Pre-#NYCC 2015 with Yumi Hoashi, Senior VP, Konami Digital Entertainment, Inc.

New York Comic Con 2015 is here and guess who's back at the show? Konami Digital Entertainment, Inc.! Yes, the company behind the Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game! When I saw their name listed in the Exhibitor list on the NYCC website, I was ecstatic! The last time I saw Konami was back in 2009. So the fact that they are returning, I wanted to know what they got in store for the attendees! I had the pleasure of getting my questions answered by Yumi Hoashi, Senior Vice President, International Card Business of the company. She is responsible for the ENTIRE Yu-Gi-Oh! TRADING CARD GAME business for the Americas and Europe, including Sales, Operations and Marketing. So without further ado, here is the interview.

Getting to Know: John Stocker, Voice Director of Sailor Moon Part 7

Please read Part 6 of the interview before reading Part 7

Specific Events -
The Super Mario Brothers Show, The Adventures Super Mario Brothers 3, Super Mario World

I'd never heard of John Stocker until Anime Boston 2014 made their Sailor Moon guest announcement. That’s basically how I learned about his involvement in Sailor Moon. After looking up his name on the internet, I came across his IMBD resume and I learned that he portrayed Toad from The Super Mario Brothers Show.

Getting to Know: John Stocker, Voice Director of Sailor Moon Part 6

Please read Part 5 of the interview before reading Part 6

Specific Events - Sailor Moon continuation

When we have obtained a new responsibility, we might do some homework as preparation for completing the task at hand. It may be days or weeks in advance. However, in Stocker’s case, the cast and everyone else involved in the recording would not get the scripts or any of the video footage until…wait for it…right before they started recording. I kid you not. “Two or three days at the most for the scripts, and sometimes the other elements arrived at the studio well after our sessions were supposed to begin.” In another words, there isn’t much preparation time. “We often recorded lines we’d never seen till 5 minutes before we started work.”

Getting to Know: John Stocker, Voice Director of Sailor Moon Part 5

Please read Part 4 of the interview before reading Part 5

Specific Events - Sailor Moon

Now we are getting to the part that you probably have been waiting for: his involvement with Sailor Moon.

Getting to Know: John Stocker, Voice Director of Sailor Moon Part 4

Please read Part 3 of the interview before reading Part 4

Voice Teaching with Stocker

Let’s add one more career to his resume: voice teaching. He had received a number of requests from voice agents who knew him and the aspiring talents that looked up to Stocker. At that point, he “realized there was a real need for one on one instruction.” He is not into the one room schoolhouse approach for voice acting lessons. If it was a classroom environment, he would be dealing with various levels of experience and skills of each student. Plus, he sincerely loves to shares what he's learned with others. “Perhaps, at the bottom of it all, is that human desire to be needed. I’m still an actor, and actors are actors because they need their egos stroked more than most people. I’m flattered by the attention.”

Getting to Know: John Stocker, Voice Director of Sailor Moon Part 3

Please read Part 2 of the interview before reading Part 3

Voice Director Stocker

Another one of Stocker's careers is that of a Voice Director, which involves scheduling and knowing the script. In regards to the first, he has to schedule the recording and be sure that it is completed within the allotted time. Regarding the script, the recording is not done as a full cast ensemble. Because most animation is recorded one performer at a time, “I need to know how every single line in the script has to be delivered…Sometimes the two sides of a dialogue are recorded days or even weeks apart.”

Getting to Know: John Stocker, Voice Director of Sailor Moon Part 2

Please read Part 1 of the interview before reading Part 2

Life of a Voice Actor continuation

The work is completed and you get your paycheck. I understand that some actors get paid even after they have already portrayed their characters for a TV series or movie. For example they get money from a portion of a DVD sale or possibly webstreaming. Stocker told me that these are called “residuals” and it is something that actors love. He goes on to explain the process, “commercials or animation productions run in cycles. Some are weekly and some are yearly. When the cycles are completed, the producers must pay performers again for the production to continue running. The amount of the payment is usually based upon a unit value, which is determined by the potential market audience in that particular locale.”

Getting to Know: John Stocker, Voice Director of Sailor Moon

Sailor Moon was anime that many of us from the 1990's generation probably watched. Whether you are an anime fan or not, I'm pretty sure many have at least heard of the title. So when Anime Boston announced that they were bringing guests from the series I was in hype mode!

Now one of the guests intrigued me. Why you ask? Because he has an EXTENSIVE resume in the industry. I wanted to get to know John Stocker, not just as the Director of Sailor Moon, but as the multi talented individual. I wanted him to share with you his knowledge and experience. He kindly agreed and without further ado, I present to you: John Stocker.

Getting to Know: James Daily, Ryan Davidson and Law and the Multiverse Part 6

Please read Part 5 of the interview before reading Part 6

Final Questions with Daily and Davidson

1. Have you ever come across a comic storyline that boggled your mind so bad that you just couldn’t figure out how to apply any law or regulations and wish you were able to? If yes, what was it about?

RD: This actually happens with some regularity in Golden and Silver Age comics. Some of the plots are just downright silly in ways that make legal analysis somewhat superfluous. Comic books frequently contain impossible things, and that as such doesn’t pose any particular difficulty for us. But when they contain downright illogical things, the analysis can switch rapidly from “That’s illegal!” to “Okay, that’s just dumb.”

Getting to Know: James Daily, Ryan Davidson and Law and the Multiverse Part 5

Please read Part 4 of the interview before reading Part 5

Beyond Blogging

In Geek Speak, Davidson said, “I’d much rather collaborate with comic creators on law-related plot points. We actually made contact with a few creators over the past few months and really hope to do a lot of this in the near future.”

Getting to Know: James Daily, Ryan Davidson and Law and the Multiverse Part 4

Please read Part 3 of the interview before reading Part 4

Book Questions

I read in Geek Speak that Daily and Davidson “retained an agent by the end of 2010, and the auction for the book rights was held within a few months.” Because I am not familiar with the whole book and publishing process, I had to ask them about the agent and auctioning of book rights.

Getting to Know: James Daily, Ryan Davidson and Law and the Multiverse Part 3

Please read Part 2 of the interview before reading Part 3

Comics and the Law

1. From looking through your book, you reference varies laws and cases, and it would be hard to bring in a superhero unmasked to a court room.

a. However, is it possible to have a superhero appears at any level of the court system or type of court, whether it be state, supreme, federal, civil, criminal, etc. if s/he became a defendant or a witness to a case?

JD: This is a complicated question. For example, the Confrontation Clause only applies to criminal cases, which means that it’s possible that superheroes could testify while masked in civil cases.

RD: As James says, that’s a really complicated question. But I will say that of the half-dozen or so judges to whom I’ve put similar questions, not a single one hesitated to say that they’d order the person in question to take off their mask as a matter of course. There is no general right to anonymity, so any interaction between a masked character and the judicial system is going to probably result in the mask coming off.

Getting to Know: James Daily, Ryan Davidson and Law and the Multiverse Part 2

Please read Part 1 of the interview before reading Part 2

The Coming of The Law and The Multiverse

So far their experience running and writing for the site has been full of “positive surprises.” It also helps to have a positive support system; their colleagues have been very supportive of their blog and book, The Law of Superheroes, but how did the dynamic duo come together?

I understand that Daily teamed up with Davidson through MetaFilter. Till this day, the internet is not considered a safe place for many. Plus, one may not know who s/he is really talking to. Now my question to the lovely gentlemen is how did they know that the other person is who they were really talking to and that they were going to provide the same amount of dedication to the site as they would?

Getting to Know: James Daily, Ryan Davidson and Law and the Multiverse

I first learned about Law and the Multiverse through a law librarian. He showed me an article in a journal (probably related to law librarianship) about comic books and the law. From a quick glance, I thought it was going to be about some copyright situation. However, when I had the time to read the article, I was intrigued. I thought using comic book storylines in teaching law or at least for us non-lawyers to understand was an interesting approach. So, I started checking their website and purchased their book. Then I had an opportunity to meet them at their NYCC 2012 panel, and now I present to you my interview with James Daily (JD) and Ryan Davidson (RD).

The Reemergence of the Tokyopop Website with Stu Levy Part 4

Please read Part 3 of the interview before reading Part 4

Final Questions for Stu

To all the fans out there that is supportive of Tokyopop, what ways can we or the general public help the company now? Here is what Levy had to say:

The Reemergence of the Tokyopop Website with Stu Levy Part 3

Please read Part 2 of the interview before reading Part 3

The Objectives

When I saw that Tokyopop has relaunched their website with a brand new design, my conclusion was that the company wants to get back in to the publishing business. However, I do remember Levy’s passion for the film and TV industry. I wanted to understand the importance of this reemergence of the publishing business and why would Levy not stick solely to film and TV.

The Reemergence of the Tokyopop Website with Stu Levy Part 2

Please read Part 1 of the interview before reading Part 2

The Re-Launch

On April 26, 2011, there was supposed to be “a spiffy new stripped-down version of TOKYOPOP.com.” Recipients of the Roboblast newsletter from that day would have seen it. However, that design was not used for the re-launch; it looks nothing like it. Because that design is two years old and web designs have changed since then, it was decided to create a design that is more modern and befitting to today’s taste.

The Reemergence of the Tokyopop Website with Stu Levy

When I saw the tweet about the re-launch of the Tokyopop website, I was surprised to see it. I really should not be, because Stu Levy and his crew had a panel at Anime Expo 2012 about Tokyopop’s manga publishing status and a Twitter account dedicated to that part of the company. However, I could not help but wonder why bring back a website and what does this mean for Tokyopop’s manga publishing future in North America.

Has the Absence of NYAF Affected FUNimation? Part 2

Please read Part 1 of the interview before reading Part 2

FUNimation at the 2007 New York Anime Festival

New York Anime Festival vs New York Comic Con

So fans of New York Anime Festival (NYAF) knows what happened to the convention; it became a convention within NYCC then completely merged with it. I was curious to know how much has this action affected FUNimation and its anime presence. To my surprise, it did not have a major impact on FUNimation's participation at NYCC. The difference was just the conventions itself.

Has the Absence of NYAF Affected FUNimation? Part 1

Last time I spoke to Adam Sheehan he was the Senior Events Manager and Brand Manager. Now he has moved out of brand management for about 5-6 years and from events 1 year ago. He had the opportunity to move on to something new and decided to go for it. He is the Senior Marketing Manager for FUNimation.com. His main responsibilities are to promote and market the company website to obtain more traffic and members, support their physical product release, to promote the FUNimation apps and video subscription service.