In news that will probably not matter a ton for people not going to Colossalcon next weekend, June 3-6: we’ll be there in Sandusky, doing a couple of panels (schedule’s here). If you happen to be going and have some time at one of the following spots, feel free to come by and check us out at any of the following times.
Intro to Mecha (3pm Friday)
-Sam, Will and I walk through a number of mecha series we’ve picked out for people who want to get more into the mecha genre but aren’t sure where to start. The focus is either on series that are either unique, flavorful alternative takes on the genre or series that run the formula exceptionally well.
Anime versus Manga (5pm Friday)
-Frame-to-video comparisons of manga and their anime adaptations to show how similar and/or different they can be. We’ll try not to be belligerent in making the point about how 4-koma series are much harder to adapt than winners of major awards, but it’s sort of hard to avoid.
Where’s my Sequel (5pm Saturday)
-We talk about the various income streams (disks, print volumes, merchandise, etc.) that determine whether or not anime are commercially successful, and hence are likely to get sequels. The ultimate answer is disks uber alles, but there are a lot of nuances there that I’ve been able to look at in more detail since posting the super-rough sequel probability equation a year or so ago. Depending on how my writeup goes, I might end up incorporating the results of the casual-interest stuff that’s been boring you for the past 2 months or so.*
Golden Age of Late Night (9pm Saturday)
-A history lesson on how the cutting edge of anime made the transition from TV to OVAs to Late-Night TV, covering all notable series (Dallos, Eva, TWHE) playing a part in that progression and why they were relevant to it.
*Right now, all the numbers I need are on spreadsheets, but I need to sort and plot them to really show what’s going on. Short version is that it’s complicated and cloaked in a thick fog, but there are two indicators that do seem to cut through it just a bit, in that you can build histograms with visible slants and not have most of the series with boosts not in the bottom 10. I’m already dicking around to see if I can find a second indicator that can be used to shave off the wrong guesses for either of those, which means I’ll probably be pulling data for Spring and Winter of the same year to test and see if that holds water.
Animetics 
Have fun, although it sounds like you have a busy schedule.
This’ll be nothing compared to last year, when we were doing 9 hours of panels, and all but one for the first time. This time I asked for Friday/Saturday slots only so we could explore the con on Thursday/Sunday, which is when most of the really interesting niche panels happen. Truthfully, though, panels are my favorite part of any convention, so doing them always makes things fun.
Will you be discussing the latest trends in sales as well, and the effects of event tickets?
I might touch on more recent (2013/2014) shows if it becomes a question, but it’s a convention audience. My default assumption going into panels is that the room I’m talking to has no idea what Aniplex does, so I’d be very surprised if I got a question about event tickets.