Fanime 2012 Day the Second, pt. 1 – Which Way to Hollywood

Saturday had its own quirks. Nothing quite as annoying as waiting in a 2.5 hour line. Saturday was all about finding the parking. Thankfully actually finding parking was pretty easy. That’s a good thing. Anyone who’s been to anything in San Francisco can attest to how terrible it can be finding parking… especially during events. In many ways, that’s the one thing that I appreciate about San José… copious amounts of parking.

Saturday was a lot more busy than Friday. Part of that is the prevalence of interesting panels. Our day got started at the bright and early hour of 8. That is a lot earlier then I ever like being awake. I made the commitment to wake up that early and make a panel before noon. The panel was “How to Pose Like a Pro”. Since I’ve never really done any real cosplay to speak of, let alone posing for cosplay photography. I like that they approached it from the fine art aspect. As someone who’s taken a lot of art history, it makes it a bit easier to digest.

One thing that can be said about Fanime is a lot of cosplay… and not so much cosplay. Like I said, I don’t normally cosplay. I dress up in costume as fits my mood at the time. I think this year will be the first year where I will actually have a cosplay that looks like something… but I digress. Now, I’m sure that I’ll get copious amounts of shit for this, but wearing a deadmau5 mask is not cosplay. Sorry. I’m not a huge fan of DJs as super stars in the first place… and I’ll cover that in a later blog.

I also saw a huge no-no… and something that I hope never to see again, but I’m pretty sure that I’ll see it again at some point. If you’re flat chested and you’re trying to portray a busty character, please take a lesson from drag queens on how to create cleavage… and please for the love of god, blend your make-up. I saw a girl who was portraying a much bustier character. So, she drew in the cleavage lines. There’s nothing wrong with that… if you take the time to blend the make-up in. Unfortunately, she didn’t. I had to do a double take because I thought they were supposed to be wrinkles on her chest. It took me a moment to finally recognize what it was she was doing. So, please… if you’re flat chested and trying to create the illusion of cleavage, look up a make-up tutorial. Otherwise, it might create more confusion.

Song of Storms guy from Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

I also was able to partake of both the Aniplex and Viz Media panels. For those who may not be familiar Aniplex puts out a good portion of anime in the US as does Viz… however Viz also puts out manga as well. It was interesting to see things that are coming in the future. What was especially interesting is the complete manga for Nausicaa, which is drawn by Hayato Miyazaki. It’s also the only one of his movies that he’s ever made a manga for. Aniplex discussed a lot of their upcoming DVD releases, including the re-release of Baccano and Garden of Sinners in one easy to obtain box.

One casual observation I had been that Fanime this year seems more populous than it did last year. I must say, I’m curious about the why of it. It’s interesting… maybe it’s because as geek culture becomes more popular, so do things where you can partake of geek culture. That’s certainly been the case with Comic Con (which I will also be blogging during in July).

(To be continued tomorrow)

Brian says:

May 30, 2012 at 7:34 pm

Two things:
One I’m not as picky about the bust size thing. I got a picture with a pair of very nice young ladies portraying Kei and Yuri (the infamous Dirty Pair!) who had very small breasts and they looked great. They also didn’t bother with pretense and just showed their tiny breasts packed into the skimpy as hell uniforms. I think if you have small breasts and want to portray a busty character then just go ahead with it. As long as you make the costume fit you I’m sure it’ll look just fine.

Two: I was thinking about the population as well and I remembered that Wondercon was held south of us this year. I think we got a lot of the Wondercon crowd that couldn’t go this year and wanted their convention fix. I know some people (I know they are the minority but hear me out) have con loyalty and will only go to one or two cons. Take that con away and they will look for another outlet. It may be begrudgingly at first but in the end I think we’re all the better for it.

whichwaytohollywood says:

May 30, 2012 at 11:10 pm

I have no problem if someone wants to be a busty character and is not busty. I do have a problem when they try to do the make-up to make themselves look bigger and instead look like they have a huge chest wound instead. That was the only problem I had with that cosplay. It was that the make-up wasn’t done well.

That might be possible. It also seems that popularity of anime and things Japanese are spiking again. The Cherry Blossom Festival has been pretty crowded the last two years. The same thing has happened with the amount of people visiting Japantown… of course, all of this is mere speculation…

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