Battles Not Joined - Anime Expo 2013

In the end, I was not allowed to fight any of the battles I had planned to fight at Anime Expo 2013 (AX2013). That wasn't because anyone tried to stop me. No one would dare try to do that. The Hubs was unsure how I could pull off establishing a magazine while picking fights. I had one angle figured out really nicely – I made my beefs part of the interview questions for the first quarry, Crunchyroll.com. I had just joined their subscription service last month when I needed to follow a new anime that this service was simulcasting. I got really irritated to find that they didn't carry Junjou Romantica, one of my favorite yaoi anime. I assumed that they didn't carry yaoi after I tried to find a couple of series on the site. Well, I got steamed at the idea that they didn't run some mild yaoi erotica but were running some terrifying, blood spewing horror and supernatural stuff. Since I had just done an essay about that very type of hypocracy in books, I was ready to take on the entire company over the issue during the interview. Well, the first thing I see is a banner for the spinoff series to Junjou Romantica. While I was getting information on how to set up an interview from the helpful young man at the counter, he had me sign into my account. There I found the spinoff series on the banner. So, no fight there, but I am setting up an interview with a cool company.

The next battle hadn't been planned until I saw the list of vendors. Among them was SmithMicro, creators of

Manga Studio, a comic drawing program I've been experimenting with. Or, I'd been trying to. It's been giving me a devil of a time despite many distress calls to customer service. The last problem was so vexing that I had abandoned it entirely in favor of pencils and inks and manual work. And while I have found that productive and satisfying, I had paid for the program. Well, when I saw they had a booth at AX2013, I thought I'd confront them about this so-called user friendly program and get some answers. Well, the very nice young people at the booth asked me if I had left on the beginners tutorial feature that turned off many of the typical aspects of the program. I had heard that at some point before, so I conceded that may be the problem. They were so nice and earnest, I just had to. Thus, another battle was thwarted.

The last battle was over before I got to say anything. I was thus left to enjoy the convention, make my magazine connections and do my interview. It was a relief, frankly. I hate being openly combative despite owning a whip and other such implements. Those, however, are never used in anger. And what about all of those internet rows I start? They aren't anger fueled. They are more intellectual or philosophical disputes. There is no heat behind them. I was glad that baggage was cleared and cleared quickly. We had a lot of ground to cover – two football fields of ground to cover.

Our mission was three fold. First, take photos of the cosplayers for my Facebook page, Yaoi a GoGo. It has

a weekly feature called Cosplay Friday. Since the cosplayers can turn up anywhere we might be, I had to point out the ones my page fans would be interested in seeing so Jon could snap them. Then, I was recruiting subjects for interviews for upcoming issues of YGG Magazine, the publication from the Facebook page. All of this is to promote my novels and the books I edit. They are a lot of work with the upkeep, luckily, I do enjoy the content quite a bit. Third, was to enjoy the convention with our friend and publishing partner, Marie. She is fluent in many forms of geekiness and really enjoys the weird. There are few that I can think of whose company we enjoy more.

On all accounts, the day was a smashing success. We got to re-connect with some of my favorite writers and publishers. We made introductions with some established and popular publishers we hadn't seen at Anime Expo before. And we found some brand new to the yaoi scene whose work looks amazing. I can't wait to include them in upcoming issues. I really want to read everything they've done. I felt so jazzed by their talent that I was thrilled to be a part of the genre. All of this work was being produced in the US, and it had the same quality of what I was seeing in Japan. It was awesome and lots of fun to interact with. Of course we dropped in on all of the many booths under Digital Manga to say hello to the lovely ladies who supervise our localizing gigs. We usually only see them in a twice monthly web conference. Most of our communication day to day is via email. I think it's always good to occasionally see people in person to forge a good working relationship. We also brought them cookies. Jon and I gave them to most everyone we interacted with. It was inadvertently Japanese of us to give a little gift to the people we either do business with or wish to do business with.

The interview was with a Japanese manga artist named Toshi Maeda who was a special guest of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshio_Maeda . He was a fascinating and charming individual that I really enjoyed spending time with. I will save the specifics of the interview for the magazine article. However, I can say that he was very thoughtful about his work and his legacy. He was also very appreciative of the fans of his work. I spent nearly an hour watching him do custom pieces of art for fans while he talked to them about the art of drawing manga. Since I have taken up drawing once again, I was very interested in his techniques. I've even been trying them on some of my sketches.

convention. He also happened to be friends with Brent Millis, a translator on the localizing team and one of my favorite indie publishers. Maeda-sensei is the father of a manga genre called Tentacle Hentai . He was a fascinating and charming individual that I really enjoyed spending time with. I will save the specifics of the interview for the magazine article. However, I can say that he was very thoughtful about his work and his legacy. He was also very appreciative of the fans of his work. I spent nearly an hour watching him do custom pieces of art for fans while he talked to them about the art of drawing manga. Since I have taken up drawing once again, I was very interested in his techniques. I've even been trying them on some of my sketches.

In the midst of all of this, there was a lot of fun to be had. There are two football fields worth of vendor

booths with all kinds of merchandise. This stuff is far more sophisticated than the pins with characters from the shows we like. All manner of crafts are used to make geeky collectibles of all types. And then there are all kinds of combinations of genres or shows. These mashups provided some of the most interesting merchandise at the convention. Luckily, Jon and I didn't have a lot of money to spend on such things, because we also don't have enough room for all this stuff. It was a very pleasant outing. I even made a real Parisian style lunch of a jambon et fromage sandwich on a baguette with some lovely white wine. That gave us a great respite from all that walking (four miles inside the building). A very good and productive time was had by us all!

To see what we saw at AX2013 go to:
 http://dlwarner.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_2814.html
 http://dlwarner.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_10.html
 http://dlwarner.blogspot.com/p/cosplay-at-ax-2013.html