A-Kon 23 Overview

So, I’m sure a few of you are wondering why I’m posting thoughts and feelings about an anime convention when this site is supposed to be more for Toku fans, eh? Well, I started attending A-Kon with 21, which was the first year that Monster Attack Team had returned from their slumber and launched their new magazine. That year there were a few Sentai cosplayers running around, and even the occasional Phillip and Shotaro from Kamen Rider W. The last two A-Kons however have seen what I would deem to be an explosion of Toku as I’ve seen folks in Gokaiger getups as well as noticed the Dealer’s room stocking an abundance of Kamen Rider material, to where even Bluefin came about to offer many of their S.H. Figuarts for happy Otaku to buy. Needless to say I think the Distinguished Toku Fan can gain a lot from attending A-Kon, so I figured I would give you some impressions of the con in general as well as my thoughts on this year’s Monster Attack Team panel.

A-Kon in general is held in the Downtown Dallas area, with many of the most recent cons being at the Dallas Sheraton, and the upcoming A-Kon 24 taking place at the Hilton Anatole, and is the oldest anime convention in America. Most would think that the “Anime” designation means endless panels and programming dedicated to the effectiveness of marrying a Linkin Park song to a Naruto clip, but in actuality this is far from the case as A-Kon actually has more of a balanced lineup between Anime, Writing, Sci-Fi, the Video Game Industry, Cosplay, and many other aspects of fandom, so there basically is something for everyone. As A-Kon is a larger convention, expect lots of crowd stuffiness, and also looooooong lines for popular panels. For the Monster Attack Team panel however, we were first in line.

At this point it would probably be a good idea to brief you on what Monster Attack Team is. M.A.T. is a Dallas-based collective of Toku fans spearheaded by Ed Holland and Joe Reilly who had sprung up in the 90s thanks to their magazine and for a lot of young Toku fans like myself, a cable access interview show that would later morph into the M.A.T. series. This was pretty much the place to go to check out clips from shows and movies that weren’t Power Rangers, but rather items like Tetsuo, the Iron Man, the Metal Hero series, and even a dash of metal from Sekima II. One of their most famous exploits was getting access to the filming of Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers before the show had even premiered on Fox Kids. This showed how much trust Toei and many other Japanese organizations had Holland and Reilly. The inital incarnation of M.A.T. later folded, but then spawned Alien Death Squad, and The Hypnotic Eye before seemingly disappearing for quite sometime until Holland had decided to reform M.A.T. along with Mike Keller where they premiered their latest issue of M.A.T. as well as begun a yearly panel at A-Kon. These panels end up being the highlight of the con for me as they usually talk about Toku shows that I haven’t even touched yet and watching Ed and Mike wax esoteric about Toku is pretty much satisfying, kinda like watching Decade falling straight into the waters of Mt. Midoriyama.

So, with this year’s panel they had actually beaten the A/V demons that had plagued their last two appearances, leading to us not only seeing footage of the 1st M.A.T. webisode, but also some old-school footage of The Hypnotic Eye as well as some interesting promo material they had shot back in the 90s for advertising their T-Shirts. Ed was running late due to the Tak Sakaguchi signing taking longer than expected, but he soon arrived along with the seminal action hero who pulled in a momentary guest appearance. Oh, for those who are not sure who Mr. Sakaguchi is, here’s a Kabuto clip, then after you read the rest of this post, you should go watch the movie Versus.

After Tak had bade all of us farewell, Ed disappeared to gather prizes for a lottery giveaway, we were treated to an early film Tak had starred in before his breakout role in Versus. Let’s just say this was more of the direct-to-video variety, but it still looked fun as hell to watch all the way through. We were then treated to a preview of an upcoming Toku remake of Denjin Zaborgar. I have to say I was really impressed how they managed to make an older design function in a modern environment and hopefully we’ll see this particular flick come stateside.

The rest of the panel was held for the prize giveaway, of which we ended up with some nice collectibles (of which many of them are proudly on display in my figurine cabinet), but there was one moment that I was particularly happy about. You see for the last couple of A-Kons I had tried to get Ed’s thought on some of the modern Sentai/Kamen Rider that had been churned out by Toei as of late, and usually he was not kind to the modern era Riders and Sentai. To an extent, I couldn’t blame him as a lot of the Heisei-era Toku is lacking to a great extent compared to it’s Showa-era equivalents, but I was hoping that it wasn’t a generational divide that one commonly sees in music or film. I have to say I was pretty happy to hear his positive impression of Gokaiger Vs. Gavan (of which you’ll get my thoughts on that soon), so hopefully we’ll get more modern Rider/Sentai material next year to go with the old-school Toku love.

Well, that does it for me at this time, be on the lookout for some Mini-Review to get caught back up on Fourze along with some other surprises, and in the meantime, go check out Monster Attack Team on the web. Well, after you get done watching Versus. HENSHIN!