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Belated SDCCI Friday Report
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Good evening Mr. and Mrs. Big-World and all the fanbrats that be...we're reporting live from sunny, loud and crowded as all hell San Diego where all of the Gaslamp Quarter has just been overtaken by a giant "Adventure Time" show grand parade; Stormtrooper Elvis is performing live at the House of Blues; and Cirque du Soleil acrobats will soon be dangling down the south side of Petco Park:
Man, has it gotten crazy at this 'con or what?
We had another packed-table Gatcha-fan gathering at lunch Friday, with Hinotori no Jun, Condoru no Joe, and *GASP!!* for the FIRST TIME EVER- a Devil Star!! The costume was excellent with a very scary looking mask and an array of rose-grenades as accessories. Also for the first time ever: a Tsubakoru no Jinpei!!! After lunch, we paid a visit to artist Cliff Chiang, who produced some excellent Gatchaman character art a couple years ago, and bought the last of his prints. While there, he shared from his iPad a model sheet he'd been commissioned to do last year as a pitch to reboot a Gatchaman/Battle of the Planets comic. The designs were an updated look to the characters that remained relatively faithful to the looks of the originals but with a notable change made to Ryu/Tiny: he got buff! (*wolf-whistle*) Unfortunately, the idea never made it past the "hey, wouldn't it be cool if..." stage, and fizzled shortly thereafter.
Dinner was hosted by our good friend Jason Hofius, who proceeded to amuse (read: torture) us with video clips of Gatchaman and BotP spinoff animation from a variety of countries and sources: there was the Megas XLR episode featuring the return of the "S-Force" BotP/Volron spoof; a Spanish kids troupe in bird-style costumes singing the Spanish BotP dub theme songs; a Sandy Frank-produced reboot of the series that like the aforementioned Chiang comic never left the launch pad, featuring an updated (read: horrible) CGI Zark padding re-edited original footage and a fresh crop of voice actors reciting an updated script with bad 1990's slang instead of bad 1970's slang and an actor who had to be sucking helium before reciting Jason's lines. Most enjoyable and interesting was a Jameson Brewer episode commentary from one of the BotP DVD releases where he's talking about his early days in animation and how the BotP series came to be. Basically, he noted how violent the source material was, how the American political climate of the time wouldn't stand for such on childrens' television, and how he had to cut it up and put it back together again with new scripting and Zark-padding.
In other news, the CCI-management's allotment of 2012 four-day advance sales passes sold out within three nanoseconds. The thundering hordes of con-goers seemed to be crowded most around the big network pavilions such as G-4, Sci-Fi, Warner Brothers, etc and the big toy companies, hoping for either a crack at a glimpse of a superstar or a 'con exclusive toy. The small-press and artists alley areas, and the larger individual artists and writers pavilions seemed to be more sparsely populated. This is sad proof that the original focus of SDCCI has shifted from equal attention to all genres classic and new to whatever is currently on or about to be released on television.
I think I'll be turning my sights to WonderCon from now on.
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-Katharine
Disturbed in NorCal
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