BEST NEW SERIES

Nozomi no Densetsu, without a doubt. I don’t think anyone quite saw this one coming, and in a way I’m glad we didn’t. GAINAX’s masterpiece was one of the best-kept secrets in years–which is made even more impressive by the fact that they chose to simultaneously broadcast it on American TV as well. Every aspect of this show so far has been a masterpiece. The manic enthusiasm of Gurren Lagann crossed with the emotional depth of Evangelion’s twisted psychology… This is very much an adult show, and embraces that. There’s a reason it’s skyrocketed to the top of the charts both in Japan and America. It’s the first anime since Cowboy Bebop to be really socially acceptable to watch in America, and is practically the talk of the nation these days.

And you know what the best part is? We’ve got the whole second season to look forward to next year. (But dear gods, what a cliffhanger! GAINAX are horrible people!)

BEST CONTINUING SERIES

There were some really fantastic series continuing this year, with FMA’s stellar finale and some of Naruto’s best arcs, but the real standout was Eden of the East. The announcement of a full second season at the end of the second movie was thoroughly exciting, and lived up to its promise. The world it painted was rich and fascinating, and extremely poignant. Everyone who saw it came away with a hell of a lot to think about, and deeper for it.

BEST MOVIE

Oh wow, Fuyu no Tobira, no question. Mamoru Hosoda has knocked another one out of the park. We all thought Summer Wars was brilliant, but it was nothing compared to this–especially given the turnout! And now the American premiere of it has opened to stellar box office results, not to mention the pundits saying it’s a shoo-in for Best Animated Picture. Not since Spirited Away has an anime movie been this widely-accepted. I personally think that Hosoda could well be the next Miyazaki.

BEST BLOG

This is gonna be cheesy of me, but… the entire goddamn blogosphere. You guys really stepped up to the plate, and made some amazing posts. The whole community seemed to really cohere this year, and swelled immensely in size. There were occasional bouts of drama, but nothing out of the ordinary. On the whole, you guys just fucking rocked this year. Mad props.

MOST INTERESTING BLOG

The OEG. We never figured out who exactly they were, but they sure stirred things up a lot. And, in the end, they were successful, on a much broader scale than even they intended, I think. We all underestimated how powerful our own viral marketing schemes could be, and… Well, frankly, we have the unofficial OEG panels at Fanime, AX, and Otakon to thank for a lot of the publicity. Sure, it resulted in a fuckton of trolling, but… go to any anime convention these days, and you’ll find a mind-boggling decrease in the quantity of idiotic narutard-style otaku. The fandom as a whole seems to be finally growing up, and the OEG may well have been the catalyst.

SADDEST MOMENT

The return of Jason fucking Miao. Goddammit. The one blemish on an otherwise glorious year. I won’t spend any more time on this cumdumpster than I need to.

HAPPIEST MOMENT

Do I even need to list this? I think everyone knows what’s going to be said.

Everyone was horrified when ghostlightning announced BusterBeamSlice’s illness. We all anxiously followed the hospital mess on Twitter, and were right there with him as he waited in anguish for the diagnosis. And when we heard the news…

Well, that’s when the magic happened. There wasn’t any one real leader to it. We all just kind of spontaneously rallied. And what resulted was a truly beautiful effort. I’ve seen fundraisers. I’ve seen charities. But this… this was something special. There’s a reason that baby is alive and healthy today, and the reason is every single one of you. You’re all beautiful people.

Fuck, listen to me! I got into this business to troll all of you, and here I am singing your praises! Shit man! This must have been one hell of a year, to get me talking like that.

And you know what? I have this weird kind of feeling, like 2011… 2011 might just be even better. We’ve got so much forward momentum. So much to look forward to. So much potential. All we have to do is… not fuck this up.

.lolikappa

I woke up two episodes later, went back to the hotel room, cleaned up, and headed for AMVs, which were much more exciting. At this point, I was super low energy (and probably kind of lame) so I headed back to the room to catch a nap. … this was everyone’s plan, it seemed, because there was barely room for me to walk for all the bodies on the floor. Soooo I got on my comp and blogged Friday and Saturday.

After blogging, I sort of hung around and talked to people for an hour or two. Then grabbed breakfast, hit up the dealer’s room, tried to watch more AMVs/anime, and I either succeeded or failed epicly because and completely just forgot I met up with CCY and his friend at noon. Author wasn’t there (fucker!!) and no one else approached me with my sign (sigh…). There was some good punching. We chatted a bit, wandered a bit, and then next thing I knew I was waking up for the webcomics panel at 3 P.M. I know that sounds suspicious, but I promise it’s not what it sounds like. It sucked because Dom wasn’t there. What.

Somehow the rest of the evening burned away—I think we watched some Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei and Dennou Coil, and I think I fell asleep a couple times. Eventually I went to the room to nap only to run into a super-awkward situation involving a male friend and his female friend. It was lulz, though, because I’m good at making awkward awkwardly funny. An hour or two later, I hit up a pizza place nearby with the guy who watched School Days with me. After that, we went to Damn You Internets…

… is what I’d LIKE to say, but it was canceled. It turns out that maybe the convention center doesn’t like having watermelons spun on against their floors. Remember, with every full revolution of your fist, your arm grows one step longer. Instead of Damn You Internets, we cracked Nice Boat jokes while in line for the second Gainax/TTGL panel. The panel itself may or may not have been cool; I went to pick out Jason Miao but was easily distracted by the opportunity to watch AMVs across the hallway. It’s kind of sad because I don’t even like AMVs that much. Then again, I don’t even like TTGL that much, and that’s not even me talking about my feelings for Gainax. FLCL? You really don’t want me going there.

After some AMVs degenerated into Anime Hell, we went across the hall again, this time to the Karaoke Gong show, which was being run by Tommy. Yes, that Tommy. The Tommy who confiscated my sign at AOD 2006. The Tommy whose karaoke contest we trolled at AOD 2007. My friend lolikappa/Duk/Sunshine was signed up to do Shiraishi Minoru. I was lulzing at the prospect until two people before my friend did Shiraishi Minoru. At that point I decided that Minoru was corporate bastardization in a similar vein to Haruhi, and I took down the minoru-dan.dotq.org site in a fit of self-righteous fanboy fury.

My friend’s “Ore no Wasuremono” was total fail but it was total fail done right. Before singing, he dedicated the song to Tommy. Before the judges said their bits, Tommy told my friend that he had come a long way from the little boy with the lolicon sign. I /facepalmed but my friend on stage—and my friends in the audience—called out to me. I stood.

“Take out the sign!” they said. “We know you have it with you!”

I had previously put it in my pocket. A suspicious not-so-obvious troll staff member had told me to take it off, so I had. I had, however, made a grievous mistake right after returning from pizza. I had left it in the room. My pocket had no sign. I decided to go out in a blaze: I would empty all my pockets, rip off my clothes—”I HAVE NO SIGN!!!”

But. It was not to be.

After emptying one pocket, I found in the other my schedule for the convention. My schedule, which had been used as scratch paper by KigaMoosh at our Create That Anime! panel. My schedule, which had “FURRY!!!!” scrawled across the back. Changing my plans in a flash, I carefully unfolded the piece of paper and then held it out.

“I HAVE BECOME A NEW MAN!” I shouted. Tommy laughed. The audience—what of it could see the new improvised sign—went wild. It was awesome. My friends couldn’t contain themselves and burst out. I bit my lip to keep myself from cracking up. I was almost crying—I couldn’t be the lolicon I wanted to be. I had to become a furry.

Then some other shit went down, and I ended up going to bed at midnight.

That was a good day somehow, even if I don’t remember what the fuck happened for most of it.

BY THE BY HERE’S WHAT I BOUGHT AT THE CONVENTION:

ARIA FIGURINES

PRESIDENT ARIA

FINALLY, in response to some things said earlier:

Zeroblade:

Also, your con posts are composed of incoherent rambling.

No; they’re composed of sleep deprivation, euphoria, and enthusiasm. Incoherent rambling is the resulting structure, not the entirety of the composition.

IcyStorm:

Punch Miao for me. He’s been soiling the name "Jason."

Fucking Jason.

Os:

You noob. You dont go to cons to watch episodes of anything.

Shut the fuck up, Mr. I Don’t Know The Joy Of Enjoying Things With Others.

Jared:

So I herd you liek me

FUCK YEAH JARED

P.S. I will write about Monday ASAP. Also, I have new shit to disseminate regarding Damn You Internets. Also, next year I will panel as much as possible. It turns out that our Create That Anime! panel was the funniest and possibly best of all the events this year, so clearly we should do more of it

P.P.S. The only two things that would have made the weekend better than it was: more people watching School Days Saturday night, and Damn You Internets not sucking.

P.P.P.S. I should blog anime again sometime.

I started off the morning with failing to blog about Friday (note how Friday’s post was written mostly on Sunday—the same day I’m writing this) and followed that up with some delicious hot chocolate and lemon bar. I then headed over to AMVs where I wasted a good two hours enjoying the mostly fun and sometimes incredibly lame fan creations. After the AMVs I hit up the dealer’s room again. This time I walked away with a new hat and an Aria figurine. And not just any Aria figurine—an Aria figurine. That’s right. The cat. Fuck yeah Aria.

After the dealer’s room, I found myself at loose ends. I tried forcing myself to re-watch some El Cazador de la Bruja and that went over real shittily. The first problem with it was that I realized that its re-watch value on go #3 is like, 0. That was the only problem I recognized because I got the fuck out. I ended up being tooled into going to the Gainax room and watching four episodes of Gurren Shittan. I flame, as usual, because I love.

At four I flounced over to the MAD about Nico panel, which was cooler than last year’s MAD panel and better than this year’s lack of Nico-ness in Damn You Internets!, due to… well, having Nico-ness. I lulzed at Nagato Yuki’s UNINSTALL. I think I lulzed too much. I think it hurt a little bit.

At five I scurried over to the Gainax panel. I sat with three friends, each of whom asked a question (the guy who asked about Yoko’as age? He did it at my bidding—I was too shy and self-conscious). I heard both of Miao’s questions. The first was, admittedly, cool, because it prompted a lot of interesting talk from the president. The second was shit because Ikari Shinji should never be apologized for. If Simon and Kamina are so different, Jason, that’s not an apology—it’s a compliment. Faggerjack.

After Miaonax I tried to hit up the How To Talk To Girls panel with my buddies but it was crap despite having Mr. Evangelion on it. We ditched it in favor of food, which was needed and sooooooooo delicious. We came back from food just in time to line up for Damn You Internets!. Which uh, for lack of a better word, sucked ass.

No internet connection, so no nico nico douga.

No Jared, so no lulz.

No Stu, so no sex.

Mikey completely failed and holding the focus while being funny and half the people who said things at the audience mic were fail. My friend who measured… well, he measured, and I was surprised that it only came out to be that long because when it’s inside me oh let me tell you it is the bomb and it is the snake and it’s like the ultimate in terrorist technology if you consider my ass to be a flying car. Or something.

There WAS a beautiful beautiful gigantic picture of wet&needy Hatsune Miku. I came a bazillion times.

I also found out WHY Jared wasn’t at the panel—the story’s lulz, and I’ll recount it when I do my more in-depth end-of-con report on Monday that will have precious anecdotes and stuff. Notable events at the otherwise fail 4chan panel: my friend announcing his measurement. The Mexican guy breaking the watermelon. The one Ronald video. Some not-too-impressive rickrolling. I yelled something about xenutv being down for breaking the law; thankfully no one paid heed.

After the fail panel, I took a shower (masaka!!!!! rite?!), chilled a bit, grabbed some food, and then catapulted myself into School Days.

School Days.

School Days.

School Days.

I love you. I don’t know if it’s that I was watching you with someone else. I don’t know if it’s that I knew Makoto had it coming. I don’t know if it’s that I’d been cracking Nice Boat jokes all day. I don’t know if it’s that I was sleep-deprived. But holy fuck, that show was awesome. I’m not editing my MAL right now, but if I were, I’d set it to complete and give it a 10/10. It was amazing. Bantering with the other audience members throughout the penultimate and ultimate episodes was hilarious fun. And there was so much applause at every event in the last episode—Makoto’s death, Makoto in a bag, Sekai’s death, Sekai’s disembowelment, “there’s no one inside you,” the Nice Boat. Some yelled, “BAD END!” I yelled back, “BEST END!” Someone said they needed to watch something happy ASAP. I said nothing’s happier than watching Makoto be raped with knives.

This is hardly Saturday any longer (the entire School Days marathon took place on Sunday, technically) but I slept for about an hour in the Clannad marathon afterward, and I’m using that as the bookend of the day.

And now I’m off to go enjoy Sunday!

There’s an animeblogger meet-up in two and a half hours in the lobby lounge of the hotel I’m in, I think, so uh—I’ll be there, I guess. I wonder if Miao will show his face. That’d be fucking hilarious on all kinds of levels.