whether there’ll be another presentation like this might lie in a similar limbo to whether I ever get to another in-person convention. For all my uncomfortable admissions that “cosplay doesn’t do as much for me as it obviously does for a lot of people,” there was something to wandering a dealer hall and seeing artifacts I’d only experienced as images before.
The first panel I watched had the somewhat provocative title “Schrödinger’s Robot: Observing the Paradoxical State of Mecha Anime.” It turned out to be presented by someone from Indonesia, and despite apologies for being in a second language that’s more than I can manage. More than that, too, the panel made a definite effort to be positive. It mentioned Granbelm as “trying something different” and Shinkalion as “making a pitch for younger viewers,” although in the end it did get to the point of cautioning “are certain problems some are very ready to identify in mecha anime production issues affecting all of anime?”
I stayed with the subject but stepped back in time for a panel about the “history of mecha” in the 1980s, from a group that had made online presentations before. It happened to get to the point of explaining how the genre had just about slid off the air near the close of that decade until Gunbuster and Patlabor were invoked. (My own perspective back then had been limited to “it’s been years now since Robotech was on TV anyway; having its novels is something” anyway.)
To get a bit closer to the present day I took in a panel titled “That 2008 Feeling: Exploring the Era of the 2000s Anime Bubble.” Not only did I live through it, some of my early posts on this journal had to deal with the bust. The panel is by someone writing a book about English-language anime fandom, although the chronicle presented in the panel was more “this happened, and then this happened.” There were certain points mentioned I did realise “oh yes; I’d forgotten them until now,” though.
Getting back to mecha once again, I finished off my merely personal online convention experience with a panel offering an overview of Macross. It was enthusiastic to the point of never quite dismissing franchise entries altogether (including the one I never quite got around to in these later days of supposing “mecha series don’t get a fair shake”), but the audio of one presenter was glitching, which sometimes made points hard to follow. There are times when I tell myself “finding and watching some online videos might be just about like an ‘online convention,’” but in some ways the more casual, less edited presentations here feel more appealing. Whether there’ll be another presentation like this might lie in a similar limbo to whether I ever get to another in-person convention. For all my uncomfortable admissions that “cosplay doesn’t do as much for me as it obviously does for a lot of people,” there was something to wandering a dealer hall and seeing artifacts I’d only experienced as images before.