amusedTurns out it was the latter, but they divided it by region, which means we could have skipped to the North America segment, which was almost at the end. But we hadn't decided what we wanted to do before Mashima-sensei started drawing the first sketch, and we were hooked immediately. We watched all the way through the North America segment, and we probably would have kept going except that we were in desperate need of a snack, and our enthusiasm waned considerably when we learned neither of us won a sketch. We might go back and watch that last hour sometime, though, because it's really neat to hear Sensei's comments as he's drawing. Lots of little tidbits and trivia about the characters, like how Llet from Rave was kind of the prototype for Natsu in Fairy Tail. They had English interpreters, too, so you can understand most of it without knowing Japanese (although the interpreters did miss a few details--the characters corresponding to Sister in Rave and Fairy Tail are Julia and Kana, respectively, for example--but all the important stuff is there).
One of the really fun things about it is that when you entered to win a sketch, not only could you request a character, but you could request clothes, poses, etc. A lot of people didn't take advantage of this, but everybody from Italy did. The best (there were a lot of bests) was the person who asked for Pino sleeping in a flower bud. Mashima drew it and said, "I think I'm going to use this idea for a chapter title page." It was so cute, too!
Anyway. It was great. We spent three hours watching it. Just Hiro Mashima drawing and talking about his characters. Like how he gets a lot of requests for Gray, which is tough because he has a hard time drawing Gray's face, but on the other hand, a lot of people specifically ask for naked Gray, which makes it easier because he doesn't have to worry about drawing clothes, so it balances out.
Today I'm thankful for getting to watch that Hiro Mashima video, getting to see a lot of cool drawing, the package with our niece's birthday present arriving with plenty of time before her birthday, the super adorable drawing of Shiki smiling that Mashima did towards the beginning of the video, and getting to buy some sandies to snack on today.
