This page will contain a description of every single event we have planned, and will be updated constantly throughout the year to have the most up to date content available. At this time we have no programming locked down for 2010 yet, so to give you an idea of stuff we're likely to have we have left the 2009 information up.
NOTE: The following information was for the 2009 event, and does not reflect programming being scheduled for Armageddicon Victory
Main Events
Whose Line is it Anime - Based on the original ABC hit show, but with an anime twist! Show regulars Ben Murphy, Joseph Murphy, and Nathan Beck are joined by newcomer Jessica Williams to bring you improvised games like New Choice, Film Styles, Living Scenery, and the crowd favorite, Whose Line. Volunteers are a big part of the show, so if you show some fun personality you might just end up on stage with the rest of the crew. And you might just get some candy too!
Puppet Show
ProtoConcert
AMV Contest
Jupiter Land Grab - Love Gundam? Love LARPing? Join like-minded folk in a classic Zeon vs Federation role play.
Fight Club - Come to a dark and seedy place where the characters of shows we love come to unleash their primal desire to fight and destroy. This is where Goku trained his hardest, where Archer learned you can never have to many weapons, were Kamina became a man before he became the man. If you think you can stand with the strongest anime has to offer and please the whims of the madmen that run the place, then step into the ring.
Distraction
Cosplay - Join us as we celebrate cosplay in it's truest form - as an art.
Rave - Come dance the night away after a long weekend of events and panels. Bring your glow sticks and prepare for our DJs to spin your world around! /dance
Proto-Rally
Legend of the Hidden Temple - Come join us as we put our own spin on Nickelodeon’s hit TV show Legends of the Hidden Temple! Six teams will take on our three challenges for a chance to run though the temple and achieve victory! You are probably wondering where we are going to put a temple in a hotel, well the temple is the hotel! Will you be able to solve the mystery and retrieve the artifacts before being captured by the temple guards? The choices are yours and yours alone!
Hentai Olympics - What happens at the HO stays at the HO, but we can tell you that this is easily one of Armageddicon's craziest events. Hosted by your very own conchair Mike and a genuine Ho, we drew more than a third of the con last year and are gonna do it again! See you there. Be prepared. 18+ only.
Discussion/Panel
Alternative Manga – A look at some things you’re not likely to see in the manga section at Barnes and Nobles, but that you might inspire you to expand your horizons.
American vs Japanese - In the corner to my left, we have Disney! And in the corner to my right, we have Miyazaki! But it is more than just these two that square off when America goes up against Japan in animation! How do they fare against each other over the decades from the 1960’s on to the present? Come to find out if Kimba will make a snack of Scooby of if the Great Mazinger will be stomped by the Transformers!
Anime Fashion Police - A scrutinizing look at the fashion sense of some of our most beloved anime characters. What's in with Norse goddesses this season? What clothes should the average pre-teen magical girl avoid? Find out what's in, what's out, and who's wearing what!
Anime in America - A history of anime in America from its earliest TV incarnations such as Astro Boy through the anime boom in the 1990s and everything in between.
Archetypes in anime - We all know about the most common character types and narrative devices in anime, but how have the archetypes and tropes evolved over the years?
Topics Planned:
* Heroes and Villians, and/or the lack thereof
* Mecha Pilots
* Types of Endings (Victory vs. Defeat/Growth)
* Female Characters and Stereotypes
* The Master/Older Brother Character
* Rivals (Foe vs. Friend)
* Popular Genres
* Formation of the Team (Power Trio, Adventure Duo, Five Man Band, etc.)
* Evolution of the Straight Man
* Settings in Anime
Recommended Reading: the Anime Tropes directory of TV Tropes. (Be warned, if you enter TV Tropes, you may not emerge for several hours!)
Death - One thing is certain in anime, characters are going to die. Directors use death to evoke a response, both from the characters, and the audience viewing at home. It might be a touching moment that gives the hero his drive to fight, or at the other end of the spectrum, played off for comedic value. In any case, we want to dig a little deeper than just who dies, and establish character viewpoints on death, why they die, and what their deaths mean, if anything. So join us for an audience discussion on this morbid, but fascinating topic. Take a moment to think about some the anime you've watched before attending, so you're prepared to participate. You also might take a look at TVTropes, for a more tongue-in-cheek look at death, both in anime and other forms of media. And please, excuse the massive spoilers.
Death Note Mafia
Dirty Dirty Fanfiction - Find out what goes where, and what shouldn't go back there!
Drinking Songs Pt 1 and 2 - Peanut butter and jelly.
Bonnie and Clyde. Tom and Jerry. Naked girls and Go Nagai. Few things in this world go together with such chemistry,
but we've found another - drinking and anime songs. First, we'll meet up in a panel room to learn the songs, and get
over ourselves. Afterwards, we caravan to the hotel's bar to sing and drink to our heart's content. Warm up your vocal
chords, get ready to down a few, and belt out Sailor Moon!
Note: This is NOT a +21 event, but if you're drinking at the bar, they will card!
The lyrics to the songs will be printed in the Program Guide!
Songs we will be singing:
Sailor Moon English Opening
Captain Harlock Japanese Opening
Star Blazers English Opening 1st Season
Beck : Mongolian Chop Squad Opening
POKEMON
...maybe more!
Fandom roundtable
Fullmetal Alchemist - Come and celebrate a world where shrimpy alchemists pal around with suits of armor, where flaming playboys and their loyal soldiers fight against homonculi, where you'll find automail freaks, foreign princes, ninjas, scarred serial killers and chimera all fight, love and live in one of the greatest stories ever told, Fullmetal Alchemist!
Gundam
History of Shonen - A comprehensive chronological examination of the major shonen magazines in Japan: Weekly Shonen Jump, Weekly Shonen Magazine, and Weekly Shonen Sunday. Beginning in the late 1950s, the panel will move forward through history, examining the series most influential in not only the battle for readers and sales, but also the evolution of shonen manga into what it is today. Furthermore, the panel will highlight key mangaka in the progression of shonen, such as pioneers Osamu Tezuka and Go Nagai, generational icons Rumiko Takahashi and Akira Toriyama, current chart-toppers Eiichiro Oda and Masashi Kishimoto, and many more.
Industry: how
Influential anime in brevity - All of Japan's most influential anime in one hour. Join Andrew and Roman as they summarize, scrutinize and pay tribute to controversial works and fan favorites from the 1960's to the present day. You'll know it's really influential if takes them more than 3 minutes to run through it.
Japanese Religion - Japanese Religions, Anime, and Otaku Spirituality: Ever wonder about all those shrines, magical mikos, and amourus Buddhist monks in your favorite animes? Well come and be enlightened about the religious background in your favorite animes and how anime and japanese religions have had an influence in the Otaku community.
Legend of the Galactic Heroes - 298 votes on ANN's encyclopedia, 210 are 10s, something is definitely right with this series. A truly epic anime spanning 110 eps and across an entire galaxy. With a cast made up of almost every significant voice actor from the 1970s through the early 1990s and a character list numbering over 100, Legend of Galactic Heroes is a far cry from your typical space anime.
Macross - Macross, what is it really all about? Come to this panel and see the anime that arguably brought forth the torrent of anime we know today. LISTEN TO MY PANEL! Now with 100% more Macross Frontier!
Matsumoto - Leiji Matsumoto is an underdog and renaissance man of the
anime industry, and most westerners have never heard of him. From Captain Harlock to Yamato, Daft Punk to Galaxy
Express and everything in between, Matsumoto’s contribution to the world is as timeless as his stories.
Series to be familiar with:
Space Pirate Captain Harlock
Space Cruiser Yamato/Star Blazers
Galaxy Express 999
Models and Such : The Shipyard - During the three years at Anime Punch, we have been exploring the building and painting of figure kits. This year, we will be showing more on the subject of Mecha and Ship kits. From Yamato to Gundam to Ghost in the Shell, you will see how to make your kit look like it came off the show room floor, or go through Hell and back!
Music in Anime - Not all openings and endings in anime are some flash in the pan band trying to make a name for themselves, or a superstar that has a song that has nothing to do with the anime. Music in anime has changed from it’s roots, where songs used to be written for the anime specifically. This panel covers the history from the humble beginnings of anime openings with Isao Sasaki and Ichiro Mizuki, soundtracks, the rise of marketing the single and not the anime, to JAM PROJECT.
Old vs New Roundtable
Oshii - This panel will NOT be about driving in a car, basset hounds, monologues, or sudden bouts of silence. What we can promise is talking about Ghost in the Shell, Patlabor, the Kerberos Saga, and the other numerous works that made Oshii such a compelling and controversial director.
Pokemon
Psychology
Racing Anime - Racing anime, a genre with a storied history and a bright future. Beginning with Speed Racer and continuing to the modern day with Initial D and Wangan Midnight, come feel the rhythm of the pulsing sound calling your name!
Required Reading - If you're into literature, in any particular genre you'll find a list of things that people sort of expect one to read. Then there's the overarching list of books that You Are Expected To Know. Classics like To Kill A Mockingbird, The Scarlet Letter, and I, Robot.
Likewise, anime that you simply expect anime fans to know is
required
reading. It's not about being good or worthwhile or influential,
necessarily. To be sure, many of these are sure to arouse strong
positive and negative feelings in those that have seen them. But
that
there is this bond where, "We've all seen some of that, we've each
taken what we can and drawn our own conclusions, and as a community
we're better for it."; that is the essential aspect of why this exists.
This is NOT the "know" you get from reading about something on
Wikipedia for five minutes. We're not about faking. If I
make a joke
about Jet Alone makeing a lopey dash to freedom, it's very different
from joking that Gendo as a slick pimp. This might be seen as the
line
between a Citizen and the Proletariat.
This is not the big
current stuff. This is not the completely obvious stuff.
Things that
are recent are on everyone's mind. Who DOESN'T know about (insert
latest huge US release), Bleach and Naruto? If you miss the
Shounen
Jump A-List you might be living under a rock: it would be like an
avid
reader never having heard of Harry Potter.
Neither is this list set in stone: because of
its very nature, the list changes and we evaluate it yearly.
This is your primer if you're starting to rach out for more. This
is
your reminder if you've ever thought "You know, I should watch
that..." This is your to-do list if you've been bored lately.
This is your shared collective camaraderie with your
fellow fan.
And so we present the current list we consider
essential for the modern anime fan who is more than skin deep.
Anime Punch's Required Reading: 2009
Series:
Azumanga Daiou
Big O
Card Captor Sakura
Chobits
Cowboy Bebop
Death Note
Dragonball Z
Escflowne
Evangelion
Excel Saga
Fist of the North Star
FLCL
Fruits Baskets
Full Metal Alchemist
Ghost in the Shell
Gunbuster
Gundam
Hellsing
Initial D
Kenshin
Last Exile
Lodoss War
Lupin the 3rd
Macross
Mazinger Z
Ouran High School Host Club
Revolutionary Girl Utena
Sailor Moon
Serial Experiments Lain
Slayer
Speed Racer
Tenchi Muyo
Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann
Trigun
The Big Movies:
Akira
Ghost in the Shell
Memories
Metropolis
Ninja Scroll
Paprika
Perfect Blue
Royal Space Force: Wings of Honneamise
Vampire Hunter D
Directors and Studios to Know:
Ghibli
CLAMP
Gainax
Go Nagai
Leiji Matsumoto
Mamoru Oshii
Osamu Tezuka
Rumiko Takahasi
Satoshi Kon
Yoshiyuki Tomino
Satoshi Kon - Satoshi Kon is that kid in high school that was a little off, extremely colorful, and had lines of reality blurred. I just described every title he has done, but he does it well. You also knew this kid was extremely brilliant, and would make something of this into a gorgeous art form. Well, Kon has done that too, and this panel is celebrating his achievements with an in-depth look into his style, themes and obsessions.
Science in anime - There's a lot of science in Anime. You might say it's one of the advantages of the medium, that anything you can imagine can be made to exist while still retaining the style of its context. To be sure, science fiction films and TV series have caught up significantly with advanced CG usage, but the seamless integration is unique to this medium. The possibilities of science can help craft a world that draws us in and provides a compelling backdrop for the plot or it can shatter our sense of immersion in the story.
And so, we will be looking at science in anime. We'll go over details that have been done right, The Moh's rating of various "hard" science fiction series, where we are now in comparison, things that "happened" in 2001 or will "happen" in just a few short years, whatever comes up. As long as it's interesting and sciency, we'll take a look at it: come prepared and ask us about things that you've been curious about.
Staff picks
Super Robots - Super Robots rock. From Mazinger Z to Gurren Lagann these machines of mechanical wonder have been dazzling audiences with their epic fights, courageous characters, and of course, SCREAMING ATTACK names for years. Come learn the history of these machines and geek out with fellow mech heads.
Technology in anime
Tezuka - You have heard of Astro Boy, but you’ve never seen it.
You know that the Lion King was a rip-off of something, but what? This panel is both an introductory course and a
gathering for hard-core fans alike of Osamu Tezuka, also known as “The God of Manga”. He is important, he shaped the
industry to what it is today, and you should know about him.
Series to be familiar with:
Astro Boy
Black Jack
Princess Knight
Upcoming Anime - A panel following the bleeding edge of the newest shows to come out of Japan. Together, we'll discuss some of the standout shows of the past few seasons and look ahead to shows that might be worth taking a look at. Join in to find out what everyone will soon be talking about!
VG and anime - This is an Anime Convention. Ahh, but we do love our interactive entertainment, too. So let's talk about games and anime. How have games influenced anime? How has anime influenced games? Sky's the limit.
Western Lit - Anime has a way of making reading actually cool, and we're here to prove it. An overview of anime based on the book. Titles covered include Nadia: Secret of the Blue Water, Howl's Moving Castle, Jin-Roh, Princess Tutu, Gankutsou:The Count of Monte Cristo, Tales of Earthsea, Moby Dick, Pretear, RomeoxJuliet and many more.
World history - Anime isn't as made-up as it appears to be. Occasionally, an anime comes along that takes actual historical events, but still manages to mess it up somehow. This panel takes a look at animes that have base in our world's history, from the Bourbon Dynasty to 1920's America, and where they were accurate, and where they were blatantly wrong.
