Woke up bright and early Friday morning. I had a lovely breakfast of Italian cold cuts, cheese and some of a wonderful gluten-free baguette from Mariposa bakery. Not exactly what anyone would consider breakfast, but it was worth it. I had to make sure that I was going to be ready to have another day fairly packed with panels… not even enough time to really get lunch.

After finishing breakfast it was time to herd back in to the expansive convention center. It feels both huge and crowded when you’re looking at about 120,000 people in one place.

I quickly made my way to the Neon Alley panel.

Thankfully I made it in time to get a decent seat for the Neon Alley panel. I’m not a huge fan of sitting way in the back for anything… well except for when I was in high school, but that was for entirely different reasons… and I digress.

So, the Neon Alley panel was largely similar to Viz Media panel as Neon Alley is run by Viz. Like their specialized panels, they tend to focus on what the panel is about.

In this case they’re focusing on Neon Alley. So, they start by talking about what Neon Alley is about.

Before last year, Neon Alley was a subscription-based online channel. They wound run shows on a timetable. They dropped that model in favor of just having a Hulu channel where they stream anime on demand. This is a huge change, and makes it easier to both see what you want, when you want and to be able to binge-watch series.

They then told us what they are currently showing on the Neon Alley Hulu channel. So, what are they showing on Neon Alley?

Here’s a list: Sailor Moon (subbed, dubbed coming soon), Naruto Shippunden (dubbed), Ranma ½, Bleach (up to episode 205 both dubbed and subbed), Death Note (dubbed and subbed), Vampire Knight (dubbed and subbed), Inuyasha (entire series, dubbed and subbed), Blood Lad, Gargantia (dubbed). Starting in fall they will be showing Naruto: Rock Lee and Ninja Pals.

Last month they said they were going to have Bleach up to episode 229. They also were going to have

12 new episodes of Naruto. They also put up 13 more Nura episodes (for you Nura fans out there).

Other then that, it was largely a lot like the Viz Media panel. There wasn’t any news that was specially held specifically for this panel. They did, however, talk a bit about what they were planning for their Sailor Moon panel on Saturday.

After that, I made my way to my next panel. For the first time in 3 years I finally made it to the Comics Art Conference. They always seem to have interesting topics, but I’ve always had other panels the same time. I finally made it this year.

I made it to the panel on sexism, gender and comics. It sounds like an interesting enough topic. Something that seemed to largely been discussed this year.

The topic itself was interesting. The Comic Arts Conference is a place for scholars to present their papers on to comic fans. That means that not everyone is going to be as equally engaging. That was the problem that I ran in to. The topic itself and the papers on their own were interesting. The people presenting them were not as engaging. So, I found myself less interested as the panel went on.

The papers being presented were on the following: A Methodology for the Analyzing of Sexism in

Comics: Birds of Prey, Love Slaves and Wonder Woman, Golden Age of Wonder Woman (this one had an interesting discussion of psychology) and Abjection and Objectification of Motherhood in Jack Kirby’s Fourth World.

All interesting titles, but the presenters lacked the charisma to keep me truly engaged. In many ways that made me sad. Since they’re dealing with more scholarly subjects, you have to find a way to make this more engaging.