Well…wow.
Anime Boston 2022, was my first return to being a Featured Panelist at a convention since 2019 and it was a fantastic experience. First of all, my very sincere thanks to the entire staff of Anime Boston, who really went out of their way to make the event a true “Welcome Home” experience for everyone. Special thanks to Doug Wilder for being the very best of anime con staffing. He was thoughtful and kind and organized – just exactly the kind of person you want running a piece of your programming.
This weekend was so genuinely busy that I hardly had time to do anything, because I was so busy. ^_^
Firstly, I met Yuri Mother! Nicki is super awesome and fun and we hung out the entire weekend. It was an absolute blast to spend so much time bullshitting about Yuri stuff. ^_^ Made my con just that much better.
My con began on Friday AM, with the Featured Panelist panel. I joined Charles Dunbar, Xan Villaneuva, Haru Menna and George Horvath as Doug asked us about about paneling; what makes a good panel and how to keep folks engaged and having a good time. Importantly, since the con this year was bentou themed, we also talked food. It was fun all around.
Then, the sprint really began. I had two more panels on Friday. First up, the “Secret” History of Yaoi and Yuri. So much has changed since I did that last in 2019, it has a bunch of new slides. ^_^ We followed that up with my wife and I discussing how to get to, stay, and shop for Yuri stuff in Japan! Everything in the slide deck is currently untrue as Japan is not letting tourists in unless they are part of specific tour groups. But…one day soon, hopefully.
We wrapped up with a nice dinner out at Wagamama for Nicki, my wife and self and honest to god, I crashed. I was asleep by 10PM, something I never, ever do. 3 panels in one day is a LOT of work.
Saturday was great. Nicki and I had a full room on the Must-Read/Must-Watch Yuri. We slammed at high speed through a pile of stuff and even squeezed in some great questions. From there, I signed some copies of By Your Side: The First 100 Years of Yuri! Waaaahhh~~ It was so much fun, I honestly wish I had nice handwriting for everyone. (By the way, we’ve added RightStuf to the vendors carrying BYS on the Yuricon Store, so you have a really great selection of vendors including a local bookstore through Bookshop.org!)
Made some new friends, had a lot of fun. So many thanks to Sue from Cheapmanga.com for letting me use her table as HQ. It’s always a delight to sit with her, because she wants to feed me snacks. ^_^ I appreciate that.
Then Nicki, my wife and I all went to Yuri Court. There was another court game panel, Yuri Approved! on Sunday, which I wasn’t able to get to. It apparently was based on Yuri Kuma Arashi‘s Yuri Court. How fun for Yuri fans that there were two goofy Yuri panels?! My game is a riff on RenFaire “court” games. Anime Boston was the least contentious so far. Hardly anyone wanted to accuse any series of being bad. ^_^ Everyone was defending their favorite series, and I had to recuse myself left and right. LOL Our winner, Rose, gave us an enthusiastic defense of Hyakko. It was a prize-winning performance!
Of course we walked the Dealer’s Room and the Artist’s Alley. I’m going to say, it’s a much harder world for dealers and a much easier world for artists right now. Dealers are competing against the entire Internet. Some companies get how to do that, or integrate it well. Others, it’s such a crap shoot as to whether they’ll sell that figurine or someone will just go online. The big vendors at AB were streaming services, trying to get sign ups.
The artist alley is filled with more things, as well as tons of fan art and a nice amount of original work, for a fun environment. Rica Takashima’s art work was being sold in the Artist’s Alley, as well! It was nice to say hello to old friends and online folks as we walked around.
People selling manga were selling out like crazy, so reading is cool again, clearly.
Sunday I had one panel and honestly did not expect it to fill a room, but it filled a room! I talked about translating pop culture media and all the things no one thinks about when they start thinking about translation. There’s a lot you don’t know that you don’t know…and that’s where skill and practice make a difference.
6 panels over 3 days, a lot of prizes given away, a carton of books signed and a great time was had by all.
Thanks again to Doug and the AB Staff, to my wonderful wife who is always a blast as a co-panelist and is cute as a button and to Nicki for hanging for a weekend. And to everyone who came to our panels – you all helped make my first Anime Boston in over a decade a great one. I sincerely hope I will be back soon.
