Anime Detour 2008
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Anime Boston 2007
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Otakon 2006
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Otakon 2005
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At which I learned small cons are WIN.
Friday, March 24
There were some hangups today because my mom's plans fell through and so she was stuck here with nothing to do. I dropped her off at the Mall of America before going to the con, but we got going late, so I missed the first hour, but there wasn't anything super important I wanted to see at that time, so that was okay.
There was a bit of a wait for registration pickup but all things considered it was pretty fast. They gave out numbers and then put you in a waiting room, and then they called your numbers to get in line. I didn't have to wait too long. They put my online name on my badge, whee! ^^ *basks in anonymity* Hee.
My first thoughts: "This is SO COOL." I seriously thought nothing but that for about ten minutes. It was just so awesome to be wandering around a packed anime con right here in my own state. The coolness of that was totally overwhelming for a while. After that, it was "I love anime fans!" and general glee at being there until I got my brain together and headed for some events.
The first programming thing I went to was Japanese Basics. It sounded good, but... well... it wasn't executed well at all, in my opinion. It was way too technical at the beginning. They showed all these charts of English vocal sounds first, and then the Japanese ones, which makes sense for in-depth classroom learning, but for a crash course like this...it was too much. It went on too long and there was no way anyone was going to remember that stuff. After that it was a lot of pronouncing English words using the Japanese sounds. Again, makes sense for class, but for this? Bad idea. It got better after that point, when we got into the alphabets and sentence structure and gestures, but unfortunately, they didn't have any handouts for us with the alphabets or whatever. The second half was interesting but I remember hardly anything from the whole panel. Kind of a wash.
After that, I stayed for "Buried Treasures," which was a bunch of unusual old anime the guy found at the bottom of his collection. The idea was, good stuff that you've probably never heard of. There were a couple of titles that caught my interest - "Cromartie High School," for humor, "Golgo 13," for action, and "Wings of Honneamise," for unusualness. The guy also brought up a couple of collections my dad happened to pick up recently, which was amusing. Oh. Never, ever, EVER watch "Apocalypse Zero." I'm not kidding. You will regret it. Seriously. The guy brought THAT one up for shock/horror/WTF value.
I changed my mind about going to the next event I had marked down and went to the dealer's room instead at that point. Oh. My. GOD. The dealer's room here totally kicks Otakon's ASS! It is AWESOME! At Otakon, everyone seemed to have the same stuff, and it was all from the new popular anime. Here, there's new stuff, old stuff, unusual stuff, you name it it's probably there. I even saw a set of those little Evangelion figures I always thought were cute, with Asuka in the fat insulated suit and Rei with a bow and arrow, but those were pretty expensive. I forgot how expensive dealer's room stuff gets. The prices are still insane. There are some good deals there, though. I got a little Alphonse Elric plushie (pity him, he'll probably be up against the chibisenshi eventually :3) and a FMA keychain and the next volume of Trigun I needed. Tomorrow I'm hopefully going to pick up a set of Totoro magnets I had my eye on, I ran out of cash today.
Know what? Hotel cons > Non-hotel cons. Really. Trust me on this. Small cons > Big cons too. If you have a local con in your area, GO TO IT. Do it. I really wish I had gone to this the last couple of years. Obviously, big cons just can't be hotel cons anymore, but a lot is sacrificed by making that move to a convention center. Small hotel cons contain the beauty that is the consuite. Free snacks, woohoo! They plastic-wrapped the floor in there. I'm amused. xD
Another plus of a hotel con - NO FOOD RESTRICTIONS. At Otakon they have no choice but to use Aramark, which charges an arm and a leg for pretty crappy food. Here, the dealer's room is STUFFED with Japanese snacks. Gummis and pocky of all kinds and all sorts of fun stuff. Plus, the hotel provided hot dogs and burgers and stuff for sale at less than half the prices at Otakon and it was all twice as good. Very awesome.
Even though I'm local I think I might stay in the hotel next year anyway, for convenience's sake and the fact that they are showing anime ALL NIGHT LONG. I had to throw in the towel and come home to sleep because I'm tired, but if I were staying there, I'm sure I could squeeze in a couple more hours of anime-watching before passing out. Plus, I could've volunteered to help out more easily, they were still looking for people.
So. Small hotel cons are love.
Anyway, moving on. Oh yeah, I also didn't go to another panel because my mom was supposed to be calling me and I didn't want my phone ringing in the middle of a panel. She still hadn't called, so I went and watched some random bits of "Chrono Crusade." It was actually pretty good, I was impressed.
I left the con for a while to drive my mom back to my apartment, and then got back in time for the opening ceremonies. I skipped them at Otakon, so this was a first. The head guy's pretty funny, so he made what could have been a boring deluge of information rather entertaining. There was some funky light-show stuff involved too, which made it worth the time, and the essential emphasis on the need for everyone to make use of the shower. xD
After that there was some downtime, so I got a chance to watch the first couple episodes of "I My Me! Strawberry Eggs," which I knew absolutely nothing about but had always wanted to see for some reason. It was hilarious. I think I need to get myself some of that. I had to sneak out early, though, because there was a big event I wanted to be sure to squeeze into so I went to the second half of the previous event in that room - "Cafe Risque." It was a collection of AMVs too R-rated to be in the previous contest. Some of them were pretty funny, but unfortunately I can't remember any of them at the moment, they were all flooded out of my brain by the following event. ^^;; I got my first look at Phade, though, the founder of AMV.org. Until Anime Detour came along I never knew he lived in my area.
The last event of the evening was the WTF Contest...which was a bit of a disappointment in some ways but awesome in others. To start off with, someone on staff tripped over some cords and broke the sound cables, so that took a while to sort out. -_-;; Then, people had been allowed to submit stuff until the moment the contest began, so the person running it wasn't nearly prepared to play them and some of them didn't work. -_-;;; After that, it was half great and half a letdown. The idea of the event itself was pretty sound; it's a contest to make the worst AMV possible...but I'm sure you can see the problem. There's bad bad, and then there's amusing bad. By having a competition for the worst AMV you end up with stuff like SD Naruto characters walking across the screen in a repeated pattern for the entirety of "Circles," and "Julia Dies," which was nothing but Cowboy Bebop Julia's last scene drawn out super slow to fit some opera aria. Extremely bad, yes, but not in the sense that made them anything worth watching for a room packed with people. Although, it was pretty funny how people were shouting out "Just shoot her!" by the end of "Julia Dies" from the agony. xD
The winner really should've been a DBZ video to Linkin Park's "In The End." That was the absolute model of everything that makes a bad AMV, and it was amusing to boot. I think it was called "AMV Torture," it may show up on AMV.org eventually. It was all Cartoon Network footage, low-quality, and it used absolutely every scene transition in the toolbox. Every single one. There was repeated footage, and random subtitles, and every crazy transition you can imagine. At the end, there was the same scene over and over and over with a subtitle-footnote basically saying "Now I'm being lazy and there's still a minute left in the song!" THAT was awesomely bad. It was great.
It lost, however, by a narrow margin to a video set to "Enormous Penis." That video was hilarious, but it wasn't BAD. That's what makes it kind of unfair. That video wasn't even half bad. It was very funny. Thanks to the amusement factor and the song, it got a bit of an unfair edge. I did, however, get the rare experience of being in a room filled with people chanting "PENIS!" for the first time since high school.
Did I mention I love anime fans? I love how random they are, and how outspoken they can be, and how they seem to have fun even when nothing fun is going on.
Not, however, at the dance, apparently. They seemed to have a sound problem when I peeked in, and there was only reeeeally quiet music and a bunch of people milling about not sure what to do with their glowsticks. No biggie, though, I've never liked dances much anyway.
Now it's off to bed to sleep up for tomorrow's adventure.
But first, let's play Name That Character!
This guy's afro looks really tacky, but that's because it contains compartments in which to store his gun and con booklet, among other things. The coolness of being able to pull random things out of the hair outweighs the tackiness in my opinion.
Great dress; I wish I'd gotten her from the other side so you could see the detail better.
This guy has the best sword and shield I've ever seen for this particular character. Unfortunately you can't see them in this photo. :\
Love the glasses!
These guys are just plain cool.
Ninja Pocky!
And some fanservice for any guys who may be reading.
Unfortunately I didn't manage to get a picture of a great Super Milk-Chan cosplayer I saw; maybe tomorrow.
Saturday, March 25
Today I learned if you see a cosplayer you want a picture of, get a picture of them right then and there, because there's a 90% certainty you will never see them again.
The start of the day was marred by the discovery that my Grumpy Bear antenna topper had been stolen off my car sometime this morning, even though I park in the "secure" underground garage of my apartment complex. This has nothing to do with the con, but there was a scary period of blinding rage. People suck.
I slept in a while because there was nothing I really didn't want to miss until 1:30, so I had a chance to have a real breakfast and take my mom to the bus station. Then it was back to the con, just in time to park and get a pretty good seat for the AMV contest. The contest was a bit of a disappointment, there were only a few entries that stood out, and 75% of the total entries were drama (only two comedy, snif), but that was somewhat expected at a small con like this.
Erhm. My video was in there. x_x Man, my heart has never pounded so much as it did when my video was on screen. It wasn't too squished, thank goodness, or I would've died of embarrassment. The crowd didn't really go for it, but it wasn't the worst one up there, and it's not the crowd-pleaser type of video, so I was fine with the response. Really, I entered this one just because it was all I had ready. ^^;; It was a good experience just to enter the contest. Besides, nobody in there knew it was me who made that video, so no biggie. Hee. :3
I really need a new video capture card. All the footage for "Angel" came from DVDs, but in comparison to some of the crystal-clear videos up there, it looked like I'd captured it off VHS tapes. Again, though, not the worst quality up there either, so I wasn't too bothered by it. Does anyone have any idea what products other folks use to capture their footage? A lot of the stuff I saw was crystal clear despite the enormous screen size.
Moving on, I slipped into the dealer's room and bought those Totoro magnets I mentioned yesterday, and checked out the artist's alley but it wasn't as populated as I'd hoped.
The next thing I went to was a "From Fanfic to Pro Writing" panel, which was interesting at the time, but now that I think back on it, it was kind of useless. Most of the panelists had never written fanfiction, so it was mostly focused on breaking into professional writing in general rather than making the transition from fanfic to pro (which is what I was hoping for). I asked the question of what changes fanfic writers would typically have to make to their writing styles to become the professional type - I've often wondered, despite the glowing reviews I get, if my style is only suited to fanfiction and wouldn't hack it in the novel world - but my question was used as a springboard to a pre-prepared list of hints for fanfic writers one of the panelists had prepared. The list was good stuff, but again it seemed to be mostly focused on generally breaking into the industry, and didn't really answer my question. Ah well. :\
That particular panelist, in fact, used to write Sailormoon fanfics. She's going to be at the fanfic panel tomorrow and I'm hoping to have a chance to speak to her afterward and find out if her fics are online anywhere where I could check them out.
When I got out of there I headed to a video room and finally got to see "This Is Otakudom." Pretty funny, although the sound was a bit quiet so I didn't quite hear the full script.
After that was the long slow half-disaster that was the Masquerade. I thought about skipping it, but I'd never seen one, so I figured, what the hell. Gotta see one sometime to know whether or not they're worth going to. When it comes to the Masquerade, an irritating trend began to surface - overcontrol. I know crowd control is necessary. I know people are unruly and need to be firmly kept in line on occasion at events such as this. In the case of this evening, however, I started to notice that the AD staff seems to be going a bit too far on occasion, at least in my opinion. The "From Fanfic..." panel was in the same room that was going to be used for the Masquerade, so the minute it ended, the staff was on us to clear out, first yelling from the back of the room and then marching up to shoo us out although people were trying to talk to the panelists a bit one-on-one. Kinda rude, but understandable; limited timetable and all.
Then there was this rule that the line to get in to view the contest was not allowed to start until twenty minutes before seating was scheduled to begin. This was pretty silly; yesterday there was a big lineup in advance for the opening ceremonies, and there was no harm done by that as far as I could tell. The hallways are small, yes, but there was still room for people to get by, and there was a fair lineup of first come, first served. With this no-lining-up thing, we then had staff members policing the hall in front of the Masquerade room yelling at everyone to keep moving so people wouldn't cloud around waiting for the line to be allowed. Makes sense, I guess, in light of the policy, but geez was that obnoxious and silly. It would've been better in my opinion to let people line up and use the staff to keep the line against the wall instead of yelling at people who just wanted to pause to take pictures, especially since stopping and standing around in that hallway had been common practice through the whole con.
I cheated and ducked into a video room to watch 10 minutes of Tenchi until the line was allowed to form. :3
It paid off. The hotel's in a circle, and the line soon stretched all the way around. I was close enough to the front that I was only about ten rows back once I got into the room, and on the end of a row. Not too bad.
Oh, another thing regarding the line. This was when I first started to take real notice of a particular member of the AD staff who became the Con Nazi according to my brain by the end of the night. It seems all she does is yell, and she carries around this stick or riding crop or something like she's going to hit anyone who doesn't do what she says. o_O This chick is scary. She was doing most of the "Keep moving!" yelling, and when people did start lining up, she yelled at anyone who strayed away from the wall or sat on the floor to wait. I understand the need to be firm with crowds, I really do, but there's a difference between being firm and being a slave driver. There is absolutely zero respect or courtesy in this woman's behavior when she's doing her thing. She issues orders and directs us like we're children, and I can't help but take some offense to that. When our eyes met at one point, she smiled, so I know there's a nice person in there, she's probably just trying to do what's necessary...but she's going about it the wrong way. (Note: I've since gotten to know this person, who apologized on the AD forums after the con and explained her behavior. She is indeed a nice person and the above issues have been cleared up.)
As are the staff as a whole, really, although to a much lesser extent. By the start of the Masquerade it felt like any little piece of fun was quickly stomped on in case it might get out of hand, and any time there was a slight gray area someone was barking orders; they have no trust at all in our ability to actually do something smart. I know large groups of people can be pretty stupid, but still, they aren't taking even the slightest little risk or giving us the slightest benefit of the doubt. It's rather annoying sometimes.
Anyway, the Masquerade. I was in a pretty good place, although the stage wasn't quite high enough, so it was a bit of a chore to see everything going on. Oh, one more thing regarding staff behavior (tangents whee! xD). Out in the line, the Con Nazi was ordering people sitting down to stand up, saying if there was a fire they'd get hurt...and then the con proceeded to create the world's biggest fire hazard once we all got into the room. There were so many people wanting to get in that they had us all squish the rows of chairs together toward the front of the room so they could set up more chairs in the back. What had been orderly rows then became a formless mass. We're lucky nothing bad happened.
The show began with a group of folks doing, according to some nearby people I overheard, something called "DDArms," basically coordinated arm movements to DDR music. (Note: I've since learned this was a Para Para performance.) It was a pretty cool dance number...at first. It went on. And on. And ON. I swear there were 20 songs strung together in the massive remix they danced to. A handful would've been great, it was fun to watch, but it just didn't end! By the time it was finished people were groaning every time a new song began. Impressive that they didn't get tired by then, but geez, 20 minutes of eight people waving their arms can only be entertaining for so long.
The costume contest didn't seem to be planned all that well; there was a lot of dead time, and issues with the lighting, and waiting for people to be ready and lights to come on got kind of tiring. The presentations were pretty cool, what I could see of them over people's heads...but I've learned that con Masquerades really aren't worth it. I like looking at people's costumes out around cons, but sitting through a lengthy show like that to see them on a stage isn't for me. So now I know. It was worth it enough to see what these events are like - so I know for sure I can skip them at bigger cons. xD At least there was the AMV halftime show while the judges chose the winners, with plenty of awesome comedy videos. That was fun.
When the show ended we got the added fun of having to stay in our seats while they dismissed us row by row, thanks to the "pull your chairs forward" chaos. x_x If they hadn't stopped people from lining up as early as they wanted, they could've just cut the line off when the room was full using the "first come first served" excuse. But no.
Enough whining... ^^;;
By the time I got out of there it was after 10 PM, but I didn't feel like going home yet, so I wandered around a bit, took some more pictures, and then watched the first couple episodes of "Revolutionary Girl Utena." I have all the manga, but I'd never seen any of the anime and I've always been curious. Man, is that anime ever on drugs. ^^;; Is it made by the same people who did the Sailormoon anime? I noticed a lot of similarities...lengthy repeated pre-battle scenes, for example. ^^;; And very distinctive hair colors. It was all right, but I think I prefer the manga. At least I got to experience some of the legendarily weird music firsthand. I never knew it was possible to learn the entire evolutionary history of the planet Earth during a fencing sequence. xD
Bedtime again! But first...
Time for another round of Name That Character!
Senshi Princesses! Saturn had her wig off, unfortunately... ^^;; And it was dark in there, so it's hard to see how accurate their dress colors really were. They had a few others in their bunch who aren't in the picture, too; it was a really nice-looking group.
And, some pics from the post-Masquerade photo shoot!
That blue thing behind these guys is a massive 3D prop on wheels.
Crossplaying is really big at this con. In addition to the below group, there was a big Fushigi Yuugi bunch with a male Miaka and a full set of female Seishi. xD
This group was great. Their Al is AMAZING. The suit is made out of some kind of foam rubber stuff, and it's accurate to the last detail. There's someone in there, but it takes three people to get him in and out of the suit and he can't really move around. Looks awesome as all hell, though. The Armstrong cosplayer was awesome, too. He had his coat on at the beginning of his group's skit, and all of a sudden he rips it open and he's got these huge cloth muscles underneath. That was great. xD He was spot-on with his poses, too.
Hello Kitty cosplaying as Sailor Moon! xD
Best of the Novice category.
Best In Show, for hopefully obvious reasons. If the awesomeness of this costume doesn't show through in the picture, trust me, the award was very deserved.
A thought...some people who won category awards also won Judge's Choice awards, but other than that, it was one award per group. The Best in Show, for example, didn't win any of the categories, which struck me as a little strange. Do all cons work like this? Wouldn't the Best in Show logically be one of the category winners as well? Even when it came to the performance awards from the skits, if anyone won something, they won only the one award. Nobody got both a performance award and a workmanship award, for example. Is that normal?
Sunday, March 26
Why is it that the first thing you always think about after a con is the following year's con?
I planned to head to the con relatively early today, but I was totally exhausted, so I slept a bit longer instead. As a result, no guest autographs for me. Oh well.
I picked up some breakfast and got to the con around 11 AM, in time for the fanfic panel. Now THAT was a GREAT panel. We mostly just sat around and talked about whatever topics came to mind. Everyone had a chance to say something about themselves and their own work, which was a refreshing change after Otakon's "workshop." The panel was a lot more about the fanfic scene in general and the attendees' work and preferences than the panelists' personal stuff. Such a relief. Yes, good fanfic panels can exist. And no, I'm not just saying that on the off-chance that one of the panelists will find this entry. :P
The panelist I mentioned yesterday was there. (Note: Anna Waltz, aka "Anna-chan.") People were slow coming in, so I had a chance to talk to her a bit before the panel began, and she was kind of amazed to talk to someone who was still writing Sailormoon. ^^;; We're an old fandom, I know, but there are still good writers who are active...so after the panel ended, I plugged sm_monthly, since she mentioned she's on LiveJournal, as a way to find many of the good writers I know who are still writing SM. She also mentioned that when she was in the fandom the Shitennou were her big area, so I recommended Starsea's "Exiles" to her as well. ^^
In addition, I pitched the idea of a fanfic contest to the panelists, and they seemed to take to the idea okay, so that's a possibility on the horizon. I'm hoping I'll be able to be involved personally in some capacity, were such a contest to happen. :3
After that, there was some dead time, and not much interesting anime showing either, so I bought a con T-shirt and then watched a couple episodes of "Saber Marionette J" even though I'd seen it before. Then it was time for another batch of AMVs. This time it was the AMV.org Viewer's Choice winners from the past several years, so they were all pretty awesome. Hot room, though. My pocky was melting. o.o
When that ended I attended the con post-mortem session, mainly to hear what everyone else thought. I did have a few comments and suggestions of my own, but there wasn't time for me to bring them up, so I wrote them down and plan to email them in later. From the sounds of things at that panel the con folks are still very open to additional helpers and even additional staff, so now I'm bound and determined to worm my way into the group. Bwahaha. I asked on the way out and the staff meetings are open to anyone who wants to join in, so I'll definitely be watching the website for meeting announcements and stopping by. I mean, how often do you have a chance to get in on an anime convention when it's still pretty close to the ground floor? It doesn't get much better than that. Being that I totally wimped out on trying to meet people, like I knew I would, getting involved in the actual planning and execution process is my next best shot. ^^
Finally, there were the closing ceremonies, wherein the AMV awards were announced and the con chairmanship changed hands. I didn't win, but no surprise there. :P On the way out, someone in the lobby was showing the AMV Hell videos on their PC, so I got to leave happily amused. xD
All in all, the con was a blast. There were snags, but there are always snags; on the whole it all went extremely well in my barely-experienced opinion. I only wish I'd started going to these two years ago.
No cosplay pictures today, I'm afraid. There weren't many people around in costume.
And that is that. Fun times, fun times...and hopefully there are lots more on the way, involving more hands-on involvement on my part. ^^
