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!

So…Hiatus #2 is done, now what?

Sorry folks, you’ll have to excuse me for gaps between posts as of late. In the real life field I’m in, I ended up severely screwing up one hand making it almost impossible to type for a couple of months, then screwing up the other hand right afterwards. Yeah, not so great times. I have been keeping up on Toku shows though for the most part.

Hiatus’ are no fun….

You’ll have to forgive for the lack of updates as of late, but unfortunately everything has been busy on the real life front. In order to make things slightly easier on the Fourze front, I am going to do a batch review of Episodes 16-20, and from here on out, do the reviews in the 2 episode arcs, that way one can get the whole sense of the story, but more importantly, it will give me more time to structure my reviews and have more to say. We may not be the timeliest here, but we try to go for more quality over quantity, which will be important as we get ready for doing a Show Overview of Gokaiger and we also add Gobuster to the lineup.

Another nice part of grouping episode arcs together is that it also gives me more time to go back to the retro shows like ’71 Kamen Rider and Ultraman as those are easier to access than the newer shows.

As for when we start back up? That’s kinda of a good question, but the best way to find out is to either subscribe to us on WordPress or Twitter, everything we do gets linked up there. Stay Gold and we hope to get more Toku on soon.

-fmpanda

More Technical Difficulties

Normally you would see me post on Twitter if there are any extensive delays in getting out reviews, but in this case I’m going to post here just to give everyone a heads up. Basically we’re looking at having to delay all future posts until either Friday of this week or sometime next week due to Cable Modem failure, as we’re going to need to get a replacement modem in order to get back on the web. I’m currently posting from my phone right now, which is great for this, but not good for the reviews.

Needless to say folks, do not think your cable modems are invincible. Also, RCA no longer makes the greatest products in the world, eh?

Let the MLP/Fourze Mashups Begin…..

Found this last night, so I’ll just drop this here…

A “Special” Note about a little panel called ANIME HELL……

So I ended up going to AnimeFest over the weekend, doing some volunteer work, and during my freetime I ended up coming across a panel known as ANIME HELL. From those who are unknowing, ANIME HELL is a collection of insane clips and commercials, with some awesome posturing and dancing from the congoers thrown in to boot. You should really check them out when you get a chance at A-Kon, AnimeFest, or YuleCon. Now what does this have to do with our little blog in the sky? Well, for some reason they were moved by the Kamen Rider Girls, you know, the girl group formed by Avex Trax as part of their partnership with Toei? Yeah, we got a treat of both of their videos for V3 and Let’s Go!! Yeah, it was hilarious times, although OOO got a pretty good pop when he came up on screen. Here, check it out for yourself:

For more info on ANIME HELL, head over here and give them some love and support. Also, buy Camay, Camay.

Look for a Kamen Rider Fourze Review on Friday. Henshin!

Hello, and Welcome to DTF!

Hello peeps, and thank you for stopping by Dallas Toku Force! In a basic sense, DTF is about a few cats based here in the North Texas area who wish to wax esoteric on all things Tokusatsu from the East and the West, whether it be Show Reviews, Opinions, Cosplay, it’ll be covered a lot here.

Now I know a lot of peeps are probably wondering why cover stuff going on in the West when the word “Tokusatsu” is Japanese in nature and generally refers to shows like Kamen Rider, Ultra Series, and Super Sentai? Well, if you take a look, the word “Tokusatsu” refers to a Live-Action TV Series or Movie involving Superheroes and/or heavy use of Special Effects. In this case, we consider Doctor Who to be just as fair game as Gokaiger.

We do implore everyone to keep checking us out either here, Twitter, or on Facebook as we should always have daily content for you to peruse. Thank you all very much and let’s get cooking!