Otakon and Comic-Con: Ceci n’est pas une compte rendu
Alright. I’m mostly of sound mind and body and my desk was only slightly overgrown by mail and other items when I got back to the office. Feeling like getting back to the normal non-convention life of laughing at small children,
angering my neighbor,
and flipping off animals and other random things.
Go see ‘How to be a Serial Killer’ staring the voice of Cell from DBZ, Dameon Clarke!
So I guess it’s time for a convention report. Being that Otakon and San Diego Comic-Con were back to back I’m wrapping them up nice and neatly in one report.
Lets start with Otakon.
Frog invasion!!
Yes, as the blog stalking mentioned before, our booth was covered in frogs. We made a peace pact by beating them in a thumb wrestling competition. It helped having bigger hands and yelling, ‘look, free cow-flesh over there!’ every now and again. With the frogs subdued for the show many fans came and took their pictures with them at the booth. We also had some sets of mini versions of these guys on our booth for the the first few hours of each day.
This, of course, worked the crowd into a fevered pitch for the Sgt. Frog English dub premiere. People lined up hours ahead of time to get a good seat for the show. Unless laughing, cheering, and clapping is a bad thing the fans seemed to love it. I pulled a few aside and asked them what they thought of the show.
Mike – “little frogs on the big screen…man that’s deep.”
Julie – “The funniest thing I’ve seen since Twilight!”
Brian – “I want to buy it right now! No really, give me it now if you value your life! Why is the security team walking this way? Get your hands off me! I have rights!! Don’t taze me bro!!!”
Much fun was had by all as you can see.
Outside of all the Frog fun we were having, we announced a few new shows at our industry panel.
- Daytime Drinking*
- Casshern SINS
- Eden of the East
- Dragon Ball Z Dragon Box
I think this is best expressed as adsfadfasdfadsfadsfadsfsadfasdfasdfasdfasdfasdf!!!!!!1!! for the excitement level of these announcements. For the Dragon Box, we even had a package mock-up with personal handlers.
After the big announcement, we had some Dragon Ball Z autograph signings on the booth.
Mike McFarland (Voice of Master Roshi) and Sonny Strait (Voice of Krillin) were on hand for the vast amount of DBZ fans who came by. We even had some sweet posters for autographs.
I could go on further about all the other cool stuff at Otakon like the Eva screenings, great cosplay, and selling lots and lots and LOTS of FUNimation DVDs but I have to leave some room in this post for the other convention that took place right after Otakon.
By this I of course mean San Diego Comic-Con.
Flying all the way to the other side of the country, we were ready for the mega-convention which is Comic-Con. We had less events planned for this convention than the prior two in July but that doesn’t mean things were by any means slower. If anything with the 120,000+ people who showed up to see us and everyone else at the show things were even crazier.
So crazy, our booth went from this
to this.
So yeah, busy.
We did have a Dragon Ball Z autograph signing like at Otakon but with two different Voice Actors.
We had Christopher Sabat (Voice of Vegta and Piccilo) and Eric Vale (Voice of Trunks). The line for autograph session started 3 hours before and we had to cap it even before they arrived. So plenty of DBZ fans all around.
We were selling the Fullmetal Alchemist OVA as well as screening Brotherhood so we had cosplayers from of ACParadise on hand promoting the show.
Many fans came by to take pictures of the crew as well as we were stamping people to join the sides of either the State Alchemists or the Homunculi. People loved the stamps, they work on anything.
We also had fully packed screenings of Evangelion 1.0, Sgt. Frog, and many others so after the smoke cleared on the show and myself amassing a total amount of 10 hours sleep in 5 days (So worth it, Flynn’s Arcade was amazing!), we said goodbye to San Diego for another year.
We won’t be at any conventions in August, but in September we are super heavy around the country so be sure to check out FUNimation.com/conventions for our full schedule for the rest of the year. Talk to you soon! …*passes out*
*The film, not the activity. That has been a staple at FUNimation since 1994.
…J/K, don’t tell HR! 
7 Responses to “Otakon and Comic-Con: Ceci n’est pas une compte rendu”
Corey Lucas on July 31st, 2009 at 2:35 pm says:
Adam: You Guys are the best!! Lol Thats my Catch phrase for you guys! Is there any more announcements on the Blog or are you going to NYAF in Sept?
Adam S. on July 31st, 2009 at 2:40 pm says:
@Corey Lucas: We will have more blog news and fun all next month and yes we will be at NYAF in September.
Vilapupu (aka gonzales10g) on July 31st, 2009 at 6:02 pm says:
it was fun Otakon (I went there). I did heard about the Comic-con and how it was. Good job on presenting Funimation in the conventions. ^_^
dragon0 on July 31st, 2009 at 9:32 pm says:
Well Adam at least you had some, how shall we say ……. “energy fluids” to keep you awake and working. (light laughter) 
Kaela on August 1st, 2009 at 4:09 pm says:
Is there an area on the website that shows the future conventions that funi will be attending?
dragon0 on August 1st, 2009 at 4:31 pm says:
check out the forums link on the funimation home page.
Kaela on August 1st, 2009 at 5:42 pm says:
I found the sub-forum; thankyou very much dragon.
