Monkey Magic: Journey to the West & Japanese Pop Culture (Anime Los Angeles 2025) Panel Slides1/14/2025  The Monkey Magic panel finally gets a full 90 minutes! I mentioned before that I felt the versions done at Sin City Anime and San Diego Anime Con were the best that could be done in the current format, but I had lots of ideas on how to expand to a full time slot. This actually mostly meant letting some sections breathe a bit more, but also gave me the opportunity to bring the focus back around to the "Monkey" & "Monkey Magic" focus that I feel was lost in rewrites. Also, Thomas decided to join in on this panel when I told him that his ALA badge was attached to it. Typically he just helps in technical ways, like setting up cameras to record, or to act as a runner if we need staff help, but he had seen the panel several times before. Even though he wasn't totally perfect as far as topic knowledge goes, he honestly did a great job for his first panel. I've had some co-panelists literally say nothing during an entire panel, even when I throw topics their way. It was also refreshing to have a co-host who just took initiative by reading off slides I actually intended to read myself. With all that said, I think it's high time to sunset this version of the panel. This version of the panel has hit the level where I feel I can't really host it again unless I just re-read the same slides. Even though that doesn't sound like a weird thing to do, it's something I personally try to hold off on if I can. I do plan to do a (mostly?) complete rewrite of it soon, but I'll probably refrain from hosting it until 2026. Then again, I do love Journey to the West... so who knows. Anyhow, be sure to come to a panel near you, and thank you to everyone who has either attended one or somehow made it to this page!  The idea of doing an all-female Japanese metal panel has been floating around for several years. Warren and I discussed doing one just on '80s metal bands at one point, and I'd talked to Rose (who has also co-hosted the '80s Japanese metal panel in the past) about it too. I guess the idea to do it really kicked off last year when I was thinking of new music panels to do. I knew I wanted to do the '60s/'70s J-Pop one, and I knew I wanted to do one on Johnny's idols, but wanted to work on more. I believe we submitted the Girl Metal one to either ax chibi or Comic Con LA first, but we'd always hoped to debut it at ALA. We thankfully got that wish this year, and I think the panel was one of the best "first versions" we've ever done. I've stated several times before that I consider the first time we do a panel as a sort of "beta", or even an "alpha", version, but this one felt like we did a decent job right out the gate. The funny thing was that it originally was supposed to be a 90-minute panel, and by the end of our writing I really wished I'd made a bigger fuss to have kept that time slot. I guess that at least means there's plenty of room for growth! Here's hoping that FanimeCon and AX take it too, because this one was a lot of fun! Anyhow, be sure to come to a panel near you, and thank you to everyone who has either attended one or somehow made it to this page! Oh, this is the ALDIOUS interview we mentioned in the panel as being a very good read for those looking for more background on the topic. Also, this is probably the only panel we've ever done that had several extra notes on the slides that only we could see. I chose to not include those here for practical reasons, but if anyone would like to see them just drop us an e-mail and I'll send them over in some fashion. |
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