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When it was first announced that comicon and the new york anime festival were merging and becoming one event, I have to admit I had my reservations. Reed exhibitions, the company that organizes each event, clearly has a host of good reasons to combined both. New York Anime Fest is mostly just a dealer's room with some panels tacked on (not nearly the variety of entertainment that other cons offer), so it would mesh well with a larger event. Comicon doesn't have as obvious of a gain, but it could be argued that US comics are losing younger audiences to anime and manga, so some cross-pollination might be good there. Whatever the reasons, there were a lot of worries that the cons would be diminished slightly by the merge.

And they were right, more or less. Anime events were fairly under-represented in this con. The anime area was literally tucked away in the corner of the convention. It wasn't as much of a merger as it was a co-existing. This was clearest when walking from one section to the other, where the average age of the persons around you would drop by 15 or 20 years. So yes, from an anime

FanimeCon 2010 has announced that rock band FLOW will attend the convention as a guest of honor. They will perform a concert on May 28 and participate in a Q&A panel and autograph session.

FLOW has provided theme songs for anime series such as "Naruto," "Code Geass," and "Eureka Seven."

FanimeCon 2010 is being held at the San Jose Convention Center on May 28-31, 2010. Other guests of honor include LM.C and Halko Momoi.

FanimeCon has announced that it will host the J-Rock band FLOW at the May 28-31 convention in San Jose, California. FLOW has performed theme songs for Naruto, Naruto Shippūden, Code Geass, Eureka Seven, Persona -trinity soul-, and Heroman. The band will be performing on Friday, May 28, as part of the FanimeCon's 2010 MusicFest.

FanimeCon will also host Rune Soldier Louie illustrator Mamoru Yokota, Gainax studio co-founder and executive director Hiroyuki Yamaga, voice actress and singer Halko Momoi (Ai Yori Aoshi's Chika Minazuki, My Bride is a Mermaid's San Seto, Tales of the Abyss' Anise Tatlin), the J-rock band LM.C, and game creators Daisuke Ishiwatari and Toshimichi Mori.

Not-So-Daily Link of the Day: Japan's Fuji-Q HighLand amusement park has announced on Wednesday that it will open a new pavilion called "Evangelion: World - Life-Size EVA-01 Construction Project" on July 23. The pavilion will house the world's first life-size recreation of the scene where the Evangelion anime's main character Shinji Ikari encounters the Eva-01 unit for the first time. The recreation will have a mockup of the Evangelion unit from the bust up.

The pavilion will also have a life-size cockpit of an Evangelion unit (from where visitors can pay to have their photos taken), a life-size figure of the character Kaworu Nagisa, a video corner, a museum, a studio gallery for taking photographs, and a shop. Fuji-Q HighLand's website will present the first interim report of the pavilion's 150-million-yen (about US$1.6 million) construction on May 26.

Fuji-Q HighLand is located near the foot of Mt. Fuji, and it has already hosted two amusement park attractions based on the Gundam anime franchise in the past, including a life-size Gundam figure (lying down on the ground). Last month, the Yahoo! Japan website surveyed fans on whether they wanted a life-size Evangelion unit constructed — and if so, which Evangelion unit.

A life-size Gundam figure stood on Tokyo's artificial Odaiba island last summer, and it will stand again in Shizuoka, the home of Bandai's main Gundam plastic model kit factory. The city of Kobe unveiled a life-size figure of Tetsujin 28-gō (Ironman 28 or Gigantor), the manga/anime robot created by Kobe native Mitsuteru Yokoyama.

There is a bitmap image here I was too lazy to make jpg.

The official website of the Evangelion anime franchise has posted images from the first day of racing for Run'a Entertainment's "Evangelion RT-01 apr Corolla" team in the Super GT300-class grand touring championship series on Saturday.

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