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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