Going to Anime Hell

Hi there, Mara here again. For those of you familiar with Anime Hell, we are going to have Anime Hell at our event. “Wow! Great! But I am not familiar with Anime Hell! What’s Anime Hell?” Indeed, what is Anime Hell? I queried David Merrill, who shall be running Hell for us at PAC, and he says that “Japanese Anime Hell is a free-form video-collage experiment featuring short animated films, clips of transgressive, inept, or otherwise out-of-contextually entertaining anime, fake commericals, real commercials, movie trailers, educational films, parody films, and audio/visual material culled from amateur and professional worldwide media. Not for sissies.”

In other words, this event is what the kids might say is “made of win.”

My first experience with Anime Hell was at Anime Weekend Atlanta 5 (AWA) in 1999. Incidentally, it was also my first anime convention. I wasn’t sure what to expect beyond seeing people in costumes and anticipating my first panel (I am no longer that blonde or that slim, but I am still friends with all the ladies who were on the panel with me, as well as the young lady in the front row in that first picture who happens to be my BFF) and looking forward to spending money on loot and hanging out with friends. Right, Anime Hell. I was getting there! It was Friday night and we were told that we must attend Anime Hell if we really wanted to say that we’d been to AWA. We piled into main events which was packed to near capacity. The room was dark, and con chair Dave Merrill sat at the projector, throwing in all sorts of tapes. Old videos, fan movies, badly dubbed anime, Heino… wow. I LOLed a great deal, I tell you what. Anime Hell is a fine tradition for any con hosting it around the continent thanks to a secret network of friends who have vowed to keep the faith. This show always fills a room to capacity and pretty much has something to make even the most cold-hearted bastard have a good chuckle.

Our Main Events room isn’t going to be set up for video, unfortunately, but we will probably have it set up in our largest panel room, as it’s got a good amount of space. Part of the Hell tradition means that there’s standing room only, anyhow. I can’t tell you when it’s going to be happening (that’s Pat’s job, and I leave these important decisions to him because he is like twice my size and for all I know, he’s not above hitting fat girls with glasses - I mean, he’s not above committing acts of violence upon my discarded Sailor Moon dolls that end in maggots). Stay tuned.