Wednesday, May 16, 2007

ACen Con Report Part 2
Saturday
Exhibition Hall:
I arrived around 10:30AM. The BJD meet didn't start until 12:00, so I decided to head over to the Dealer's Room, not really with the intention of buying much (BJD hobby = only $20 leftover for convention stuff), but rather just to wander and blow off time. I ended up running into a lot of classmates here, but that was the last time. I only saw a few of them again afterwards.

I was surprised to see that the House of Anime booth is almost entirely J-Rock now. Most of their merchandise are of visual kei bands that I'm not terribly interested in, but I found another J-Rock filled booth and made the first of two purchases, a photo of Hyde (L'Arc~en~Ciel) back when he looked like a Hispanic girl. :D

BJD Meet:
Admittedly, I had forgotten where this meet was supposed to take place, mainly because I was so worried over the JE meetup taking place later in the day that I neglected preparing for this one. During the half hour before the meetup started, I mainly just ran around the Artist Alley (where a lot of BJD owners had booths) and the main lobby of the hotel, approaching random BJD owners and asking if they knew where the meetup was taking place. NO ONE DID.

Finally, close to the starting time, I ran into one owner in the lower level of the hotel who said to check the main entrance of the hotel. No one else was there when I arrived, but after a few minutes, a small group had formed. The meetup had a very rocky start; a lot of people were upset that there was a lower turnout than expected, mostly because of the confusion as to where/when the thing was taking place. I actually ended up avoiding one particular owner, as she's known for being generally snarky and she was already in a bad mood. XD;;


But otherwise, I enjoyed talking to the other owners and seeing all of the dolls. The above pics are a handful of the ones I took. As a note, the Naruto and Gaara dollies shown in the pics above are likely smaller than the palm of your hand. ^^

myO Meetup:
I had thought the meeting started at 1:00 instead of 2:00. So I basically spent this hour waiting, then finding a working payphone, calling Katana, and wandering around until 2:00. I waited again at the front of a coffee bar near the main entrance of the hotel.

Now this is where I had a THANK GOD FOR REMY moment. A couple BJD owners, who were not present at the meetup, stepped into the coffee bar to buy some drinks. One of them saw Remy and started a conversation with me about BJDs while she and her friend ate lunch. After about fifteen minutes of this, I started to get worried that no one from myO had shown up yet. Luckily these girls had cellphones, as I probably would have never met with the myO group if I did everything through payphones.

Katana missed the first call I made, but she called back and left a message on the other BJD owner's phone. (Good lord, I forgot her name. *facepalm*) Funny thing is, she had no clue who Katana was, so she found the message baffling when she listened to it. The convo went something like:

Her: Hey, I just got this strange message. *plays it outloud for us to hear*
Katana: *talk talk talk talk talk Bell talk*
Her: I have NO idea who that is!
Me: ....I think that's for me. XD

I eventually managed to contact Katana, and Shinkiro, Schultzie, Waffles, and her came over from the Dealer's Room to the coffee bar. The other BJD owners left when the myO people arrived, and all of us sat in a circle off to the side and talked.

Big, mindblowing truth revealed here: Bell is quiet! Or at least I'm quiet in comparison to everyone else on myO. :3

So yeah, I don't really remember what all of us were talking about, but I DO remember Katana and Waffles eating my Koala Yummies, the whole group looking/WTFing at passing cosplayers, me forcing DBSK music on Shin, and when 4:00 rolled around, we all got up to find Shinkiro's lost coat and a schedule.

While Katana and Waffles were at the bathroom, a classmate of mine appeared from out of nowhere with a few friends of hers in tow. So I ended up pretty much ditching the myO people for my classmate. (Sorry about that, guys. XD) The group of us talked for a little while, but they eventually decided that they weren't interested in going to the Masquerade, so I headed off to the line alone.

Masquerade:
Another lucky moment here: there was a ticketing process for the Masquerade, but by the time I arrived, all the tickets were gone. The attendant stated that there were more tickets coming in, but he had no idea when. So I stood there for a while, panicked because I've NEVER missed an ACen Masquerade before and it would feel like breaking some sort of tradition if I ever did.

But the attendant I had talked to just a couple minutes earlier suddenly pointed to someone behind me and said, "You might be able to get a ticket from him." So I turned and saw a man giving out a handful of tickets to a crowd of outstretched hands. Naturally, I THREW myself at the man and managed to grab one.

The Masquerade started at 6:00, an hour later than scheduled, but I didn't reallly mind the wait since the Masquerade this year was incredible. The costumes were so good that I was even entertained by the walk-ons alone, and that rarely happens. One of the costumes I remember best was a Speed Racer cosplay, in which they crafted a car that had actual, albeit limited mobility.

[WARNING: Fangirl moment ahead]

Another favorite, although for very different reasons, was a young Asian man cosplaying as DMC Dante. He was with a group of other video game cosplayers, but I point out Dante because....

HE HAD ABS YOU GUYS. ABS. THE CAMERA FOCUSED ON THEM WHEN HE WAS BACKSTAGE AND HE NOTICED AND STUCK HIS TONGUE OUT AT THE CAMERA IN RESPONSE. (AND I CHEERED FOR HIM.) IT WAS SO HOT ASAFDLKF;DS@21!! Even the girls next to me were OMGing over him, and they were pretty damn critical throughout the whole thing. What sucked is that I remember seeing that very same Dante sprawled out on a couch while running around looking for the BJD meetup, but I didn't bother taking a picture because I was in a hurry. Damn do I feel stupid now.

[/fangirl moment]

The skits were, for the most part, also very entertaining and impressive. My favorite was a crack!Princess Tutu skit that was actually rather suggestive, so I'll refrain from quoting any lines here. XD

The Masquerade ended with a real-life proposal from the cosplayer to a member of the ACen staff. Everyone say it with me now, "Awwww."

JE Meetup:
The Masquerade ended at 8:00, right when the JE meetup was planned to start. Ironically, this was the meetup I was the least prepared for/most worried about, but had the least trouble finding. I basically just caught sight of a group of girls in the corner of the conference area, and when I realized they were listening to NEWS's Sayaendou, I knew I was at the right place. The meetup started with brief introductions from everyone, and I found out I was the newbie of the group! Some of the other girls have been fans of JE for years. ^^;

An Arashi fangirl, who for various reasons I will refer to as Sasuke, arrived shortly after I did and sat next to me. At first, I was more intent on talking to the kanjani/NEWS fans than I was on talking to Sasuke, until she opened her laptop. That's when I saw that right next to her mousepad was...

A DBSK STICKER!! OMG DONG BANG SHIN KI FANGIRL. Naturally, I clung to her. For the first hour of the meet, we mainly watched kanjani/Arashi PVs and other JE-related videos. Sasuke showed me some videos of Ohno, her favorite member of Arashi, including a video in which he demonstrated his excellent grasp on the Engrish language. I found out that Sasuke is also a BJD owner (she currently owns two, one having just arrived a couple days ago), and is fond of my awesome Japanese double-flavored lollipops. After the first hour of the meet, Sasuke had to leave to pack, but we exchanged LJ info before she left. :D

So for the last hour of the meet, I watched NEWS and KAT-TUN vids with the remaining girls. We mostly talked about Akanishi Jin, who I love, but who the other girls think is an arrogant h0r. A funny arrogant h0r though, since we spent a large portion of the time watching Jingrish vids.

When the meetup ended, it was almost 10:00, so I called my sister to pick me up from the hotel. In the middle of the meet, someone passed around a notebook asking for our LJ usernames and other contact info, so I've been in contact with a few of them since the con. :)

[to be continued in the next post]

*Note: Profile song change. Guess who!
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