With the last set of guest announcements from two days ago, doesn't the guest list of Otakon look kinda ridiculously old school? Let's put it this way: this guest list would have been pretty awesome way back when Otakon started... in 1994. Okay, technically speaking, no one in the English speaking world could even know about Tamura singing the
Rayearth OP until late 1994, but indulge me here.
Imagine this is 1994. Clinton's President. Al Gore's busy inventing the internet. OJ Simpson's on trial for killing his wife. In the context of 1994:
- You have the legendary helmer of Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Yamato, and Megazone 23, along with his producer on LotGH.
- You have the voice of a popular anime series that in Japan was just getting to OAVs after 161 episodes on TV and had just recently worked on the other role that would make her a legendary goddess.
- You have the character designer for that recent OAV, Ah My Goddess.
- You have a singer for a then-new anime series, Rayearth (again, indulge me with a little fudge on the date).
- And a man behind the studio that worked on animation for shows such as Record of Lodoss Wars and movies such as Barefoot Gen, and had helped animate recently (or just after) with a manga group that they'd become intimately familiar with in the coming years, CLAMP, with the short CLAMP in Wonderland.
A full half dozen of these guests were making
serious names for themselves in this industry before the vast majority of us got into anime, self included. I gotta give some respect to the GoH coordinator out east. Otakon's got some style.
words from jason, 2009-07-02 01:48:42, los angeles
