FanimeCon 2010

Day 2

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Day 2

The most business-like day of the con, Saturday launched with Gainax. The panel immediately preceeding Hiroyuki Yamaga's presentation of the History of Gainax was in fact a screening of Evangelion 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance.

Yamaga's panel presentation lasted only twenty minutes or so, leaving the rest of the two hour block available for a Q&A session that featured some of the usual questions-- such as one about the infamous fourth episode of Gurren Lagann, whose change in art style led to mass whining, resulting in some unsavory comments from Gurren Lagann producer Takami Akai being posted online, followed by fan complaints, followed by Akai stepping down as producer --and some surprises. Dark Horse Manga editor Carl Horn, who edits Evangelion: The Shinji Ikari Raising Project and the upcoming Evangelion: Campus Apocalypse, asked whether Gainax concerns themselves with their overseas audiences, which Yamaga answered more or less with a no.

(Yamaga also revealed the origin of the Gainax name: the co-founders wanted a name that, following trends of the time, ended in X "like Xerox," and they wanted to preceed it with an obscure kanji. The kanji they found was "gaina," which means "large.")

Straight after the Gainax panel came Dark Horse's, in which Horn gave out double-sided CLAMP posters featuring Card Captor Sakura and Chobits as part of their "Love and Wonder" manga campaign. Horn listed out upcoming DH manga releases, including Campus Apocalypse's first volume on August 11th, and then proceeded to take questions himself. Horn indicated that the original CLAMP manga project originally called "mangettes" is still on, but that no official updates could be revealed. He also declared that Eden - It's an Endless World! may not be performing as strongly as Dark Horse would like but that they are struggling to keep the series afloat.

After lunch I sat down with an interview with The Anime Companion author Gilles Poitras, available here.