 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! J-Pop Idols of The 1980s: The Golden Age of Showa Era Pop (Anime Los Angeles 2024) Panel Slides1/4/2024  Hosting a panel solely on 80s idols has been something I've thought about doing many times in the past. I actually hosted one at Kraken Con way back in 2015, but a mistake in the program guide convinced me to make half of it a general idol panel at the last minute. Also, no one went to it, and I didn't know half of what I know now, back then. At various times I'd tailor later panels to focus more on the 80s if we had a relevant co-host, such as when the late Greg Hignight hosted a few with us in 2015/16, but there never seemed to be an audience for an 80s one until after the "Plastic Love" boom. Even though some of the artists here have been covered in the 1980s J-Pop panels, I didn't want to do an idols only one since I wasn't sure how to approach the topic. This was because I wanted to have a showcase of artists and get my own theories out regarding the decade. Basically I wanted to approach it as an examination of what caused and ended the idol boom of the 80s. This version is heavier on the showcase aspect, and I actually already have an idea for a 2.0 version, but I think I managed to get in everything I wanted to. I'm hoping I get a chance to do it again soon. Maybe at FanimeCon 2024? 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! Lastly, the songs from the opening montage can be found below:
 This was a completely brand new panel that I wrote after Fanime. I had just found a source for the complete Oricon data I needed for the 80s (in Japanese) and after I went through all the trouble compiling all the info I needed, and romanizing it, I figured I might as well start on a potential 2000s list since I was already on a roll with the 80s list. It was then that I started seeing all the familiar songs that really took me back, and a few that I was surprised made it into the criteria I had set (such as "Taiyou no Uta"), from there I wrote the outline and submitted to the only con that I hadn't already submitted other panels to, LA Comic Con. I was a little surprised they took it if I'm being perfectly honest, but I was extremely excited to do a panel outside of the normal round of anime ones A-to-J usually attends. Doing this one was really easy too since I had a lot of this knowledge already in my head, and didn't need to rehearse it as much as other panels. Since it was at LA Comic Con though, that meant I had to do a 50 minute version of it, but I've already thought up the ways I'd do this one as a full hour, or even a 90 minute, version. Maybe I'll get that chance at FanimeCon 2024... 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! Lastly, the songs from the opening montage can be found below:
Music of The Lost Decade: A Guide to Japanese Pop In The 90s (San Diego Anime Con 2023) Panel Slides11/20/2023  Even though this panel was written way back at the start of the year, I assumed that there'd be several versions of it by now. Maybe because so few cons took it, and I had to create so many variants of the 80s panel, I realized that the 90s one was barely moving forward. This SDAC one was actually just the Sin City one, but like truncated and with a couple new slides that I never really liked. I had started making a version for ALA that was going to be like 75% different content and even format, but since they didn't take it I only had the outline of it. That said I decided to take the parts I'd actually written for ALA and incorporate them here so that it would be distinctly different from past versions, at least a bit. What's interesting is I almost took out the KAN slides, but decided to just leave them one last time and we LITERALLY got back to our hotel room after the panel when I saw a post from a friend on Twitter that KAN had passed away that day. That's just crazy to me since I was a huge fan of "Ai wa Katsu", and had just been talking about him hours before. 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! Lastly, the songs from the opening montage can be found below:
More Than City Pop: A Guide to Japanese Pop In The 80s (San Diego Anime Con 2023) Panel Slides11/20/2023  I mentioned that I changed the ax chibi panel in several ways right before I went on stage, but with a few days before San Diego Anime Con, and some newly found videos, I decided to rewrite the entire beginning of this panel. Also, I had an idea to use Shizuka Kudo in the 90s panel instead, so I had a use for those Toshinobu Kubota slides I didn't use for ax chibi after all. I finally talked about Monta & Brotehrs and Imokin Trio. I'm not sure if this panel will be retired, but if it is I'm happy with this version. Also this version has a few slides that weren't shown live at SDAC since I made a single PowerPoint for that. 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! Lastly, the songs from the opening montage can be found below:
More Than City Pop: A Guide to Japanese Pop In The 80s (anime expo chibi 2023) Panel Slides11/12/2023  The panel at ax chibi originally started as a version of the one from San Diego Anime Con, but since the cons were kind of close together in terms of location and date, this one got a rewrite. Also, when the panel was first accepted the e-mail started it would be a 50 minute panel, but the schedule showed it as a full hour. This was confirmed at con, so I added in some of the extra slides I had originally cut out (mainly the entire middle section about "Plastic Love") and switched out a slide about Toshinobu Kubota's "You Were Mine" because I just didn't feel like talking about that song after all. I guess I'll save those slides for a future version if this panel isn't retired soon. 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! Lastly, the songs from the opening montage can be found below:
Music of The Lost Decade: A Guide to Japanese Pop In The 90s (Sin City Anime 2023) Panel Slides11/6/2023  We almost did both the 80s and 90s panel at Sin City Anime, but there was some confusion regarding it being a 60 or 90 minute panel that kept us from actually doing it. Seeing as so many panels cancelled just before the con, or even cancelled at the con, I hope that they give us more slots next year. Anyhow, this 90 minute version of the panel was based on the Fanime one, but this time it's tighter, more rehearsed, and there were a few changes just to make it feel neater in general. It's a bit closer to that version than we usually do, but the goal with this panel was to do a "perfect" version before it got hacked up a bit more for other cons. 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! Lastly, the songs from the opening montage can be found below:
 Sometime in Summer 2023 I finally found the info I'd needed for over a year: The full 1980s Oricon End-of-Year lists. This meant that all the older "More Than City Pop" panels were now extremely obsolete. I still stand by that they aren't inaccurate, as the songs and artists presented are/were important, but I immediately started working on a new version that fits the criteria I have for the other decade panels. Seeing as Ronin Expo and San Diego Anime Con were the ones I had a good feeling would accept, I started there. I made two versions of the panel, and this one was only completed very recently as Ronin Expo sent the panel confirmation relatively close to the con. This is only a 60 minute version, so I hope to one day do a full 90 minute version, but either way, I plan to fully retire this panel at some point in 2024, so enjoy it while you can! 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! Lastly, the songs from the opening montage can be found below:
Music of The Lost Decade: A Guide to Japanese Pop In The 90s (FanimeCon 2023) Panel Slides5/30/2023  This panel was originally written a week before ALA 2023 in the hopes of maybe getting a last minute panel slot to debut it at. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately depending how you look at it, that didn't happen. It was previewed at the end of that cons' "More Than City Pop" panel, and since it was a long time to FanimeCon (which turned out to be the next con we were going to), it saw a TOTAL rewrite. This means that while this version of "Music of The Lost Decade" wasn't the "real" first version ever created, it was definitely better for it as all those first-version kinks were ironed out without even having to host it anywhere! Now that isn't to say that there isn't room for improvement in future versions, but this is definitely the most polished debut panel we've ever had at A-to-J. Also, because the 80s panel went a little long at Fanime the day before, some cuts were made to this panel the day of. It turned out we probably DID have time for this version, but as it stands there are some slides here that no one outside of A-to-J has seen. So, enjoy the slides, add some of the songs to your playlists, and catch it at live one day a con near you! Oh, and if you're wondering about that first version, it doesn't technically exist as this second one was just written on top of the old one's files. RIP Lastly, the songs from the opening montage can be found below:
 This is the most recent version of "More Than City Pop" from FanimeCon. This is an interesting panel as it was the first one completely finished before the con since some of the other panels required heavy research. That means that this one sat completed for months and was nearly completely rewritten by the time the convention came around just because better (or at least more consistent) sources on charting songs was discovered in that time. That doesn't really matter though as each of these songs are definitely "hits" so the idea of the panel still stands. With that said, the next version of this will be VERY different, so please check that out. The songs from the opening montage can be found below. It was supposed to be one from each year and listing them makes one notice that 1981 was accidentally left out. Oops!
Also, the interview mentioned after the KABUKI-ROCKS slide can be found HERE. Keep in mind that it's a much older interview (Year One A-to-J) so it may not be up to what we consider our current standards. |
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