San Diego Comic Con-alicious
Sorry for the lack of posting yesterday, folks, but I am now in San Diego for Comic Con. There’ll be panels for TOKYOPOP - whose booth is HUGE, I swear to god they’re housing their staff in that thing - VIZ, FUNimation, ADV, Seven Seas, Broccoli, Del Rey Manga, and Dark Horse (though I expect they’ll be focusing more on their non-manga offerings). Yen Press will also be giving a launch panel, which should be fun even though it overlaps with the Kevin Smith panel slightly.
As of just now when I re-checked the schedule, the only big panel today is VIZ (though a TOKYOPOP rep will be at the GoComics mobile phone comics panel so I may pop in there too).
Tomorrow’s the big day, though: TOKYOPOP, Dark Horse, Broccoli, Seven Seas, and Yen Press and Kevin Smith. Saturday’ll be FUNimation, Del Rey Manga, and ADV, and Sunday is poor l’il CMX, all alone. It *looks* like I’ll be able to make it to all of these panels, so expect full coverage! Depending on how the Internets are at the convention center, I may also live-blog them on the forums.
I’ll get to the news as fast as I can, after a few more thoughts/predictions…
Over all, I think this will be a banner year for manga at Comic Con, at least in terms of announcements. Here’s why:
TOKYOPOP: I’m hoping they announce a few good licenses here. They unfortunately had that 38-title leak back in June, but it’s now the end of July and they definitely have been focusing on Comic Con a lot, since they didn’t even have a booth at AX and didn’t announce anything at Otakon, except that maybe-more-Sailor Moon thing that turned out to be only a possibility and an old-ish one at that. Crossing fingers!
VIZ Media: These guys also minimized their presence at AX and they didn’t even have a panel at Otakon. And they DIDN’T have a giant title leak. So here’s hoping they’ve got some new stuff on their plates.
…Okay, those are the main reason.
FUNimation: I don’t expect any big announcements from FUNimation, although I suppose they could have saved something exciting for last - but with Darker than Black at AX and Host Club at Otakon, it’d have to be something pretty major to make a solid trifecta. We’ll see.
ADV: After their giant Gurren Lagann announcement at AX, is there any way ADV could top it? I think they could reach similar levels of OMGWTF if they licensed, say, Lucky Star, but that doesn’t mean I think that they’ve done it. They may have a few more new series announcements but I’d be surprised if it was anything jaw-dropping.
Del Rey Manga: Another absentee from AX, they DID say that they would be announcing new titles at SDCC. It should be interesting to see how many are new licenses and how many are OEL, since they have published a couple of celeb-OEL titles (Avril’s Make 5 Wishes and the upcoming Dean Koontz Odd Thomas book).
CMX: I’m less familiar with this company, D.C.’s “oh, maybe we should do that manga thing too” child, so I really don’t know what to expect from them. Them being with D.C. and not announcing anything at AX (they weren’t at Otakon at all), it seems like Comic Con would be their Big Thing. But again, no idea what to expect there.
Seven Seas: They announced quite a few new things at AX, so I wouldn’t expect too much from them here at Comic Con - though I wouldn’t be surprised at a LOT of extolling of their OEL titles, especially Hollow Fields.
Broccoli: They, too, did not announce anything new at AX and did not have a panel at Otakon, so we may see a few new titles.
Yen Press: Another company from which I have no idea what to expect, but this time I have a good excuse - they’re brand new. Actually, I guess I do have some idea what to expect: they’ll talk about their upcoming manga, their new OEL titles, and their recent acquisition of all of ICE Kunion’s manhwa. And maybe some new licenses in there, too.
I think that’s everyone. Whew. By the way…big con is BIIIIIIIIIG. I’ve been to SDCC before but it’s still pretty amazing how packed it gets. I mean, hell, last night was just preview night - only open to people who pre-registered for all four days - and the giant exhibit hall was STILL pretty full. Yipe.
Tags: ADV, broccoli, cmx, Dark-Horse, del-rey, FUNimation, sdcc07, Seven-Seas, TOKYOPOP, viz, yen-press
July 26th, 2007 at 11:37 am
Ahh!! *jealous* I miss going to the Chicago Comic-Cons. Just the atmosphere gets addicting. Have a good time while there, gia!
July 26th, 2007 at 11:52 am
Will do - and it looks like I’ll be able to liveblog the panels, too <3
July 26th, 2007 at 12:52 pm
Sweet! Here’s hoping that they make it worthwhile!