ConCONcon 2020 – page 10
I’ve actually done whole comics on the “remember when they talked about ANIME at these anime conventions?” topic, and I SURE DO WISH I COULD POST SOME LINKS TO THEM RIGHT HERE. Hopefully I’ll remember to come back and add some once I get the rest of the old comics re-posted. That said, when I DO re-post said comics, I may find myself havign to walk back some statements, because my attitude has changed a bit.
There was a time when I blamed this kind of questionable scheduling entirely on present-day otakudom’s overcompensating for past generations’ gatekeeping tendencies. You know, don’t be like the creepy old guy who scares new folks away, instead welcome absolutely EVERYBODY without actually vetting them to see if they’re worth giving a platform to. That kind of stuff. And I do still think there’s a problem with that, but probably not the only one. It probably also hurts things that, in a post-Internet world, a lot of people don’t NEED conventions to provide them with a platform to talk about whatever. If anybody can start up a blog or YouTube channel or whatever to get the word out about whatever they want from the comfort of their own home, that cuts into the supply of people willing to travel out to cons to do it. And that, in turn, provides an opening for somebody who just wants to be in front of a room full of people to slap some anime references onto a failed TED Talk and submit it as a panel.
No joke: one Otakon I saw a panel named something along the lines of “Careers Management for Artists.” A how-to on getting into voice acting or being an artist or something like that? NOPE! It was some lady giving a seminar on how to write a good resume. An hour of cover letter instructions, only with a random Dragon Ball Z clip awkwardly shoehorned into the intro to make it “anime related”. And this wasn’t some little local con struggling to fill the schedule, this was frickin’ OTAKON. Every geek on the East Coast supposedly hurls panel submissions at this con, yet THAT garbage somehow got through. The mind truly boggles.
In ConCONCon’s defense, the sponsorship money from the insurance and lawn care industries for including some of those panels can be REALLY good.
And some Manga can be really really sugary, you do have to watch out for that.
Edit: Hey, look, comment editing seems to work just fine here. mysterious.
I know, right? It’s clearly not a problem of the plugin itself being broken. There has to be something else on Far Out There specifically that’s interfering with it, but I can’t figure out what.
Ed8, you have explained the top 3, but didn’t explain the other 2. Don’t worry, I can help for that:
– Anime and Proper Traffic Safety reinforces how important Traffic Safety is by using it as an example medium. Isekai Anime is used to show how many ways and times a person would realistically die in Anime, while other Anime is used to showcase how little Anime Characters pay attention to Traffic Safety.
– The Workshop is just a normal Creator’s Workshop, hosted by Independent Comic Creators on teaching how to work through crippling debt and depression.
Oh my gosh, the Isekai Anime bit is WAAAAAY too clever and legitimately funny to have ever been on purpose. Well played!