Hey there everyone! I'm back and I bring news from Sakura-Con 2008! As many of you may know, I was actually press at Sakura-Con this year and had the privilege of doing all sorts of snazzy press things like cutting into lines and demanding drinks and stuff from con volunteers (I was told it was easier to ask forgiveness than permission, so...).
Anyway, the first industry panel I caught was Funimation's at around noon on the first day. As I was told, I quickly ran to the front of the panel room, picked a jacket off the chair on the end, placed it neatly underneath the chair, and sat down. Everyone looked at me a little awkwardly after that, but I just smiled back and everyone ignored me afterwards - well, except one guy who was really emphatically trying to apologize for something (he kept staring at me, clearing his throat and going "excuse me!" for some reason)... but that was besides the point. This was really about learning what Funi's going to be up to this year.
First off, I just wanna say that Funimation has some incredibly dedicated people working for them. Case in point: the panel host was cosplaying Alphonse Elric, full suit of armor and everything! Just the way his voice sounded on the microphone, I think he even had a small vocoder in the helmet to add a neat "reverberation" sound to it all. Actually, I think it was more amusing that no one really seemed to think anything of it - I guess everyone had gotten into "convention-mode" sooner than I had.
Polyresin suit of armor aside, he did give an excellent account of what we could expect from Funimation in the time to come. The one that immediately comes to mind is the new "reduced price" DVD collections they're going to start releasing in May - and no, I don't mean the Viridian Collection. This new line of DVDs is called "Super-Viridian" and - to be perfectly frank - seems like a strange move. As far as I could tell, it was Malibu Stacey but with a new hat; basically, it was the Viridian DVDs but for a couple bucks less and with a free bookmark inside.
Some other bits of news from the panel seemed far better, however. As many of us already know, Ouran High School Host Club was licensed by Funimation last year or so. Well, the release date has been set for May 13th (a common mantra during the panel was "coming soon this May"). I remember someone asking how they'd be able to get a volume out so quickly considering when the actual license took place. The host was speaking fast (and the vocoder was echoing everything strangely) so I wasn't able to write down all the details. Still, it sounded like they were going to be able to release Ouran quickly because it was going to be Japanese audio only and feature only the first two episodes. As everyone in the room murmured a little (especially one girl in the middle who swore really loud - that was fun too...) the host explained succinctly that it would all be okay because "Ouran is such a surefire win that we can pretty much put out anything with blue blazers on the cover... and the girls will pay anything for it."
Well, it seemed at least a little better. Still better than the other news that Vic Mignogna was retiring from voice work in May (again with May). Again, the host quickly had to explain - seems Vic wanted to focus more on his singing career, so after doing his final voice work on an unnamed project he was going to quit working on anime. Well, that was an absolute bomb he dropped on us which led to even more noise and a whole slew of questions about Vic Mignogna.
And sadly, that was actually how the panel ended. I came a little late so I missed the first chunk of the panel, but it pretty much ended with 20 minutes of questions about how they could let Vic Mignogna quit. Personally I wanted to ask when the full box set for Beck was going to come out, but I just didn't have a chance...
At the end of it all, though, "Alphonse" still stated to all of us "not to panic", and that "they were going to be fine."
Personally, I think everything was a load of bunk.
So that was my first press experience at Sakura-Con. Please don't flame me.
