Hi everyone, boy this post is way way overdue. I got a nasty case of laryngitis at the end of the London trip which took me out of order for almost three weeks, so I fell behind on everything.

But now I'm back!

So first about what went down in London:
I did my intro to anime lecture on Sep 25 which was about 90 minutes long and featured the progression from early emaki scroll art to Tezuka, and then a jump to how aspects of Shinto and Buddhism are to be found in two pivotal scenes of Totoro, the bus scene and the world tree creation initiation scene. The workshop on Sep 28 started out with a 90-minute chunk on shoujo anime from Mahotsukai Sari and Ribon no Kishi onwards, culminating in Nausicaa. After the break, I went a bit into male mythologies (Hokuto no Ken and Dragon Ball) before finishing off with contemporary deconstruction mythologies, first Evangelion, then ending the whole thing with the first episode of SKU. Since you guys were the most engaged with the prospect of the material to be developed from this, I specifically built up the shoujo part of the workshop to give more perspective to all the things that lead up to Utena, so I'm sure that part will be interesting to you as well. We had a very nice screening room at the university, which meant a huge projection screen about two meters high. (This only occured to me now, but a life-size Akio car scene might have been very effective.)

Audience was quite varied, there were seasoned anime enthusiasts as well as people who have never heard of the concept of anime before, so it took a bit of a balancing in the beginning, especially in the lecture. The workshop's 3-hour length had the effect of reducing attendance to only those who knew what they were signing up for. No one specifically came up and said they came to the thing because they read it here on tumblr, so I don't know if there were specifically SKU-people there. But I did find that it is very hard to describe what Utena is about to people who've never seen it (let alone seen much anime before), even as the very beginning of it is actually playing on the screen. So half of the time I talked about SKU I was kind of talking about what the basic concepts are, but I still hope the other half will have useful new stuff for all of you.

Both events were recorded with two cameras, and were digitized earlier this week, the lecture footage is being color-graded as we speak, and editing is due to commence soon, courtesy of my two excellent colleagues on site in London who did the recording as well. We are planning on going in a linear fashion and splitting the final footage into more easily digestible, 20-30 minute episodes, and putting it up on the net for all to see. At this point I don't have a specific timeframe for when it's going to be ready, but I hope to start releasing episodes in November and maybe (just maybe) getting to the end by January. We'll see how it goes.

Before I took upon myself the adventure to the land of respiratory illness, I also told you that I had some secret plans up my sleeve. Since then I've come into the position of actually talking about the first two, even if just briefly and the whole thing's still a bit hush-hush.

The first thing is, during my UK visit I've met a Japanese cultural researcher who lives in London, and we have many interesting things in common. She has also researched anime, but from a different angle, how it all ties up with tendencies in Japanese society, for example whether decades of shoujo anime actually impacted women's roles in society (in other words, has "the revolution" happened). We have much to discuss and talk about so I've devised a short web series format where we talk about such topics. We are currently putting together an early production draft, budget, and list of topics -- I want to do at least one episode specifically about SKU, as it ties in exactly to her research. I'll divulge more as soon as we find out whether we can get some funding for this (as it is an educational series).

Second thing is, I might possibly be returning to London as early as mid-March 2014. This time around, if there's interest, I'd love to do a 3-4 hour SKU workshop for as small a group as five people. I brought it up this early so interested parties can organize their schedules around this. No specifics yet, but if there's people who'd come, we'll make it work.

Any questions and comments are welcome, and either way, I'll be back hopefully in a few weeks with news about how the footage is going.

Adam

Last edited by AdamDobay (10-31-2013 01:15:55 PM)

Really excited about the forthcoming video.