Tag - otakon

 
 

OTAKON

Japan Times
CULTURE / CULTURE SMASH
Jul 23, 2017
Crunchyroll takes anime to a live level
Summer is high season for live celebrations of Japan's pop culture exports. The two largest events in the West, Japan Expo in Paris and Anime Expo in LA, drew hundreds of thousands earlier this month. August will see the U.S. East Coast's biggest anime convention, Otakon, move from Baltimore, Maryland, into more spacious environs in Washington, D.C., and later, the California debut of Crunchyroll Expo, a convention hosted by the most popular dedicated anime streaming service outside of Japan.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film / CULTURE SMASH
Jun 25, 2017
Director Sunao Katabuchi shares his corner of this world
Last summer saw the release of what would become the highest grossing Japanese animation film to date, Makoto Shinkai's "Your Name.," which was also the country's top box-office draw of 2016. The surprise hit's main characters are a pair of body-swapping teenagers. A survey conducted by the Fields Research Institute earlier this month revealed, unsurprisingly, that its commercial success was driven by the nation's teenagers — over 30 percent of whom said they bought tickets, compared to 4 percent of those 65 and older.
Japan Times
CULTURE / CULTURE SMASH
Aug 13, 2013
Otakon celebrates 20 years of anime fandom in the U.S.
The American anime convention, Otakon ("Otaku Convention"), begins with a costume parade before it officially opens. Last week I had a bird's-eye view of the spectacle from my 14th-floor hotel room in Baltimore, Maryland. An endless army of imaginary characters trudged across the elevated concourse and down adjacent sidewalks to the Baltimore Convention Center to register and obtain entry badges. Most were instantly recognizable from anime series old and new, brandishing swords or other weaponry fashioned out of homemade materials, or wearing massive multicolored wigs, capes or sewn-on tails — or very little at all.

Longform

Historically, kabuki was considered the entertainment of the merchant and peasant classes, a far cry from how it is regarded today.
For Japan's oldest kabuki theater, the show must go on