Hey everyone! Myself and the Propeller Anime Club rocked MegaCon this past weekend! We were successful with all our events and panels, even the one MegaCon almost prevented everyone from seeing! Yours truly presented several talks titled “Anime is Already Dead?”, “The Panel about Everything”, and “It’s MANIME! The Manly Anime panel.” The first two did okay but the Manime panel was most excellent in turnout. Everyone who stayed was definitely a better person than before they entered.

First, I have a few announcements to make:

• At the Manime panel, in my loathing rant of hipster douchebags and their theft of the manliness of the beard, I promised, in the heat of my passionate fury, to take it back. They can keep their shitty Pabst Blue Ribbon and their sad obsession of liking things ironically, but the beard is coming back to true men dammit! I promised to sport a manly beard at this year’s Metrocon in Tampa, or else Brotha Kyo gets to kick me in the nuts.
• I won’t be doing events at Metrocon, but I will be there hanging out and enjoying myself there.
• I am going to start up “Kent Ward’s MANcast of Awesome!” this spring. The podcast will cover all things manly in the world of martial arts movies, videogames, Manime, 80s action flicks, norse mythology, and ass-kicking in general. Stay tuned!
• Anime Festival Orlando is coming up in August. It’s the best anime convention in Florida(I’ll be happy to give you a manly headbutt if you disagree with me) and they have started pre-registration. Be there or you’re already dead.
• I’m fucking awesome and don’t you forget it!

And now, my report!

“In Anime is Already Dead?”, I discussed the rise and fall of anime in the 2000s, citing factors that lead to anime’s near demise. Moe anime(fetish anime about little girls being boring every episode) was considered a major culprit, but the lack of risks and variety of newer anime and the fact that America has caught up with Japan in anime releases are also problems.

When anime boomed in the early part of last decade, there was 30+ years of great stuff to get from Japan and on to U.S. retail shelves. Anything that was crap was abandoned for the most part. Halfway through the decade, all that was left was the stuff that just came out in Japan. Because the load of good anime was already blown quickly, there really wasn’t much good anime left to release.

Sure, great stuff like Full Metal Alchemist, Baccano!, Summer Wars, and Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann have recently come out, but those good series and movies are far and few between now. Because of this, along with the glut of moe shows and generic shounen shows about twelve year old kids with powers being impossibly cool, the interest has died down over here.

I made some points on where anime needs to go and I think I will follow this up with a talk “How to make anime cool again” at a later convention.

The “Panel about Everything” was a joke name inspired by a panel that happens at some other convention. It was actually a convention etiquette panel. But we didn’t want to call it that because the people who need to be taught about that the most would not show up. They didn’t anyways but there was some great discussion with both the audience and my co-panelists. Some great stories were shared too! Maybe calling it “Super Kawaii-chan Glompfest Desu” will attract the audience I am aiming for with this?

“It’s MANIME! The Manly Anime panel” was clearly the best part about all of MegaCon, period. If you did not go, then you wasted your money and wristband. That is the fucking truth. Everyone who did go, in fact, became manlier just by being there! Brotha Kyo and I covered a final revision of the Twelve Laws of True Man and we are hoping to get such laws published. I heard at least one feminist was angry during our panel but my manly spirit does not care too much about that. Maybe she should have brought us sandwiches if she was that offended? That would have fixed her good.

We discussed what made anime manly citing examples such as Fist of the North Star, Beserk, Grappler Baki, Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, and Violence Hero Riki-Oh! We also made time to give some love to Cobra: The Animation, Guin Saga, and the granddaddy of Manime… Golgo 13! Granted, these series have excess amounts of violence, muscles, and testosterone; however those are all core ingredients of Manime.

It was the good time had by all who did not have sand in their vagina! For some reason, these three bros were upset that we did not cite Kamina and Gurren Lagann at all in the panel? I still have no idea why. Kamina has more in common with Street Fighter’s Dan Hibiki than he does the likes of Kenshiro, Gutz, and Duke Togo. I should have blown them off but I felt the need to have a debate. I hope to be able to write more in-depth on this matter later.

I helped out with other events in addition to mine. Most notably, the Cyberia dance that Anime Sushi puts on at MegaCon every year. It’s a dance for weeaboos to have seizures with glowsticks while loud electronic music and phat beats are blasting out of the speakers.

I worked security along with my friend Shawn and nobody dared to start a fight, have sex, or break out the pepper spray. This is sad because we were given permission to destroy people if such things were to happen. Perhaps, they felt our manly aura and knew the line to never cross? The dance went on without much incident to speak of, though I did have to clean up someone’s puke off of the dance floor.

MegaCon was a fun experience this year! I got to cosplay classic Terry Bogard on Friday which is something I’ve wanted to do for a very long time. In addition, I spent plenty of time with close friends while even making new ones. I got some cool gifts from friends and a very sweet girl brought me homemade sandwiches and cookies that gave me super powers! I bought myself the Baccano! boxset from FUNimation’s booth(which I started watching that last night!) and I saw some good panels that I helped schedule. I didn’t get to meet any guests, which I don’t feel bad about because it was they who missed out by not meeting me!

It was a great weekend and a lot of hard work and I look forward to new followers on my Twitter, more readers for this blog, and soon enough – the MANcast!