Tuesday, July 5, 2005

AH-NEE-MAY EH-KOO-SOO-PO!!!1

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I can't seem to be able to find the "next page" button in the comment window. I know there are six comments, but it seems I'll only be able to do the most recent five. Sorry, whoever that was.

Lea- Summer school.. For the sake of an elective (We're required to take health and a language our first year).

DDG- I took 121 total (suck it, Shin), and though I'm not putting up all of them, I've only cut out three so far. Because of this I am going to be dividing them up (though in a more orderly fashion than last year, I hope).

Shin- I think I only beat it twice.. I tried replaying it when Windwaker was coming out, but I forgot how to get past the first room in the Fire Temple and said "screw it."

Godel- A lot of people were trying that at AX, I guess.. o_O

Tony- Mine is the type who gets mad when you beat him in multiplayer and insists that you take it easier on him. I think he's gotten past that, though.. He beat Dodongo's Cavern just now, I think.

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All right. So. Anime Expo.

After school, we stopped by my friend's house to pick up his luggage.. From now on, let's just call him by Ethan (Kiowanman21 on myOtaku), since that's a lot easier than saying "my friend" and other such anonymous phrases over and over.

Anyway, once we got his stuff, we came here and I threw all my stuff into a bag. We then waited around for my dad until about five. He decided to cash a pay check after work, which caused delays. I was rather peeved.

Though it was all good in the hood once we got on the road. Ethan and I played Meteos on the DS. I think I never mentioned that I bought it..

Well, it most certainly rocks, and it served me well while waiting in lines over the weekend. We tried getting some people in on some sexy DS Download Play action, but aside from Shin there were always connection errors.

I figured out the difference between Download Play, which requires one cartridge, and regular play, where everyone has one. It seems that in Download Play you can only choose from four levels (unlike a lot of other puzzle games the different levels actually have different mechanics, instead of just backgrounds), and if you want to change levels you have to have everyone reconnect. I guess it makes sense.. But I wish there were more map choices for it.

Once we got down there it was around 7:30, and fortunately registration ran until 10. Also, since we were so late, not too many people were there. We spent more time walking through where people would have been if the line was loong than actually standing in the line. For some reason, Ethan's ID said "Nathaniel Irving" of some town in Utah. We printed out the real one instead, though we still have Nathaniel Irving's badge.. I don't know who he was. All I know is that there was one very sad man from Utah in Anaheim this weekend.

The Exhibit Hall was closed by the time we got our badges. Instead, we walked around and took pictures of cosplayers and such.

They screened Jin Roh at 10:30. Since I've heard so much about it, we decided to go, and it was a little more dull than I had hoped. It had its good points, but overall I found it sort of pointless and unmoving.

Maybe it's because we missed the first few minutes. I don't know.

Our hotel room was nice. Better than the Hilton.. Though, there were only two beds, so I slept on the couch. It was surprisingly comfy, especially when I pulled the other chair over and used it as a footrest.

The next morning we woke up pretty early and went down into the line for the exhibit hall. This was Ethan's first convention, and he decided to be a swag hunter. He got.. A lot of free stuff, actually. It was kind of scary how dedicated he was.

We went to an AMV Creation workshop. I'm interested in video editing, and I figured AMVs would be a nice place to start.

Though we didn't get computers (I got a computer at some digital drawing workshop last year, so I sort of assumed). Instead, we got some weird guy that looked like Seth MacFarlane who went on about how he thought it would be funny to make a crossover movie trailer. It was boring, and there was no free stuff in sight, so we bailed.

We decided to go the Anime News Network panel since there was nothing else going on. Actually, programming was pretty lame this year. I remember having the entire day laid out last year.. And though we didn't follow the schedule in the least, there was still a lot more on the table.

The panel was fun, though. They had a good number of ANN people there, and they just sat up there having fun. For the sake of free shit (they had a bunch of lame DVDs and a couple Samurai Champloo shirts), I got up and asked a lame question. Somehow they managed to steal a door sign from the Hilton, and gave it to the guy with the worst question.

Lucky bastard.

Before we got in, though, the Pierrot panel was letting out, and as everyone exited, they got a little Naruto mini-figure. This pissed me off, since they had Tsunade, and Tsunade is the shit.

This sent us on a panel-visiting spree, in the name of swag. Unfortunately, all the good ones were earlier that day.

We watched Tsukihime episodes three and four after that. I watched one and two last year, and enjoyed it, so it was only logical to continue it.

Oh, God, the Super Smash Bros. tournament. Ethan wanted to enter it, but by the time he registered he was entry number 150. There were only two Gamecubes set up. The first 128 got in, and the rest were put on "standby." So we left. When we came back five hours later, it was still going.

I'm leaving out details, but most of them are going to be filled in with pictures. The first group (Friday and most of Saturday) is what I'm putting up today. You'd better enjoy it- I spent an hour resizing these bastards.

Parking Lot. The Anaheim Convention Center is such a lovely building. Very futuristic-looking.. You can't tell from here, but they had a really big poster on the front that displayed the AX logo. Sexy.

Ethan in the Marriott. I was kind of hoping this one would come out DeviantArt-worthy, but Ethan turned around and totally ruined the entire thing. GAH.

Registration line. It moved very fast.. I have no idea how bad it was earlier in the day, but for us the process was nice and smooth.

To register, you had to go downstairs into Hall E, walk through all these little ropes, go up the stairs, and around the upper hall to register. We could have cut out everything up to the escalator, but we had to go through the ropes anyway.

First cosplayer pic. And what an odd one to start with- a Heartless from Kingdom Hearts. I took a picture of him without his consent (I don't like approaching people and asking if I can photograph them), and when he noticed the flash, he came over, threateningly asked me if I took a picture of him, and kind of followed us for a minute. I saw him the next day as well.

The first good cosplayer The merchant from Resident Evil 4. We saw him setting up his little torch-light, and I freaked out and asked him to do his catchphrase. Then he opened his jacket pocket and said "WELCOME!" in an awesome way. My favorite cosplayer of the day by far.

For the record, the costume itself wasn't so hot. It was just the RE merch. And you know how awesome he is.

First game of the convention. Ethan played Super Mario Kart Double Dash, and I watched. He kept getting second or first.

Later on he played Halo.. Some ten year old Asian kid got mad when he took his kill, and went on to teamkill him in vengance. This lead to them losing, I think. I'd bet ten bucks that kid has Xbox Live at home.

Ah, the gaming hall.. Reeking of B.O. and Doritos.. A bunch of old fat dudes yelling at each other.. HOME.

A memory book. One of the artists in the Artist Alley decided to put one of these out.. There was a Priest convention going on at the same time as AX, and so someone made a little cartoon of Jesus going "I ****ing HATE Pagans!" I figured it was camera-worthy.

The artist alley itself. Last year they had a lot of space.. This year it looked really really cramped down by registration. I prefer calling it the Artist Ghetto.

Took this one right as we got into the exhibit hall. Not much else to say.

A really blurry shot of the Bandai booth. Every hour they threw shirts and stuff into the audience.. And behind this they had demos of their upcoming games set up. If you played one you got a ticket for a wheel of prizes. On Saturday we came back every hour to try to get something, but they kept running out of tickets. We gave up and never looked back.

Greatest. Bag. EVER. We saw it just sitting there, admired its beauty for a minute, then took it. In the end, I got to keep it.

Elegant Gothic Lolita and other dresses. It's a cool fashion.. Definitely my favorite Japanese style. I have a friend who admires the dresses, so I took pictures of them for her. These were $200 each.

God bless the Japanese for thinking that this is plausible.

This was a really cool robot.. But I have no idea what it's from. In the booth next to this they had an Alphonse Elric FullMetal Alchemist statue about the same size.. But this one was cooler.

The ADV booth. As always they gathered people and threw stuff into the audience.. On a much larger scale than Bandai. See the bald guy running with his hands in the air so he can be in the front row? That's me.

A rather nice dress. Sometimes I like the people just wearing elegant clothes at cons more than people actually dressing up as anime characters.

We saw many Marios. And about as many Luigis. These ones got picked for a Bandai contest, though.. They raised their plungers in the air victoriously. It was cool.

Link and Sheik. There was this really awesome Link at the con (this one sort of sucks, I just like the Sheik).. But that picture will probably be up tomorrow.

Bender! There's a little kid behind him in this picture.. The beer bottle conveniently covers his face, but it's safe to assume he's scared shitless.

The R2 was nice.. But I still don't think Star Wars people should be at Anime Expo.

I got a better pic of this guy later, too.

There was an odd fad going around this year.. Where people would just break out bubbly JPop, get in a line and start dancing by waving their arms back and forth gaily. I don't really get it, but Ethan said he heard someone say it was some sort of Japanese exercise thing. Which explains Animal Crossing.

GREATEST COSPLAY EVER. Nothing is hotter than a female Katamari cosplayer. And this time there were two of them.. And of Asian descent. They had holes in the masks, but when peopel took photos they would pull the face part down.

I would have had sex with them, and I wouldn't have cared if they kept the costumes on. Wink wink.

Our grand total of stuff (free and otherwise) by the end of Saturday. Not pictured is my uber cool FLCL coffee mug that is yellow with the P! on it.

We got a lot more stuff by the end of the con. This is actually pretty meager, when you compare.

But these.. These are the true prizes. The ultimate victory. The dramatic event that will go down in the history books, shaking the very foundation of my shopping skillz.

I bought all five of those Sin City books for $20. All five of them. $4 each, because they were supposedly messed up, but other than a marker line on the side of one of them and a couple of loose pages in another, I can't spot anything. They didn't have That Yellow Bastard, though.. That's too bad.

And on that note, I'm cutting this post short. It's getting late, and I'm tired, and I have to catch up on my summer reading that I've skipped.

Tomorrow's exploits: SHINMARU AND OTAKUSENNEN COLLIDE (and the other guy was there too) AND SPARKS FLY AS THEY MATCH OFF. BUT WILL THEY RESOLVE THEIR DIFFERENCES AND FIGHT FOR THE GREATER GOOD: A PICTURE WITH MAN FAYE? STAY TUNED AND FIND OUT, BITCHES.
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