I was spared the Sunday morning check-out rush since my roommates specifically “do not want to be a part of the great weeb exodus” and doing that, or simply pushing back your check-out time to the afternoon for cons is really nice. ESPECIALLY when you’re trying to stuff cosplays back into your bag (I somehow managed to leave the con with the same number of bags/items as I arrived which might be a first! And thank god since my rolling duffle bag+freezer bag+backpack combo is tough enough to wrangle onto the metro as it is).
So I was off for my final event of the con, the dub screening for Gundam: The Origin IV with some Q&A from the staff later. I didn’t like the dub super well honestly, I just didn’t like the voices and felt like the lip-flaps didn’t match up as well as they could, but Stephanie Sheh (who's done multiple production-side roles for this and Gundam Unicorn) had some really cool insight into directing the dub. She’s apparently decided that she will not re-use voice actors across UC Gundam shows (the “main” Gundam timeline with at least a dozen installments in it at this point), unless someone is playing just a character who dies quickly in the background for their second voice. She doesn’t want the same voices appearing, even if it’s “decades” apart, especially since they’ve going with more realistic sounding voices for UC Gundam series which means it’s harder for a voice actor to stretch their voice to sound like totally different characters (side note, one of the new Gundam Build Fighters mini-episodes just even had a gag about this that aired right before the con lol).
She also talked about how dubbing The Origin episodes can be a little challenging since they have to lock a recording day into the schedule in advance and sometimes the final animation in Japan isn't finished by that day! So they make up for it by having the actors do basically another hour of takes where they vary the lines to give them more options when it comes to match everything together (although they sometimes have to still edit the lines a bit in post). Hideyuki Tomioka (the producer) said that they know they have to finish the animation two months in advance so that the DVDs can ship on time but maybe they should work on doing it three months in advance lol (Sheh liked the idea!). Tomioka said that he was actually very impressed with the dub, he felt like the voice matched the flaps amazingly well despite these hardships but ehhhh I'd have to disagree, there were multiple times in this one episode where I felt like things weren't matched neatly so I wasn't surprised to hear about how much extra trouble the dubbing for this series is.
I was a bit frustrated that I had literally just stepped up to the microphone to ask my question during the following Q & A and then they went “oh we’re out of time!” Frustrated that both that they didn’t cut it off earlier and also at all of the people in front of me in line who were obviously thinking “oh I want to ask a super deep question so the staff will remember me” and took forever to ask their questions (hell, I even realized that I’d be cutting it close so I came up with a back-up, short question as well!). I was also skeeved out by them having everyone pose with the Zeon salute (for non-Gundam fans, it goes with a “seig Zeon!” cry so I’m sure you know exactly what this looks like) but I couldn't pull myself together fast enough to yell about it at the moment. I wish I had been able to, especially since this was one fucking day after Charlottesville, but I didn’t. I did hop up on a chair when they were getting everyone together, before they asked for the pose, so at least the producers in the Japan will see one small white girl giving the rest of the room the world’s clearest “what the FUCK BALLS are y’all doing?!” expression of disgust.
Still, I'd even had a hunch they might do that during the panel and tried to think of what to say and just, couldn't find coherent words in time.
Hell, if I'd done that then they would have totally remembered me above all other American fans they met that weekend....
After that the con was mostly over for me. I had lunch with two other members of the Organization of Anti-Social Geniuses (my co-host of The OASG podcast/head of site Justin and my editor/co-host on Manga in Your Ears Manjiorin), packed up and took the metro home. Along the way home I was thinking of writing a small post about how taking public transportation makes the con last longer, you see your fellow fans riding along with you and when I got off the metro I wasn’t the only person lugging con things while heading for the far corner of the long-term parking area of the parking lot.
But then I got home and found the carpet in front of my room pulled up and surprise, the AC had started leaking! I gave my roommate grief for not making more of an effort to get in touch with me earlier (since we have totally had the "Okay In An Emergency, Here’s How To Get A Hold Of Me" chat) but thankfully I didn’t lose anything in my room, we just need to replace some of the padding underneath my carpet.
Although that’s why, weeks later, I still haven’t been able to put my room back together. I did a pretty good job at not leaving my room a disaster zone before the con for once too…...
