Fear and Loathing in Woodley Park February 24, 2008
Posted by Lindsay in Anime, Commentary, Manga, Writing.1 comment so far
Part One: Getting In(to Character)
On the night of Friday, February 15, the day after Valentine’s Day, I took the Metro to the Adams Morgan station on the red line, with my flash recorder slung around my shoulder. It was in the early evening, and I was still dressed in the clothes I had worn to the office that day, but with the added accessory of the headphones on my flash recorder around my neck, the only place they would fit. The train hadn’t passed too many stops before I began to see teenagers dressed as pink-haired samurai and robots made of plastic and foil climbing on. They were clearly headed to the same place I was, the Omni Shoreham Hotel, for Katsucon – the biggest Japanese pop culture convention of the season.
As I rode the escalator up out of the subway, holding my coat closed in the cold, I recognized even more familiar characters from Japanese animation. At least four or five Uzumaki Narutos, ninjas young and loud; a gang of death gods from Bleach, their soul-sealing swords at their waists; Sailor Moon and the Supremes…I mean, fellow Sailor Scouts, ready to fight with love and honor against the insidious Queen Beryl. This wasn’t the first time I’d been to an anime convention – there was one every year at Smith College, just a few hours away from Amherst, my all-too-recent alma mater. But it was definitely the first time I’d gone as a reporter. (more…)
Fear and Loathing in Woodley Park II March 13, 2008
Posted by Lindsay in Anime, Commentary, Writing.add a comment
Part Two: The Line That Blurs
I happened upon a group of college-age convention patrons sitting on the floor of a merchandise room and decided to see what they knew about webcomics. They were open to being a group interview, which would make for good “round-table” discussion sort of tape, so I sat down with them and began to ask them questions.
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