Thursday, June 15, 2006

A-Kon 17 and it's Aftermath

David's A-Kon 17 Pics

Other A-Kon 17 Pics

Me As Shugo At A-Kon 17

You're thinking in Japanese! If you must think, do it in German!
- Asuka Langley Soryu (Neon Genesis Evangelion)

Greetings all! I hope you’re all having a great day! This past week has been FULL of interesting things. And, I mean packed. I wish I could have posted earlier and spread all of this out, but I just haven’t had time or have been too lazy or unmotivated. But, I know if I wait much longer I’ll end up writing a novel rather than a post, and nobody wants that. But, to accommodate for your time and to make it easier on you to read, I am dividing this post into sections. This way, you don’t have to read it all at once. Consider this to be four posts in one. So, without further ado, on with the post(s).

The Final Word On My Costume
Well, I know you’ve all been hanging in suspense since my post last week. It left some things unresolved as far as my costume goes. So, I’ll go ahead and fill you in on how that whole thing turned out. I did in fact manage to complete the costume. It was truly a work of time, stress, sweat, and divine intervention. I still can’t believe I actually got it complete. The gloves got here on time like I had expected they would. The trouble was the belt buckle. The belt buckle didn’t arrive until Saturday. That was a little too late. So, on Wednesday last week I went to the mall and bought (and paid way too much for) a belt buckle from one of those fashion belt buckle kiosks that have become popular as of late. The buckle I purchased was initially $25. Now, knowing these salespeople at the kiosks worked on commission, I thought I could talk this woman down. I was able to. I tried to get her to go down to $10, but she wouldn’t. She didn’t want to go below $20. Eventually, a middle ground was reached at $15. Now, this is still sinfully expensive for a friggin belt buckle I was going to be mutilating anyway, but when the fate of your entire costume, which you’ve been planning and working on since January, is hanging by a mere $15 expenditure, you pay it. So, I did. It hurt, I won’t lie, but in the end it was worth it. I spent all week since Monday sewing and finishing it all up. Surprisingly, I had a lot of trouble with Shugo’s white neck warmer. I couldn’t get it quite right. My dad, being very helpful, was the one stuck in front of the sewing machine only he knows how to use cranking out these attempts at the neck warmer. Not a one of them worked like I wanted them to. I ended using one of them, but that was only to use as a stable object in which to stuff the white strip of cloth that became the neck warmer. It was very stressful. By the end of it I think both of my parents were ready to throw this entire project into the fire and sit back while the thing burned. Fortunately, the restrained themselves and the costume came out wonderfully. Still not perfect, but very good. I am satisfied. This brings me to my next topic…

A-KON!!!
A-Kon was this past weekend! YATTA! It was such a blast! I loved every minute of it, I did. It beat out last year’s by a ton I think. In some areas it was lacking, like in the video room department. The anime selections weren’t all that diverse and nothing incredibly new or unique was shown. I did watch the first two episodes of Eureka 7 before I had to go out and wait for David at our prearranged meeting place. The man doesn’t have a cell phone, so if he was for some reason to get lost in downtown Dallas there was no way for him to call me and ask for help or inform me that he was running behind. So, I went through a lot of effort coming up with the best route for the man to use to get into downtown without complication. After all that, the man still manages to get lost because he DIDN’T FOLLOW THE DIRECTIONS! I stood outside in our prearranged meeting spot for an hour waiting on the man. Its not all that cool inside my three-layer costume. With the high for the day being a whopping 95 degrees in Dallas, this hour was not very fun. Shame on you, David. Learn to follow directions. ^_^

Anyway the rest of the weekend went phenomenally. I got plenty of pictures taken of me. I can tell you that was very good compensation for the amount of effort I put into that costume. There were also plenty of pictures taken of other costumes as well. David brought the camera, so I didn’t have much of a say as to who got a picture taken of them and who didn’t, but he did a great job. A few of these pictures are at the bottom of this post, as well as a few select pictures I have taken from the A-Kon gallery pages (click on the link to go and visit). The highlight of the weekend was definitely the concert on Friday night. My group missed most of the first concert performed by Kristine Sa because we were stuck in a Chinese restaurant waiting on our food, but the second concert was not to be missed. KOTOKO was INCREDIBLE!!! It was the most fun I have had at a concert in ages, if not ever. She is so good! I loved her music and went and bought her CD on Saturday. (It’s been in my car CD player ever since). I didn’t stop moving the entire concert. I’m not sure, but I think I might have been the only person jumping, but I don’t care. I couldn’t help myself. She was just too good. The other Japanese musical guest attraction, performing on Saturday night, was not nearly as good as KOTOKO was, although they were the more anticipated. Penicillin Nano is what the group was called. They are a small offshoot of the popular J-pop group Penicillin. I don’t consider them J-pop though. They are more rock then pop. Not really my taste. I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy their concert, I did enjoy it, but it was certainly not worth the 4-hour wait and the hearing loss. I still don’t think my ears have returned to normal after that thing.

Sunday was shopping day at the Kon. I spent three non-consecutive hours in the dealers’ room milling about and drooling. So much stuff to buy, so little money! I eventually did come out with two things. One, was purchase by David. He insisted on buying something for me, saying “I never bought you a birthday present”. I don’t know why he felt so inclined, but I think him for it. He bought me Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi. Awesome series. Hilarious. I also spent about an hour in the dealers’ room contemplating the purchase of a men’s kimono. I’ve wanted one for a while and figured A-Kon would be the place to buy one. And it is. There were plenty of clothing dealers there from whom to buy. I ended buying one. One large issue though. I didn’t know anything about men’s kimonos before I purchased one. They are supposed to go all the way to your ankles and wrap about around what appears to be about a quarter of your body while still being comfortable to move around in. The one I bought did not do this. But, I didn’t think I was buying a kimono anyway. I wasn’t sure what I was buying, but in the “heat” of the moment, I went ahead and cracked. I bought it. Well, it is in fact a men’s kimono, not something else. It only goes about as far down as the top of my calf and does not wrap around my body. Clearly it was made for a much smaller man than I, or a child. Thankfully, my card was declined (how often are you going to hear that huh?). The women I bought it from called me today asking if I would figure out some other means of paying them or fixing it with the credit card company. I’m not going to fix anything. I’m going to mail the thing back to them and seriously look into buying a kimono elsewhere, now that I have actually put forth the effort of researching the garment.

So that was A-Kon. It was a great weekend. I can’t believe it’s over. It doesn’t feel like it should be. Too short. It always is. If you want to read about how someone outside the anime circles would think of A-Kon, check out the Dallas Morning News article about the convention. Also, check out my picture galleries at the top of this blog and the galleries posted by other conventioneers at the A-Kon galleries page.

Withdrawal
You know that feeling you get when you get back home after an extremely fun and relaxing vacation and are thrown back into reality? This is what I’m going through, right now, only different. When you go on a vacation, you leave your own home and your own culture and visit a new one. You go to a place you are unfamiliar with and where you don’t belong and you explore. Then you come back and return to normality. It’s the opposite with A-Kon and all conventions in general. I don’t really belong in reality as we know it. I don’t think I really fit in. In fact, I know I don’t fit in. I’ve always been the outcast, the one people made fun of, and the dork. It’s only at A-Kon and other conventions where I am no longer the outcast. I can actually about my interests with people at the conventions and they won’t think I’m weird for it, because they are the same as me. It’s a wonderful feeling and I slightly envy all who are able to do this in American culture. So, coming back from a con is like leaving my home and going to the unfamiliar land where people look at you funny because you aren’t a native. It’s difficult to return to an environment like this. When I’m at school it’s not so bad because I have friends there who are like me. But at home, even though I have a couple of friends. It’s not the same because I rarely see them. I’m mostly stuck in this reality by myself. It’s especially hard at work. I go to work and I sit in front of a computer doing data entry. I sit there for 8+ hours a day and have all the time in the world to think. It’s boring as hell. I don’t even have anybody to talk to when I’m on breaks. And work was already hell before you factor in the social aspect. It’s exactly what I have feared my life would be like ever since I first started thinking about what I wanted to do with my life. I made a specific goal NOT to get stuck in a job I hated where all I did was watch the seconds tick by slower and slower until they finally hit 5:00. That’s all I live for now, the magical strike of clock at 5:00. I have nothing to occupy my time with when I get home either. Before the con I had my costume to work on, which occupied most of my free time outside of work. I also had my class. But, now the costume is finished and my class has been over for more than a week and I’ve got nothing to look forward to. Nothing to get me through the day. I started thinking today about why it is that I look forward to 5:00. What is it that keeps me going. And when I couldn’t formulate an answer, I almost cried. What is it that I am doing with my life? What keeps me going? These are the thoughts that race through my mind. It happened to me last year after A-Kon as well. In fact, it was worse last year. Last year I actually did cry as I stood over my copy machine shoving countless numbers of documents through the scanner. Last year I pulled out of it though. And, I’ll do the same this year as well. I guess it’s the price I have to pay for having such a good time (as if the $80 room fee and $25 admission wasn’t enough ^_^).

Conclusion
Well, that’s what’s been going on for the past week since my last post. A lot, eh? I think so. I apologize for the length of this post. I’ll be very surprised if anyone actually reads this thing all the way through. If you do, I congratulate you. If I was you I don’t know if I could have done it. Heh heh! I won’t do another one this long ever, I hope. This one just had to be this long. One topic just sort of flowed into the other. I couldn’t really break it off at any particular point or it would have been incomplete, you see? Again, congratulations to all who successfully completed this post. The pictures David took from the convention are in the link up at the top of this post. I hope you all have a great day and I look forward to visiting your sites as soon as I can. Sayonara!

Caesar1280's Anime Ticker

.hack//Legend of the Twilight, Air, Air: The Movie, Akira, The Animatrix, Appleseed, Aquatic Language, Ayakashi: Japanese Classic Horror, Beck, Black Lagoon, Blame!, Blood the Last Vampire, Bokurano, Burst Angel, Castle in the Sky, Cowboy Bebop, Cowboy Bebop: The Movie, Digimon Tamers: The Runaway Digimon Express, Egao, FLCL, Fullmetal Alchemist, Fullmetal Alchemist: The Conqueror of Shambala, Gankutsuou, Gatekeepers, Genshiken, Ghost in the Shell, Ghost in the Shell: Innocence, Ghost in the Shell: Solid State Society, Gin-iro no Kami no Agito, Grave of the Fireflies, Grenadier, Haibane Renmei, Hellsing, Highlander: The Search for Vengeance, Hikaru no Go, Howl?s Moving Castle, Jin Roh: The Wolf Brigade, Jyu Oh Sei, Karas: The Prophecy, Last Exile, Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi, Midori?s Days, Milennium Actress, Mushi-shi, My Neighbor Totoro, Naruto, Naruto: The Movie, Nausicaa, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Neon Genesis Evangelion: Death And Rebirth, Ninja Scroll: The Movie, Other Worlds, Paprika, Perfect Blue, Pet Shop of Horrors, The Place Promised In Our Early Days, Prétear, Princess Mononoke, Read Or Die, Read Or Die: The TV, Samurai Champloo, Samurai Seven, Samurai X: Trust & Betrayal, She and Her Cat, Spirited Away, Steamboy, Tide-Line Blue, Tokyo Babylon, Tokyo Godfathers, Trigun, Voices of a Distant Star, Witch Hunter Robin, Wonderful Days, Wrath of the Ninja, X

Anime I've Seen - .hack//Legend of the Twilight - .hack//Sign - 5 Centimeters per Second - Air - Air: The Movie - Akira - The Animatrix - Appleseed - Aquatic Language - Ayakashi: Japanese Classic Horror - Baby Blue - Beck - Black Lagoon - Blame! - Blood the Last Vampire - Bokurano - Burst Angel - Castle in the Sky - Cowboy Bebop - Cowboy Bebop: The Movie - Digimon Tamers: The Runaway Digimon Express - Doorbell - Egao - FLCL - Fullmetal Alchemist - Fullmetal Alchemist: The Conqueror of Shambala - Gankutsuou - Gatekeepers - Genius Party - Genshiken - Genshiken OAV - Ghost in the Shell - Ghost in the Shell: Innocence - Ghost in the Shell: Solid State Society - Gin-iro no Kami no Agito - The Gokusen - Grave of the Fireflies - Grenadier - Haibane Renmei - Happy Machine - Hellsing - Highlander: The Search for Vengeance - Hikaru no Go - Howl's Moving Castle - Innocent Venus - Jin Roh: The Wolf Brigade - Jyu Oh Sei - Karas: The Prophecy - Karas: The Revelation - Last Exile - Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi - Midori?s Days - Milennium Actress - Mushi-shi - My Neighbor Totoro - Naruto - Naruto: The Movie - Nausicaa - Neon Genesis Evangelion - Neon Genesis Evangelion: Death And Rebirth - Ninja Scroll: The Movie - Other Worlds - Ouran High School Host Club - Paprika - Perfect Blue - Pet Shop of Horrors - The Place Promised In Our Early Days - Prétear - Princess Mononoke - Read Or Die - Read Or Die: The TV - Samurai Champloo - Samurai Seven - Samurai X: Trust & Betrayal - Serial Experiments Lain - Shanghai Dragon - She and Her Cat - Spirited Away - Steamboy - Tekkonkinkreet - Tide-Line Blue - Tokyo Babylon - Tokyo Godfathers - Trigun - Trinity Blood - Vampire Hunter D - Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust - Voices of a Distant Star - Witch Hunter Robin - Wolf's Rain - Wonderful Days - Wrath of the Ninja - X Total: 93

Anime I Haven't Completed - .hack//Roots - Ah! My Goddess - Angelic Layer - Avenger - Baccano! - Bamboo Blade - Basilisk - Binchou-tan - Black Cat - Bleach - Blood+ - Boogiepop Phantom - Case Closed - Le Chevalier d'Eon - Chobits - Chrono Crusade - Code Geass - Coyote Ragtime Show - D.Gray-Man - D.N.Angel - DearS - Death Note - Dennou Coil - Desert Punk - Digimon - Dragon Ball Z - Ergo Proxy - Eureka Seven - Excel Saga - Fighting Beauty Wulong - Final Fantasy Unlimited - Flag - Freedom - Full Moon - Gantz - Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex - Gintama - Glass Fleet - Great Teacher Onizuka - Gundam Seed - Gundam Wing - Hayate the Combat Butler - Hellsing OVA - Higurashi no Naku Koro ni - Ikki Tousen - InuYasha - Jigoku Shojo - Kage Kara Mamoru - Karin - Kino's Journey - Love Hina - Loveless - Lovely Complex - Lucky Star - Makai Senki Disgaea - Marchen Awakens Romance - Meine Liebe - The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya - Mononoke - Monster - Moon Phase - Mr Stain on Junk Alley - Naruto Shippuuden - Negima?! - Negima! - Neon Genesis Evangelion: End of Evangelion - Nerima Daikon Brothers - NHK ni Youkoso - Night Walker - Ninja Nonsense - Noir - Peacemaker Kurogane - Pokemon - Prince of Tennis - R.G. Veda - Ragnarok - Rec - Red Garden - Robotech - Romeo x Juliet - Rosen Maiden - Rurouni Kenshin - Saikano - Sailor Moon - Samurai Deeper Kyo - Sci-fi Harry - School Rumble - Scrapped Princess - Shin-chan - Shingu - Shion no Oh - Shuffle! - Shrine of the Morning Mist - So Long, Mr. Despair - Solty Rei - Sousei no Aquarion - Speed Grapher - Spice and Wolf - Super Milk Chan - Tales of Phantasia - Tenchi Muyo - Tenjhou Tenge - Texnolyze - The Third - Tsubasa Chronicles - Urusei Yatsura - Venus Versus Virus - Welcome to the N.H.K. - Winter Cicada - X-1999 - Xenosaga - XxxHolic - Yu Yu Hakushou - Yume Tsukai - Zero no Tsukaima - Zipang Total: 116

Manga I've Completed - Cowboy Bebop - FLCL - Manga Messiah - Manga Metamorphosis - Q*Ko-chan - Saiyuki - Shirahime-Syo Total: 7 Manga I Haven't Completed - .hack//Legend of the Twilight - Black Cat - Blame! - Chobits - D.Gray-man - Darkside Blues - Death Note - The Demon Ororon - Desert Coral - Disgaea - Eureka Seven: Gravity Boys and Lifting Girl - Fruits Basket - Getbackers - Hayate the Combat Butler - Kamunagara - Legal Drug - Love Hina - Loveless - Megatokyo - Naruto - Negima - Read Or Die - Rurouni Kenshin - Tactics - Trigun Maximum - XXXHolic Total: 26

Anime I'm Currently Watching
Samurai 7, InuYasha, Samurai Deeper Kyo,
Boogiepop Phantom, and Shrine of the Morning Mist

Manga I'm Currently Reading
Read Or Die, Hayate the Combat Butler, and Megatokyo.hack//Roots, .hack//Sign, 5 cm per Second, Ah! My Goddess, Angelic Layer, Avenger, Basilisk, Binchou-tan, Black Cat, Bleach, Blood+, Boogiepop Phantom, Case Closed, Le Chevalier d'Eon, Chobits, Chrono Crusade, Coyote Ragtime Show, D.Gray-Man, D.N.Angel, DearS, Death Note, Dennou Coil, Desert Punk, Digimon, Dragon Ball Z, Ergo Proxy, Eureka 7, Excel Saga, Fighting Beauty Wulong, Final Fantasy Unlimited, Flag, Full Moon, Gantz, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Gintama, Great Teacher Onizuka, Gundam Seed, Gundam Wing, Hayate the Combat Butler, Hellsing Ultimate, Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, Innocent Venus, InuYasha, Jigoku Shojo, Kage Kara Mamoru, Karin, Kino?s Journey, Love Hina, Loveless, Lovely Complex, Lucky Star, Makai Senki Disgaea, Marchen Awakens Romance, Meine Liebe, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Mononoke, Monster, Naruto Shippuuden, Negima?!, Neon Genesis Evangelion: End of Evangelion, Nerima Daikon Brothers, NHK ni Youkoso, Night Walker, Ninja Nonsense, Noir, Ouran High School Host Club, Peacemaker Kurogane, Pokemon, Prince of Tennis, R.G. Veda, Ragnarok, Rec, Red Garden, Robotech, Romeo x Juliet, Rosen Maiden, Rurouni Kenshin, Saikano, Sailor Moon, Samurai Deeper Kyo, Sci-fi Harry, School Rumble, Scrapped Princess, Serial Experiments Lain, Shingu, Shuffle!, Shrine of the Morning Mist, So Long Mr. Despair, Solty Rei, Sousei no Aquarion, Speed Grapher, Super Milk Chan, Tales of Phantasia, Tenchi Muyo, Tenjhou Tenge, Texnolyze, The Third. Trinity Blood, Tsubasa Chronicles, Urusei Yatsura, Welcome to the N.H.K., Winter Cicada, X-1999, Xenosaga, XxxHolic, Yu Yu Hakushou, Yume Tsukai, Zero no Tsukaima, Zipang

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