Anime Boston

Last year, someone proposed having a room dedicated to all the old anime, like Sailor Moon, Gundam, Kenshin, Tenshi, Shaman King, Cardcaptor Sakura, Dragon Ball, Yu Yu Hakusho, and so on and so forth....

I was wondering if the idea would be possible for this year. A few people in that specific thread last year thought it was a really great idea, myself included. I think a lot of the older con goers would love it.

Just posting to say I thought it was a good idea then and still do!!!

Ahhh, a nostalgia room, I'd definitely stop in to watch something!

It'd even be good for getting younger viewers exposed to some older series they might not otherwise seek out on their own, so this sounds like a great idea on all fronts.

While I was programming manager, I tried to center things as much as possible and that is one thing we still strive for.

Although good in theory, many old school titles do not have license holders in the US anymore. To understand this, take for instance an anime like Sailor Moon. This series is beloved by many and is a staple of magical girl anime. When a US company wants to bring it to the states, they sort of lease the title for a certain amount of time. After that amount of time, if the company does not renew, they loose rights to release. When that happens, the anime unfortunately can not be shown at an event of our size.

I hope this kind of explains why we show what we show and why we can't show certain things. Believe you me, I have watched many anime in my day and would not love anything more than to show anime that I grew up with to the newer generations of anime fans. As an added note though, there are many classic anime being re-released, so we will still be able to enjoy anime from all generations.

ShadowAgent wrote:While I was programming manager, I tried to center things as much as possible and that is one thing we still strive for.

Although good in theory, many old school titles do not have license holders in the US anymore. To understand this, take for instance an anime like Sailor Moon. This series is beloved by many and is a staple of magical girl anime. When a US company wants to bring it to the states, they sort of lease the title for a certain amount of time. After that amount of time, if the company does not renew, they loose rights to release. When that happens, the anime unfortunately can not be shown at an event of our size.

I hope this kind of explains why we show what we show and why we can't show certain things. Believe you me, I have watched many anime in my day and would not love anything more than to show anime that I grew up with to the newer generations of anime fans. As an added note though, there are many classic anime being re-released, so we will still be able to enjoy anime from all generations.

Ahh so i take it you guys are under the home viewing act ie: dvd's/tapes are only viewable at home, public viewing is not allowable.

So you have to ask each studio/company if you can run a showing of certain Animes? wow that has got to be time consuming, really time consuming. Do you need then to pay the owners of the anime to show them then? or do you work out deals for free veiwing?

(sorry for hijaking the topic a little but this is rather interesting, learning the ins and outs of con running)

-Cave Johnson

Sorry for the late reply. As you can imagine, we are busy with all kinds of stuff.
You are correct that every title we show at the convention has to get approval to show. Anything released by Funimation or whatever company, needs to get prior consent. It is time consuming, but we get the information at the same time we usually talk to industry about what they want to do at the con.
Buying a dvd only gives you the right to view it privately, not publicly like we do at the convention.

Back to the old animes, I think some people may be pleased with some oldies in the linup, but you will have to wait about a month before you know.