Anime Weekend Atlanta, or AWA (pronounced by letter or A-wa, whatever you like), took place this past weekend on September 18-20. AWA turns 15 this year. It is one of the top 10 attended anime conventions in the US. It’s particularly known for its AMV contests. I’ve been going since 2005, making this my fifth convention, a personal con attendance record rivaled only by MTAC.

If conventions are really for convening, then AWA is a great place for it. You get to meet all sorts of interesting people, including a guy grilling hot dogs right outside the con because when you got to eat you got it eat. It’s always great to meet people, and it’s especially interesting when you later find out about the odd connections you actually have with people (random cosplayer actually being friend of a friend and so on). I got to hang out with OSMcast and Akihabara Renditions on Saturday, talk tokusatsu with GaijINside and meet a lot of random people in great costumes. The whole experience is very communal, which is one of the most important parts of a convention.

As opposed to the larger Dragon*Con just weeks earlier, AWA doesn’t feel quite as busy. There are still plenty of people around and events to go to, but everything seemed more lax in comparison. Maybe it’s just in comparison to Dragon*Con, but more than that, I think it’s the breathing room.

AWA has one of the coveted possessions I find other cons lacking – space. Nice, open lobbies and wide halls make the Cobb Galleria Centre and the Renaissance Waverly Hotel a great con hotel for the attendee. The actual used convention space is fairly spread out, which occasionally leads to a long walk between panels. Luckily though, the halls usually aren’t so crowded to hamper movement too much. AWA has been at the same location for years, and there’s still space to grow. Really makes me jealous for MTAC.

The artist alley was moved from the hotel section with registration into an exhibition hall next to the dealers’ room. I was initially worried that the lower visibility from registration would hurt artist alley attendance. However, from random artists, I’ve heard they were pleased with the new placement. I’m sure they liked having a room that locks up at night for once. With registration and main room events, the freed-up space helped lines snake around to take up less hall space.

Speaking of space, there was plenty for events. Actually went to some panels this year. The Gundam panel, ran by the hosts of Akihabara Renditions, was entertaining. Complete with videos and funny pictures, it was informative while still having a sense of humor about the franchise. Daryl Surat’s Panel of DOOM and Anime’s Craziest Deaths were both a hilarious compilation of funny videos along with witty commentary from Surat. The podcasting panel suffered somewhat by having a couple of the panel hosts scheduled for other events at the same time. This was not the only time I heard people complain about bad scheduling.

AWA’s video rooms are particularly impressive. There are five of them: one main room for larger showings, two general anime rooms, a classic room and a room dedicated to Japanese live action. In addition to a good variety of series, AWA also had themed programming blocks scattered throughout the weekend. Everything from MANime to Shoujo Fest to Sentai Shows.

The only issue with this programming blocks that there’s no listing of the shows shown during these blocks. Despite that one oversight, AWA did a really good job listing their programming. In addition to the video room schedule being on the back of the events schedule sheets, the program guide also maintains an index of almost every series shown, complete with descriptions, genres, ratings and (if licensed) who owns the rights and distributes it.

Oddly though, in the mall within the convention center, there is an actual movie theater that is closed down and goes unused. It would be really awesome if AWA could wrangle that for their use, but even still, their main video room is essentially a small theater, like those found on college campuses.

Can’t talk about a con without the cosplay. AWA had plenty of talented and inventive costumers this year. The Kamen Rider fan in me was especially pleased with the Kamen Rider Den-O and Kamen Rider Kiva costumes. I appreciated people with an eye for classics, like a Ginrei from Giant Robo the Animation and Lum from Urusei Yatsura (helps that they’re attractive too). Full body suits also showed up, with a Diddy Kong, a Ryo-Ohki and even a Rodimus Prime. Who knew Rodimus had fans?

Then there’s the dealers room. I actually managed to find some stuff I wanted. Typically, I find myself wanting less and less stuff because of my increasing interest of tokusatsu heroes over some anime. Most of the anime I even want doesn’t really go down in price much either, making them unattractive buys. Many figures I wanted, including a Revoltech of Super Galaxy Gurren Lagann, were way overpriced.

That said, I still came away with some neat stuff. It was as big as usual, probably even bigger with the addition of booths on the back wall. Thanks to some awesome deals on Sunday, I managed to snatch up some great manga and DVD. Also got a cool Kamen Rider Kuuga kick pose figure, which goes great with my Kamen Rider 1 kick pose figure.

AWA is a fun con to go to with a bunch of friends. Everyone hangs out together, attends fun events, buys plenty of crap, meets new people and laughs it all away. Looking forward to going back next year.

(To find more of my AWA photos, check them out on Facebook.)

Dragon*Con makes experiencing the entire con difficult. It’s really a group of several mini-cons (not like Transformers Armada) with its several programming tracks, some of which having more content on their own than some other complete cons. All of these are spread out among the four convention hotels. If your interests are spread out among several fandom genres, expect some walking.

Registration to such a large con would understandably take a while. Despite reserving a fan table, we still had to go through regular registration. Surprisingly ot much of a problem. Friday morning registration actually wasn’t that bad, getting done under an hour. This is primarily because of the flood of pre-registration attendees on Thursday night for the Friday morning 10 a.m. Shatner/Nimoy panel (William Shatner’s only panel all con). From what I hear, that line wrapped around the hotel registration was in a couple of times. To these individuals, I must thank you for making my registration experience quicker than expected.

Most of my convention time was spent manning the GMX booth ( What is GMX?), even more so than usual, so I don’t really have many events to talk about. Panel-wise, I mostly hovered around the anime and animation tracks, which were a floor below our booth. How to Run a Convention is pretty self-explanatory, and that one, I was on with probably the least experience of the panel.  Animation at War was an informative and entertaining look at the history of animation going into WWII and its use as propaganda, mostly from the US side (a similar panel with Russian emphasis was the night before). Fans and Freaks discusses the con documentary of the same name by Steven and Suzie Lackey (check out their CineGeek site yours truly writes for). This panel was the last in the room for the night, so we stayed after and recorded an episode of the CineGeek podcast.

One especially neat event was the Mad Scientist Ball. Why? Because effing tesla coils. And pie.

What really makes the convention is, of course, thepeople. The awesome people. People like the very cool MomoCon crew, many of which also run the D*C Animation Track. People like Neil Kaplan, voice of Optimus Prime in Transformers: Robots in Disguise (second TF reference in this article), posing with our Optimus standee at the GMX booth. People like local prop god/Apparition Abolishers/Disco Trooper Chris Lee. People like the random visitors and cosplayers that talked to us at the booth and took photos with the GMX Girls. People like whoever controlled the R2-D2 for Thriller dancing alongside the GMX Girls. People like random MTAC/GMX staff I get to hang out and bond with.

People and the random encounters and happenings we do together are what make every convention. While I didn’t go to most of the events I wanted to or see many guests, I had a great time hanging out with people. That’s what matters. That and actually managing driving in downtown Atlanta, my greatest accomplishment of the whole trip.

This piece has taken longer than it should. Oddly enough, it’s not really that long. Dragon*Con is definitely one of those cons that requires a good decompression period afterwards. After thinking about the whole trip, it was fun. Even if you don’t attend most of the con’s events, it can be fun with the right people. Just goes to show that no matter the content, it’s always the social experiences that make the con, the convening that makes the convention. With thousands and thousands of people attending Dragon*Con each year, social experiences are in no short order

(originally posted at NikoScream)

To start off with full disclosure, I haven’t read the book (or any Harry Potter books). I haven’t even seen the previous movie.  This may give me an advantage as a watcher unbiased by the source material, but should that matter? Does being a fan of the original work hurt or hamper the adaptation viewing experience? That’ll come later. Now, onto the Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince movie.

It was decent. I don’t really have much to say. This is a long movie, over two and a half hours, yet it doesn’t feel particularly long, or that too much is happening to keep track of. Pretty much all the characters were done well in their development, from Harry’s anger to Draco’s nervousness, from Hermione’s jealousy to Ron’s love sickness. The awkwardness of teen romances is well handled, which is good because there’s plenty of it. It seems like even wizards-to-be are not immune to high school relationship drama. The kids of the series are acted out quite nicely.

This movie isn’t perfect though. Its major problem is in the climax. It’s anticlimactic. The subplot of the mysterious Half-Blood Prince is revealed to little to no effect. The final fights are essentially over in a blink of an eye. The important character death at the end hardly has a reaction from the cast aside from a light show. The movie is pretty solid for the most part, but once we get to the Dumbledore/Draco confrontation, it goes down hill.

I did notice something when discussing the film with friends who have read the books. With most superhero films, I’m along with many fans worrying about getting the characters right and sticking with the source material and not screwing with the story too much. Sometimes I forget how it is on the other side of the audience, the side that doesn’t care about the source material.

Adaptations into movies are tricky, even with small and complete source material like the Harry Potter franchise (Yes, it is small compared to the multiple decades of any given comic book franchise). Not only will everything not make it into the film version, but there may be plot changes to better suit the medium. Subplots may be altered or even cut altogether.  This becomes especially tricky when subplots in one part of a multipart franchise become essential to the plot of a later part. The absence of such subplot in an adaptation may lead to outrage to source material fans, claiming it has ruined the future story. The flaw in this thinking? Assuming that the latter plot will go unchanged without any adjustments to fix any gaps because of a missing subplot. It can be difficult to judge the accuracy of an adaptation of a multipart series until the entire series has been adapted.

So what makes a successful adaptation? In my opinion, keeping the characters true to who they are, and keeping the minimum basics of the underlying main plot solid. By character, I don’t mean exact physical details or trivial actions. Otherwise, I’d be complaining up and down that Peter Parker’s eyes are really hazel and not blue. I mean the basic core of the character, the past that forms the character and the way the character would act in any situation that may be adapted or original.

Does this mean fans should give adaptations a break? Depends on if the characters and basic plot hold true. Organic webshooters don’t change much about who Peter Parker is and what he does, yet Superman and Lois having a kid changes the characters’ dynamic and likely kills further franchise development. Making Optimus Prime an extended engine truck with a moving mouth doesn’t keep him from being the awe-inspiring leader of the Autobots, but making Galactus into a cloud kind of kills any actual character Galactus has. Everyone will always have minor bones to pick, but understanding the basics and keeping them intact will lead to the original fans likely enjoying the work. Of course, if the original work sucks anyway, all bets are off.

Back to Harry Potter. From my limited knowledge, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is a good adaptation. The characters and the plot feel right and flow well. Thematically, it could have been improved at points (namely the climax and the end), but otherwise, it’s a decent movie and does the original work justice. Criticisms may be well founded and deserved, but really it’s not all done yet anyway. There are still two more movies to go before one can truly judge the actions of this movie doom the plot of the next.

(Crossposted from NikoScream)

Admittedly, I didn’t care for Tomica Hero Rescue Force when it first started in 2008. I watched the promo video and the first episode and was done. The rescue team theme seemed too gimmicky, and the show seemed to hammer us with promoting the toys (more so than usual). So why did I watch the 2008 Rescue Force movie? Combination of continual praises I’ve heard and a guest role by Hiroshi Fujioka (the original Kamen Rider 1). And how did that go?

Well, I may have to give the series another try.

The movie really has two parts. There’s the main movie, Tomica Hero Rescue Force Explosive Movie: Rescue the Mach Train!, and before that, there’s the comedic 15-minute bit Explosive Run! Tomica Hero Grand Prix. The Rescue Force team competes in a race sanctioned by the United Fire-Defense Force to see who’s the fastest. Along the way, Neo Terror (or Thera. I’ve seen it either way) butts in and joins the race. It’s not quite as wacky as Wacky Races, but it made me chuckle a bit.

Rescue the Mach Train! is about the Rescue Force’s efforts to stop a hijacked global train from colliding at the end of its line, causing a massive explosion in a major town that could kill millions, including those on the train. Along the way, there’s plenty of action as Rescue Force battles Neo Terror minions who try to stop them.

The plot is fairly captivating. While the danger could be enough for the feature film, a couple of Rescue Force team members and a new friend getting caught up in make it somewhat personal for the team and increases the suspense. Neo Terror also sends plenty of opposition along the way, giving Rescue Force a good fight or two. Well, not so much Rescue Force as much as just R1 and R2.

Rei and Juri, R3 and R4 respectively, are two victims of circumstance in this film, and that unfortunately sidelines them from major action. I find it odd that the two female members miss out on all the action other than evacuating civilians and tending wounds. I don’t know if it’s like this in the series, R3 and R4 operating more in a support role to the male R1 and R2, or if R1 and R2 are supposed to fulfill a more combative role, but it just seemed kind of off balance. Especially considering R3 beat all of them in a sparring match at the beginning. Both R3 and R4 seem capable of action. Maybe they just got the short straw this time and I’m just reading too much into it.

Hikaru and Kyousuke, R1 and R2 respectively, handle most of the fighting and foot work, with a little help from R5/team captain Eiji Ishiguro and the new R0. They range from fighting to vehicle driving to train jumping, and all together, they seem pretty up to the challenge.

The new toys, I mean tools, are out in full force. The movie introduces us to the Rescue Diver, which seems to be a flying drill tank (instead of some aquatic vehicle that actually, oh I don’t know, dives). The Rescue Diver combines with Rescue Striker for not one, but two new forms. There’s also the debut of the Zero Fire, R0’s Rescue Vehicle carrier, coming with its own set of Rescue Riser, Shovel, Drill, Turbo and Dozer. R0 also has his own personal Core Striker Fire and new weapon Rescue Zamber, which changes forms between a javelin and a pick ax. Confused? Like I said, Rescue Force is a big toy commercial, which isn’t new. However, it feels like it’s overloading its audience with too many new toys.

And of course, we have the movie’s true star: Hiroshi Fujioka, better known as Kamen Rider 1. In this, however, he’s R0, a previously unknown member of Rescue Force. Might as well be Kamen Rider 1 given how much he shows up the Rescue Force team. He even refers to them as “youngsters.” When out of his R0 gear, Fujioka dresses in style by sporting a nice black suit and hat.

There’s a small subplot with a girl named Miyuki who wants to be a dancer. By small, I mean she’s just there to fill the role of the innocent needing not only help but also inspiration from the heroes to pursue her dream. She’s also a good reason for the dance number at the beginning and end.

To wrap it up, Rescue the Mach Train! is a decent movie. Its strengths come from a suspenseful danger, plenty of action and a well-done new character with Hiroshi Fujioka. Its shortcomings mostly come from shortchanging its female Rescue Force team members and saturating itself with new toys. Even if you never got into the series, you may enjoy the movie. Add to that the amusing Grand Prix short. With both parts together clocking in at just under an hour and 20 minutes, it’s worth your time to check it out.

Little side note: Some characters from Madan Senki Ryukendo make cameo appearances. I’ve only seen one episode of Ryukendo, but if you’ve seen the series and enjoyed it, keep your eyes open.

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