I arrived in San Jose on Fanime's Day 0, Thursday.
The past two years at Fanime, badge pick-up has been a debacle. Long lines, power outages... I was prepared for anything on Day 0. However, when I got to the San Jose Convention Center, the main entry looked like this:
I thought either Fanime had been cancelled - or something very odd was going on here.
When I went to pick up my badge, this is what the pick-up line looked like:
One entire half of this massive area that had been staked out with yellow tape lines went unused:
At last year's Fanime Day 0 badge pick-up line, pre-paid registrants waited upwards of eight hours just to get their badges.
The time it took me to get my badge this year - a freakishly short FIVE MINUTES.
The con organizers had been saying for weeks that they'd radically changed the badge pick-up procedure, and that this year it would be much better. This only served of course to totally unnerve people, who expected it to be even worse this time. But whatever they did to change it - worked.
People emerged from badge pick-up blinking, wondering what to do with the 6-8 hours of their lives they just got back. Some sat down outside with their goodie bags and began planning out their con schedules.
And speaking of goodie bags:
I recall when goodie bags actually had a few goodies in them - like manga, pins or patches, and other fun stuff. Ah, for the good old days of 2005-2008...
I walked around downtown San Jose a little on Thursday. San Jose - especially downtown - always strikes me as having the infrastructure to be the capital of Silicon Valley, but without the people. Pedestrians are sparse and even street traffic isn't very busy.
I stayed at a hotel that was close to the Clockwork Alchemy hotel, and took the light rail trains most of the time back and forth to the convention center. Along the way, the train passed through residential neighborhoods where the houses and other buildings looked like old California - reminding me greatly of north Orange County, near where I grew up.
The Manga Library was still getting set up in a ballroom at the Marriott next to the Convention Center on Thursday.
On Friday, Day 1, I took a look inside the gaming hall. This shows only about one-third of the vast space:
Just like at other cons, I noticed that while the video gaming, arcade and console game play areas were merely busy, the tabletop game area had people packed like sardines at the tables playing board and card games of all varieties. I really must check out tabletop games sometime. O_O
I took cosplay photos on Friday, and then forgot to take any more after that. Friday morning the con was still a little quiet.
But it certainly got busy by Friday afternoon. Anyway, for what it's worth, here are the cosplay photos.
This Attack on Titan cosplayer had more equipment than I'd ever seen. He told me it's all supposed to be worn at once, which I guess - helps?
The last picture is kind of funny. I was on a balcony area and saw Edward Elric and his father Hohenheim down below, so I went down and asked if I could take their picture.
The guy who I thought was cosplaying as Hohenheim told me that he was just a Clockwork Alchemy steampunk guy. His Victorian-looking vest and blond hair tied back and glasses were all just steampunk, and his friend just happened to cosplay as Edward Elric from FMA.
He was a dead ringer for Hohenheim and in fact, I wasn't the first person who'd asked to take his picture as "Hohenheim" - which he thought was very funny.
Here's something I can't do:
The Viz Media panel was held on Friday.
The big announcement from Viz was a news item that had already been covered by ANN a few days before: they're re-issuing Sailor Moon, plus they'll be streaming some new version or series of Sailor Moon later this year (I think - ? - is what they said).
Guest of Honor Gilles Poitras held a panel on Anime and Manga for Parents on Friday.
Poitras, a librarian at San Francisco State and author of numerous books on anime, was a gracious and knowledgeable presence. It was a relief to be in a room where nearly everyone was my age for a change. It was a small oasis of calm.
Fanime's sister convention is the steampunk con Clockwork Alchemy. Here are a few photos from the gallery and dealer's room at Clockwork Alchemy.
I spoke with one vendor, Kathryn Hedges, about steampunk. Hedges makes jewelry and shadow box art:
It was a conversation I initiated with a number of people at Clockwork Alchemy whenever I was there. What is steampunk and what is the attraction of it? The last time I attended Fanime, I wrote about my unfavorable impressions of Clockwork Alchemy. It felt like a small, claustrophobic and exclusionary experience, my meeting the only other Asian person there - author Elizabeth Watasin in the dealer's room - notwithstanding.
This year, I saw some African-Americans and Asian-Americans dressed in Victoriana and engaging in steampunk activities at the con. I chatted with two women at the Doubletree bar on Saturday night about steampunk, and how I had felt two years ago that someone like me didn't particularly belong and possibly wasn't even truly welcome there. I noted that the con felt more open to everyone now.
The younger of the two told me that she thought steampunk was loosely defined - and that a lot of freedom in the defining was part of it.
I actually spent Sunday at Clockwork Alchemy instead of Fanime. More on that later.
Free shuttle buses took people back and forth between the Convention Center in downtown San Jose and the Clockwork Alchemy hotel, the Doubletree, near the San Jose Airport about five miles away:
On Saturday, I attended a really fun panel - Living and Working in Japan.
The panel was given by Raj Ramayya, a Canadian musician who spent his youth in both Canada and Japan, and who has spent the last twenty years in Japan working alongside composers like Yoko Kanno.
Ramayya was funny and had a lot of stories to tell. He opened it up to Q and A immediately and many people asked questions about how westerners are received in Japan. Ramayya said that Japan is still a closed country in feel if not in actual fact, and that he had a hard time finding a landlord who would rent to him, a Hindi-Canadian, years ago, despite the fact that he's completely fluent in Japanese.
He told one young person that Japanese people would be more afraid of her (a white westerner) than she would ever have cause to be afraid of them, and that sometimes a Japanese person will literally ask a foreign tourist, "Why are you here?" Not in a mean way, but really asking, like they don't understand why someone from the west would even come to Hokkaido or wherever. ;-D
I joined the line of questioners and asked Raj how Japanese-Americans like myself are generally received in Japan. Raj said that while they are somewhat forgiving of Japanese-Americans who don't speak Japanese, they really do expect at least some Japanese language ability from us. Good thing I started taking Japanese classes again. ;-)
I stopped in at the Artist's Alley several times on Saturday, but only bought one piece. It's an unusual and oddly compelling piece.
I've never seen Matsumoto and Gin from Bleach featured in fan art before. The back story of the characters is that they were lovers before Gin betrayed the Soul Society. I love the emotional content in this piece. I think the artist really captured the feel of how they related to each other.
In the Dealer's Hall - which was much larger than I recall it being two years ago - it now nearly rivals Anime Expo's Dealer's Hall - I bought a few items from Kinokuniya SF/Animate's booth. They had a sale on clear files, so I bought three from Kuroko's Basketball and one from K:
As I said above, I spent Sunday at Clockwork Alchemy. It was close to my hotel, I was flying out in the late afternoon and just didn't feel like returning to the din and crowds of Fanime. Clockwork Alchemy had an author's programming track and I attended a number of writing workshop panels.
One room had a fake library set-up, complete with a faux fireplace on an electronic screen and an argon laser - whatever the hell that is, or is for:
They also had a working telegram machine:
And they flew mylar balloon "airships" (airships are a big deal in steampunk) that were remote-controlled and had ribbons that could be used to tug the airship out if it got stuck somewhere:
Steampunk adherents are into: steam power, goggles, Victorian dresses and uniforms, military history, odd machines, legendary sea creatures like the Kraken, leather corsets, skulls, Goth accessories, lace, walking sticks, filigree, gears, top hats, vampires, airships, velvet, lasers... the list of weird and incompatible things goes on. As I said to Kathryn Hedges, as I walked around the dealer's room I had no idea what I was looking at - the context of it all escaped me.
But that's exactly what I said about anime nine years ago.
Two years ago, when Clockwork Alchemy was brand-new, it was a tiny convention. You would walk down dead-silent empty hallways at the Doubletree until you reached the next small hive of human activity, be it the dealer's room or panel room or something else.
This year, Clockwork Alchemy was entirely different. The attendance was noticeably bigger and there were more signs that whether it intends to or wants to or not - it's becoming more inclusive of people that would have stood out as "not like the others" before. The last panel I attended at Clockwork Alchemy was presented by a husband and wife writer/editor couple. The husband said that steampunk anthologies are now actively looking for stories where the main character is a minority or a woman - that the standard old Caucasian male adventurer stories are out of fashion now.
I'm still not likely to become a steampunk fan, but my attitude is much softer toward it now. Steampunk is changing and opening up. Those who want to join it, apparently are now quite able to do so - so good for them.
In sum, I had a nice time at Fanime this year. And I probably won't be back.
This was my third time attending Fanime. When I go to anime conventions, I go not only as a fan but as a professional translation rewriter and editor of light novels and manga. Fanime is a fan-run convention and doesn't offer the same opportunities for me to mingle with publishers and editors that Anime Expo does, or Yaoi Con which is even more in line with the yaoi and m/m romance field that is my specialty as both a writer and editor.
As such, I've attended Fanime primarily as an anime fan - which is fine, but for me it involves airfare and a hotel stay. It's likely that next year if I go to any fan-run conventions, I'll probably try Sakura Con in Seattle or Sac Con in Sacramento which are the only two major anime conventions on the west coast that I haven't been to yet.
So, barring some unforeseen change, this was my last hurrah at Fanime. At least I attended long enough to experience the miracle that was the five-minute badge pick-up. =D
