I never properly reviewed the Nanoha franchise, because I powered through most of it long ago before the first iteration of this blog, hence placing this post in Rants and not Classic Reviews. I do intend to do proper reviews of those shows, rest assured. But I want to address a series of tweets I…
I’ve been in the anime fandom for a long time. Not as long as many, but certainly longer than most. I’ve been places, I’ve seen things. But today, it’s a different scene. It’s a scene dominated by run-of-the-mill fans, scraping the bottom-of-the-barrel both in quality and quantity. It’s about showing people online how you are King and Queen Nerd of Nerds, about who has the bigger crush on Matt Smith, and who can squee the hardest, ignoring the fact “squee” is not a word. Maybe I am seeing this in a different light. I appreciate form and function over vanity and flashy. Animation for me is a medium I find to be more versatile and molding for storytelling and universe-building. But more importantly, when I am among the fandom, I respect what it means to be a fan, and to be part of something bigger than myself.
By now, we’ve had a few days to process the immense failure that is Dashcon. If Dashcon were just a failure because of the content, then we’d have nothing to talk about. But Dashcon was a failure on the most fundamental level of the fandom. It was about teenage organizers who knew nothing about their fandom and had even less respect for it in general. They thought they could slap together a few rooms, reel in some big names on promises of delusion and grandeur, and capitalize on the fact that people are perfectly willing to throw away money to become temporary internet superstars for fifteen minutes, before realizing the folly of their errors, and crying in the hugboxes they delicately maintain as-is.
And frankly, it really sort of pissed me off.
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With Katsucon Twenty behind me, I feel like I’ve had the same conversation afterwards for the past decade. “Am I going next year?” The answer always ends up being yes immediately. Why would I say no? Anime conventions are different experiences for different people. For most people, it’s probably the only time in the year they escape their otherwise mundane worlds to enjoy their hobby among others who speak their language. For others, it might just be the same thing they already do in a bigger space. I’ve quipped a number of times that conventions are really the same thing every year. So why do I keep going? Why not just stop?
I don’t usually like to get into personal wah-wah shit in this blog, but some context may be required to frame the post here. You’ll know when.
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There hasn’t really been much for me to write about this season, it’s pretty bland, and rather than force myself to write bullshit, I’d rather write nothing.
But I came across this on Facebook the other day and felt it was worth putting a few words in about, since the author is completely incoherent. Unfortunately, thanks to my having to understand broken English for so many years as the result of having dumb or foreign friends, I understood the message he was going for.
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