The Desu-Effect – Nova’s Desucon Report

Author: nova

So Desucon happened and as I promised, I was there to witness it. Desucon appeared to challenge the traditional anime conventions in Finland with such radical ideas as an attendance fee and complete absence of a cosplay contest. Did it succeed? Let’s find out.

Desucon was my first con. In fact, it was my first contact with the Finnish real-life anime fandom. Finnish cons did not interest me much due to their immature key demographic and heavy focus on cosplay. Desucon promised to break away from this common mold and since I conviently felt the need to prove my point about something nasty I wrote on Sankaku once, it seemed like a good opportunity to see this ambitious project either make history or crash and burn in an epic fashion.

I was feeling kinda ill on the first day of the con so I didn’t rush straight in. I sort of regret it now but I blame the week of work in the night shift. However I made sure to be there in time to check out the first of the three guests of honor: a seasoned seiyuu-veteran Tohru Furuya, familiar to the Gundam-fans out there. But before discussing him, let me say a word or two about my overall first impressions on the conviention.

Nice lake.

Desucon was held at Sibelius Hall in Lahti and I can hardly think of any more fitting location for it. The hall was just the right size for a convention of a few thousand attendees and it never felt really cramped or difficult to move around. The attendees themselves behaved quite well, at least compared to what I have heard from some other cons in Finland. The hallways weren’t blocked by bunches of squealing middle schoolers having dry sex with each other, probably nobody was paddled, the guests of honor weren’t bombarded with nothing but awkward yaoi-themed questions and I didn’t spot any obnoxious “JOIN US WE HAS YAOI XDXXDX”-signs either. The average age of the attendees seemed higher than usual too and people were abudant in the Adults Only-rated panels. The level of cosplay was surprisingly good and the usual hordes of Naruto and Bleach cosplayers were nowhere to be seen. Hell, I even spotted Touhou and Higurashi cosplay. All this simply because the con wasn’t free to attend? Who knows, I’d like to call this the Desu-effect.

But let’s proceed with something about Tohru Furuya who was probably the most anticipated guest of honor at Desucon. He is best known for his role as Amuro Ray in the Gundam franchise as well as Pegasus Seiya in Saint Seiya and Tuxedo Kamen in Sailor Moon. My first observation was the poor performance of the narrator and translator who both were obviously very anxious and spoke in a flat, awkward voice. This formed an annoying contrast as one could not say the same about Furuya himelf – the man was clearly at home on the stage and full of energy and confidence. The questions prepared for him were well thought-out and resulted in quite an interesting and educative discussion. The audience questions were good for the most part as well, aside from the usual “Can a Finn become a seiyuu for Japanese anime?“. Hell, I could see from Furuya’s face that to him this question was utterly absurd though not unexpected. As a parting gift the Finnish audience was presented with an exclusive video of an upcoming Kamen Rider videogame – first time it has been publicly shown! – after which Furuya performed two songs from his recently published music album. All in all despite the lackluster narration Tohru Furuya’s performance had a great impact and in my opinion was the climax point of the convention. It would have worked better on the latter con day but apparently due to Furuya’s flight schedules this was impossible to arrange.

After checking out Furuya I headed to the anime blogging panel but got caught in the dealer’s room for a bit too long and lost my sense of time (and budget) – so I ended up at the panel when it was about halfway through. The panel was held in a smaller auditorium which of course meant that I couldn’t just sneak in unnoticed and thus I was greeted with “Hey is THAT Nova?” and my own blog being viewed on the screen. So I ended up giving a short statement about why one should bother blogging about anime in English instead of Finnish. To be honest there was a lot of stuff I felt like saying but it was my mistake for turning down the offer to be one of the panelists, so I saw it best not to interfere too much (aside from a few shouted comments, sorry guys!). As I missed the first half I can’t really say if it was better than the blogging panel at NY Anime Festival ‘08 I discussed in the past. The part I happened to witness gave me sort of mixed feelings. After all the circles are small in Finland and the panelists were maybe a bit too familiar with each other and parts of the audience to be informative enough. Then again the audience itself seemed to be mainly the type that knows a thing or two about anime blogs already.

The smaller auditorium was surprisingly packed during moe vs. GAR.

Next up was an adult only-rated panel Cosplay and Sex (hey it’s totally coz some friends just wanted to see it…) which was filled to the rim with both intentional and unintentional hilarity, mainly in the form of samples from Lucky Kira (a blatant zero-budget live action porn Lucky Star ripoff) and This Ain’t Star Trek (a blatant zero-budget live action porn Star Trek ripoff, dear God). Especially a certain scene from Lucky Kira with a striking similarity to a certain age-old Finnish internet meme caused enough hilarity within our group to get us an inch away from getting kicked out. Since Pararin insisted and the alternative was a J-rock panel, I decided to call it a day with Moe vs. GAR-panel. To be honest I wasn’t expecting much of the panel but it turned out to be quite entertaining with seeing a tank getting punched in the face, Kenshiro and Konata…uh…wat (guys, I really think you took the “moe IN GAR”-topic a bit too literally) and for a short awkward moment being stared at by the entire audience (“look, this guy in the back row only likes 2D girls“).

A new day, a new beginning! Sunday was an improvement as far as the weather was concerned but the Voice in the Shell panel I had much anticipated was badly bogged down by a poor translator. Ryuusuke Imai had a well prepared presentation and narrated most of it himself in English which made it much more fluent than what merely communicating via a translator would have been. But whenever the translator was needed, his speech was very awkward and inconsistent. The translator seemed to have little trouble speaking with Imai in Japanese and I’m not going to complain about how well he did the translation work itself since I definitely lack any merits for that. But whenever it was time to present Imai’s sayings to the audience in Finnish the translator sounded like giving a speech at a funeral service. Now I understand that it’s a tough job and there obviously was a lot of pressure but it could’ve and should’ve been a better presentation to the audience. Both the audience and the lecturer deserve it. The presentation itself was solid and almost metaphysical at times, discussing the role of voice as a part of the soul and identity of a character as well as its use in the history of animation. I totally feel like rewatching Ghost in the Shell-movies now, because Imai’s lecture opened my eyes to a whole lot of things I had missed before. His presentation was perhaps a bit too abstract for your general con audience but very interesting nevertheless for anyone interested in more deep and analytical stuff.

I sort of regret my lazy attendance on sunday as the only other events I participated were the “Worth watching II: The Return of the Elitist Bastards” (Katsomisen Arvoista II: Elitistipaskojen paluu) and the ending ceremony (ALL HEIL NIIDLER). Before these I successfully trolled Pararin about Clannad (seriously guys, who’s Fuuko? What are you talking about?) and rushed over to the viewing room to see Kara no Kyokai only to find out that the schedule was delayed and they were still running Detroit Metal City (which was pretty damn funny too though). The Elitist panel had a lot less elitism that I anticipated but it gave me some interesting ideas to watch and the selected sample clips were entertaining (NICE LAKE).

Time for the bottom line: Desucon was a very good experience and I will definitely be attending its continuation next year. Parts that require improvement: Narrators and translators working with the guests of honor must have more confidence and energy in their speech, especially when keeping up with an energetic man like Furuya. The viewing room’s schedules seemed to be all over the place and thus I only had the time to watch half of Kara no Kyokai before having to jet for the Elitist panel. But other than these two things, I have nothing to really complain about. Keep it up. I apologize for the lack of photos in this post, I will add some later when I get permission from the photographers. For the time being check out Lmmz’s gallery.

ADDITIONAL LOOT POST

There obviously was no way I’d get through the con without acquiring some merchandise, so here it is: my loot from Desucon dealer’s room. I really appreciated the small but interesting selection of soundtracks – I’ve been looking for Memories OST for some time now and there it was! Manga was everywhere but the almost total absence of anime DVDs was a great disappointment. Word for all dealers: Please stock more DVDs, if only a bit. I’m sure it will pay off.

Tags: desucon, finland, loot