See Anime North Again and Live
May. 25th, 2025 06:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerThat I scraped together the resolve to step outside weekend routine and head to my area’s big anime convention in 2019 could feel in the immediate years afterwards like “at last yet almost too late; at least I can say I once saw what they were like.” Even after starting to get on cruise ships again I was at least noticing warnings that conventions had never been healthy places. In the leadup to this year’s “Anime North,” though, noticing davemerrill’s panel announcements might have tipped a balance that had already been shifting. (That had something to do with being invited to describe a university anime club experience at the time of the very first Anime North.) A few daydreams about taking the chance bounced through my mind, and then I bought a Saturday pass, perhaps a few more days before the convention than I’d managed back in 2019.
Part of my preparations following that commitment involved visting the Uniqlo store in my city’s shopping mall. It didn’t have any of the “45th anniversary Gundam T-shirts” I’d heard about. I wondered about breaking out the Dirty Pair shirt sent as if in partial apology for the Kickstarter Blu-Ray set having been squeezed in the corporate gears of Sony purchasing Right Stuf, then pushed back the idea and resorted to digging out the mere “40th anniversary Gundam T-shirt” I’d worn the last time.
In the meantime the the full convention booklet had become available, and I’d gone though the PDF version wondering what other panels I might see on Saturday afternoon. One of the first things I noticed, though, was that the “1965, 1975, and 1985 in anime” panel that had first got my attention was listed as a Friday event. My first reaction was dismay; my second was to identify a Saturday alternative or two. Somewhat later, however, I realised the text listings and the “grid” didn’t match, and started half-hoping the misprint was on my side.
Remembering the way convention-goers surging back and forth across the road had made arriving by car a very slow process, I was now ready to take a chance on transit. After weighing two different subway-and-bus routes suggested on the convention home page, I was reminded of a somewhat more extravagant option. Either of the subway routes would have involved me taking the train to the central station downtown, still distant from the convention centre. The station, though, was where a recent “airport express” could be picked up, and the airport isn’t that far from the convention centre. Once I’d figured out you could board a city bus at the airport that would go right by the centre, I decided to try that.
This did mean an early start on Saturday. The train trip was familiar; the airport express was something new. It wasn’t that far through the airport terminal to the bus stop, where I found myself waiting for a while with people I could overhear were also convention-bound. As we left the airport more people in full costume got on at various bus stops, and then we were getting off the bus at the convention itself. I suppose at that point I was part of the crossing throngs getting in the way of people in cars.
It was a fair walk past many people in costume (and some itasha cars with anime character artwork) to where I’d pick up my entry badge, although the line proper for that inside moved at a good brisk pace. Dropping back into the building where I’d got my badge I visited the “gaming hall,” having been somehow amused by seeing there’d be a “Battletech” presence there. Before I’d really understood just where Robotech came from I’d seen some of the earliest Battletech products in mall hobby stores and wondered “now who’s ripping off who?”; years after that I found comments on the record from one of the people who’d put the story universe behind the war game together that he’d been aware of mecha anime beyond “mechanical designs” but wanted to make something “more occidental.” If people are more relaxed now (or, indeed, were never that far apart except in my own unjustified suppositions) that’s quite all right; I was, anyway, perhaps more struck by a big aircraft carrier on display than in the smaller “BattleMech” figures further back on the playing field.
After that I dropped in on the dealers’ hall, although it was crowded enough that that, as much as “just one figure or whatever isn’t much, but where would I put a bunch of them?” had me hurrying through and leaving without buying anything. I crossed back to where the panel I’d hoped to see would be held, and as it turned out the “years in anime” presentation really was scheduled for Saturday.
In advance of the panel I’d been thinking I’ve actually sampled a little more anime from 1965 than 1975. I’d also been thinking a bit about animation over here in those two years, supposing the earlier had marked theatrical animated shorts winding down towards extinction and “all-ages” works on TV getting scarce and the later being well in the “Saturday morning cartoon” doldrums. The panel reminded me anime itself could have seemed very much “kids’ stuff” at first glance in the 1960s and perhaps not all that changed a decade later even with the rise of giant robots. I did notice it didn’t mention Wonder Three from 1965, although it did bring up Hustle Punch and Gulliver’s Space Travels, the one theatrical feature animated in Japan that year. As for 1985, I have to admit I’d been thinking in advance about the difficulties I’ve had over the years with Zeta Gundam. The panel didn’t seem to build up the series to the heights I might have supposed it had reached before the first time I got off on the wrong foot with it. Other works including Dirty Pair were then covered, just perhaps familiar to parts of the present and, so I suppose, the very things the first people to look beyond Robotech had seen as “the latest and greatest from Japan.” The panel also happened to include Robotech itself near the end, although this confused Matchbox, which had assembled a not all that impressive toy line as the series picked up some steam, with Revell, which had put “Robotech” on model kits to begin with.
With the panel over I crossed the road again and checked out the more spaced-out industry section, taking a closer look at a Lego exhibit and tables of model mecha near a corporate store; I pondered buying a model and then reminded myself I have one more “beginner’s kit” waiting to be opened and assembled. Crossing back the other way, I have to admit to abandoning vague thoughts of getting to a panel I’d seen in the guide, and dropped in instead on a video room programming old anime. I doubled the amount of 1975 anime I’ve seen with an episode of Raideen selected perhaps not quite at random; it had a certain peculiarity to it the first instalment of that series might not have carried, although the subtitles weren’t that impressive. I then stuck around for an episode of Anne of Green Gables knowing that I’d seen it before; it had a bit of immediate impact even if it wound up including a flashback to a previous episode as if to stretch things out just a little.
After that I went to a panel about the studio Knack, now most infamous for Chargeman Ken (quite a few people in attendance whooped up its mention) but with quite a few other merely low-grade series to its record, one of which I’ve seen, two of which I have waiting on Discotek discs, and one of which has been almost completely “fansubbed.” I bought a “zine” just to bring something back from the convention and supposed I could head for the bus stop. As I got outside I saw the very bus that would get back to the airport at the stop, but as it turned out enough luck was with me for the lights to let me across the road before they let the bus away. A crowd had packed into it, but a lot of people got off before the airport, where I retraced my steps and connections back to my own place.
Now aware of how much can happen in a year, I don’t quite want to tempt fate by looking ahead to another instalment of Anime North. I might know a lot sooner than that whether going back was “conquering fears” or just “coming down with something.” Anyway, while I have to keep admitting that “cosplay” doesn’t seem to do as much for me as it does for a lot of other people, there was some interest in recognising where costumes were from. DAN DA DAN looked popular, but there were also Chainsaw Man outfits to be seen and Maomao from The Apothecary Diaries kept catching my eye. At least two Witch Hat Atelier costumes did the same, and that title’s not an anime yet. In the end, though, one costume that looked to be modelled after the water tower near the convention centre might have been the most amusing for me.
davemerrill’s panel announcements might have tipped a balance that had already been shifting. (That had something to do with being invited to describe a university anime club experience at the time of the very first Anime North.) A few daydreams about taking the chance bounced through my mind, and then I bought a Saturday pass, perhaps a few more days before the convention than I’d managed back in 2019.Part of my preparations following that commitment involved visting the Uniqlo store in my city’s shopping mall. It didn’t have any of the “45th anniversary Gundam T-shirts” I’d heard about. I wondered about breaking out the Dirty Pair shirt sent as if in partial apology for the Kickstarter Blu-Ray set having been squeezed in the corporate gears of Sony purchasing Right Stuf, then pushed back the idea and resorted to digging out the mere “40th anniversary Gundam T-shirt” I’d worn the last time.
In the meantime the the full convention booklet had become available, and I’d gone though the PDF version wondering what other panels I might see on Saturday afternoon. One of the first things I noticed, though, was that the “1965, 1975, and 1985 in anime” panel that had first got my attention was listed as a Friday event. My first reaction was dismay; my second was to identify a Saturday alternative or two. Somewhat later, however, I realised the text listings and the “grid” didn’t match, and started half-hoping the misprint was on my side.
Remembering the way convention-goers surging back and forth across the road had made arriving by car a very slow process, I was now ready to take a chance on transit. After weighing two different subway-and-bus routes suggested on the convention home page, I was reminded of a somewhat more extravagant option. Either of the subway routes would have involved me taking the train to the central station downtown, still distant from the convention centre. The station, though, was where a recent “airport express” could be picked up, and the airport isn’t that far from the convention centre. Once I’d figured out you could board a city bus at the airport that would go right by the centre, I decided to try that.
This did mean an early start on Saturday. The train trip was familiar; the airport express was something new. It wasn’t that far through the airport terminal to the bus stop, where I found myself waiting for a while with people I could overhear were also convention-bound. As we left the airport more people in full costume got on at various bus stops, and then we were getting off the bus at the convention itself. I suppose at that point I was part of the crossing throngs getting in the way of people in cars.
It was a fair walk past many people in costume (and some itasha cars with anime character artwork) to where I’d pick up my entry badge, although the line proper for that inside moved at a good brisk pace. Dropping back into the building where I’d got my badge I visited the “gaming hall,” having been somehow amused by seeing there’d be a “Battletech” presence there. Before I’d really understood just where Robotech came from I’d seen some of the earliest Battletech products in mall hobby stores and wondered “now who’s ripping off who?”; years after that I found comments on the record from one of the people who’d put the story universe behind the war game together that he’d been aware of mecha anime beyond “mechanical designs” but wanted to make something “more occidental.” If people are more relaxed now (or, indeed, were never that far apart except in my own unjustified suppositions) that’s quite all right; I was, anyway, perhaps more struck by a big aircraft carrier on display than in the smaller “BattleMech” figures further back on the playing field.
After that I dropped in on the dealers’ hall, although it was crowded enough that that, as much as “just one figure or whatever isn’t much, but where would I put a bunch of them?” had me hurrying through and leaving without buying anything. I crossed back to where the panel I’d hoped to see would be held, and as it turned out the “years in anime” presentation really was scheduled for Saturday.
In advance of the panel I’d been thinking I’ve actually sampled a little more anime from 1965 than 1975. I’d also been thinking a bit about animation over here in those two years, supposing the earlier had marked theatrical animated shorts winding down towards extinction and “all-ages” works on TV getting scarce and the later being well in the “Saturday morning cartoon” doldrums. The panel reminded me anime itself could have seemed very much “kids’ stuff” at first glance in the 1960s and perhaps not all that changed a decade later even with the rise of giant robots. I did notice it didn’t mention Wonder Three from 1965, although it did bring up Hustle Punch and Gulliver’s Space Travels, the one theatrical feature animated in Japan that year. As for 1985, I have to admit I’d been thinking in advance about the difficulties I’ve had over the years with Zeta Gundam. The panel didn’t seem to build up the series to the heights I might have supposed it had reached before the first time I got off on the wrong foot with it. Other works including Dirty Pair were then covered, just perhaps familiar to parts of the present and, so I suppose, the very things the first people to look beyond Robotech had seen as “the latest and greatest from Japan.” The panel also happened to include Robotech itself near the end, although this confused Matchbox, which had assembled a not all that impressive toy line as the series picked up some steam, with Revell, which had put “Robotech” on model kits to begin with.
With the panel over I crossed the road again and checked out the more spaced-out industry section, taking a closer look at a Lego exhibit and tables of model mecha near a corporate store; I pondered buying a model and then reminded myself I have one more “beginner’s kit” waiting to be opened and assembled. Crossing back the other way, I have to admit to abandoning vague thoughts of getting to a panel I’d seen in the guide, and dropped in instead on a video room programming old anime. I doubled the amount of 1975 anime I’ve seen with an episode of Raideen selected perhaps not quite at random; it had a certain peculiarity to it the first instalment of that series might not have carried, although the subtitles weren’t that impressive. I then stuck around for an episode of Anne of Green Gables knowing that I’d seen it before; it had a bit of immediate impact even if it wound up including a flashback to a previous episode as if to stretch things out just a little.
After that I went to a panel about the studio Knack, now most infamous for Chargeman Ken (quite a few people in attendance whooped up its mention) but with quite a few other merely low-grade series to its record, one of which I’ve seen, two of which I have waiting on Discotek discs, and one of which has been almost completely “fansubbed.” I bought a “zine” just to bring something back from the convention and supposed I could head for the bus stop. As I got outside I saw the very bus that would get back to the airport at the stop, but as it turned out enough luck was with me for the lights to let me across the road before they let the bus away. A crowd had packed into it, but a lot of people got off before the airport, where I retraced my steps and connections back to my own place.
Now aware of how much can happen in a year, I don’t quite want to tempt fate by looking ahead to another instalment of Anime North. I might know a lot sooner than that whether going back was “conquering fears” or just “coming down with something.” Anyway, while I have to keep admitting that “cosplay” doesn’t seem to do as much for me as it does for a lot of other people, there was some interest in recognising where costumes were from. DAN DA DAN looked popular, but there were also Chainsaw Man outfits to be seen and Maomao from The Apothecary Diaries kept catching my eye. At least two Witch Hat Atelier costumes did the same, and that title’s not an anime yet. In the end, though, one costume that looked to be modelled after the water tower near the convention centre might have been the most amusing for me.
