Tuesday, July 6, 2004

Tales from the crypt.. Of cult subculture.
Yes, I am back from Anime Expo, which was the time of my life.

I woke up around eight or so on Sunday, shaking out of excitement (which lead to hitting my head, but whatever). My brother woke up when I poked him with a stick, and my mom was already up drinking her coffee. My dad needed some coaxing, but he got up easily enough.

We got out of the house easily enough- I still had to get my stuff together, which really didn't take long, and I had to decide between my .hack//Quarantine shirt and my Super Mario Bros. Poison Mushroom (Game Over) shirt.

The drive down was surprisingly easy. We must hit the freeway between really early traffic, and the noon traffic.

Apparently, my dad couldn't get the time off for the con, so he was coming down to Anaheim between shifts (They have rather long shifts down there), and God knows why he bought a pass for the exhibit hall and panels. It was a waste of money. We went down in two cars so his back-and-forthness, and I ended up in the van with my mom. I basically ranted on and on about stuff like Resident Evil 4, Tsukhime and, of course, Anime Expo, but it felt good to talk.

The only thing that seemed to be against me in being on-time was checking in to the hotel. My parents decided to go check in, give them our baggage, and otherwise seem to stall for a good amount of time.

Perhaps I was just over-excited, but it seemed to take forever.

I finally convinced my parents that registration was in one of the halls- not the Hilton like last year. We spent maybe five minutes in line, and a little under ten actually registering. Last year I had a Hamtaro ID because I was under thirteen, but this year I got two stylish new cards- a Cheeky Angel (I read a bit of it- guy gets turned into a girl, wasn't that bad), one for Sunday, and a Bleach (new Shonen Jump manga) one for Monday.

It was a great improvement above the abomination that is Hamtaro.

I was hardly out of the little area where they give you the ID holders when Karmi walked by. We paused for a second, she recognized my shirt, and greetings were exchanged. My family gave the okay, and we ran off to find Shin and Kat.

We stayed by the meeting place for a while, just talking about AX so far among other things. After a short while we both got bored, and decided to search for them. As we made our way down the convention center lobby, we saw many cosplayers, many geeks (I take pride in knowing that I am not a true geek, compared to them), and many Kuronekosama backpacks, hats and plushies. Shin was sitting with his sister by the bathrooms where the Naruto guy flipped me off last year, and Kat joined us a few minutes ago.

Let's just say my Mr. Sparkle Shirt was a godsend.

We made our way into the exhibit hall, which I like to call the "free stuff room," and made our rounds. Karmi, Kat and Kat's friend were mostly talking and shopping around, while Shin and I mostly stayed quiet and followed them, while taking more pictures of weird sights than ourselves.

There are a truckload of crazy people that turn out for Anime Expo, and we got caught in the way of a lot of them.

Sight A: Crazy Yaoi heckler. There was a booth that had lots of doujinshi, most of which I didn't touch because you needed ID (They had the FLCL doujin I've been searching for- turns out it's 18+). There was a guy standing on top of the booth's table with a paddle that said "Yaoi" on it, yelling at passersby to purchase some Yaoi doujin. He yelled "Hey, you! You need some hot guy-on-guy action!" at Shin and me, and we just ran.

Hugging Cat Guy. One of the people that you would have expected to grow up by now, but seems to have no sign of maturity whatsoever. He had a sign that said "Pet me, I'm a cat" or something along those lines, ran up to us, meowed, and ran off. This happened to us two or three times, actually, and each time the cat freak eluded Karmi and her desire to hug.

Man-Faye! Yes, Man-Faye seems to reproduce by mitosis. There's at least one at every convention- a fat 35-year-old dude in yellow hot pants and a very skimpy top. This year they had to take him away for indecent exposure (Saturday.. I didn't see it), but he was back on Sunday. Karmi got a picture with him, which I had the displeasure of taking.

Other cosplayers in drag. God, they're everywhere.. There was even one Chii whose gender seems to be unknown. If it's the same one that I saw in line for an anime showing later in the day, it's a she, but the pictures make her (it?) seem very.. Masculine.

Random fanboys who think looking at slightly outdated video programming schedules is a horrible thing to do. God, I didn't think there were this many of them. There's one that won't leave me alone at school, but there were hordes of them here, ranting on and on about their gripes with minor errors in everything. It got me angry.

A real life Emilio! Yes, we found a real Emilio, playing DDR and everything. ...Not much else to say about it.

We sat down for a bit, went through our already-acquired goodies, which I found to be pretty scarce in comparison to last year. They gave us free stuff just for watching previews at Bandai last year, but the only way I got a shirt this year was through my mother, who happened to catch a couple shirts that the ADV people were chucking at their crowd of worshippers. The thought of Dippin' Dots around the corner was alluring, though, so we got up, ate some, and went on our merry way.

We then had to temporarily split, due to conflicting schedules. Karmi went off to do a panel with Crispin Freeman, a rather prestigious voice actor, and the rest of us went to the Marriott to watch some anime. Shingetsutan Tsukhime was the main reason we were there, but we had some time to spare, which we blew on an anime called Stratos 4. It was so-so, really. Parts of it were interesting, but the characters seemed rather shallow. In the end, it seemed like dumbed-down Evangelion with a crappy opening theme and bolder, more gratuitous fanservice. They sat in the cockpits laying down, with their asses in the air. Watching anime like these really makes me wonder how short most Japanese school uniform skirts really are.

They then showed this weird little animated short about these little.. Goddesses, or something, that sort of resmbled characters from Ah! My Goddess, who were playing The Game of Life.. There were a couple funny parts (A Love Hina reference was thrown in there), but most of us thought it was actually replacing Tsukihime. Fortunately, the thing was only ten-or-so minutes long, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

The show was as I expected it to be: Mysterious, intriguing, beautifully animated with somewhat interesting dialogue. We were only shown the first two episodes, but what I saw of it made me want to buy the whole series the day it comes out in box form. Badly.

I think the atmosphere was a big part of it- the music, the colors, and the directing.. It was just interesting.

After that we watched some people do open mic Karaoke for a minute, but we had a bit of time before we had to go back and meet Karmi. Well, lucky us. The Marriott had an arcade. And in this arcade was one of the best selections of arcade games I have ever had the privilege of witnessing: Two DDR Extremes, one Guitar Freaks, one Drum Mania (Or whatever it's called.. You know, the drum game), Bemani IIDX (Keyboard game), and Para Para Paradise, a game where you wave your hands around sensors instead of hitting pads on the ground with your feet.

Of course, I didn't play any games, but it was fun to watch. I had never seen any bemani outside of DDR in person before, so it was cool.

We then re-joined Karmi, sat down for a minute where all the cosplayers had gathered, and took pictures of Man-Faye, who was being interviewed by G4 (May God cast his mighty fury upon their heads). We then wandered around a bit more, with nothing in particular to do. The Console Gaming hall was open, we watched some people sit in a dimly lit room play F-Zero GX, Mario Kart and Halo. Shin shouted "Halo sucks, you fools", and we had to make a very quick escape.

Shin and his sister then had to leave, so we took a group photo, and they were off. Kat's friend left soon after. The remaining three of us then walked around more, wasting more time. It was getting to be around 7, and Karmi had to leave at 7:30. Problem was, we couldn't find her mom. Their bus was leaving in an hour for the airport, and an hour later they were leaving for South Carolina. We ran around searching, and eventually I had to leave, without any closure to the Find-Karmi's-Mom scenario.

Let's hope she's not sitting outside her hotel room right now, begging for quarters so she can call her mom. <_<

And, with that said, here is the first wave of pictures.

Karmi and Kat..


Suave.



Yes, it's me, with a god-awful haircut and lameness galore.

I'll continue this wonderful spew of information tomorrow, as I talk about Monday's misadventures. Keep in mind I still have many, many pictures to show, and I'm afraid my 250Free will suffer drastically because of it, but I shall find a way. Bye for now.
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Sunday, July 4, 2004

It's here, it's here!
Yes, the day of Anime Expo has finally arrived. We're all getting ready to head down to Anaheim right now, so I can't talk long. I'll be sure to give an extensive review of the events of AX on Tuesday.

'Till then, I say farewell.
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Friday, July 2, 2004

Eh..
No time to put up the little Anime Expo Rant image..

It's 11:30 right now, on Thursday (despite what the date thing says), and we're all getting ready for this wedding. This thing, it turns out, is only a few miles from Anaheim. That's right, if I play my cards right, I may be able to make a bit of AX on Friday, and perhaps a tad on Saturday.

We don't have a hotel room, though, but I think that's already taken care of.

Time until Anime Expo meet: 50 hours, thirty minutes.

What I'm currently doing that's AX-related: Well, I got a really crappy haircut at the mall earlier. -_- I didn't want to, but it happened, and I'm afraid I won't look my best at the Expo.

I'm going to be packing up my stuff tomorrow, after the morning ceremony thing, though, just in case we do end up staying down there all weekend, I'm doing that as soon as I get off the computer.

Current AX memory: That guy dressed up as a Ninja from the Villiage Hidden in the Sand that flipped me off while my family was on a bathroom break. >:| He was a jerk-off.
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Thursday, July 1, 2004

Whoa, man..
Wow, 8 comments, and none of them are like "omg click here to view my site lol".. Interesting.

This calls for me commenting on the many comments.

Shin- Eh, I've been to three or four weddings and three funerals. None of them have really had me interested. I'm always just there.

Karmi- Oh, I'll be changing in one of the many bathroom stalls. Just set a camera up in every one of them on Friday and Saturday, but be sure to install Obese Fanboy Blocking Sensors.

Mimmi- Yeah, he's wearing armor and such. Originally, when I first drew him back and third grade, he highly resembled FFVII's Cloud, but became a bit more original when I became inspired by Fire Emblem, The Lord of the Rings and Golden Sun.

But this picture does look somewhat Cloud-ish, in the hair. :|

Aleia- Jealousy is a tool of Satan. Don't worry, though, we'll collectively take enough pictures so that it will seem like you were actually there.

Arcadia- Badass hair that I initially stole from Cloud. ._.

Kat- Yes, I've squeezed more conversation out of that shirt this year than anything I've ever owned. It's weird.

Mal- I will. :D

Des- Whoa, signature and all? That's pretty nifty.

The problem with your signature shirt being a joke is that, eventually, once everybody gets it, you have to find a new, original one. :/

---

Well, we were in San Diego yesterday going through boxes upon boxes of my "passed" grandmother's, which mostly contained photo albums and pictures of a lot of different stuff..

Mostly, we had pictures of her with family in Kentucky, or here in California, but there were a lot of pictures from her trip to Europe. It was sort of interesting going through all of it.

As I've said before, I have a 9-months pregnant aunt who's having a hard time coming to terms with the death of her mother, who's.. Pretty big right now, heh. Yesterday I was in our car listening to Yuki Kajiura's Fiction, when my mom ran out in a rush. She told me that my aunt was having the baby (two weeks early), and that we had to get everything ready.

I went inside, where my aunt was rather frantic, asking where my mom was. I started gathering up the little children, as my uncle, who is very laid-back and Californian-ey, even then, helped his wife into the car. They called the doctor, who said to wait an hour.

We went to Fry's, I bought Devil May Cry, and read my instruction booklet as everyone paced back and forth. It turned out that it was false labor, which got me sort of down.

I would have enjoyed being in the hospital for hours and hours, waiting. I've never done that before, and it may be boring and/or dramatic, but I think it would be an interesting experience.

We got home around two, and I fell asleep quite quickly, insanely giggling at the thought of finally meeting Shin, Karmi and Kat in real life.

And I woke up and played Devil May Cry. :D It's a pretty wicked awesome game, but I haven't destroyed that orange lava-ey spider yet. I got him down to about 25% health, but he caught me off guard with those weird lava pillars (I thought he was going to shoot one of those projectiles at me).. Eh, I'll try again later.

My parents left earlier to look at.. Houses, or something, and came back a few minutes ago ranting about buying a house on a lake over here.. Eh. We're on the list. I have no opinion on it.

Oh, and Excel Saga volume four just came in the mail. I wonder where that came from.. I couldn't find a name or location.

..But where's the mouse..? :P
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Wednesday, June 30, 2004

An update!
Yeah, I've been a bit busy the past couple of days. Mostly, I've just been gaming and drawing, but I'll get to that later.

Lately, I have been falling asleep at 3:30 AM or so every night. I won't be tired, I'll end up with my right to internet access threatened unless I get in bed by 1, so I sit in my bed, thinking about stuff.

Most of the time, it's not really deep or anything. Maybe I'll be thinking about a song, or a conversation I had that day, or maybe a video game, but it's a really boring time. My mind runs out of topics by 2, so I look at my clock for an hour and a half trying to find a comfortable position to fall asleep in.

Last night I couldn't stop thinking about the uber-awesome mouse that is being sent to my house some time this week, along with Excel Saga manga volume 4.

<_< If I tell anyone the story of the Santa, I fear that that person may get angry, so I shall not go into further detail on that.

But I'm not paying for it, and that's what counts. :D

Oh, and while we're on the topic of deep thinking, I've been thinking a lot about my many social anxieties while playing DDR lately. The game holds a lot of memories for me, some good and some bad, and my mind just thinks about, maybe, that time when I went to the mall without adult supervision for the first time and played it with a good friend, or maybe just last week when I got introduced to a really nice guy through Dance Dance Revolution by a close friend.

But mostly, it reminds me of a former comrade of mine, which gets me rather depressed, so I don't play as much lately.

But I beat Afronova, a particularly difficult song, on Heavy Mode, finally. :D It's a big milestone for me. Next stop, Max 300 on Standard..

Today I woke up at 10, instead of 12:30, and heard my mother yelling at my dad over the phone about unexpected visitors. Apparently, our family from Kentucky was in California, and they were to come and visit us, unexpectedly, today.

So we cleaned. We cleaned like madmen for hours and hours- my brother dusted the entire house and reorgainzed all of the wires sticking out of our TV cabinet which belong to various game controllers, light guns and other gaming peripherals. God bless that kid's soul..

I, however, had the enormous task of gutting out this office/computer desk thing. My dad does all of the bills in here, and there's little notebooks of budgets and stuff everywhere. I just stacked it all in a neat little pile, went through all of our CD-ROMs, sorted the little papers I have everywhere, and crap like that.

They got here, we went to a restaurant, and I had an extremely unfilling portion of steak and shrimp (God, there were, what, 6 small shrimp and maybe 3 ounces of steak).

When we returned, my brother entertained the cousins, who seem to really enjoy playing Time Crisis and Super Smash Bros. Melee. I just walked around, eating Jolly Ranchers (They give me a buzz) and playing DDR when the three little children ran upstairs to do God knows what.

They're gone now, off in San Diego, staying with my 8 1/2-months pregnant aunt. Between the only parent she ever knew dying, this roller coaster pregnancy, the drastic swelling she's going through, and playing inn-keeper for everyone, she really has a lot on her plate.

We will probably be in San Diego tomorrow as well, where we shall hopefully bring back the long-sought after TV and DVD player. It seems that we may not end up with them, now.. My parents don't think they can trust me with a TV (I don't even need cable, just give me A/V cables and a monitor), and we already have two DVD players, including the computer.

My uncle's Xbox-playing TV seems to be overheating, so we may just let him have it. I don't want to spend another day over there without any gaming because the TV makes an annoying screechey noise after it's been used for fifteen minutes.

I submitted a drawing to TheOtaku a few minutes ago, which I am really proud of. I spent three hours drawing God-awful sketches, and eventually I came up with this.

..Obviously, the background is PhotoShopped, and I had to fill in some un-shaded space, but it's still one of my best drawings ever.

Not much to talk about today. Instant Ramen is offically going to be at AX, and I finally decided what I'll be wearing on the day we all meet.



Fear the shirt.

I decided to wear this simply because it's bright and that it will stand out. Not to mention I don't think too many people will be wearing this shirt.. I'll probably change into my signature shirt later, because I refuse to wear that much pink for an extended period of time.

And I'll probably wear my Poison Mushroom "Game Over" shirt on Monday, but that doesn't really matter, since I won't be seeing anybody there.

I put together a folder of all of my Anime Expo papers today- maps, schedules, cell phone numbers at which I can contact Karmi and Shin, and other stuff. I'll probably be putting my backpack together tonight or tomorrow, because we'll be attending a two-day wedding thing on Friday and Saturday.

Damn my cousin! Why would he want to get married during Independence Day Weekend? It's insane.

The bride's not even going to be wearing a patriotic wedding dress. :/ No red or blue.
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Monday, June 28, 2004

Good times, good times..
Well, the little graphic I posted yesterday grew on me enough to overtake the O-Ren Ishii scheme.

And other than that, I have nothing else to say, so let's get on with the..

Don't worry, you only have a few more updates with this post in it before its ugliness leaves for good.

Karmi informed me yesterday that she won't be at AX on the fifth (Monday), which means that I will be all alone, able to do whatever I want.

In a sense, it's a mixed blessing, because on one hand I won't have to negotiate with anyone about what to do next, but I'll also be alone.

Which can be so depressing in a convention hall full of anime fanboys. But what can you do? I'm sure I'll live.

If you read Karmi's latest post, and then head to the comments, you will see Solo mentioning Karmi meeting Shin and Shy. This has already caused some confusion as to whether or not Shy is attending Anime Expo and meeting us there.

He and Syk were planning on meeting up and doing a cross-country road trip (This was months before The Simple Life 2, so don't sue), and ending up at Anime Expo, where they would meet Shinmaru and myself. However, they couldn't do that, and that part of the meeting was slashed.

Things regarding AX calmed down for a while, and a couple of weeks ago the topic of Karmi being in California came up. I asked her if she could make it to Anime Expo, which she ended up being able to do, to meet Shin and myself (along with other people who may or may not be there).

The thing is, I have no clue if Shy will meet us there, or if he'll even be at Anime Expo at all. I haven't had the oppurtunity to ask him about it, but.. Just thought I'd clear that up.

*sits* I may edit this later, if I have more to talk about.
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Sunday, June 27, 2004

Smile through the sorrow and win a free T-shirt.

A new little myOtaku intro I made out of a lack of anything to do. I'll explain where this came from later.

Last night my mother and father went to some sort of charity dinner, which was held by some sort of business club that one of my dad's subordinates runs. My brother and I stayed home, I was on the computer doing my regular shpiel, and my bro was watching TV or something. After a few hours of quiet, my dad suddenly called and told asked my brother to come to the phone as well. He then told us that he was going to help his coworker unpack a fireworks booth early on Sunday. My brother immediately went into happy-optimistic-sure-I'll-do-it mode, while I heard "morning," felt that my right to sleep had been infringed upon, and said I would have to "think about it."

Well, somehow my parents dragged me into it, and I was brought out of my happy little nap at 8 AM to go into the mall parking lot, wait for a truck of fireworks to come, and then put all the boxes inside of a metal shack-booth thing. When we got there, the truck had not arrived yet, so we just stood around for a minute. It was not too long until the truck came, and two greasy stereotypical truck-driving people took inventory of the oddly titled fireworks. Some that stood out in my mind were "Screaming Willy," "Dragon Breathes Fire," "Exploding Balls" and "Bunker Busters." Who names these things..?

Anyway, they spent about fifteen minutes making sure everything was there, and there was a surprisingly large amount of explosives in the middle of the mall parking lot by the time they were done. Some boxes were surprisingly light, but most were painfully heavy. :/ Somehow my brother got away with carrying the boxes two feet into the booth, and I had to put the boxes on the highest shelf. He hardly did anything, by his own decision, and now he's complaining about how he feels he didn't help enough.

I don't plan on selling any of the fireworks when that all starts tomorrow. In fact, I'm hoping that we won't buy any fireworks. We're going to be in Anaheim (At Anime Expo, hooray!) on Independence Day, with a view of Disneyland from our hotel room.

Hmmm, now let's think for a moment here.

Disney is a big theme park. Theme parks tend to have big shows. A lot of them are at night.. Now what sort of show would a major theme park with lots of money do on the Fourth of July, and I wonder if we'll be able to see it from outside the park?

Sparklers suck. Major theme park explosives are where it's at.

We went to the mall for a short while after that, and I just read some manga in Suncoast and Waldenbooks for a while. Normally, I just look at manga for a minute and move on, because I have to meet someone or the people I'm with don't want to stay, but today I was pretty free, so I just stood in there for a while and read various manga.

And now for today's..



:} I like using that picture.

Last night I looked at the revised AX Film/Video Programming Schedule and found that they're showing the first two episodes of Shingetsutan Tsukihime, a series that Azure particularly enjoys, and one that I would like to see. According to what I have read, the series has been liscensed (By Bandai, I think, but I'm not sure) under the name "Lunar Legend Tsukihime." It should be out in October, if I read right, and the viewing is going to be in subtitles, not dubbed, thank God. It's true that I've never heard the Tsukihime dub, and I'm not sure if they've even started it, but I don't want to take my chances. :/ I haven't trusted dubs ever since Evangelion.

Also, while in Waldenbooks today, I picked up the manga version of an anime that I had downloaded once- Comic Party. From what I gathered, it's about a guy who didn't make it into art college, but is determined to become an artist anyway. I don't think he originally wanted to do anything manga-related, but it seems that he eventually becomes a doujinshi-writer. Doujinshi is an "underground fan comic," in case you don't get it.. CLAMP and Rikdo Koshi (The creator of Excel Saga) started off as doujin-writers and went pro, which is pretty cool.

Comic Party takes place at a doujin convention named.. Well, Comic Party, or Comipa for short. The beginning part of the first volume seems to poke fun at fanboys, and the general musty-grossness of non-industry conventions. Heh, I thought parts of it were pretty funny, but I don't think I'll buy the series.

The art in Comic Party is pretty damn inspiring. The color art especially moves me. It's high quality CG anime pictures.. Bliss.

..And now I realize that a lot of that had nothing to do with Anime Expo, but eh. Whatever.
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