Anime Festival Orlando Report

AFO has come and gone, thus marking my first run of the Panel OF DOOM. Overall I'd say it was more successful than I thought it would be. Being that it was a first-time event, they put me inside one of the video rooms, and it was standing room only for most of the time. I was lucky since not only did they plug the panel at Opening Ceremonies and at some of the daytime panels, but they put me in the traditional Friday night Hell timeslot. Things went so well that I ran an extra hour, which was generous of the con considering that the panel required a staffer to man the volume controls on their high-falutin' A/V setup that's normally automated so that there's no need to have any volunteers do shifts in the video rooms. Most of the things went over quite well, particularly the Pranksters segment which elicited such a loud response that the guests over in Main Events were wondering what the heck was going on in the other room (course, they were told it was the hentai panel). The TV Carnage segments were a big hit, which is good because they comprised a significant chunk of the panel. I know at least one person in the crowd was convinced to buy the set.

Some things didn't go over quite as well as I'd hoped, such as the Sonny Chiba Street Fighter trailers (no reaction for "Terry Tsuguri: six foot six of half-breed fury!" or "Junjo--YES, JUNJO--returned from the dead for revenge!"), Jim Brown in Slaughter's Big Rip-Off, or George Takei's Daily Show appearance. I was let down by the Eagle's Nest audio clips I played prior to the panel starting. The problem wasn't that people didn't get it--as is standard practice, the anime con was sharing the hotel grounds with a Christian convention--so much as they couldn't hear a word that was being said. The clips sounded fine on my home TV, but came out so garbled on their system that you couldn't distinguish what was being said. Someday I'll learn how to use those EQ sliders for situations like that. I'd say the one segment that cleared the most people from the room was the William Shatner rendition of Rocketman, so for AWA I'm going to trim that one down.

I was offered the opportunity to do the panel at Metrocon, but when they mentioned that the chair of the con would have to deem it "non-offensive" since Metrocon is a family outing, I think I'm sunk. Especially since he refused "Anime That Sucks" on name alone, since he figured I'd show something that would make somebody REALLY fighting mad or something. It's not like I show anything worse than R-rated or TV-MA, but "non-offensive" is beyond my ability, which is why the con guide description was sure to state "for those not easily offended." I was told that a mother and daughter in the crowd apparently took some umbrage to "It's Wonderful Being a Girl," the educational film all about menstruation and how to rig up one of those sanitary napkin parachute things. Then someone else wasn't quite jiving with the assorted WW2 Nazi Germany shots spliced into the original Heino clip.

Next up: Anime Weekend Atlanta. Being that I'm up Saturday opposite the costume contest, I don't expect as large a turnout, and since it's in a whole other state I should be okay if I just rotate out the [known] Hell footage in favor of other stuff.

So, who wants copies?