Fan conventions are often punctuated by a variety of panels, workshops, and open discussions about issues and topics that are important to the community at large. These events are scheduled because event planners understand that there is a subset of the fan community that is interested in self-analysis. Many attend specialized conventions to expand their knowledge of the subculture, learn about the fringes of popular culture, or simply become more involved in their hobbies. Whoever hosts the panel has to reconcile this sort of attendant with the sort of fan who exclusively attends to talk about their interests, to merely pontificate on what is already known and comfortable. We found that the panels at Anime USA generally had panelists and attendants in each category, allowing for a good mix of viewpoints. It is important for the died-in-the-wool fan attendees to bring their nuanced, specialized knowledge to these discussions, as their obsessive attention to detail can often help illustrate and further illuminate some of the broader issues at hand. The attendees who are passionate about bringing scrutiny to their hobby in order to improve it are able to help the unquestioning fan better understand, or at least generally situate, their fandom. The overall goal of these panels is not to reach didactic consensus, but rather encourage discourse and the broader understanding of the group’s mutual interests.
A photo from last year’s Anime USA
Not all panels are geared toward the higher ideals so far mentioned. Some panels serve more as fan-service than a service to enquiring fans. These panels might just be organized discussions about a particular anime series speaking within the cordon of the text rather than within the cultural landscape which produced it. Such a panel might be oriented toward discussions of plot, character development, or contributors like voice actors, animators, and directors directly responsible for making the show. Other panels might just be question and answer sessions with the aforementioned contributors. Voice actors’ panels were popular attractions for convention goers at Anime USA. We sought out the more enquiring panels because we’re both academically inclined and not involved enough with anime to understand the minutiae discussed in fan panels.
X-Strike Studios
As we mentioned before, Anime conventions are not limited to the discussion of anime, but rather incorporate similar interests that are on the periphery and show how they help forge a general appreciation “fantastic” popular culture (“fantastic,” here, is a general term that explains why Anime conventions are able to cater to the tastes of pen-and-paper role players, those interested in science-fiction literature, people who like horror movies, video game players, and persons interested in all things Japanese). For example, independent filmmakers X-Strike Studios hosted several panels throughout the weekend that only tangentially dealt with anime, if at all. On Friday evening, they hosted a discussion on video games as vessels for narratives. This discussion was largely open-ended, putting the responsibility and momentum squarely on the shoulders of the audience. Most everyone was able to debate the finer points of the Final Fantasy series or discuss the importance of the recent, abstract sleeper hit Katamari Damacy (2004, PS2). It was impossible to always find commonalities, as participants spoke about a vast array of games. For example, there were no nods and more than a few grumbles when Kevin tried to highlight the wholesale dismantling of narrative expectation provided by Planescape: Torment (1999, PC) One problem with the panel was that the audience was unquestioning of some of their basic assumptions about the purpose of games. A loaded term passed around was “immersion,” which many of the attendees conflated with involvement and enjoyment. After the panel Bobby mentioned this to X-Strike’s Darrin, who admitted he recognized its detriment to the discussion but feared it might be an uncomfortable shift for some of the fans to make.
Darrin and Rory
Veterans of the east coast convention circuit would have recognized X-Strike’s second panel entitled “X-Strike Versus Hollywood.” X-Strike began as a labor of love – recognizing the disservice that Hollywood had done to video game franchises, X-Strike started to make movies that appealed to gamers, paid appropriate homage to the title in question, and challenged our assumptions about the practices of adapting and expanding upon existing works of popular culture. Their films maintain the delicate balance between reverential and blasphemous, always funny and never complacent for long. At this panel, X-Strike explained their position and mission, then opened up the floor to the attendants, posing questions in an attempt to improve their films and find ways help video game movies in general. Many of the attendants had seen at least one of their films, some had seen every one of their films several times, and some had never been exposed to their work. Discussion often returned to the difference between premise-based features and films based on a single joke (for example, Mega 64 predominantly makes short films based on one-joke games; X-Strike has explored this avenue in their internet exclusive shorts). Attendants and panelists questioned whether or not there were “unadaptable” games. Are there games that could never possibly be deprived of their interactive elements and be rendered cinematic? We feel that X-Strike has done a good job representing gameplay as well as story in their films, especially with their most recently releases Project Snake: Low Budget Espionage and P Rappa’s Nth Mile. These films have captured the extra-narrative nuances of games, which unlike Hollywood films, are driven by the flexibility of the intellectual property. Attendees also wondered if there games that are too canonical, too precious and singular, for low budget filmmakers to adapt? The overwhelming consensus was that this limitation is imposed less because of the sanctity of a series than the inability of film to add value to the game. The panelists from X-Strike also admitted that they felt they would not do a series like The Legend of Zelda or Metroid justice if they attempted a low budget version and that it might be possible for a creative and intrepid filmmaker to tackle these games provided the appropriate resources. Further, would it be possible to do a serious, non-parody film about a game or game series? The panelists think that it would be possible, and even highly desirable, but think that the current cultural attitudes toward games would render it difficult. Plus, high-minded seriousness, even at its most sincerely melodramatic, is always in danger of lapsing into campy kitsch. While under-spoken drama could eventually land in a video game film, the contemporary film industry does not seem up to the task. Finally, X-Strike lead a panel on video games and conceptions of violence. While this necessarily tread familiar ground, the panelists and attendees eventually turned to brainstorming ways to elevate the discourse of video games above such philistine worries. Associating games with the history of “serious” art, symphonic concerts of video game music, and more feminist games and game genres are three of ways that could possible curb this unfortunate debate.
Robert Aldrich
Author Robert V. Aldrich presented a series of panels on his books and their underlying influences. Aldrich is very candid about his inspirations, which bridge the nostalgic (Transformers) and the historic (the earliest comic books and graphic storytelling mediums). Aldrich writes “anime” novels, which means that he bases his books on action and character-oriented motivations rather than narrative. His form of writing is very phenomenological – he “inhabits” his characters and, given his sketches of their motivations, allows them to direct where the story goes. Anime literature is more than big eyes and furry tails. In one panel, he talked about the evolution of comic books and graphic narratives, noting that anime as a cultural sensation is the product of an Eastern/Western meeting of the minds. No how matter much of a Japanophile you are, it must be conceded that anime is a truly multicultural affair. In Aldrich’s panels, attendees were able to lend their cultivated knowledge of anime and manga franchises to the larger discussion. Aldrich also did a panel geared toward his books and their fans. While he has not yet cracked the New York Times bestseller list for fiction, Aldrich has cultivated a relatively large readership, which he solidifies with his convention appearances and panels.
The attentive yet boisterous crowd.
One specifically anime-related panel we attended was the “Gothic & Lolita Fashion.” It caught our attention with its name, so we had no idea what we were going to be involved with. The original plan was to bring the kind of critical cultural questions we’ve grown accustomed to raising in panels. However, we were overwhelmed by the deeply entrenched participants of the panel and the opportunity never presented itself. Rather than the discussion we expected, Gothic & Lolita was rather a workshop—a rudimentary summary of how interested fans can dress Lolita. The presenters gave fashion “do’s and don’ts,” tips on how to put together a “Loli” outfit on a budget, and an overview of the varieties of dress. The presentation was attended by a younger crowd - the same crowd that would be looking to define their fashion sense in situations outside of an anime convention. The language used by the presenters even relegated the audience to an inferior status, explaining the beginnings of something complicated but adding the disclaimer that “you don’t need to know about that,” in which ‘you’ refers to an out-group to be built from the ground up while the presenters were the in-group.Lolita fashion is truly baffling. “Dressing Loli” implies cosplaying a certain archetype, one which has precedents in anime film but need not be slavishly based on any particular model. Most cosplaying deals with meticulously reconstructing the fanciful dress of favorite anime character. Cosplaying is a dedicated practice, but not a particularly social or creative one – rather than commit to inhabiting or role-playing these characters, most cosplayers simply attempt to mimic dress for the benefit of picture-taking. Like all anime, the Lolita archetype has a ridiculously complex history that (to our knowledge) was in no way addressed at the panel. Vladmir Nabokov’s famous novel Lolita paints a picture of a perplexing, ambiguously pre-sexual femme fatale who drives old men wild. “Loli” fashion takes this idea and infuses it with sensibilities of Victorian English fashion. More specifically, the practice of “dressing Lolita” deals with mimicking a particularly Japanese reading of the Victorian/Gothic sensibilities of Alice in Wonderland. The Alice that resonates for the subculture is a mix of Alice from American McGee’s Alice (2000, PC) and Jonathan Miller’s Gothic-sublime film Alice in Wonderland (1966). In short, the very practice of Lolita cosplay is sourced on an American misreading of a Japanese reading of a pop cultural pastiche.
Bobby witnessed a particularly intimate moment in this panel from his vantage point in the back which sums up the disquieting nature of this sort of presentation. The panelists were discussing the intricacies of Lolita footwear. One of their “don’ts” of footwear was sandals. A girl in the back of the room, who was obviously attempting to dress Lolita for Anime USA, looked down at her sandal-clad feet in embarrassment. She crossed her legs, hoping to hide the top of her feet behind her purse. Bobby described it as peering in on the pinnacle of her insecurities and said he was overcome by guilt for having voyeuristically witnessed such a private personal moment.
Of course there were more panels than any person could ever attend in a single weekend, so people might not sit in on a discussion of something they have no interest in. While this is why Kevin and I attended the “Gothic & Lolita” panel for this very reason but we expect that most other people would not do the same. We’d encourage convention-goers to explore new topics - if not to branch out than at least to solidify the reasons for your current interests. Panels have become our favorite events at MAGFest primarily because we can play a lot of the games in the gameroom at home. The panels we dropped in on at Anime USA taught us a lot that we couldn’t learn from visiting the video rooms to watch episodes of shows we were unfamiliar with. Final words of wisdom? Come to the Virtual Fools panels at MAGFest!
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