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Otaku Spotlight: Epic Anime Time's Gak Attack

Toronto's Yung "Gak Attack" Lee has no formal education in filmography or special effects work, which hasn't stopped his "Epic Anime Time" video from becoming one of Canada's most-favorited Film & Animation vids for the week of June 20 on streaming site YouTube. The video features cosplayers from this past May's Anime North convention in Toronto, who take turns beating Lee up. Here's the video:

This Shiek cosplayer took a "giant haymaker punch to the face" in the name of fandom

Lee told ANN that he took the camera (a Canon EOS Rebel T2i digital single-lens reflex (SLR) camera) to Anime North— his first anime convention —but didn't want to simply take photos, which he said felt boring, and instead decided to "bring these characters to life" in video form. "

Lee approached cosplayers, who he said were generally enthusiastic about participating, and choreographed short, simple stunts that could be shot in as few takes as possible so as not to take up too much time. He also decided that the stunts should involve himself taking hits, since he felt that cosplayers might not appreciate being punched at. (The one cosplayer who did take a punch, portraying The Legend of Zelda's Shiek, was a friend-of-a-friend who Lee called out as a good sport and "really gutsy.")

Dragon Ball's Great Saiyaman gives Lee a kick to the gut

After completing the filming at the con, Lee says he spent two weeks editing the project in Adobe Premiere and creating the special effects in Adobe After Effects. (Speaking of the effects, he apologizes to fans of the World of Warcraft massively multi-player game "for getting the color of 'Azzinoth's twin warglaives' wrong!")

When asked, Lee told ANN that he grew up with imported Japanese videogames like Dragon Ball without knowing what the shows were until later on. His favorite anime of all time are the Dragon Ball franchise ("minus GT") and Mobile Suit Gundam 0079-0087; more recent faves include Eden of the East and Naruto.