Manga Monday: Anime Expo 2014 Report Part 2!

07/28/2014 4:34pm
Everybody’s talking about Comic-Con—but why be trendy, when there’s still so much to say about Anime Expo? ^_^ AX is considerably smaller than Comic-Con, with only about 80,000 people attending. But I’m doing those Dr. Evil air quotes around “only,” considering that Anime Expo has reached those numbers without any boost from the Hollywood premieres and celebrities strongly associated with San Diego. 
There’s nothing wrong with that, but people basically attend Anime Expo because they’re fans of Japanese pop culture—anime, manga, music, games, figures, cosplay (it’s interesting how the once otaku-only term, “cosplay,” is now in the mainstream). The actors they wait in long lines to glimpse aren’t the ones from a major studio film with a $100 million dollar marketing campaign. At AX, fans come to honor the performers who do the voices for Sailor Moon or Kill La Kill. The fact you can get 80,000 people to show up to support a scene that, compared to Hollywood, remains essentially import and indie, and do so right in Los Angeles, the center of the American media industry, is an amazing achievement in of itself. Despite the heat, despite the crowding, it’s something both the staff and attendees of Anime Expo can be proud of. 
Dark Horse had three panels at Anime Expo 2014. The first, on Thursday, was a general DH manga panel covering our Japanese manga, artbook, and novel releases into the spring of 2015. There were also announcements of new titles; in part 1 of our Anime Expo report we related two news items from the panel concerning The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, but Dark Horse was proud to announce two other titles at Thursday’s panel as well.
[Please use image The Art of Satoshi Kon here]
This spring, Dark Horse announced plans to release two manga drawn by the legendary anime director, Satoshi Kon—Satoshi Kon’s OPUS (on sale November 26) and Seraphim: 266613336 Wings (on sale February 18, 2015), a collaboration with the equally legendary Mamoru Oshii, director of Ghost in the Shell. But at the Thursday AX panel, DH announced a third project, The Art of Satoshi Kon, a hardback artbook scheduled for release in August 2015. Satoshi Kon blazed a brilliant animation career before his tragic death in 2010 at age 46. Dark Horse will be privileged to remember him and his works through The Art of Satoshi Kon, a collection of Kon’s illustrations for his movies Perfect Blue, Tokyo Godfathers, Millennium Actress, Paprika and his television series Paranoia Agent, plus his unfinished The Dreaming Machine, his manga, commercial art, together with several little-known and incomplete projects by the creator.
[Please use image Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt here]
The second of the those two other titles announced at the Thursday panel was, how shall I put it, different from the first 8D. And yet, you know it too: Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt, the manga version of the infamous GAINAX anime from director Hiroyuki Imaishi (Gurren Lagann, Kill La Kill). Panty and Stocking are a pair of cute but highly dangerous angels, booted out of Heaven for wrath, sloth, lust, envy, avarice and gluttony (at least pride wasn’t high on their list). Now residing among the sinners of Daten City, the angels try to earn their way back into grace by exorcising evil at the behest of their questionable preacher boss, the Afro-bedecked Garterbelt! The Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt manga (scheduled for release in May 2015) is drawn by TAGRO, whose Abnormal Physiology Seminar was a neighbor of Felipe Smith’s Peepo Choo in Kodansha’s Morning Two magazine. 
[Please use image OMG! 20th Anniversary Panel.jpg here]
The next panel Dark Horse had at Anime Expo was on Saturday: a special event to honor the 20th anniversary of Oh My Goddess! (actually, it’s in August, which is also when vol. 46 of OMG! is out—more about that, plus other OMG! news, next week!). Thanks to two decades of support from readers, Oh My Goddess! is the longest-running manga on the North American market, and I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that the 300-seat room was full, with people standing in the back. The panel detailed the history of the English-language version of OMG!, including the years it was published in comic book format, its serialization in Super Manga Blast! magazine, and the two different graphic novel editions (western-reading and Japanese-reading). That history, of course, is also the history of the people who have worked on the Dark Horse edition of the manga; including English adaptor Lea Hernandez, who spoke on the panel, and ace letterer Susie Lee of Studio Cutie, who contributed images and commentary for the slide show. The wi-fi in the room was i-ffy, but it did allow a two-minute Skype call from OMG!’s longtime translator Dana Lewis—enough time to hear who her favorite goddess is (Urd) and for her to receive a thunderous round of applause from the audience for her thoughtful work over the years on Oh My Goddess! Finally, we were honored to have attending the panel a representative of Kodansha, OMG!’s Japanese publisher, which meant a lot to us. 
[Please use image Tony Takezaki here]
Finally, on Sunday, Dark Horse had a panel on Neon Genesis Evangelion, with special guests Rocco and Garrett of Mega64. Most of the panel was devoted to an open discussion and audience questions regarding this, shall we say, complicated franchise. But DH had an Evangelion announcement to make as well. If you’re familiar with our anthology of Eva gag manga Neon Genesis Evangelion: Comic Tribute, you may remember that one of the major contributors was Tony Takezaki, who sensitively addressed some of the most solemn moments in the series (such as Shinji being not at all horrified by the Reiquarium, and falling in love with an invader frog version of Kaworu). If it left you hungry for more, look forward in May 2015 to Tony Takezaki’s Neon Genesis Evangelion, an all-new collection of respectful evocations of Eva!
—Carl Horn
Manga Editor

Everybody’s talking about Comic-Con—but why be trendy, when there’s still so much to say about Anime Expo? ^_^ AX is considerably smaller than Comic-Con, with only about 80,000 people attending. But I’m doing those Dr. Evil air quotes around “only,” considering that Anime Expo has reached those numbers without any boost from the Hollywood premieres and celebrities strongly associated with San Diego. 

There’s nothing wrong with that, but people basically attend Anime Expo because they’re fans of Japanese pop culture—anime, manga, music, games, figures, cosplay (it’s interesting how the once otaku-only term, “cosplay,” is now in the mainstream). The actors they wait in long lines to glimpse aren’t the ones from a major studio film with a $100 million dollar marketing campaign. At AX, fans come to honor the performers who do the voices for Sailor Moon or Kill La Kill. The fact you can get 80,000 people to show up to support a scene that, compared to Hollywood, remains essentially import and indie, and do so right in Los Angeles, the center of the American media industry, is an amazing achievement in of itself. Despite the heat, despite the crowding, it’s something both the staff and attendees of Anime Expo can be proud of. 

Dark Horse had three panels at Anime Expo 2014. The first, on Thursday, was a general DH manga panel covering our Japanese manga, artbook, and novel releases into the spring of 2015. There were also announcements of new titles; in part 1 of our Anime Expo report we related two news items from the panel concerning The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, but Dark Horse was proud to announce two other titles at Thursday’s panel as well.

This spring, Dark Horse announced plans to release two manga drawn by the legendary anime director, Satoshi Kon—Satoshi Kon’s OPUS (on sale November 26) and Seraphim: 266613336 Wings (on sale February 18, 2015), a collaboration with the equally legendary Mamoru Oshii, director of Ghost in the Shell. But at the Thursday AX panel, DH announced a third project, The Art of Satoshi Kon, a hardback artbook scheduled for release in August 2015. Satoshi Kon blazed a brilliant animation career before his tragic death in 2010 at age 46. Dark Horse will be privileged to remember him and his works through The Art of Satoshi Kon, a collection of Kon’s illustrations for his movies Perfect Blue, Tokyo Godfathers, Millennium Actress, Paprika and his television series Paranoia Agent, plus his unfinished The Dreaming Machine, his manga, commercial art, together with several little-known and incomplete projects by the creator.


The second of those two other titles announced at the Thursday panel was, how shall I put it, different from the first 8D. And yet, you know it too: Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt, the manga version of the infamous GAINAX anime from director Hiroyuki Imaishi (Gurren Lagann, Kill La Kill). Panty and Stocking are a pair of cute but highly dangerous angels, booted out of Heaven for wrath, sloth, lust, envy, avarice and gluttony (at least pride wasn’t high on their list). Now residing among the sinners of Daten City, the angels try to earn their way back into grace by exorcising evil at the behest of their questionable preacher boss, the Afro-bedecked Garterbelt! The Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt manga (scheduled for release in May 2015) is drawn by TAGRO, whose Abnormal Physiology Seminar was a neighbor of Felipe Smith’s Peepo Choo in Kodansha’s Morning Two magazine. 


The next panel Dark Horse had at Anime Expo was on Saturday: a special event to honor the 20th anniversary of Oh My Goddess! (actually, it’s in August, which is also when vol. 46 of OMG! is out—more about that, plus other OMG! news, next week!). Thanks to two decades of support from readers, Oh My Goddess! is the longest-running manga on the North American market, and I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that the 300-seat room was full, with people standing in the back. The panel detailed the history of the English-language version of OMG!, including the years it was published in comic book format, its serialization in Super Manga Blast! magazine, and the two different graphic novel editions (western-reading and Japanese-reading). That history, of course, is also the history of the people who have worked on the Dark Horse edition of the manga; including English adaptor Lea Hernandez, who spoke on the panel, and ace letterer Susie Lee of Studio Cutie, who contributed images and commentary for the slide show. The wi-fi in the room was i-ffy, but it did allow a two-minute Skype call from OMG!’s longtime translator Dana Lewis—enough time to hear who her favorite goddess is (Urd) and for her to receive a thunderous round of applause from the audience for her thoughtful work over the years on Oh My Goddess! Finally, we were honored to have attending the panel a representative of Kodansha, OMG!’s Japanese publisher, which meant a lot to us. 


Finally, on Sunday, Dark Horse had a panel on Neon Genesis Evangelion, with special guests Rocco and Garrett of Mega64. Most of the panel was devoted to an open discussion and audience questions regarding this, shall we say, complicated franchise. But DH had an Evangelion announcement to make as well. If you’re familiar with our anthology of Eva gag manga Neon Genesis Evangelion: Comic Tribute, you may remember that one of the major contributors was Tony Takezaki, who sensitively addressed some of the most solemn moments in the series (such as Shinji being not at all horrified by the Reiquarium, and falling in love with an invader frog version of Kaworu). If it left you hungry for more, look forward in May 2015 to Tony Takezaki’s Neon Genesis Evangelion, an all-new collection of respectful evocations of Eva!

—Carl Horn
Manga Editor

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