Awesome! Glad to see you've taken interest! I saw one of your posts around on the forums about doing a tg cosplay, so its really great to see someone already interested come forward. Its even better that you already have panel experience! I'm going to be 500% honest and say I've never hosted a panel before, but I have been cosplaying for about 4 years now, and I figured why not give it a shot. Also hearing that being in character is a top priority really sets me at ease especially with tsukiyama, as the anime kinda blows his character out of proportion! I also checked out your tumblr and I am super confident that you'll be just fine!
As far as the rating goes, I think PG-13 sounds good. I was worried about making it R-18 because of that exact reason. Only folks who really know the series would come, and while tg is growing in popularity, its not enough to drag in a lot of people for a late night panel.
At first we were considering doing a Tg:re panel instead, but decided against it as the new sequel is only 20 chapters in and not everyone reads the manga. It would be very difficult to get people to come, let alone cosplayers to do a group with us. Also severe spoiler alert for everything.
Content wise I was thinking it would be fun maybe towards the beginning to have a "ccg raid" that's if we can get other folks to do ccg cosplays. It would be short and quick, nothing huge. Mostly just a "oops ccg is here and now they're in our ghoul panel wtf." Alternatively, if no more ccg cosplays pop up, then I want to come in as juuzou late with snacks.
The audience requests was one we were considering, but truth or dare sounds like loads of fun! Of course we'll have to set up boundaries and such. One of the funniest things I saw at a Q&A panel last year was a race. It was Sayaka and Kyouko from pmmm racing for a snack. Not entirely relevant to the topic now, but maybe having small contests? Like silly junk like that. Nothing too strenuous (like racing) because of the potential to damage our cosplays....
Sorry if that turned out too long.
Your post actually set me at ease, too! There's nothing that spoils panels for me more than going to one and the panelists aren't in character and have no handle whatsoever on the situation. Just from reading your writing, I think I'm pretty confident that you'll do just fine! I only started hosting panels recently, and everybody runs them differently. As long as everybody enjoys themselves, there's no real right or wrong way to go about it. It's comforting that we were already both thinking about a lot of the same things! And never worry about a post being too long for me; if you couldn't tell by my first post, I can get wordy, because I absolutely love to write and appreciate people who write well~
I agree that it was a good call to keep it as just a general Tokyo Ghoul panel and not label it as a part of the series that not everyone would be familiar with. Less is more, a lot of the time. One trick I learned is to do your best to title the panel appropriately: Put what people would scan the program book for first, so it's alphabetized properly. I used to title my panels by the characters involved, but then people miss it because they look for the series they like, not the characters. So if it was called something like, "Tokyo Ghoul: Ask a Character" or something along those lines, we'd get the most people.
I like that idea, too, of the CCG gate crashing if we have any cosplayers for them. They're excuse for not mauling us on sight could be that they're too worried about "endangering civilians" with all the attendees, and that as long as we don't try to eat anybody, they're chill with it~ I also was thinking about how funny it might be if the panel started, and it seems like everything's going as planned, and then the doors open and I can walk in as Tsukiyama, fashionably late (and possibly uninvited), take a nice deep breath in, and be like, "Aha, I
thought I could smell you in here, Kaneki-kun~ Mind if I join in the fun?" And yes, it would be awesome if Juuzou came in with little goodies like lolipops, or pocky (yes, please), or things like that! That'd be adorable!
And you've got the right idea about Truth or Dare. It's great fun, as long as the right limitations are made clear in terms of the panel's rating, what's acceptable, and the whole "all panelists have the right to deny your request if they feel it is in any way inappropriate" deal. Otherwise, it's a great chance for some truly priceless antics!
I'm trying to get my sister, who is my cosplay/panelist partner-in-crime, into the series, so that maybe she'd join in, but no guarantees yet. If she gets into it, though, you can count on her to be in-character, too. We both look at cosplay in much the same way. Not sure who she'd want to cosplay yet. I also know another really talented friend who was thinking about cosplaying Touka, so maybe we'll have more people!
