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Organized by ANCEA (AsiaNorthwest Cultural Education Association), Sakura-Con is another important annual ACGN exhibition in addition to AnimeExpo, and is quite famous on the west coast of the Pacific Ocean. Sakura-Con has invited many high-profile guests, including Gen Hibuchi and Yuki Kajiura. The 2014 Sakura-Con was held at the WSCC (WashingtonState Convention Center) in Seattle and took place April 18-20 (Friday through Sunday) Pacific Time Zone. Xiao Han spent his first year in Seattle and decided to write down his experiences at Sakura-Con for the benefit of his readers.

Day 1 / Friday, April 18

Since it was already half past nine, I skipped the opening ceremony from 9:30 to 10:00. When I arrived at WSCC, I found that the scene was already crowded, and cosers could be seen everywhere, so I was so excited that I couldn't wait to rush in and take a special shot. But to get in, you first have to go to another building to get your documents. I booked my ticket online for $60, so I could exchange my ID and QR code for my badge directly on-site. Tickets can start as low as $40 and increase as the time gets closer to the launch. Of course, tickets can also be purchased on-site for $65. Upon receipt of the badge, you will also receive a house catalogue and a paper catalogue. There are detailed introductions of guests and activities in the house catalogue.

This time, Sakura-Con invited various English dubbing talents, famous cosers in the English circle, and Japanese guests. The English voice actors press the table, and the Japanese guests include:

· ELISA, SINGER. The most recent work is April Hegemony "The Inferior Student of the Magic High School" ED. It made its debut in North America.

Yui Ishikawa, voice actor. The representative role is "Attack on Titan" Mikasa Ackerman. It made its debut in North America.

Kyoji Asano, an animator. Graduated from Yoyogi Animation School, he served as a tween animation for the 1997 "Neon Genesis Evangelion Theatrical Version: Dead and Reborn", and was originally part of Production I.G., where he was in charge of the concept art, art supervision, and general art supervision of the first season of "Guilty Crown" and "PSYCHO-PASS". Led the art team of "Guilty Crown" to form WITSTUDIO after the separation of Production I.G., and served as the concept art, art supervisor, chief art supervisor and character design for "Attack on Titan". It made its debut in North America.

Tetsuya Nakatake, an animator . Formerly part of Production I.G., he was in charge of the concept art and painting supervision of "Guilty Crown" with Mr. Asano, and established WITSTUDIO with Mr. Asano. It made its debut in North America.

Tetsuya Kinoshita, producer. He is now part of PonyCanyon and has worked as a producer for "Sengoku BASARA" and "Attack on Titan".

Mami Koyama, a famous veteran voice actress. Recently, he played the role of Itogawa Tsukoko in "Ice Candy".

Tomohiko Ito, animation supervisor. He worked as an assistant supervisor for "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time", "Piano Forest", and "Summer Wars", and participated in the storyboard of the 2011 TV version of "Madoka Magical Girl", and first served as a supervisor in the first season of A-1Pictures' "Sword Art Online" in 2013.

Shingo Adachi, graduated from Osaka University of the Arts, originally belonging to XEBEC. He has served as the animation, concept art, and even art supervisor for several works, and served as the character setting and art director for the first season of "Sword Art Online".

Koji Nashi, an animator man. Supervision of MAGI.

· Shigehiko Sato (kanji unknown), notaminA producer.

Hiroshi Nagahama, an animator . Served as the storyboard, background and object setting for "Girls Revolution Theatrical Version: Apocalypse of Spring", the supervision of the first and second seasons of "The Insect Master", and the supervision of "Evil Flower". Mr. Nagahama's bold use of live-action video rotoscoping technology throughout "The Flower of Evil" will surely be fresh in your memory of this mental pollution.

Koichi Ohata, an animator person. Mainly as animation supervisor and mecha designer. Designed a mecha for GAINAX's Leap to the Peak in 1988-1989.

Renji Murata, artist. He has worked as a concept designer and visual artist for "Final Exile", "Blue No. 6", "Shangri-La" and many other works.

Toshifumi Akai, an animator A-1 Pictures is the owner of MAGI and is responsible for the character design and general painting supervision.

There are three main animation works that the Japanese guests invited to participate in this time: Sword Art Online, Attack on Titan, and MAGI, and most of the animation activities revolve around these three works. They are all Aniplex creations. As the U.S.-owned subsidiary of Aniplex, AniplexUS is the most wealthy sponsor, and only AniplexUS booths give away free food at hypermarkets (although it's just a thin calendar, it's only from May to October). Other sponsors include two major North American animation broadcasters, Crunchyroll and Funimation. Goodsmile was also present but not among the sponsors, as was YenPress, an English-language light novel publisher.

The first event I participated in was the Hiroshi Nagahama Q&A from 11:00-11:30AM. Mr. Nagahama was a short man, and his appearance was not much different from what he saw in the photo. After stepping onto the podium, while playing "Eclipse of the Sun" on the big screen, I took off my shirt and let us see the Spider-Man cosplay wearing it - sure enough, Mr. Nagahama came prepared! In fact, Nagahama has been participating in Sakura-Con as a guest for seven or eight years, and he says that he still likes the show very much. At the meeting, Mr. Nagahama confirmed in his answer that the second season of "Insect Master" will cover all the original manga (applause here).

The question that sticks in my mind is, "Why is there so much time between the first and second seasons of "The Bug Master"?" Mr. Nagahama replied that in fact, after the end of the first season of "Insect Master", Nagahama had reached a consensus with the production team that he wanted to animate all the original comics. In the eight years since it ended in 2006, he has not rested, but has been asking for help in the hope of getting funding to continue animating "The Bugger". After eight years, Aniplex finally saw the light of day, and Aniplex reached out to Mr. Nagahama to continue animating "Bugger", which allowed the second season to be released in 2014. As for the "Eclipse of the Sun" special, it was supposed to be a work that was not animated, but if it was made into a special, the entire content of the manga could be brought to the screen.

The question I asked was, "Why doesn't Evil Flower use traditional animation techniques and instead uses a rotoscope?" Mr. Nagahama's answer was very simple: after reading the original manga by Shuzo Oshimi, I felt that the manga did not express the "moe" of traditional anime, but a more realistic and ugly human nature. Although the characters are more "moe", the "moe" art of traditional animation, especially the cute female figures, is not the most appropriate way to express the theme. As a result, even though rotoscoping was much more difficult than traditional animation, Nagahama managed to overcome the technical challenges. In addition, the anime finale has a flashback insertion of the protagonists' future, and Nagahama said that this is an affirmation that he is seeking expression from the audience for a live-action rotoscopic, and this affirmation will also be responded to in the form of a manga in the "Bessho Shonen Magazine" next month - could it be that the manga that will end next month will also use the live-action rotoscoping style?! (laughs)

The final question is "If you had a dream team, who would you like to work with?" The answer is "StanLee". It turns out that Mr. Nagahama is also a fan of American comic superheroes. He also said that if he plans to do original animation, he still wants to do superheroes. And he did contact StanLee and expressed his intention to cooperate. I was quite surprised by this, obviously his works are very literary......

The second event I participated in was the AniplexUS Meet & Greet at 1:30-2:00PM. At the meeting, the trailer of Aniplex's current anime was basically broadcast, and the focus was on advertising the devil, which is omitted here. In fact, everyone is looking forward to the SpecialAnnouncement, but the result is just the old news that "Sword Art Online Season 2: SIMULCAST" will air in July this year. Of course, with the simultaneous release of the United States and Japan, it is enough to make the American otaku present excited for a while. The prize of the final raffle was a Kirito and Asuna figure signed by Ito and Adachi, as well as a signed poster. It's a pity I didn't get any of them.

The third event was an ELISA meet-and-greet from 2:00-2:30PM. At the meeting, I met the ELISA real person, played the magic ED, and that's it.

3:00-3:30PM is the signing time for Shingo Adachi and Hiroshi Nagahama. There were $2 signature boards for sale at the venue, but the autograph book I brought with me was a notebook of my own Japanese research papers, and when I signed the autograph with Mr. Adachi, I explained it to him in English, and he looked surprised and asked me, "What books do you read for research?" There were a lot of authors that popped up in my head at the time, but the most famous one was Higashi Hiroki, so I told the truth. He listened to the translator as he signed, and laughed when he heard "AzumaHiroki". IN ADDITION TO WRITING BOOKS, DONG HAOJI ALSO WRITES SCRIPTS, AND HE WROTE "FRATALE", WHERE UNCLE KUAN DIED VIOLENTLY, AND THE ANIMATION INDUSTRY PROBABLY HAS HEARD OF IT FOR A LONG TIME, SO HE LAUGHS LIKE THIS, RIGHT? After he finished signing, I took it and took a look, and in addition to the name, he also drew a small Asuna head below, which was a worthwhile trip.

Then there was an autograph session by Hiroshi Nagahama. It is estimated that not many people will know him other than loyal viewers of "Bug Master", so there are far fewer people queuing up to sign autographs than Shingo Adachi. I respectfully handed over the notebook, and Mr. Nagahama also stood up solemnly and saluted. I took out the admission card with my name in English pinyin, and Mr. Nagahama carefully copied it in his notebook, and then drew a portrait of Yingu holding a cigarette and signed it with the romanized pronunciation of "H.Nagahama" underneath. I thanked me again, and he bowed respectfully and returned the salute and said "thank you" to me in Japanese. As an animation supervisor, he does not put on a show, and his signature is also serious and strict, Mr. Nagahama is really the conscience of the industry!

What I'm looking forward to is a lecture on "Animation and Academics" at 9 o'clock in the evening, and a lecture on "Is Otaku getting old?" activities. Later, it turned out that the latter was just a bunch of old houses spraying EVA new theatrical version, lamenting how good the old theatrical version was, and so on. Returning to the lecture on "Animation and Academics", the speaker was teaching the dead college students how to write animation topics in their papers, such as "Girl Revolution and Feminism" and "Magical Girl Madoka and the European Medieval Witch Hunting Tradition", and so on, so my friend and I left silently......

By the way, unlike Asia, the "Girl Revolution" series and Kunihiko Kihara are both very popular in North America. Among Asian audiences, "Cowboy Bebop" did not react so strongly.

Sakura-Con has a free anime event for three days, and of course the copyright of the anime is owned by Aniplex. So, with curiosity, my friend and I decided to go to see IQ opportunities late at night, with one purpose in mind: to see how North American otaku reacted to Okochi who gave up treatment. The famous ** episode of IQ Opportunity is after 11 episodes, and only 7-10 episodes will be broadcast this time. But when we got to the door of the screening room, the staff stopped us: "Do you have a wrist stamp that is over 18 years old?"

(You can imagine that even if the IQ opportunity is not ** back, it has been identified as R-18 by the North American otaku, what a joy this is, hahahaha)

So we ran to the stamp booth, showed our ID cards, stamped the "over 18 years old" stamp on our wrists, and then entered the broadcast scene of IQ opportunities. Originally, I wanted to see how you reacted to the general plot of the IQ opportunity [beep-] (Yan) Ying (art), but I don't know why everyone was expressionless almost the whole time. Disappointed, we left WSCC after watching the tenth episode and embarked on a journey home in the middle of the night.

Let's continue to report on the second half of Sakura-Con, Xiaohan is still very lucky, and many industry leaders took a group photo, the idea of the American Comic Con can actually be used as a reference for China, many special lectures are very good, and there are activities in the evening. Now the domestic exhibition, whether it is a fandom exhibition or an anime exhibition, basically ends at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. At the same time, we continue to call on friends overseas to contribute more comic concourses and guides to the Celestial Empire.

Day 2 / Saturday, April 19

The crowd on Saturday has increased significantly, and the number of cosers and character types have increased significantly. It was already past 10 o'clock in the morning, and there were too many people who wanted to ask for Murata Ren'er's autograph, so I decided to go to a lecture called "Mecha Setting and Cultural Influence". When I found out that the speaker was just listing various mecha animations in chronological order, I felt cheated and hurried back to the place where I signed it. When I arrived at the place, I was told by the staff that the number of people was full and I couldn't queue anymore. So let's wait for the third day to schedule the second Murata Rener autograph session. I walked around the hypermarket to buy some souvenirs, but I didn't find any good house items to buy, but the Aniplex booth was holding Magi's cosplay intensive photo session.

It's also interesting to note that the booth of the North American broadcaster Crunchyroll has a live barrage machine, a Sony TV with a camera mounted on top of it, which takes in the surrounding content in real time and displays it on the TV screen while broadcasting it to the network. A summer cosplayer of "InfiniteStratos" approached, and the barrage on the screen suddenly turned into various party fights and "Summer H!" (laughs)

"PanelsQueueArea" means "Lecture Queue Area". Most have a designated queue time before each event starts, and you can't start queuing 30 minutes before the event starts. If you are one step slower, you will not be able to join the queue to enter the event after the number of people in the queue reaches the limit, so you must calculate the time carefully. But this queuing mechanism makes this year's event more punctual and orderly than in previous years.

After the start of the event, there will be a regular Q&A time. In addition to clarifying that the responsibility of the painting supervisor is to correct and unify the different styles of the artists, both animators mentioned that the most difficult thing in terms of character setting is to make the character design more suitable for animation so that consumers who have not seen the original work will also watch it, and not to destroy the character design too much to anger the original party. Akai and Adachi complained in unison, "It's terrible that the original party is angry!" Could it be that the original party in Japan will also send blades to the animators who destroy the characters? (Thinking of the treatment of ** threatening letters back then, it's really not impossible)

However, what impressed me the most was Mr. Adachi's exclamation, "Good animators either retire or die when they get old, and new animators are people who can participate in animation production even if they don't know how to draw. It seems that Yoshiyuki Sadamoto also said this at a university event in Japan, and it can be seen that the animation industry is thankless and the severity of the brain drain. In addition, Mr. Adachi jokingly said, "The treatment here is much better than in Japan!" In Japan, animators are not held in such a high esteem at all, and there may not be many people who come to events such as live streaming and painting." Someone in the audience immediately shouted, "Then come to North America!" The audience burst into laughter, and Adachi replied, "Yes! I'll seriously consider it."

These were all answered at the same time when the two of them were painting live. I used my iPhone to record the whole process of their live painting.

Adachi painted Asuna and Silica, and Akai painted Morjana and Sinbad. It's a pity I didn't get a single one. Even more unfortunate was yet to come, as the live drawing session didn't end until 5:30, and when I arrived at the Attack on Titan autograph session (Tetsuya Kinoshita, Yui Ishikawa, Tetsuya Nakatake, and Kyoji Asano), I was told that the queue was full. Sure enough, the popularity of giants is very high in both Asia and North America. So I went home for dinner first, because the rest of my activities would start in the evening. 7:00-8:00PM ELISA Concert I unfortunately couldn't be there for some reason, which is one of the regrets. But a friend said that there was a small episode at the end of the concert, ELISA originally prepared Encore, but the North American otaku were ready to leave after she finished singing, so ELISA had to sell cuteness to attract everyone to shout Encore...... Her repertoire is the classic "Have You Ever Remembered Love". At the scene, it was said that all kinds of senior houses were in tears. I secretly reminded myself that I must go to the concert at Sakura-Con 2015!

I would like to inform all novices who are new to the exhibition that when looking for a shooting target, you must first observe the lighting environment and the corresponding camera settings. I just used an old standard lens when the light was not very sufficient, and the CMOS of the camera itself also had problems, the guide was always out of focus, and after the focus was in focus, the exposure time was too long because the camera was in Av mode, and the shooting was all paste. If you were aware of the surrounding light at the time, it would have been much better to use the camera's manual mode (or at least Tv mode) accordingly. If you really don't have experience with a camera, the iPhone camera is also a good choice, and I used my own iPhone 5s for most of my photos on the third day.

Day 3 / Sunday, April 20

It was the last day of Sakura-Con, and the crowds were noticeably soothed compared to Saturday. Today's first event is a 10:00-10:30 autograph session for Mami Koyama. Miss Koyama appeared in a yellow kimono, which is also the conscience of the industry. She walked into the venue and greeted the fans in line kindly. When it was my turn, she and I were both respectful during the autograph process, and she was very patient with the group photo. But after all, she is a veteran voice actor, and the appearance rate is not as high as that of the new generation, and there are naturally fewer people coming, most of whom are senior otaku. There is an otaku who asks her to sign an old anime that she found at the store, and another shows up with an old anime DVDBOX that she treasures at home (although I don't even know the titles of these old anime, Khan). Xiaoshan showed a look of surprise when she saw it, presumably she was very happy in front of these loyal old viewers.

I got the autograph of Mami Koyama, and I immediately lined up for the autographs of Kyoji Asano and Tetsuya Nakatake. Everyone came in the name of the giant, and there is nothing worth recording. After getting their autographs, I went to the meeting between Yui Ishikawa and Tetsuya Kinoshita.

After that, I decided once again that it didn't feel right to go home without a souvenir for this kind of big annual fair, so I walked into the hypermarket again. On the left side of the hypermarket is mostly merchandise, and on the right side is fan art. Personally, I think the shame of hanging pictures and figures is a bit high, and I can at least keep the books as a collection for study, so I went to the bookstall to visit. Kinokumiya, a well-known Japanese bookstore chain in North America, also opened a booth at the show, and as an EVA fan, I bought an original EVA:Q book (top) at the stall for more than $60. Although it is more than 20 more expensive than the domestic sales, there is no way to do it, and the same book on eBay can be sold for 75 dollars. I also bought a book of Satoshi Kon's selected paintings. I was mindful of this album when it was released in Japan, but I didn't expect it to be introduced by Kinokuniya Shogun. In order to pay tribute to the master and to learn painting skills, I also bought this copy of "Satoshi Kon1982-2010". These two art books can be considered the trophies of this Sakura-Con. At another bookstall, I also saw the third volume of the original painting book of the giant at a reduced price, with a gilded line drawing of Amin on the cover, marking the "Clearance Sale on the Last Day of the Exhibition", which was reduced from $60 to $39. I'm not a giant fan and I've already bought two copies, so I didn't start. If you go to sweep the hypermarket on the last day of the exhibition, you may have such an unexpected gain.

The cover of Satoshi Kon's Selected Paintings includes some storyboards and original drawings of all of Satoshi's anime works, creative visuals of all unfinished and unreleased works, and his early works at Musashino Art Academy.

After buying the book, I went back to the next event: the WITSTUDIO Q&A session, and the guests were naturally the two founders, Kyoji Asano and Tetsuya Nakatake. After entering the venue, the host closed the door as usual, and told us that we would be showing a special 30-minute video and asked not to shoot it. We were all a little surprised. In the introduction, Mr. Asano mentioned that WIT was recently working on the second season of zuòPSYCHO-PASS, and everyone applauded.

After a brief introduction, the "special video" will be played. IT TURNS OUT THAT THIS IS A GRASS SHOT OF THE 21 EPISODES OF "ATTACK ON TITAN" (AND NOT ANOTHER PRECURSOR PV OF THE SECOND SEASON OF PSYCHO-PASS AS WE THOUGHT). This is a precious internal image, and most of the industry does not want to leak out, so it is understandable that filming is not allowed. The so-called grass shoot is an "unfinished shot". When the animation is not yet fully completed (background, animation, coloring, etc.), in order to catch up with the schedule, the animation team will first make a whole episode of the film, let the voice actor dub the half-finished product, and then finish the rest of the work. In this sketch video, you can also see that the names of characters framed in boxes appear at certain times. Mr. Asano explained that these boxes are markers that indicate when the voice actor starts speaking his lines. There is a black bar at the top left of the video, which shows the time of the video in seconds. In the video, most of the background is still in the state of the white paper pencil drawing in the original painting, with only the effect of layer movement and camera distance and proximity added; Some of the characters have been animated, but those completed parts are either not accompanied by animated backgrounds or are reused frames from the past. Most of the characters that are not moving are original drawings played one by one according to the storyboard chronology, and some of the wires have not been wiped clean (that is, this sketch shot has not been delivered to the second original painting when it was recorded, let alone corrected by supervision). In addition, the fight scenes of the Survey Corps basically confirmed my suspicion, most of the long and medium shots in the forest use full 3D rotoscoping 2D (in the part that has not yet been rendered in 3D, the background is replaced by a still original painting, and there are small notes on the 3DCG written in pencil on the original painting), while the high-speed movement scenes in the close-up use background 3D to facilitate the scheduling of camera movements and angles during the follow-up, and the characters are 2D original paintings that are superimposed on the 3D background layer like small pieces of paper. However, even with such a rudimentary sketch video, the storyboard with sound effects and voice actors is still quite shocking. Mr. Asano even said bluntly, "When I was drawing Chapter 21, I looked at the storyboard and tears came down", which shows the strength of the table.

After the grass video was played, everyone said that Li Jufu was blessed. Here is an excerpt from the Q&A session:

Can you reveal the content of the Titan theatrical version of the anime? A: (Moderator) Due to the limitations of Funimation (a large animation provider in North America), I can't say what will be added. But the theatrical version is basically a TV episode to correct the picture and improve the picture quality, and some plots will take advantage of the medium of the movie to show it in different ways, and these advantages are not possible for TV.

How many people participated in the production of the TV version? / A: (Asano) There are about 100 original artists who are credited, and about 8 original artists who do not appear in the staff credits list at the end of the film. (Compared with the twenty or thirty original paintings of TV animation in the same period, the one hundred original paintings of giants are simply bunkers)

Is there a tight time for making zuò? / A: (Asano) Yes. When Tetsuro Araki (the supervisor of this anime) handed over the storyboard to the drawing department, everyone was shouting "OhmyGod!" But still have to desperately catch up. Normally, this kind of storyboarding and image quality would take at least 12 weeks, but WIT's painting department completed it in five weeks, and everyone was very happy. But when the 21 episodes were aired on time, everyone was happy and thought that there would be four weeks of hell ahead, so they became sad again (laughs)

Will the grass video be included in the Blu-ray Bonus? / A: (Zhongwu) I'm sorry, no. But if we attend the exhibition next time, we will still bring such precious videos for everyone to watch inside.

Question I asked: Why did you want to separate from IG and set up a separate WIT? Does IG still help WIT now? / A: (Nakatake) When I was making "The Crown of Crime", the president Mitsuhisa Ishikawa asked us (the two) whether we should continue to stay on IG or set up a separate portal? After thinking about it, we decided to set up our own company. Our parent company is still related to IG and is called I.G.Port, but the animation production zuò has become independent. It's really hard to run your own company (laughs) (Asano) As for helping, IG can be said to be "veryhelpful"! They initially provided a lot of supplements to our anime, but then they had their own productions, like Kuroko's basketball and Ghost in the Shell ARISE, so they had to say "I'm sorry, I can't help you." However, even if we didn't help with the animation production, IG was still helping us with the management of personnel and equipment, which is why you will see "Production I.G." at the end of "Attack on Titan".

- So, aren't you really kicked out because the second crown of the middle two collapsed www However, according to this description and Mr. Asano's description of maintaining a good friendship with IG, it shouldn't look like you've been kicked out......

After attending the WIT Q&A session, I was going to attend the autograph session of Yui Ishikawa and Tetsuya Kinoshita, but when I arrived, I found that the queue was still full and closed, and I still couldn't get Ms. Ishikawa's autograph on the last day. However, Murata Ren'er's signature was still obtained.

After obtaining Murata's signature, Sakura-Con is also coming to an end this weekend afternoon. I went to the show to announce the results of the AMV awards, and the first place was still Anime101, which won the best AMV at the Boston Anime Expo.

The closing ceremony ended in a hurry, and there were no other after-performances. There was a singer who sang "Cherry Blossom Flow" by Otako, but his skills were obviously insufficient, and he didn't enjoy listening to it to the end.

Sakura-Con 2014 ended on a cloudy afternoon. In the end, I still couldn't find the pajama cat squad leader, I couldn't get the autograph of the voice actor of the third master, and I couldn't hear ELISA's cover of "Have You Ever Remember Love". However, at least I heard the bitterness of the people in the industry themselves, saw the process of animation production, and saw the strong combat effectiveness of North American otaku. On the way back, my heart was full of satisfaction with buying an art book, and the beach in my mind was still washed with the joy of enjoying cosplay, but when I closed the door, I found a shallow melancholy in my heart.

It doesn't matter, next year I'll borrow a better Canon Mark Rabbit from the school, bring my completed Japanese research papers, and run around the six-story building at the Washington Convention Center. You might be able to buy the next original art book of EVA:Q, you might be able to hear the singer's Encore, and you might even be able to photograph Hanegawa wearing silver-haired cat ears and pajamas at the venue.

Sakura-Con2015, we're here for you.