Fanime 2012 Day the Third, pt.2
We got back before a panel that I was really looking forward to: Persona for You. Now, I love Persona… Hell, I love the Shin Megami Tensei series. I didn’t expect much new or overly informative from it. I expected a fun panel discussing Persona… and that’s what I got with a lotof like-minded geeks. I got into like 30 minutes before the panel. It was on its second leg by the time I got there. The line snaked about a bit. There were a lot of people who were fans of Persona. More than I thought… and definitely more than the panelists were expecting. They repeatedly said that they expected only 3 or 4 people. 2 of three panelists were cosplayed as 2 characters from Persona 4. There would have been 3 of 3, but con exhaust set in for the third.
Gilles Poitras at the “Universal Gundam vs. Other Gundam” panel
That panel was really quite funny. They would also make in character jokes (especially once they got to Persona 4). They talked a bit about Persona 4 Arena (aka Persona 4 the Ultimate in Mayonaka Arena). They talked about what it’s expected to play like (games like Guilty Gear and BlazBlue). They also talked about characters that are expected to appear (there’s a new character very reminiscent of Metis from the bonus game in Persona 3 FES). There was also a little talk about Persona 4 the Golden (which is a lot like Persona 3 Portable)… and some touching on Persona 5.
After the panel, I needed to go look for my SO. I had gone to the panel myself and wound up sitting next to a random guy who was fun to talk to. While, I’m normally incredibly shy about engaging new people, but for some reason knowing that many people are geeky in a similar way makes it easier to engage other people.
Anyways, after the panel, I had to look for me SO. I started walking out of the room and there he was, sitting towards the back of the room. He had taken a turn through the dealers’ room and bought stuff. Now I’m a Red Dwarf fan, have been for some time. I love how they lampoon many things that are considered pretty holy to a lot of Sci-Fi fans (*cough*Star Trek*cough, cough*). There was someone selling Red Dwarf stuff there, and they happened to have a copy of both of the third Red Dwarf books (Red Dwarf is written by two writers collectively as Grant Naylor… separately they are Doug Naylor and Rob Grant). Ever since 1997 or 1998 I’ve wanted to read “Last Human”. Now I finally can. I’m pretty excited about that. The Red Dwarf books are both really interesting and funny.
Oddly enough, Sunday was the day we were there the latest. Saturday I wanted to leave earlier because I knew that we were going to be waking up earlier on Sunday to catch an earlier panel. So, we actually were in a panel until 11. That panel was Geek Networking. The whole weekend was worth it for that one panel. I admit, I don’t know how to network. It’s something that I’ve never really needed to do before; so I had no idea how to do it. The panel had a brief overview of what the panel was about and then we got to network among the participants in the panel, if they had similar things they were networking for. I was the only screenwriter. That’s not entirely surprising. The other writers were largely doing other forms of writing that, while I do it, it’s not what I really want to do with my life. I think I managed to get the word out about my blog (and those of you who are now here to read my blog from and/or because of Fanime, welcome).
I can’t say how much I’m glad that we had seen this panel. I can’t imagine what else I could have done that was more beneficial to me. I learned how to do something that I’ve never really known how to do and I got a chance to actually network some. It has to be one of the most invaluable moments of the con. And it’s certainly an opportunity I don’t think that I would have gotten anywhere else.
Skyward Sword Link
After the networking panel we had an hour before what I had wanted to stay for. We needed something to do to occupy that time so we went to Stage Zero which out in the middle of the convention to watch one of the game shows they were holding there. The game show was called “Anime Hazard”. It was kind of like Jeopardy but with all anime topics. Now, I had never really stopped and watched anything at Stage Zero before. I knew there were game shows. This time I actually watched one… and man, was it funny. Once you start getting towards the later part of the evening you get a lot more wackiness happening… and boy did that happen. That game show looked like a lot of fun, but I would have been full of so much fail as I didn’t know a lot of the questions. They did 2 rounds of Anime Hazard. One for a new group of contestants and another for people who were considered champions from the prior nights/ occurrences of Anime Hazard. We had stayed for the first round and had found it quite amusing. It was a lot of fun.
(Last part to come tomorrow)