If you’ve not yet seen the Battlestar Galactica mid-season cliffhanger “Revelations”, you’re missing out. While not the most emotionally moving episode nor the most action packed, it does reveal a lot to the show’s characters as the clandestine final four of five cylons are brought out to the open. The results range from shocking to devastating to the Galactica crew. More importantly, its final minutes hit hard with an unexpected final revelation.

Spoilers after the jump…

Not only does the Galactica fleet learn the location of Earth due to the final four of five and not only does the fleet make it to Earth but we actually get a glimpse of the homeworld in the concluding minutes. To be honest, there was only a couple of ways this could’ve played out: Galactica is taking place in pre-historic times or it’s taking place at some point in the future. Anything else just wouldn’t work. Right now it looks like a “Planet of the Apes” twist has been added as the Galactica and Cylon main characters head down to check out Earth only to be greeted by bombed out rubble and radiation. Zing!

The characters were pretty depressed and quiet in reaction to all this but I wouldn’t have minded someone pounding their fist into the ground crying, “You maniacs! You blew it up!”

Thinking of Planet of the Apes reminds me of Power Records from my childhood. Power Records were great… the 1970s was not the best time for animated superheroes… Super Friends, BatMan and maybe the Fantastic Four with HERBIE. Power Records filled the gap until the 1980s revitalized the genre. Power Records came in both 33RPM records generally standalone and 45RPM records bundled with an original or adapted comic. I had a decent collection of records with representatives of the classics: Six Million Dollar Man, Space: 1999, Star Trek, G.I. Joe, some superheroes and Beneath the Planet of the Apes. I knew the story of Beneath the Planet of the Apes long before I saw the movie. I was a bit disappointed that the movie ended with a fade to white and not with the Earth pulling and Alderaan. The back cover of the Apes series had an ape pointing at the reader like Uncle Sam with the text “Power Books & Records wants you to… Go Ape!” Cute.

I also had The Incredible Hulk at Bay which was okay but actually a little light on the Hulk action. The only thing the Hulk punches is a wall and the main villains end up knocking each other out! A little weak but I guess it needed to send some kind of positive message to kids. The Hulk at Bay story featured The Abomination as one of the villains. Unlike the movie version, the classic comic Abomination was distinctly reptilian, though from the previews it seems like the movie version has its own disturbing features.

Unlike Iron Man, I have mixed feelings from the previews of The Incredible Hulk movie. On one hand, I’m glad that it recalls themes from the TV series and features adversaries from the comic book. On the other hand, the Hulk if fundamentally challenging in the need to balance the tormented Banner with the enraged Hulk. It’s also difficult to make a realistic Hulk: even if the CGI were a real model of what a Hulk would look like, I think the human mind would still reject it at some level from not quite being able to relate such a creature to the real world. In any case there’s little chance I’ll make it to a theater so I’ll have to wait for it to arrive on disc from Netflix.

Fanime grew out of the transition of anime to more mainstream audiences in the ’90s and the need to fill the San Francisco Bay Area’s needs for such a convvention. Several organizations recognized the growing interest in anime and manga in the early ’90s and organized independent conventions in the Bay Area, namely AnimeCon and Anime America. There were some other anime conventions prior to these elsewhere in the States, but I’ll just talk about what I know. I missed AnimeCon and the first Anime America conventions but went to AnimeCon’s spiritual follow on Anime Expo in 1993. The t-shirt that year was pretty cool with the Silent Mobius inspired logo on the front and various SD characters on the back. Unfortunately, the Bay Area didn’t seem to be able to handle two 1,000+ person attendance anime conventions in those days and Anime Expo moved on to bigger and better things as the country’s premier anime convention down in the L.A. area. Anime America continued along until it’s demise after 1996. As a side note, for that last convention I tried to be a correspondent for the fledgling AniMecca site but like many of my activities, I didn’t get too far beyond my initial report, but that’s a story for another day.

Anyways, the move of Anime Expo to So-Cal and the end of Anime America opened the door for Fanime’s club oriented gatherings to grow over the course of the decade.

I never attended Fanime until it located to the Santa Clara Convention Center in 2000. I guess I was (and probably still am) a “con elitist”. When it was at Hayward State or Foothill College, I thought “do I really want to go to something at a local college campus?” It might’ve had something to do with graduating from school and feeling like I wanted to put all things college behind me. Or maybe I was just a little burned out on a lifetime of Creation cons, BayCons, TimeCons and the local comic shows. Who knows? Fanime kept growing and eventually moved to the San Jose Convention Center where it’s been for the last five events. The only place to go up locally is San Francisco but that requires a step up in money.

Fanime has grown pretty well. Sure there have been bumps, the occasional long lines and waits for events but all in all it’s worked out okay. Programming is pretty solid with a selection of video rooms (animated and live action), panel programming, a gaming hall, “artists’ alley”, the obligatory exhibit hall (aka “dealer’s room”), masquerade / cosplay plus a variety of modern, related events such as fashion shows and even a maid cafe.

Generally, there are two headache inducing hurdles that every convention must overcome to grow successfully: registration handling and the big attendance event(s), which for anime cons is usually the masquerade. Back when I was going to Anime Expo eight to six years ago, these gave my friends and I no end of teeth gnashing and hair pulling. Percentage-wise, they occupied a small part of the four day weekend but they were handled in such varyingly bad ways that they reflected incredibly badly on what was otherwise and management triumph. For Fanime, I stopped going to the cosplay event a few years back simply for time constraint reasons. The on-site registration process is long but at least well organized and gives good reason to either pre-reg or show up by 8:00am if you’re attending for just one day. They at least have the registration process right, decoupling filling in information from payment from picking up the badge and program bag. This is how all the professional conferences do things and it’s only a question on being able to afford to scale up computers and staff to accommodate the crowds.

As a side comment: a lot of people maybe come to conventions expecting it to be like attending a movie at the mall. It’s not. While there’s a core staff that frequently returns, every year that staff needs to train new volunteers in a very short amount of time and it’s hard work if you’re not accustomed to it.

Nowadays, I’m basically only attending Fanime one day a year. Memorial Day weekend is typically busy and it’s hard to juggle work, family, the convention and whatever else happens to be going on that weekend. Unlike comic conventions which have big mix of people, I’m really starting to feel like one of the “old” people at the anime cons. It seems like it’s 80% tweens, teens and college kids. That’s great because it speaks of the vibrancy of anime and manga. But, I definitely feel the pains of disconnect to a lot of the current popular shows. I still go for the rare but gratifying experience of finding something new that I’m interested in, like the recently broadcast Macross Frontier. More on that another time.

To wrap up, I saw my future at registration: a graying, pony-tailed father trying to get his cosplaying kids’ attention as they scurried away to get their badges and run into the event. “Girls, remember back here at 6:00pm, okay?” he said, followed immediately by a, “Baby, give me a kiss bye.” His black feather wing wearing daughter hopped back just long enough to peck him a kiss before catching up with her friends. I guess that’s not a bad way to end up some day.