I iz too a cosplayer cuz I has cat eers on

This book is as every bit as depressing as the cover image.

So photographer Elena Dorfman, as you may already know, took a series of photos of "cosplayers"--her words, not mine, as you'll see later--which has been released in the book Fandomania. The blurb goes like so:

"The theater of cosplay has no boundaries, is unpredictable, open-ended. It includes both the fantastic and the mundane, the sexually aberrant and innocent, female characters who become samurai warriors and brainy scientists, and male characters who magically change their sex." Explorations of identity through portraiture are at the forefront of Dorfman's work, with the blurred lines between fantasy and reality a continuing theme.

Not to hate, but after flipping through the book it becomes clear that Dorfman's bold statement is undermined by the fact that half the people in the book look like they were picked up at the cosplay equivalent of the Bowery Mission. Whatever Dorfman's intent, these dispiriting photos convey only the message that the theater of cosplay is one of cruelty, filled with sad, sad, predominately white people living a broken-down lie. I mean, who the fuck is this supposed to be? I feel like I should at least recognize this as a character but all I feel is a pervading sense of sadness and pity. You can do it! Defeat the emo that rages inside and reclaim your flip-flops! Go, girl, go!

What's this? Oh, it's just a trap. This isn't even cosplay either, it's just how people dressed at my high school. And that sloppy hanging thread just bugs.

There are costumes in the book that are much better, but for photos featuring some of the the saddest-looking cosplayers and so-called "cosplayers" around, Fandomania is a safe bet. Then again, you can find these exact same people loitering in front of the elevators at your local convention, shrill-voiced with "GLOMP ME!" signs and boxes of Pocky. It's like Hot Cosplay Mess...

...with a foam cover. There's no reason why it should be foam, nor does its foamy quality add anything whatsoever to the finished work except for a vague sensation of squishiness, but that's how awesome and well-thought-out this project is.

So... hard... core!

It's a perfectly fine tune, but do you really want to kick off a Letter from the Convention Chair with a song whose lyrics include the lines

For a feast for your eyes to see
An explosion of catastrophe?

Apparently, yes, yes you do.

Still, bonus points if ACen's opening ceremonies will also involve mascots with guitars and five rounds of skeletal chick boxing.

While we're at it, check out deleted scenes from Perfect Hair Forever. Oh, wait. No? That's not what it is? It's a Tandokucon promotional video? (Tandokucon: where panelists will be crushed by falling sheetrock and you will like it.) Well, watch it anyway. Gotta at least applaud the effort--I really like the end credits--while realizing it was a glorious diversion of time and effort from things that would actually have made the convention run good.

In an unrelated comment, am I the only one who thinks it's quietly amusing that Tandokucon promoted itself as the first anime con produced by an African-American owned group, but still won't use a mascot of color? Even all the characters in the promo video are white.

The devil is in the details

So Tandokucon has come and gone, to decidedly mixed reviews. The backstory, which deserves to be enshrined for all posterity, is that it was created by a Philadelphia-area mother as an alternative to the cost and hassle of having her daughter travel alone to faraway conventions. (Like, I dunno, New Jersey or Maryland or, um, Pennsylvania.) You do the math. And also--wait, what's that you say, Tandokucon website?

To us, TandokuCon is something more than just a good time.

Well, sure, I can understand that--

It is our way of fighting against a terrible epidemic: the loss of life amongst our young people.

--oh-kay, that's a new one, but--

The tragedy at Virginia Tech is an awful reminder of the callousness some feel towards this matter.

Wow. Alright, let's leave aside how that last sentence has no actual logical connection to anything that precedes or follows it, and move on...

Interesting Fun Facts: Tandokucon's host company, T-Con Expressions, was founded in October 2006. E'lea is now 20 years old. Is now really the time to express your concern with rented convention center space? Honestly? Are you going to wait until she's 24 to set up a polling booth on your street to save her the danger and expense of traveling to the nearest school or senior center to cast a ballot?

Anyway, more about T-Con Expressions:
Staffed by one person, TCON Expressions has recruited several volunteers to administer TandokuCon. The volunteers who comprise the convention staff are passionate about art, anime and the young people of Philadelphia. We are Project Managers, students, PR Professionals, Retail Professionals and Customer Service Professionals.

Inspiring. And possibly suggestive of multiple personality disorder. Customer service professionals, you say? (Best Guest Relations Liaison... ever!) Speaking of professional, how about this helpful Tandokucon website blurb from convention artist Daylen Wright?

"I've been using the alias 'Kizziesama' in honor of one of my personal best characters named Akurin Kizuo (nicknamed "Kizzie" for her last name). She gets the '-sama' suffix because her rank is the Queen of Hell after marrying Lucifer.”

You know, if you're trying to cut the poor girl a break by featuring her on your website, do her a kindness and edit her text for idiocy. It's the least you could do. Y'know, for the children.

In related con core competency news, ran across a Mahou Con flyer this weekend. And they still couldn't spell August. Do you want to give these people your money? I know you do!

Did New Hampshire teach you nothing?

Everyone and their mother wants to run a convention these days--literally, but more about Tandoku Con later--though sadly, not everyone deserves to run a convention.

Exhibit A for the prosecution: MahouCon '08. Is the California anime con circuit hurting for more? No. But too bad, here's MahouCon, a month after AnimeExpo and located in the same county. Perhaps it's merely a case of envy; even though its convention site is still under construction, that hasn't stopped MahouCon from taking out an ad swap on AnimeCons.com and cheerfully pirating AnimeExpo for what pieces of information they do have up and misspelled.

Although the event is scheduled for the Hotel Huntington Beach, it "may" move to the Anaheim Convention Center second floor if the event grows too big. (Not... likely.) Their tentative video room schedule is even titled "Video room if in Anaheim" and is organized by Anaheim Convention Center room numbers. The schedule also refers to a Go Tournament which you will not find referenced anywhere else on the site. You rock, MahouCon!

Best of all, the list of guests consists of--could it be, it is! Chris Hazelton ("he coming") and Amanda Tomasch! I'd suspect something but quite frankly, this effort looks so inept (with at-door prices like $22, $16, and $8--you've never seen registration in your life before, have you?) that I could honestly believe the organizers, whoever they might be, mistook the pair for, well, actual people in the industry.

One of us! One of us! One of us!

What's better than the mouth-foaming drama of Your Webcomic is Bad and You Should Feel Bad? A blog devoted to harshing on Your Webcomic is Bad And You Should Feel Bad! Especially when the blog that's critical of the criticism blog is, in and of itself, bad. The first scathing shot across John Solomon's bow is "Your web comic review blog is bad and you should feel bad for using a blatant Futurama quote instead of coming up with something yourself which is rather ironic considering you constantly rip on web comics for doing the exact same thing except with other pop culture phenomenoms instead of Futurama", a sure sign that we're not exactly looking at the next MST3K contender.

Who should feel bad? Who knows. Welcome to the Internet.

Here is my shoddy assemblage of cliches. Now buy my stuff!

There's still some weird mucky liquid at the bottom of the cup of delight that is Demented Dragon, so here we go with A Steel Wing Shattered by Chris Hazelton. First, the story in their own words:

In an average town a three hundred year unseen war is about to come to a head. Leona, a girl with no past must uncover the key to a place no living being has ever been, and secure humanity's place in the struggle to unlock the secrets of the universe itself. Her only clue is the mysterious woman known only as "Alsatia".

Because reading these things takes 1d4 SAN a shot, let's sum it up in brief. If your comic looks like it was lettered in Zapf Chancery, stop. You fail. Oh, and fellas--I know you love the boob size stuff, but it's not an adequate substitute for actual characterization and/or dialogue that suggests the women you know best all have little yellow subtitles when they talk. Nor is having characters walk in on each other naked novel or entertaining, but it does suggest you learned everything you know about writing by parroting anime and manga instead of developing talent, creativity, and an individual voice. And if your series is set in the modern day but it looks like it barely made it out of colonial Williamsburg, well, that's on you.

Here's the bottom line for all you would-be manga-ka out there: if you don't care enough to attempt even a bare modicum of professionalism and effort, maybe you shouldn't be doing this at all. Sure, we can't all be great artists or writers. But if you don't even try to do your best? If you're content to do half-assed work and call it good enough for print? That's an insult. Get the fuck out.

Are we done? I think we're done. Oh wait, he did some other stuff? Crap. Okay.

Chris also has another webcomic, a gender switcher called Misfile, and there's bras and recycled boob humor and cars and shit and more cars and he still hasn't figured out how to use a decent font. Right, now we're done.

Wow, New York guests at a New York convention!

Okay, but seriously, New York Anime Festival. When are you going to announce the good guests? Co-director for the new Evangelion money grabs, that's nice, but your guest list is about as vigorously vetted as a stray dog with three legs and most of the kind folks on it are only marginally harder to get than genital herpes.

Admittedly, exhibitor participation is probably the biggest feature of the New York Anime Festival--which underlines the impression that there simply doesn't appear to be much at the Festival that you couldn't find anywhere else, the Festival just has collected more of it in one place for your mechanical consumption. But with a month still to go, there's still a chance for some genuine excitement to develop...

What's that? Oh, it's only a vending machine.

Walking the streets of Japan? Afraid of becoming a crime victim? One woman may have the answer!

The other white meat

Want $100 off the price of the Fujoshi Paradise Tour? Buy a Digital Manga Publishing employee at Yaoi Con! And then please, please explain to him the principles behind graphic design so that he can take the knowledge back to the others. Life is too short for weak typography. Anyway, Ben comes "sporting a lovely Wa-Lolita outfit in a floral pattern" from Dreamshoppe. Will it look anything like these? Because not many men--even very pretty men--can carry off the Strawberry Shortcake Lives On Through Me look.

Other Yaoi Con delights include Cafe Verfuhren, where you can "[d]elight in the ever changing dynamics between the owner and his growing harem of bishie waiters as they serve up food, drinks, and hot fan-service for your enjoyment." Everyone involved is actually female, but I'm guessing that if your idea of a good time is watching American girls pretending to be boys patterned on female fantasies of vaguely homoerotic male behavior in order to immerse you in the culture of Japan, then this is for you. Bon appetit!

Come tour a magical land where people are fantasies and fantasies are people!

The Fujoshi Paradise Yaoi Tour snagged a brief mention in the New York Times today. Despite its promise to "take you into the secret garden of bishonen", it's just a standard Tokyo tour package with one day set aside for yaoi-themed activities. Okay, two days if you count taking your free day in Tokyo to, as they suggest, "Find your bishonen prince". Which you could probably do in Southeast Asia for cheaper, if that's the brand of cheap fetishization you're after. Or you can take the day to join the Tokyo Darkside goth-loli tour, which is the exact same tour except their special day is spent shopping, talking, and eating goth-loli, with dinner at the Alcatraz Medical Prison Restaurant. The latter seems about as authentic to the EGL experience as Trekkies dining at Mars 2112, but what do I know. Here, have a menu. They do birthdays.

As for the secret garden of bishonen? Shopping in Ikebukuro, two yaoi cafes, a visit with yaoi manga artist Makoto Tateno, and an all-male (sorry, "shapely Japanese bishounen"--speaking of fetishization...) variety dance show in Roppongi. Now, I don't know how big a yaoi manga artist Makoto Tateno really is, but the English release of her series Yellow is hilarious. Or at least the sample pages are, anyway.



Leaving aside the fact that so-called professionals laid this page out just like the Dungeons and Dragons maps I drew in Canvas 3.0 when I was 13, and in fact I would not be surprised if this was laid out in Canvas 3.0--the ellipse tool is a subtle and wily beast--"His identity is a secret, except that he's gay" is the best non-description I've seen since, well, White Wolf's classic "May be a Jew." Now that's the way to deftly establish character!