It was another panel buffet at Anime NYC this year. There were a few panels I was interested in going to, but two things stopped me — time conflicts and uh, tiredness. By the end of Friday and Saturday I was done, so a couple of the premieres that took place (A Destructive God, Somali and the Forest Spirit) I ended up skipping. But chances are you would’ve found a panel of interest during the three days since there was a ton of variety. Now, some thoughts on the panels I attended.
Friday
– Denpa Panel. The good: the announcements! Moto Hagio, Gundam, more Fate works, and Baby Bear Bakery hits a number of audiences, and those are always good to have in your catalog.
The bad: From how late the panel started, to a few technical issues throughout the panel, to not mentioning that you’ll have a Q&A with the author of Today’s Menu for Emiya Family, TAa, during a rundown at the start of the panel, and to only having about maybe 5-6 minutes of a Q&A with her? And there was no time for any fan Q&A, so it was really just unfortunate. There was the live drawing panel on Saturday that might have solved those issues for some attendees, but for others, maybe not so much.
+ Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! panel. We got some neat insight into Science Saru — From Eunyoung Choi, Producer & Co-Founder, explaining her journey into the anime industry (studied Fine Art and Sculpture in Korea, moved to Japan, then moved to France, then moved back to Japan and worked in the anime industry) to learning Masaaki Yuasa searches his own name online, to their philosophy of trying to take on projects that would be a challenge, it was a good look into what the studio is all about. We also got to see the first half of Eizouken! episode 1, which will premiere January 5. Looks to be a fun show that I’ll have on my list for the winter season. Overall, the panel was neat.
Saturday
= GKIDS Panel. Unfortunately, not much in the way of announcements here, and it was for the most part a general rundown of what they’ve put out, upcoming stuff, and Ghibli Fest. They did have a Q&A with the fans though, which I think is a good thing. You just hope you don’t get any odd questions (which is what did happen in this panel).
+ Square Enix panel. Despite it starting mildly late + a technical difficulty (they really wanted to show off that video that highlights everything the company does), the panel was a success. It was paced well, they integrated visuals with videos, had 6 announcements, and made everyone stand up and do Jan ken pon! So they made everyone active and also gave us an idea of where the company will be going not just in 2020, but in the future.
– The US vs. Japan: Making Manga in Two Very Different Publishing Environments. They did have a creator (Misako Rocks), a US Director who publishes manga (Erik Ko from Udon), an agent and a Graphic Novel Director (Gina Gagliano from Random House), and yet after staying for the whole thing, I’m not sure I got anything new that I already didn’t know before. You can mostly tell Japan more or less favors works created in Japan (as Misako explained why it was tough for her works to get published there), the publishing schedules are drastically different for US and Japan, and that Rumiko Takahashi has 30 assistants…Ok, that I didn’t know (and I do wonder about), but overall, I think I was expecting there would be a Japanese editor alongside a US editor to go over the differences, but instead I got something I already knew. Might have been better for those who aren’t in as touch with the industry as me.
Also, Erik Ko did recommend Bakuman as an example of what goes on for manga creators.
INCOMPLETE: Yen Press panel. I was there when they made their announcements. I was there when they started the Q&A. I was not there while the Q&A was going on because I had press duties to attend! So that’s the only reason why I have this as incomplete.
General take though: I am interested in a few of their licenses (In The Land of Leadale, High School Prodigies, Sadako…Highschool DxD because everyone fills up their Twitter mentions asking about that???), but I am actually shocked they licensed 13 titles. The second half of 2019 for Yen Press has been shuffling a good amount of their releases to 2020, so adding any more seems like asking for trouble to me. Maybe half of that or 8 would’ve been fine. Butttt I guess they believe they’ll have the staff to handle all these titles.
That said, if this is all they’ll have between now and their next panel in 2020, maybe this will be fine.
+ J-Novel Club. This panel was pretty much announce everything and take questions from the fans. And that’s a good thing! The panelists pretty much got into what they were releasing, starting their new J-Novel Heart label, took questions from attendees and did that in under an hour. The titles they announced might find an audience with someone (and you have to try a work from a creator named 616th Special Information Battalion, no?), and bringing more titles to print (Bakarina and Sexiled) can’t be a bad thing. So overall, one of the better panels I attended over the weekend.
Sunday
+ Vertical/Kodansha panel. Vertical’s announcements were short (more Nisiosin, and a box set for Chi), but Kodansha Comics pretty much took care of announcements, from some new titles (Blue Period, Life Lessons of Uramichi-Oniisan) to a title going from digital to print (Heaven’s Design Team) to some crazy person deciding that it was time to bring over Kei Sasuga’s GE: Good Ending as part of their digital catalog (note: they announced a lot of digital titles). All in all, that made the panel very good, and they even had a Q&A to top it all off. To also have an editor from Dessert magazine in Japan, Megumi Kitahara, also join the panel and talk about the editing process? Yeah, we got a panel winner here.
+ Localize This!. Literally the only problem with this panel was its length. An hour is nowhere near enough to really dig into everything localizers (Translator, Editor, Letterer, Adapter) do, but the 6 who were on this panel did their best. It was very engaging, and discovering the famous “I AM HERE!” was actually something Caleb Cook, the translator for My Hero Academia, had to come up with actually blew my mind. In general, everyone also got into their philosophies, the extra legwork you sometimes have to do when working on a title (For Kristi, she played the Granblue Fantasy game), and how they broke into the industry (For Zack, one of the ways involved reaching out to a company and telling them to let him translate a work because the current translator wasn’t cutting it!). Was all very good, and probably should convince some convention person to make the panel longer next time!