| Anime Weekend Atlanta doesn't take its opening ceremonies too seriously.
When convention chairman David R. Merrill (right) and "minister of propaganda"
Joseph Vecchio Jr. take to the stage on Friday evening, you can expect
silliness to follow. Their grins tell you what followed: the annual throwing
of candy into a cheering audience. |
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| In one sense, Merrill and Vecchio had something they couldn't laugh
about. High-profile anime and manga figures such as Apollo Smile, Scott
Simpson, Scott Houle, Lea Hernandez and Toren Smith had to back away from
promises to attend AWA. However, those people weren't missed as much because
of the quality of the guests who did attend. Among them was Tim Eldred,
long-time anime fan who works as a director in the U.S. animation industry
(much of the animated Godzilla series is his work). |
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| Special appreciation was due Kuni Kimura of Studio Ironcat, the American
manga importer which marked its first anniversary at AWA. Kimura was responsible
for bringing artists Mio Odagi, Shinpei Itoh and Ippongi Bang to AWA, making
them the convention's first Japanese guests. |
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| Other AWA guests got a chance to shine at the opening ceremony, people
such as Jeff Tatarek. Once known online as "Rich Lather," Tatarek still
has anime fans talking about the amazing AV-98 Ingram costume from Patlabor
that he built for a previous AWA. |
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| Amy Howard, once the English-language voice of Nova in the dubbed,
televised Star Blazers, has become a part of the strangest AWA tradition,
the burning of a card from the Magic role-playing game. Role-players invaded
a convention before AWA was formed, and that invasion had such an negative)
impact on AWA's founders that they decided to show their opinion of Magic
by burning a card. In 1997, Howard provided the lighter to burn the card,
and she happily repeated the task for 1998. |
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| The result: one seriously charred Magic card, which went up in flames
before a cheering crowd of anime fans, many of which had never been to
a previous AWA. For that audience, the night was just getting underway... |
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