Online Anime Conventions in a COVID World
So, in years past, I’ve written about some of my experiences with a local anime convention. This year, even prior to all the cancellations for COVID-19, my wife and I had decided that, since there were no “must see” guests announced by the time the signups closed, that we were going to take this year “off” from attending, and see if maybe 2021’s version of the convention seemed a little more interesting. The 2020 convention was planned for the end of March, and for better or worse, deciding to skip was suddenly looking like a wise decision when everything began “lockdown”.
Welcome to “12 Days of AniTAY 2020”, a writing challenge in which I look to have an article a day for 12 days leading up to Christmas, all centered in some way on anime or anime-related topics. You can find re-posts of my 2018 and 2019 series (posted originally on the late TAY and AniTAY Kinja sites) now here on Medium.
Of course, our local convention wasn’t alone in having to cancel. (And to their credit, they also issued full refunds to all those who’d purchased passes. And if my friend’s experience is typical, most of the local hotels likely allowed people to cancel and gave refunds, even when typically they wouldn’t.)
I touched on it briefly in yesterday’s article, but in addition to conventions / expos that were supposed to be put on by the major anime players that had to be canceled, and the loss of income from those, the cancellations of other conventions, big and small, also had impacts more significant in their relative sizes to those normally involved. For example, our local convention to my understanding is supposed to be the main “fundraiser” of the year for the university anime club that puts it on. Similarly, this convention, and conventions like it “nearby” (like the northeast US, and maybe some in Canada), are typically major sources of sales for various anime stores who rent space to sell to convention-goers, as well as any number of small-to-large artists who sell their own works.
While many (most?) such conventions, certainly through the middle of the year, were never able to be held, several of the “major players” (and some smaller ones) were able to re-work things, and hold “online” conventions. (Crunchyroll compiled a list starting with events in July; while they list some as still planning to be held in person, I believe a number of those were also eventually canceled/moved to online.)
In particular, I personally looked into a group of such conventions that all occurred around and on the Fourth of July weekend this year: Anime Expo Lite, Kuro Con, FunimationCon, and Aniplex Fest Online. I tried a little bit of Anime Expo and Kuro Con, but didn’t see much in their particular formats/events that interested me. I tried to do a bit of FunimationCon, but unfortunately, they were streaming through their website, and either my internet, my laptop (or both), or their streaming seemed to always be buffering too much to make it useful. That left me streaming a fair amount of Aniplex Fest Online. They ran live streams on YouTube, so their streaming was generally not a problem, and more practically for me at least, meant I could use my PlayStation 4 console to show the streaming on my TV.
I wasn’t glued to the TV all weekend, but I looked into the schedule and tried to catch at least most of the events that interested me, as well as a few additional ones along the way. (Aniplex US also kept videos of the events up on their YouTube channel for about a week afterwards for people to catch up, as well as re-broadcasting some panels during the event, but I believe that they are no longer available now.) The event had 3 English-speaking ‘hosts’ from Aniplex/Aniplex US who would introduce panels, and provide some ‘filler’ as necessary. Each panel was presumably previously recorded, but would generally have their own ‘host(s)’ as necessary (a few events didn’t use the panel format) to introduce the guests and move things along. All of the events were subtitled (very well) in English, hence my supposition that they were pre-recorded, but much appreciated. The panel setups were nicely done, with guests either distanced at separate small tables for the larger groups on one set, and smaller groups using a slightly smaller set with plastic dividers between the guests — this also worked well visually, in that until one of the panelists mentioned being separated from the others at one point, I hadn’t even realized that that’s what they were doing because they were clear and hard to see edge-on, so it was not a distraction.
Some of the events I caught all or part of were:
- A wonderful video with the lady who’s composed the music for a number of different anime series, including mega-hit Sword Art Online. It was an interesting interview/day-in-the-life look at how she works. She briefly discussed how she got into the job of creating anime music, and then her more-or-less philosophy on writing music, and some more details on how she wrote specific music, and we got to see a brief section of a recording session, as she listened to the musicians, and would stop them to make changes in the music.
- A panel with several of the voice actors from the Fate series of shows (and games, and books, and…), who discussed a number of moments from the various series (including the original version of the series, despite the host’s seeming best efforts to gloss over it, given that it was not produced by the Aniplex “family,” although many of the voice actors themselves have stayed the same all the way through). This included the recent tie-in series to the Fate/Grand Order mobile game (which I will likely discuss in a later article in this series) and forthcoming tie-in movies, and ended with the voice actors and actresses listing some of their favorite moments from the shows, and then the two voice actresses, who have both been with the franchise since the beginning, also doing a countdown of fan-voted favorite moments, with the #1 favorite being an obvious (for the fandom) choice:
- There was a panel on the afore-mentioned Sword Art Online, which was finishing up (or had just finished up) its latest season. The panel had video greetings from both the main Japanese voice actor, as well as one or more of the main American dub voice actors as well.
- There was a panel with the two stars of the hit series Cells at Work, due to have a second season (and/or a spin-off series) starting this upcoming January. (I was definitely in for that, being a fan of both the series, and its star, Kana Hanazawa.)
- There were (obviously) panels on other anime series, and on other video games all under the banner of the Aniplex production family.
- There was a panel on how anime figurines are created.
- There were some other panels about various aspects of the anime production progress, including some discussions on creating the theme songs, including a great anecdote on how the composer was one second short on the opening song for a major show, and solved his problem by having the singer count in two beats at the start.
- The events that may or may not have been possibly live, they had a DJ who had his own remixes, with light shows, of various anime themes.
These larger events, sponsored by the big companies, naturally were able to have at least some convention-related merchandise and/or sales in their online stores. While I looked at some of the things I was interested in from Aniplex, shipping costs for the items coming from Japan had me not purchasing anything there. (Also disappointing: Despite checking for a week or so afterwards, the convention panels’ claims that there would be giveaways of autograph cards from the various people involved never seemed to materialize a sign-up page on the convention’s webpage, just a perpetual “check back later” message.) On the other hand, despite barely poking my toes into FunimationCon, I certainly took advantage of their DVD and blu-ray sale to expand my collection.
“Real” life and adulting (combined with not always being a long holiday weekend) meant that I didn’t really check into other conventions online throughout the year. But I would certainly consider doing more, especially another from Aniplex, and/or from folks who can stream on YouTube. Indeed, from a purely selfish perspective, while I don’t know how much was streamed before, and while multiple voice actors expressed their enjoyment of getting to go and meet with the fans in real life that they were missing, I hope for more streaming, as this year’s event opened things up for me in a way that I hadn’t really tried, and I really felt, if not so much able to “participate” in the event, as at least able to “attend” in some way, that I couldn’t/wouldn’t have if it wasn’t online-only.
Indeed, a few months ago, there was word from our local convention that due to restrictions from their usual location, they would be looking to have their own online version of the convention for 2021. I think we will certainly look into that, as one of the reasons we were intending to skip this year is that “local” = an hour and a half away, necessitating a hotel stay for the weekend, whereas an online version means staying comfy at home, not worrying about a late-season snow/ice storm during the convention, etc. Last month, they posted some details of their plans, including that the convention would be free of cost, and broadcast on Twitch (which is definitely nice in that again, console app means I can stream it on my good, but not really Smart, TV without much trouble). They are also planning to put together an online store for artists to sell their merchandise. They’re looking to have a single day’s streaming, and unlike “normal” years, they won’t be accepting “community” run panels, so I presume that will mean primarily a focus on the guests (still TBA) and similar things (maybe they can still do the AMV contest either with direct links to a YouTube playlist or via the streaming, with an online voting site). I suspect, depending on the guests / list of panels, that we’ll likely check at least a few things out, but the beauty of free online streaming and no need to purchase “badges” well in advance means we can at least make essentially day-of decisions.
So, here’s hoping to a better 2021, an interesting year of conventions, and perhaps a new, more ‘hybrid’ way of conventioning than before.
