Chicks Dig Giant Robots: An Examination of Women In Mecha Anime (Anime Los Angeles 2024) Panel Slides

This panel was an interesting one to write. Rose and myself (Manuel) usually do one brand new panel at every con we show up at together. We've done one-off J-Horror panels, a cool Body Horror-centered one, and one examining what makes art Eroguro. (As opposed to just a history of the topic.) This one came from a conversation we had back towards the beginning of 2023, and we literally chose to do it once we brainstormed the title a bit. Racheal joined us later after it was accepted by ALA since she was going to be there anyhow, and her and I have hosted mecha-focused panels in the past. The problems arose when it came to the actual writing. This is truly a collaborative panel, but in a lot of the wrong ways. We all wrote bits of it, and we all had different views of what the panel was going to be. We eventually managed to get it together right before the con, but the result is a panel that I'm not at all satisfied with. It's not a bad concept, but it definitely needed a complete rewrite. Racheal and myself plan to take the panel idea to FanimeCon, but focus on important female characters in various mecha media. So look forward to that. Maybe we'll give it another stab with Rose at a future con, but we tend to have so many ideas that we rarely do a panel like this twice. As usual, be sure to catch one of our panels at a convention near year, and thank you to everyone who has either attended one in the past, or somehow made it to this page!