Sakuracon: Day 1

Waking up early, I started off today as a typical Seattle-ite. You know, stopping off at Starbucks first. Yeah, considering I don’t usually stop here I am trying to fit it as a city liver. I don’t think that is working at all, but it was worth a try. After that, I was still early to the convention so I stopped by the video room before the convention started.

Video Room – Humanity Has Declined

Remembering Irina’s review of Humanity Has Declined, I decided to go to the video room playing that before the opening ceremonies. It’s pretty obvious that I didn’t wander into the first episode, but it was still funny regardless. Especially the skinned headless chickens starting a rebellion then failing at it completely. Thank you for writing about this, Irina. I will definitely have to put that on my soon to be watch list to get the full context.

There is a lot of quick retorts and subtleties to the humor of this anime that that just help brings the laughs more and more. Also, there are a lot of fun characters including our main protagonist, a lot of great bits of animation when it’s needed, and who knows what else. I have to watch this one very soon or at least find it at the convention hall so I can watch it whenever I want to. Both of those options are acceptable I think. The 2 episodes I saw were pretty great.

Sakuracon 2019 Opening Ceremonies

Compared to last year, the line up before being allowed into the into the opening ceremonies didn’t take as long. Perhaps that was because I just entered the line before officials let people into the building though, but whatever. It’s always fun seeing what sorts of costumes appear in these sorts of line ups when everything is jammed together. A fine way to gather trends of what is currently popular and what isn’t.

As for the opening ceremony, it was slightly different and not as busy as filled with content as last time. Mary Mariko Ohno’s Kabuki band was back, but they played the Evangelion opening instead of Sailor moon opening this time on top of the original english Pok’emon opening. It’s always fun to hear opening music in different styles.

And since 2019 is the 40th anniversary of Gundam, the Japanese correspondent to this convention, Yoichiro Yamada, and his guests dressed up as original gundam characters. As you can see from the photo below, the correspondent himself dressed up as Char and his two assistants as Amuro and Sayla. It was so much fun.

Kari Wahlgren Q&A

Seeing the actor behind the voices of different characters I like is always interesting because you never know what they look like or how nice they are. I’m glad to say that the voice actor behind Saber, Haruko, and who knows how many voices I know and don’t know, is very fun and down to earth. She answered a lot of good questions and even showed off her voice talent when she did an entire scene by herself with three different people. It’s amazing how she remembered all the voices and personalities behind each character that was in the scene.

Gunpla 101

Since I am new to Gunpla, I thought that I would some new tips on how to build models more efficiently, but no. I did but a Super Deformed model of the original gundam in less then an hour, so that’s a fun achievement for me. Otherwise, I don’t have that much to say really other then look at the model that I built below.

Live-Drawing with Real Japanese Animators

This panel was a lot of fun because it focused on two people who drew different parts of Code Geass DRAWING. Eiji Nakada, a mecha animator, drew the head of the Lancelot and Yuriko Chiba, a character animator drew Lelouche vi Britannia. They switched off drawing in front of the screen and is it ironic to see that Chiba was more animated and lively when talking about the characters of the show she drew. She even said she did crazy things like posing with Lelouch while drawing and showing how to pose with other animators was really funny. Nakada really didn’t give any direct answers to the questions he was given, but that’s ok. He still seemed pretty cool.

Sunrise Industry Panel

The line before this event was kind of annoying with Gundam fans being horrible gundam funs and seemingly only caring about Gundam’s mechs rather then enjoying both it’s mechs and it’s story/characters. So, definitely not becoming friends with some gundam fans, those others seemed to be pretty ok.

The panel itself was everything that I’ve saw in previous announcements. Double Decker is being released, there is a Live Long Sunshine movie that will make its way to the U.S. soon, and Code Geass: Lelouch of the Resurrection will have a special screening tomorrow and early May in the United States for sub and dub version. I’m scared of this, but apparently the film is supposed to launch Code Geass for the next ten years. Not a fan of that either. Also, all the Gundam announcements were made. I feel like I had a more fun time watching the battle between the Japanese representative and his translator because the translator kept missing things. I would say that I should have gone to the Funimation panel instead, but that was such a bore fest last time.

Panty and Stocking’s Pajama Party (18+) (w/Jamie Marchi and Monica Rial)

I wasn’t able to take any photos this time because all of the nature of the panel itself and nobody wants anything that happens in the panel to come out. It’s a Panty and Stocking panel. How else would things go? But in general, it was a very fun time with a couple voice actors that were also having a fun time. And of course, it was centered on Panty and Stocking. That’s all I am going to say on the matter.

Day 1 Haul

Just four dvds this time. I did get Humanity Has Declined on dvd. Looking forward to this one because it looks like a lot of fun. Also got the second Gundam Thunberbolt movie on blu-ray, Gundam 0083, and Getter Robot Armagedon. I feel like I am going to have a short Yasuhiro Imagawa event soon on my blog soon. No other way around this because I already watched two shows he directed, G Gundam and Shin Mazinger. I now have another thing he sort of directed, because he was an episode director for episodes 1-3. It’s going to happen now.

Ending Day Thoughts

Today was a very action heavy day that was just a blast to get through. A lot of mecha related events and also other events if you look for them. I also downloaded today’s seasonal anime on my phone as I was wandering around, so caught up with all the anime too. I’m glad I put a lot of breaks in my schedule so I was able to do that. I can’t wait to do this for another round tomorrow/day. See you all then! 😀

All Cosplay Photos will appear on a blog post after the convention is over.