Articles
Report: Anime Evolution 2004 part 2 - 6/9/04
By: Jesse Betteridge
Saturday
I wasn't in a huge rush to get anywhere on Saturday morning, so I arrived back to the school around 10:00am. It was pretty cloudy out compared to the day before and I tried to get inside as fast as possible, considering that SFU is on a mountain and all.
There were two separate panels being held for voice director Rob Bakewell and veteran voice actress Run Sasaki. I popped into Rob's panel for a bit, but I'm sorry to say that I couldn't get into it. I feel kind of sorry for Rob, since he was stuck all alone to run a panel on his own, he wasn't attracting much of an audience, and I think the lighting over him was burnt out. However, I found Run Sasaki's panel to be quite interesting while she gave a lot of neat insight into both the North American and Japanese dubbing industries. She spoke very little English, so all of the questions had to go through an interpreter who sounded suspiciously like Mr. Mackey from South Park. I swear to god I thought he was going to say "m'kay?" at the end of every sentence.
After grabbing a sub sandwich for lunch (I was pretty much sick of noodles at this point) I popped into the third voice actor panel for the day, which featured Trevor Devall (voice of Mu Lu Flaga in Gundam SEED) and David Kaye (voice of Sesshoumaru in Inuyasha. Naturally, David proved to be quite popular with the ladies in the audience, especially when he improvised a rather suggestive dialogue involving Jaken, but since I don't think a lot of the dub fans in the room had seen Gundam SEED yet, Trevor wasn't getting very much attention. I asked him a couple of questions about doing the voice of SEED's universally loved playboy, and he said that he had originally intended to give the character a real "Han Solo" style flavour, but decided to make it a little less obvious in the end. One interesting thing he pointed out, however, was that in every single episode of Gundam SEED that he recorded, he made sure to fit a line from Star Wars into the dialogue. I had him sign a $3 SEED poster I had just bought. Apparently this was also his first con, but somehow I suspect that he'll be a little more popular next year.
Me with Trevor Devall. No one else seemed to be that enthusiastic about his appearance…
I popped outside for a minute and was surprised to see that rain was pouring down like crazy, which had forced the cosplay show to be moved from the outdoor stage into one of the main screening rooms. Unfortunately, I got there a bit late because the last voice actor panel had run long, and ever seat in the room had already been filled. A pity, because I hear it was quite a decent show. Luckily, there were more than enough cosplayers roaming the hall to keep me distracted.
After picking up a couple of Japanese Fruits Basket comics up in the dealer's room along with a cute poster of Tohru and Kagura, I went back downstairs and passed by a very recognizable figure on the way, wearing a cowboy hat and plaid vest. It was none other than Scott McNeil, and it didn't even take five minutes for the harem that would be following him around all night to track him down. He was later joined by Michael Dobson, Alexandra Carter, and Andrew Francis at the Japan-A Radio stand. Since I found myself coming back to hear them chatter again and again, I finally caved and decided to buy a ticket to the Guest Reception being held up at the pub. It cost $20, but since I had barely bought anything at the con, I figured that it wouldn't hurt to buy one at the last minute. And I must say, that was a good move.
The Guest Reception dinner was a blast. I got to sit down and talk with Rob Bakewell, whose panel I skipped out on earlier. He told me a few interesting things about Ocean Studios, the most notable being that he believes (but can't really confirm, since he wouldn't be working on it) that Blue Water Studios in Edmonton is currently working on the dub for Gundam ZZ. I also had fun chatting with Andrew Francis, who apparently had a total blast playing Azrael in Gundam SEED. I got him to autograph my poster as well, but unfortunately no other actors for major characters in the show were present at AE this year. Apparently this was also his first con, and we was having quite a good time.
Top left is Andrew Francis, middle is Scott McNeil, right is Rob Bakewell
Staying clear of the enormous line-up for the Yaoi panel, I headed to the karaoke at 9:00pm that evening. I really, really wanted to sing 1/2, the second opening theme from Rurouni Kenshin, but apparently they got busted for using mp3's for music last year, so they could only use songs from CDs available. Unfortunately, nobody thought to bring the appropriate soundtrack. Oh well.