NDK 10: Madhouse Guests

Every year, Nan Desu Kan tries to get at least one guest from Japan to come to the convention. Usually this is a person working in the anime industry but sometimes it’s a J-pop artist or another random Japanese personality. This year, the guests from Japan were Sato Yuzo, Umehara Takahiro, and Mizushima Seiji from Madhouse Studios. For the uninitiated, Madhouse Studios is one of the largest anime production companies in Japan. They’ve created such classics as Cardcaptor Sakura, Gungrave, Jubei-chan, Lensman, Metropolis, Ninja Scroll, Tenjho Tenge, Unico, and Vampire Hunter D to the more modern BECK, Chobits, Di Gi Charat, Galaxy Angel, Gunslinger Girl, Milennium Actress, Monster, Shingu, The Gokusen, Tokyo Godfathers, Trigun, Trinity Blood, and X. And that’s just to name a few! (Phew!)

Of the three guests, the biggest was Mr. Mizushima, who’s best known as the director of Fullmetal Alchemist and Fullmetal Alchemist: Conqueror of Shamballa. FMA is one of the hottest anime out there right now and scoring Mr. Mizushima was a big win for NDK.

If it wasn’t enough for Mr. Mizushima to be there, he brought with him a special edition of Conqueror of Shamballa that hasn’t been shown in the United States before (it won’t be released until November). They showed the movie in Main Events on Saturday afternoon to a crowd of about 800 people, after which Mr. Mizushima had a Q&A session. I missed this session because I was busy working in the video rooms (damnit!) but I heard that everyone had a great time.

The Madhouse guests also did two Q&A panels over the weekend and I managed to attend the second one. Unfortunately, Mr. Mizushima was busy at the time but Mr. Sato and Mr. Umehara were both there. It was an interesting panel and I learned a lot about Madhouse Studios and about how they approach their work.

Of all the guests I’ve seen at NDK, they were the most interesting to me because they’ve been directly involved with many shows I’ve actually watched. With my limited anime viewing, it’s rare that there’s a guest that’s been involved with producing something I’ve seen (especially since the guests tend to be English dub voice actors and I watch mostly subtitled anime) and these guys have made some of the best stuff out there. All I can do is cross my fingers that we get more guests like them in the future.