So I went to NYComicCon and ignored all the comics stuff but it's still merged with the NY Anime Festival, and it had pro vidja gaming there too, so sure. Saw / got me some new anime.
* Fate Zero: They had the first episode subtitled (legal I guess then!). I never saw any of Fate / Stay Night and have 0 interest in doing so - Tsukihime was a noble failure, and Stay Night was apparently 26 torturous episodes of nothing happening combined with anime romance to generate mana. However, this has Ufotable doing it, and I like Kara no Kyokai. More importantly, I suspect I will like the cast way more. Rather than lame high school anime leads vs. a killer loli, a bunch of experienced badasses duking it out? And two of them are even married so they have families on the line? Awesome. Okay, we do have one seeming high schooler, but it looks like they're setting him up for a fall, and he seems interesting enough anyway. Emiya seems pretty cool too, for all that it's hard to tell if he'll be able to live up to all the hype given to him - the maybe-retired unorthodox assassin who takes on even mages but whose wife thinks has a hidden heart of gold, and has the straight-up knightly summon? Could be awesome. The inquistor and the mage seem like an imposing enough teamup. Angsty dude with bugs struck me as the most lame, but whatever, 4/5 ain't bad.
One thing that will swing my interest in it: how many episodes do they plan to make? The correct answer is hopefully "13 or fewer." The Holy Grail War is basically Highlander, right? You shouldn't stretch that out forever. People fight it out and then everybody else dies or concedes and then somebody collects ultimate power (which they apparently do very much with since the world situation isn't substantially different 9 years later.)
* Sunrise panel: There really wasn't much else to go to at 12. Lots of Gundam hype, yawn, whatever, a little Tiger & Bunny hype (the writer/director(?) of T&B was their guest). They were hyping Gundam like baseball in the sense of whole "generations of fans, history, tradition," which I'm not sure is a good idea in the States. Was vaguely amused in their history clip about how they described Gundam Wing as "introducing many female fans to the series with its attractive male characters." I see. They then had a preview clip with upcoming Sunrise properties. Sacred Seven appeared to be a bog standard dudes with amazing powers series, but its song was by Fiction Junction, so that's something. Phi God of Puzzles is probably lame but I am still impressed with Japan's ability to take any normal ability and try to make it awesome - "I AM THE ULTIMATE PUZZLE SOLVER, BRING IT ON EVIL PUZZLE CONSORTIUM." The Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere (sp?) - uh, started off sounding promising - there's some kind of spaceship time reversal, and it's 1648 again with the Thirty Years War in Europe and the Warring States period of Japan, except now with superpowers and mechs, or something. Sure, I approve. Except that the actual shots seemed to be *all* scantily clad females in fetish gear blowing each other up with magic arrows or whatever, and the character designs were very clearly on the hentai end of the scale - trying very hard to be "hot" even if the actual result was grotesque. Ugh. Gundam Age is apparently a new Gundam and involves what looks like an 8 year old piloting a mech, but also an Ugly Old Man, so maybe they combine and create the usual angsty teenager or something.
* Revolutionary Girl Utena - So this was an odd one. See, there's this forest with a giant staircase, and then this upside down castle, and a student council getting messages from The End of the World, and swords being pulled from bosoms, and.... what? This has been out for years you say?
Actually, since I watched Utena at my college's anime club, and had been pre-warned that the movie was terrible and pretentious, and only joined in after the person who warned me said that actually the television show was kind of interesting, I never saw the first two episodes before. So this was new. The show actually did a pretty solid job on introducing characters and the wacky rules that exist at Ohtori Academy. Utena responded properly puzzled to the bizarreness ("oh! That's cold!"). I also found it interesting that Utena fought the first duel over Wakaba's honor, and Anthy had rather little to do with it. Didn't know that! In general I think it was a good choice to have Utena rather distant from Anthy at first - you need some motion in relationships. Touga was nicely established as a charming creep early with his binoculars and actions toward Saionji. Just overall solid.
* Show floor - Not THAT much interesting, although the Japan tourism booth was interesting with its pamphlets funded by small towns who never get any tourists, but want to brag that there's totally a statue somewhere dedicated to a character from Galaxy Express, so please come visit anime fans. Reminds me of problems in tourism budgets in the US too - New Jersey totally pays for brochures hyping the beautiful Blue Mountains that nobody ever visits but not enough on the casinos or the Atlantic City beaches which people do actually visit thanks to legislative pull. They had the "Japan anime tourism map" and everything.
I did pick up a copy of "Sword of the Stranger." Never saw it before, but a friend recommended it, so we'll see. Came with an art book, too.
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Haven't been watching much anime in general, though. Started up Morbito: Guardian of the Spirit awhile back. It's good, but hit a point that's not quite compelling - not enough tension to force me to watch the next episode. There was also one plot escape which I slightly boggled at involving being knocked off a cliff at high speed and surviving and not having said miraculous survival be obvious from watchers above, but whatever. Also watched the first 3 episodes of Penguindrum. Uh, we'll see on that one, though points for creativeness so far with the invisible stalker penguin spy corps.
