#ax lite

Natsuki: Sammi-chan. He sounds a lot like me.

Me: *laughs*Really? Well you both have extremely powerful and amazing voices.

Natsuki: ... do you think I could wear leather pants like that?

Me: *remembering the bdsm gear from Egotistical* Yes please.

Best part of this damn holiday by far was Kishow and GRANRODEO. Especially those leather pants. 🤤

His voice and energy just makes me smile. I'd love to see them live someday.

Friday July 3rd, 2020

Program: Warner Bros. Japan Presents “Stay Connected with Anime”

Anime Expo held an event called Anime Expo Lite where they accommodated for the Covid-19 pandemic and put the whole con experience online. This particular program had many seiyuu and Japanese anime studio staffs as guests where they talked about three anime and their experiences with them.

The program started out with talking about Dungeon ni Deai wo Motomeru no wa Machigatteiru Darou ka III (Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? III) with guests Matsuoka Yoshitsugu (voiced Bell Cranel) , Minase Inori (voiced Hestia) , Osawa Nobuhiro (from EGG FIRM, an anime production company), and Matsukura Yuji (producer from J.C. Staff, an animation studio). The beginning was just each guest answering questions that fans from all over the world submitted:

The author was asked if he was ever inspired by the voice acting of Matsuoka and Minase-san to which he answered yes and the program proceeded to show two specific scenes where Matsuoka’s and Minase-san’s voice acting inspired him (Minase-san was also asked to perform a small line live which was really cute)

They prepared a teaser image for the third season and for the big reveal Matsuoka had to tear a curtain off of a huge poster board while saying an attack name but the curtain got caught on the corner which almost made it fall 😂😂

This is the teaser image:

Matsuoka was asked if there were any difficulties when recording season 3 so he talked about how Bell had gone through lots of growth throughout the 2 seasons and how he had to think about how to properly act out just how mature Bell was now compared to before, considering he’s now leader of the Hestia Familia

Minase-san answered the same question. She talked about how she made sure to try and keep in mind how close all of the characters involved are plus Hestia’s mental and social growth within the group

There was a video message from Iguchi Yuka (voiced Chigusa) since she sings the opening! There was also an announcement that sajou no hana would be performing the ending song! Both messages were very nice and cute (they spoke English x3) and both artists just talked about how they were looking forward to everyone’s reactions to their songs and to look forward to the anime.

Airing of DanMachi 3 will begin in October!🎉🎉 

The next anime that they talked about was Shokugeki no Soma: Gou no Sara (Food Wars: The Fifth Plate) with guests: Matsuoka Yoshitsugu (voiced Yukihira Soma) and Yonetani Yoshitomo (animation director) 

Yonetani-san was asked about how he felt about the anime and what he thought about when working on its animation. He said he wanted to express how amazing the cooking process/food was as well as wanted to excite (oh b o y 😳) the audience

Matsuoka-san was asked the same question. He talked about how since he’s been following Soma since day one he has to think a lot about his growth in Totsuki when voice acting for him. He talked about how he kinda thinks about his own high school days as well

Matsuoka Yoshitsugu, Fukuyama Jun (voiced Saiba Asahi), and Takahashi Minami (voiced Tadokoro Megumi) pre-recorded an irl shokugeki which was shown on the program!!

Matsuoka and Jun had to make a tonkatsu sauce for Takamina. Matsuoka ended up winning because Jun was chaotic asf when he made his xD (he put dried fish and squid along with peanut butter and nutella so there were just tons of flavors trying to be the main thing)

Matsuoka was asked which lines were more memorable for him, other than Soma’s: he talked about how whenever he had to record the monologues when dishes are being made and when they’re being presented was difficult since it would be hard to express a good portrayal of Soma’s energy if he didn’t even know what he was talking about (so on the side he had to keep using wiki to understand what Soma was even talking about lol)

Question about the production of the anime: Yonetani-san talked about how there were lots of complicated words they had to use; there were lots of cuts in certain scenes (like when presenting the dishes) made to try and portray the energy that they wanted in the anime

Someone asked about where the producers get ideas about the ending theme sequences: Yonetani-san’s used the songs as inspiration for the backgrounds used for the ending themes and also tried to relate to all of the cooking and the theme of high schoolers just going through life etc

The next and last anime talked about was JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind. It starts out with a video made where Ono Kensho (voiced Giorno Giorvanna) and two producers from David Production (Kasama) and Warner Bros Japan (Omori Hiroyuki) are questioned.

Apparently during production they actually count how many ‘ora’s and ‘muda’s etc when they do stand cries! But when OnoKen went to Koyasu Takehito (voiced Dio Brando) to ask about counting his ‘muda’s but never needed to, he just synced with the animation which surprised OnoKen xD

Next, they talked about the anime-only scene of Giorno giving gelato to a kid. The staffs wanted to show how kind Giorno was despite eventually becoming a gang-star. The story itself if also personal to Kasama-san since he had actually went to Italy and had experienced intense heat there and went to a gelato stand so he wanted to preserve that memory to animation

They mentioned how they purposely put characters that are later properly introduced in the anime within frames earlier on so that manga readers are even more hyped up and anime-only people could go back and see those little easter eggs for themselves and appreciate the little hints given which I absolutely love. AND they specifically mentioned that they wanted Giorno to do the famous Dio pose, saying they felt that they needed to live up to fans’ expectations so considering how dedicated of a fan base Jojo has, they decided to put that little nod toward Dio’s pose with Giorno doing it too

They talked about how the second theme for Golden Wind was hard to make since they needed to match or one up the first theme (Fighting Gold). It took a while to produce the second theme’s music and ideas presented were rejected three times before finally being accepted. And they had already decided to make an alternate animation for it as well, which made the process to make the music even harder.

The man himself that produced it (as well as the entire soundtrack for Golden Wind), Kanno Yugo, was a guest for the live broadcast! He talked about how, considering his experience with parts 3 and 4 with their opening themes, he felt he needed to try and one up himself for part 5′s

He compared making music for Jojo felt like competing in the Olympics since its a difficult job to one up yourself every time there’s a new season for the anime. Since he started working with Jojo since part 3 and made such iconic main character themes since then, needing to make something as amazing as those themes was tough but he definitely delivered in the end

Overall an amazing experience! 😊

ita bag progress!!

bag from lunacatz.com

lio pin from congercineart.etsy.com

rainbow mad burnish pin from joycehwang.com

all others are official promare merch preordered from aita-kuji when the movie came out (the mad burnish team one is technically a standee so I modified it to hang in the bag)

11:10 AM - 12:10 PM (PDT) | Channel 2 | Saturday 4 July 2020

Panel Description: Join Production I.G. USA President/Producer, Maki Terashima-Furuta as she hosts her annual Production I.G panel, introducing their current and upcoming shows, including Junji Ito’s Uzumaki, B: The Beginning Season 2, along with many other titles. The panel will feature the new trailers, as well as video letters from her virtual guests Mitsuhisa Ishikawa (the founder of Production I.G), Hiroshi Nagahama (director of Uzumaki Anime), Haruyasu Makino (producer of Ghost in the Shell SAC_2045), Rui Kuroki (producer of B: The Beginning), George Wada (producer of Attack on Titan, Great Pretender, etc.), and Junichi Fujisaku (writer of Ghost in the Shell: SAC, Blood C, Blood +), Mary Elizabeth McGlynn (English voice of Major Motoko Kusanagi) and Jason DeMarco (senior VP Adult Swim). Followed by 10 minutes of Q&A.

--- My Review (@peggyseditorial): There were not many notes to be had in this panel. One of the cool things about attending was simply seeing all the different faces of Production I.G.’s team and some of their partnering creators. We also got to see some trailers for upcoming or recently released works like Haikyuu!!: To The Top, Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Die Neue These, and Mars Red. A thing to note is that production has been delayed from the current pandemic, maybe by a lot more than the team was willing to express in the panel. 

Overall, it was a semi-disappointing panel. The messages from the creators were pretty repetitive and there was not much news to be found in the mix. Some of the things we were looking forward to hearing about, as Noblesse’s release were never mentioned. (Fingers crossed that we still get a 2020 release!) But there was still some news and I know that Casea (@madamekrow) is looking forward to Junji Ito’s Uzumaki being adapted into a 4-episode animated mini-series.

In all, you can keep up with Production IG’s working list by checking out their website, link. You can read more about the panel hosts here, link.