Anime Central 2014

This year's Anime Central (Acen for short) opened to unseasonably cold weather at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, a suburb of Chicago in the shadow of O'Hare Airport, on Friday May 16th, with snow being reported in some more outlying suburbs. That did not deter the cosplaying attendees at all, though (including the guy wearing only boxers to portray a certain Titan from Attack on Titan) and the weather gradually warmed as the convention extended through Sunday May 18th. Attendance figures were not available at press time, but the convention looked no less crowded than last year's turn-out of 28,000, which would allow it to continue its standing as the largest anime 'con in the central Midwest and one of the largest in the country.

The Japanese guests of honor for Acen included the musical duo angela (Stellvia, K, Valvrave the Liberator), composer Nobuo Uematsu (the Final Fantasy franchise), artist Yoshitoshi Abe (Haibane Renmei, Serial Experiments Lain, Texhnolyze), fashion designers h.Naoto and Sixh.IBI, and the Wake Up, Girls! idol group, who were making their American debut and were accompanied by anime director Yutaka Yamamoto and producer Hiroaki Takeuchi. The American industry was also well-represented, including voice actors Crispin Freeman (Alucard in Hellsing, Togusa in Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Kyon in The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya), Travis Willingham (Roy Mustang in the Fullmetal Alchemist franchise, Rock Bison in Tiger & Bunny), Laura Bailey (Sana in Kodocha, Tohru in Fruits Basket, Ayaka and Evangeline in the Negima franchise), Chris Ayres (Dragon Ball Z Kai's Frieza, Arthur in Tears to Tiara), Emily Neves (Angel in Angel Beats!, Saki in From The New World), Joel McDonald (Meow in Space Dandy, Jacuzzi Splot in Baccano!), Josh Grelle (Itsuki and Yuji in the Funimation dubs of the Initial D and Shakugan no Shana franchises, respectively), Tia Ballard (Happy in Fairy Tail, Rea Sanka in Sankarea), and newcomer Bryn Apprill, who will quickly become a new star with major roles in upcoming dubs for Red Data Girl, Date A Live, and the movie Hal. Also present were scholar Helen McCarthy (The Anime Enyclopedia), Trevor Mueller and Josh Elder from the Reading With Pictures initiative, and a slew of special entertainers that included Samurai Dan and Jillian.

Guests and Other Programming

Festivities kicked offer late Friday morning with the Opening Ceremonies and continued unabated through the Closing Ceremonies late Sunday afternoon. Throughout the convention numerous musical performances were offered, including a pair of A New World concerts featuring music from the Final Fantasy franchise, a concert by angela, and a live performance by the Wake Up, Girls! to go with a screening of the anime franchise's seminal movie. Those with a taste for dance could attend Friday's Hardcore Synergy rave, the formal Crystal Ball, or The Soap Bubble, which claims to be the longest-running anime convention dance party in the States.

All of the guests were readily available to attendees via various Q&A, autograph signing, and/or panel discussion sessions, and several were also available for press-only sessions. One such guest was Crispin Freeman, who reaffirmed a long-standing claim that he got into anime dubbing work because, as a fan, he could not stand what he saw as crappy English dubs and felt he could do better. (Vision of Escaflowne was mentioned in particular here.) He also described at length the various podcasts and other projects he has been doing recently to promote voice actor training, his love of scholarly discussions about anime, how he prefers anime with extensive story and setting development, his first directing and script adaptation experiences (with Space Travellers and Boogiepop Phantom, respectively) and all-time favorite titles and roles (Laputa and Tsume from Wolf's Rain, respectively).

The full line-up of the Wake Up, Girls! in their corresponding anime series outfits, together with producer Yamamoto and director Takeuchi, also were available for press interview. While waiting for the girls to get changed the adults answered questions about what they saw which influenced them to make anime-related careers (both cited Laputa, while Takeuchi also mentioned Astro Boy and Akira) and the process that Yamamoto went through to establish studio Ordet, which produced the anime version. When the girls arrived, each of them answered each question in turn. They clarified that many personal stats (blood type and birthdays in particular) were retained for their anime equivalents, but otherwise how closely they resembled their characters varied; one had a birthmark in the same place as her character, another was left-handed just like her character, and another said that fans regularly say that she looks and acts like her character, though this was not the case for all of them. Although most of them mentioned that they had originally been aspiring voice actors, they also had mixed opinions about whether they liked voice acting or performing live better and further had scattered opinions about whether natto or okonomiyaki is better. All were visiting the States for the first time and most were looking forward to sampling genuine Chicago pizza. They, like all other Japanese guests who spoke publicly in either interviews or the Closing Ceremonies, where quite impressed by how excited and friendly American fans were.

Another major event held at Acen every year is Anime Hell, this time on Friday night, which packed one of the site's largest meeting rooms. This collection of animation clips, commercials old and new from around the world and comedy bits (Batman reacting in an undignified way to a variety of situations was one of the running jokes this year) is easily one of the 'con's rudest and most riotously funny fixtures. Also held at Sunday noon was the final round of the World Cosplay Summit American Nationals.

Industry Panels

While both Media Blasters and Sentai Filmworks had dealer's room presences, neither conducted industry panels. For the companies that did:

Viz Media

Hosted by Senior Manager for Anime Marketing Charlene Ingram, this Friday afternoon panel was easily the highlight industry event of Acen, though that it would turn out that way was hardly apparent at first. Most of the panel consisted of fairly ordinary announcements about what Viz had upcoming in the manga realm, including announcements for Fall quarter releases of World Trigger, Assassination Classroom, Kiss of the Rose Princess, Yukarism, Master Keaton, the Resident Evil prequel Biohazard Marhawa Desire, the limited edition hardcover release of volume 19 of Vampire Knight, and Jaco the Galactic Patrolman, which may be of particular interest to Dragon Ball fans as this project by Akira Toriyama is supposed to have all-new Dragon Ball material, including the revelation of who Goku's real mother is. Ms. Ingram also clarified that a Complete Collection release of Vampire Knight is due “later this year.” Also coming up are a couple of Princess Mononoke artbooks, including The First Story, a watercolor collection by Hayao Miyazaki featuring concepts about the movie's story that were made well more than a decade earlier. Also clarified in Q&A parts was that Neon Alley would, indeed, be carrying both subbed and dubbed content going forward. The dub cast for Blood Lad (details available here) was also announced, and in response to a question Ms. Ingram stated that announcements about the status and dub of Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet may be coming at Anime Expo.

But the big event was to come at the end, in a bonus session marked only as “Surprise!” on the schedule. Ms. Ingram had been teasing about this all session but offered no details or even vague hints other than that there could be an A or B version to the big announcement based on what was being settled in Japan as the panel was going on. No one knew what for sure to make of initial comments in the advertising clip about a legendary anime, but many gasps and cheers greeted the iconic image of Usagi's hand extending up towards a crescent moon, which led to the inescapable conclusion that Viz had licensed Sailor Moon. The cheering became even more raucous seconds later as the phrase “and this time COMPLETE!” flashed on the screen and continued as “Absolutely uncut” and “First Time on Blu-Ray” added to the excitement. It was topped off by the bonus announcement (the one that factored into the A or B matter) that Viz also had just, within the last few minutes, secured simulcast streaming rights to the upcoming Sailor Moon Crystal series in July. All who attended for the announcement were given special memorial badges (pictured below) and asked to say, “Happy Birthday, Usagi!” in a clip that was to be sent to Japan.

A follow-up panel on Saturday simply recapped the bigger announcements from the previous day, with the further stressing that the new Sailor Moon English dub would retain all original names, character genders, and character relationships. The most interesting comment from it was Ms. Ingram's comparison of Sailor Moon to the queen on an anime chessboard if Dragon Ball is regarded as the king.

Crunchyroll

The timing and staging of the Sailor Moon announcement was such a publicity coup that no other industry panel could even come close to competing, but Crunchyroll did what it could. Amidst discussion of what all it was currently offering came their announcement that the live-action movie Ichi 1: The Origin (the live-action prequel to Ichi the Killer) and the live-action horror movie Ring of Curse would be streaming starting later that night. They also announced the “simulpub” of the manga The Tenth Prism effective 5 p.m. EST on May 19th and an upcoming stream of the anime movie The Princess and the Pilot, although details on that were not available at that time. During Q&A time Crunchyroll's representative clarified that their contract with Kodansha requires them to take manga down from their site as the physical release of the manga becomes available. He also stated that streaming already-established dubs from catalog titles was certainly not out of the question going forward but that Crunchyroll had no intent to make their own dubs.

Funimation

Funimation's panel was led by Adam Sheehan and Michelle, Funimation's Social Media Manager. They talked extensively about Funimation's ongoing efforts to grow their social media presence and promoted The Funimation Show, their own in-house streaming show. They also spoke at length about the titles available at the Funimation Shop at Funimation.com and showed clips of some upcoming releases. Announcements were relatively sparse and included details about an upcoming theater screening for Ghost in the Shell Arise on May 29th and how fans could request the movie for the big screen in their area by getting at least 50 votes for it on Tugg (www.tugg.com). They also announced that Funimation now has the home video rights to Hyperdimension Neptunia and the final two installments of Hellsing Ultimate, which are due this fall. Also revealed were the dub casts for the upcoming releases of the movie Hal (see the details here and Senran Kagura (see the details here).

Aniplex

The representative for Aniplex opened his panel by talking extensively about what titles from Aniplex were currently streaming and/or available for purchase and showing trailers for several. He also talked about a few upcoming releases, including Servant x Service and Nekomonogatari (White), and the eventual advent of the Aniplex+ Store, a venue where fans can pre-order certain figures. Nearly all of the company's “announcements” were just rehashes of announcements made previously over the past month, with the only new announcement being that Aniplex would host the U.S. premiere screening of Sword Art Online II on July 4th at Anime Expo and would have writer Reki Kawahara and original artist abec as special guests.

English Dub Premieres

Several English dubs for upcoming releases made their debuts at the convention, typically with two of the cast members from the dub as hosts. Three of them are briefly reviewed below.

Red Data Girl

Doing an English dub for this title posed some special problems, as the original performance of Izumiko by Saori Hayami was a very carefully nuanced performance which required a very soft and delicate touch. That ADR director Joel McDonald actually found a perfect fit is nearly as remarkable as the fact that this was the debut lead role performance by newcomer Bryn Apprill, a high school senior from Plano, Texas whom Joel picked for the role almost instantly upon hearing her in an open audition. Bryn explained in the commentary after the first four episodes aired that she has been active in theater since age 8 and has already received extensive vocal training, and that really showed in her portrayal of Izumiko's fragile emotional state through the first four episodes and her smooth transition to the more imperious tone of Himegami. These episodes mark her as a rare talent, one who (unsurprisingly) has a couple of other major roles coming up and should be a Funimation regular for years to come if she wants to be. The rest of the casting decisions were uniformly very solid. Funimation's interpretation of the wording loses just a little punch in some places (similar to their effort on Claymore), but overall it is a very solid dub.

Blood Lad

Only two episodes of its dub were available, but they were a fun listen. Unsurprisingly, Bryce Papenbrook fits almost perfectly in the lead role of Staz and Kyle Hebert is perfect as his thuggishly-voiced right-hand man Dek, while Xanthe Huynh (Sword Art Online's Sachi) and Kira Buckland (Lagrange's Madoka, Accel World's Kuroyukihime) suit well enough as Fuyumi and Hydra Bell. Other roles are at least passable. Not an ounce of the humor or smarminess of the original is lost in this great script adaptation.

The Devil is a Part-Timer!

Four dubbed episodes were shown. Although some of the jokes get adjusted a little for American terms, script writer Jamie Marchi usually knows quite well what she's doing when it comes to comedy series, and so the dialogue doesn't miss a beat. The Enta Isle language, which sounds like a vague derivative of German, was completely made up for the series and used consistently; Josh Grelle, who voices the title role, commented that the younger and newer voice actors had a much easier time with it than the more veteran ones did. Josh fit into his role pretty well, with Anthony Bowling (Baka and Test's Shin) making a great complement at Alsiel. In a very limited appearance, Aaron Dismuke sounded like he will be fine as Lucifer, too. The female roles were a little more questionable, with Tia Ballard as Chiho occasionally sounding a little shrill and Felicia Angelle (Sankarea's Mero) sometimes going a little overboard as Emilia, though not to grating levels. And that sure sounded like Monica Rial in a very brief performance as Emeralda. Overall the dub seemed pretty good so far, and they do have some great material to work with, but the verdict is still out on this one.