Tuesday, May 15, 2007

ACen Con Report Part 1
Thursday
Registration line:
Thursday morning before school, I made the last-minute decision to head off to the Hyatt after school for early registration. This was mainly because if I registered Friday, I would end up possibly missing both the Spiral Spiders and High and Mighty Color concerts, and attending the Saturday concerts wasn't an option if I didn't want to miss a couple meetups.

The pre-reg line took almost three hours to get through. I kid you not. None of my friends came with me since most were only going on Saturday, and I didn't bring anything to read, play, or eat, so I just stood there and acted somewhat pissy all throughout.

That is, until I finally started talking to the girl in front of me. The conversation flowed fairly smoothly, which was surprising considering that it took over two hours for us to start talking to each other. We mainly talked about con and school-related stuff. (She recognized the school I go to.) She mentioned her plans to attend one of the High and Mighty Color concerts and hoped we'd see each other there. But once I got out of registration, I never met with her again.

I suppose I find this encounter important to mention as ACen 2007 was the first convention in which I spent most of my time hanging out with total strangers, despite many people I personally knew already attending the con. In a way, this was a fitting prelude of sorts to the rest of the weekend.

[/dramatic intro]

Friday
Spiral Spiders:
I arrived a little after 5:00PM. The Spiral Spiders concert started in less than half and hour, so I immediately ran over to main programming. ACen hadn't posted the concert regulations prior to the start of the convention, so I was worried that there would be some ridiculous ticketing process that would keep me from attending. Thankfully, for the first time EVER for a convention concert, the ticketing process was very simple and painless. I basically just had to walk towards a desk ten feet away, grab a ticket, then head back to main programming.

The Spiral Spiders concert was a lot more fun than I had expected it to be. The vocalist was VERY energetic and prone to running around, behind, and through the mosh pit. He was very ninja; one moment he was onstage and the next he was crawling on some chairs from across the room. And his Engrish was cute. :3

High and Mighty Color:
There was a twenty minute wait inbetween the Spiral Spiders and H&MC concerts (I just stood/sat in the mosh pit during the wait). My feet were already hurting like hell at this point--I jump far too much than I should sometimes!

When the H&MC concert began, I first noticed two things:

1) The mosh pit grew almost twice as large
2) The audience was also almost twice as loud and crazy

I actually only recognized a few of the songs played, but it was still exciting regardless. I was fairly close to the stage (at the very least, close enough so that Maakii might have been able to see me if I jumped), although this was primarily because the crowd had grown very very tight. Admittedly, I ended up accidently hitting a few people who were within my fistpumping space. XD

It wasn't until near the end of the concert that I noticed one very important thing: the drummer of H&MC is adorable. He hardly ever sticks out much in pictures of the group, but MY GOD, in person. IN PERSON. At the end of the encore, I was THIS close to catching one of his drumsticks, but a guy two feet away got it instead. Lucky bastard. Although something almost as good happened on Sunday...

Panel hopping:
After the concert, I slumped onto a nearby couch and looked through my programming schedule. I had another stupid moment here: for whatever reason, I had accidently left most of my Friday schedule at home. So I just ended up going to an RPG discussion panel I saw listed on the part of the schedule I did have. Admittedly, it wasn't terribly interesting to me; I really just wanted a place to relax my feet.

At around 8:30, the guy sitting next to me took out his full programming schedule, and I asked to look at it out of curiosity. And there I realized that a Gankutsuou lecture panel was going on at that very moment.

OMG.

So I immediately left in search for it, but got lost multiple times because who the hell is supposed to know where "Da Vinci AB" is? I ended up only being able to see the last 15 minutes of the panel, but what an informative 15 minutes it was. The tidbits I found most interesting were in relation to the many hilariously bad spin-off TV series based off of The Count of Monte Cristo, including one where the Count and Haydee travel to Texas to do good deeds. Texas, you guys.

The panel ended a little after nine, and I decided to call it a night and took the train home.

[to be continued in the next post]
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