by Jason Young, staff editor, Inside AX- Anime Expo

Spending a good chunk of last weekend at the San Francisco at Japantown, I must admit that I had a very interesting experience. From the joys of drinking beer at the New People Theater while watching the “Tokyo Freshly Squeezed!” music videos on Saturday, while completing surveys on j-pop and j-rock videos, to a day that I would soon rather forget on Sunday for personal reasons, it was quite an entertaining weekend to say the least. My own personal dramas aside, the J-Pop Summit Festival 2011 was a substantial improvement over last year’s in my opinion as it was nice to see an increased anime presence at the convention/festival.

With free admission, the festival was setup so that a majority of the events took place over at the New People building, with vendor booths scattered along Post Street and the Japan Center Peace Pagoda used as the primary concert area, giving it the intimacy of a smaller convention combined with large convention support and sponsorship from Aniplex and Bandai. With ticketed events at reasonable prices, I thought that this was a fantastic way to slowly introduce people to the wonderful world of anime conventions without having to swamp them with the general hectic atmosphere of say Anime Expo or even FanimeCon in San Jose. That and it’s always nice to see a new up-and-coming convention/festival succeed in only its third year. I just hope that the festival/convention doesn’t lose track of its original mission, which is to promote music as it increases and possibly gets more support from around the industry.

Here are my thoughts on the two events that I had a chance to check out while I was in attendance:

Tokyo Freshly Squeezed: Hottest Music Videos from Japan!:
One of the more interesting screenings at the convention, I thought that this was a great way to expose newbies and veterans of J-Pop and J-Rock to a number of Visual Kei, J-rock and anime song artists that they may not have heard about including Chatmonchy, the Gazette and Scandal. With videos ranging from the dramatic to the bizarre, my personal favorite aside from AKB48’s “Everyday Kachuusha” was Ayaman Japan’s rather risque and avant garde-style music video “Poi Poi”. If you haven’t seen it yet, watch. It was weird, creepy yet awesome all at the same time, setting it apart from the rest of the pact. Or it could just be the beer that I drank talking.

AKB48 Documentary – To Be Continued:
Heh. So many different directions I could go with this one, but I’ll stay within the bounds of what people want to know. Recently licensed by New People, this documentary featured the lovely idols from Japan as people got a personal account of the girls’ struggles and growth through personal interviews with members including Tomochin, Mayuyu and Takamina. It was a great way to experience their 2010 concert tour while learning about how much the general elections affected the girls and just how closely knit they are to their subgroups. My favorite part of the film was Mayuyu’s background and how she previously was not into looking good until she joined the group. We got to witness her shopping for anime figures in Akhihabara and a personal account of her history and thoughts. Look for our comprehensive review once the film is officially out on home video and DVD later this year.

Find out more about the festival at the  J-Pop Summit Festival 2011 website.

Tags: akb48, J-Pop Summit Festival 2011, New People, San Francisco, Viz