Broccoli Books Blog

Hello, blogger Shiz here.

Freelance designer Chris was finally able to get the Industry Babble blog set up. Yay!

So please visit http://www.bro-usa.com/industry_babble/. I’ll be posting daily!

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!

Hey, blogger Shiz here.

I’m working with freelance designer Chris to set up a new blog.

It’ll be a revamped and renewed Industry Babble (since the one at dot-anime.us is gone).

Not sure when it’ll be up and running… but hopefully by the end of this month. Maybe earlier.

Stay tuned!

This is blogger Shiz.

A group of anime bloggers put together something called Anime Blog Awards.

Please visit the site and vote for Broccoli Books blog in the Manga section.

Thanks!

Sorry for the retro posting, but the Industry Babble category is spinning off as a new blog at dot-anime.us.

I’ll continue to have Broccoli Books related industry babble blogged here, but a lot of the other misc things I do (cuz publishing is less than 20% of what I do at Broccoli USA) will have a new home.

But now there’s all this pressure to write material!
This blog is very on-a-whim thing (yes, it’s part of my job… but I don’t have anyone whipping me to write), while the dot-anime blog involves many more people.

Well, gambari masu!

Retail manager Dennis, marketing staffer Jonathan & I headed over to Anime Jungle 2nd to help them out during their grand opening event.

Anime Jungle is a retail store in downtown Los Angeles, and they just opened their second store on 1st Street & Los Angeles Street, in Little Tokyo. Next to Daikoku-ya ramen shop.

They gave away a nice goodie-bag to the first 50 customers who showed up.
There were over 40 people lined up before the store opened!

Bandai Visual US gave me a kaiten (store opening) gift to give to Anime Jungle, so I went over to deliver it. Along with more give-away items we had lying around in the Broccoli offices. Plus some give-away items received from Geneon Ent.

After the initial mad rush was over (there were two waves of crowds), ex-Broccoli staffer Ardith dropped by so we went out to eat lunch. We called up voice actress Stephanie & went karaoke at the Little Tokyo Shopping Center.

Non-candid photo at karaoke

I don’t know a lot of songs, so I generally stick to the Di Gi Charat & Galaxy Angel songs. But we didn’t sing Party Night to finish the day. Tsk, tsk.

Today I went to Bandai Visual USA’s office for lunch.
And to introduce someone.

We went to eat at Yuzu in Torrance.

I had grilled hirame, for a light meal.
But it was still a lot of food.
Who said Japanese food has small portions? Their lunches are always big & I can’t finish the lunch meals whenever I go to Japan.

We had dessert afterwards too. I had a citrus sherbet. It was sappari good!

Then later today, I headed up to Studio City to have dinner w/ BLEACH people.
Well, voice actor Stephanie Sheh called to say that a producer from VIZ was in town. I didn’t know him, but I thought I’d go socialize. I haven’t done too much US industry rounds for a while.

So I had dinner with voice actor Stephanie & voice actor Michelle.
And VIZ producer Peter.
And audio man Ed(?).
And VA Stephanie’s college roomie Jen (non-industry).

At a restaurant called Zach’s Italian Cafe.

I was trying to pick between the goat cheese lasagna or the wrapped pasta… I went w/ wrapped pasta because VIZ producer Peter went with the goat cheese lasagna. He gave me a piece of the lasagna, though. And it was yummy! Not that my wrapped pasta was bad. It was like an unsealed ravioli. But the lasagna was good!

Try it if you ever go there.

I headed over to the Bandai Visual US office today for our not-so-regular meeting.

We’re exhibiting together at Mikomi Con (Northridge, CA).
Sign up for any of the Broccoli Books or Bandai Visual mailing lists & get a free Kenshin calendar.

We just got a sample copy of Galaxy Angel Rune DVD vol 3, so we might show that.
Or Royal Space Force Wings of Honneamise on HD.

We also talked about what to do with title announcements during the off-convention-season time. Since dot-anime.us will eventually have a content section (the Japanese site has a section called Tornado Base, that has original novel serialization, creator blogs & stuff), I thought it would be cool to put up off-season announcements in the content section.

Or even an image banner.

I’m thinking Title Do Re Mi or Title Merazoma! would be ideal to post up on dot-anime.

Especially Title Do Re Mi.
Our marketing plan for Title Do Re Mi included promotions on dot-anime, so it makes sense to start the promotion with the online announcement.

Now to plan out the timing of the release.

Editor Samantha & I had a meeting w/ Aurora Publishing today.

Mainly for information exchange & how we can work together at Yaoi Con.

Speaking of Yaoi Con, Boysenberry will have a booth there.
We’ll have Delivery Cupid and Pet on Duty available there.

Anime Insider asked me to list my top 10 anime.

I don’t watch a whole lot of anime outside of work, but I was able to compile a list.
I won’t reveal my list yet, so you’ll have to wait for the issue to come out (not sure which month it is).

But the breakdown:
4 of them are movies
I met 5 of the directors

I should ask around others in the industry to see who participated.
Hopefully I’ll make the final edit of the article.