Broccoli Books Blog

Hi, blogger Shiz here in San Diego.

Today was my day off, sorta.

After I passed out badges to staff in the morning, I headed over to the Square Enix booth. I bumped into Aniplex producer Henry Goto, international division’s Kodaka-san, and three other people from Aniplex Japan. The marketing person was dressed up as Roy from Fullmetal Alchemist. So Broccoli Japan isn’t the only company with staff who will happily cosplay for the company *giggle*

I went to the VIZ booth when BLEACH manga artist Tite Kubo was signing autographs & Yen Press editor Tania was in line. *giggle*

Then former Broccoli sales manager Ardith, Treyarch artist Erika, Square Enix localization specialist Jyun and I went searching for voice actress Stephanie Sheh’s autograph session, when we bumped into Robotech.com webmaster Steve who told us that she’s signing at the Score Entertainment booth. Voice actress Michelle Ruff was signing with her too.

At the end of the day, I headed over to Anime Jungle booth to talk to store manager Tetsu-san. On the way there, I bumped into the Nightow, Minowa, Yoshimatsu group. My childhood friend & Anime Expo staffer Toyo was there, so I was chatting w/ him when Aniplex USA manager Hiroe-san came by.

And… and… and…
She introduced me to Yukari Fujimoto, who is a writer & educator of Japanese culture, especially of the shoujo manga genre. I had read her essays in college when I was taking a Japanese pop culture class & wrote a report on shoujo manga and Boys Love siting her as a reference.

In my nine years in the anime/manga industry, I never felt so fan-girl in my life!
I even asked if I could take a picture with her.

I still have shivers in my body. Now I know how nervous and happy and all these emotions I can’t describe fans feel when they meet their favorite manga author or animator. This could be one of the happiest days of my life.

After the convention, I met up with Sakura Con staffer Hidehiro. This is the last time I’ll see him before he heads back to Japan to do real lawyer work. But maybe I’ll see him at the Tokyo Game Show, since he’s going to be part of a panel there.

And then I met up with ADR director & voice actor Michael Sinterniklaas. VA Stephanie Sheh, SEI Jyun, Treyarch Erika & her sister and I went to eat at an Indian restaurant.

This is my 8th year, and I realized I never walked around and did so much stuff in one day at Comic Con before. Today was a lot of fun… and I never have “personal” fun at a convention.

Just one more day left!

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 26th, 2008 at 11:08 pm and is filed under Convention, Industry Babble. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.