Tuesday, May 17, 2005

Fullmetal Rucksack

Well, I survived the Expo. The update's coming a little later than I anticipated as lots of things suddenly leapt upon me at once, and I wanted to catch up with the Anime Lounge/Manga Workshop backlog that I hadn't been able to deal with. I'm also ill, again. Whereas a few years ago I'd be making myself ill through inactivity, now it's overstressing myself with going everywhere too much. I've been off college all day today and I'm considering taking tomorrow off too. I'll see how I feel later, though. Before I get started with the post proper, some notes. I can't see the comments... again... but there are some things I want to say anyway: Mimmi: Eee, well done with your new job. I'm sure you'll do well ^_^ Kei: Thank you so much for the Lloyd picture *hugs* ^____^ I'm putting it on my wall, hehe. Now, to business. Expo-tainment The preparations for this, my first massive anime social event ever, began much later than they should have done. I didn't pack my bags until after I got back from college on Friday, leaving me with only two hours before Jeremy was due to pick me up, heh. I grabbed everything I thought I'd need and eventually, he picked me up and we set off to his house. Once there, after giving Jeramy's mum some flowers (to thank her for everything) we watched the first Star Wars: Clone Wars DVD, and it was actually much more impressive in a 67-minute animated feature than in three-minute chunks. Not that I'm going to buy it or anything, though. It wasn't that good. I got about five hours' sleep that night. Poor timing on our part, heh ^_^; We wanted to get up to London for 9-ish to get to the Expo for when it opened, which meant geting up at five to shower, shave and all the rest before having to catch a train that we weren't sure about where it was due to arive. We made it in the end, though ^_^ It had just gone ten when we pulled in to the railway station next to the ExCeL centre (I don't know why it's spelt like that, but whenever I was there I was tempted to make Excel Saga jokes. I stopped myself) and it is the biggest bloody building I've ever seen. There are 16 or so conference halls in this place, each about 200 metres (or more) long/wide. Massive massive massive. Our hotel was just opposite, nicely ^_^ We threw our bags into the room and made for the queue. Methought: "Ah, just as well we have FastTrack tickets- we'll get in in no time!" I've never seen more people waiting in two single lines. They snaked all over the complex- I'm sure some must have been there for at least two-three hours. We got in at 10:45 (almost defeating the object of having FastTrack tickets that were meant to get us in an hour before the official 11:00 opening) and I went straight to the Anime Village, passing a disgustingly huge yellow truck used in the movie Nightwatch. Subtle. Anyway, skipping quickly by the Manga store (nothing of particular interest to me there) I ran into a Robotech stand. Almost immediately (and at great inconvenience to people trying to get past) I took a picture of this man, who I can only assume is wearing a Robotech cosplay outfit. It looks more to me like something from Last Exile, but I've never seen Robotech so I can't tell. Can anyone verify? Next to Robotech, behind a very flimsy folding wall, was MVM- distributors of Trigun and Chobits DVDs in the UK and also as of that day (one of my priorities for the weekend) Fullmetal Alchemist and Read or Die: The TV. The shop was literally three tables bundled together around a corner to form an alcove in which two or three rather exasperated people tried to deal with everyone's shopping reqeusts at once. It was always a crush- they had soundtracks, artbooks (including some hentai, which surprised me a little- I'd never be able to buy something like that with so many people stood next to me. Not that I'd buy hentai anyway...) and DVDs. They had someone cosplaying as Edward Elric, handing out leaflets just by the side of the stand, too. I was impressed with the handiwork on her arm, heh. As soon as I asked to take her picture, several others did as well. I hope I didn't start anything too bad... Next to the shop, across the other side of their designated area, they had their display, showing trailers from new releases and things yet to come (Samurai Champloo in particular was a big trailer for pulling crowds). For very short periods at a time they also had posters up for grabs by the TV. I nabbed a Kiddy Krade one and managed to get an FMA one from behind the counter after asking if they had any more left. How nice of them ^_^ I snapped up those two DVDs like a flash along with two Read or Die: TV soundtracks (Taku Iwasaki = ^_______^) and a set of Kenshin postcards, then moved on to ADV. I must admit, I'd expected the scenery for the stalls to be much more... impressive. They were literally bits of white wood stuck on hinges with folding frames. I know it's not exactly E3 or anything, but it looked incredibly bland in places. Things that ADV did have, though, were fantastic wallscrolls- a Rahxephon one and an Evangelion one. I asked what happened to them after the show, and they explained that they were over £1000 EACH, so there wasn't any chance of them being given away as freebies. Next to them was a massive ADV display wall, showing characters from their more well-known (or anticipated, in the case of Saiyuki) series. That cost even more money, apparently ^_^; At that time, though, I was only interested in Chrono Crusade Volume 2, not due for official release until Monday. I boughted it ^_^ Aside from three stallholders running down the wall to the right of ADV and the Playstation 2 stands next to Manga, the only other thing in the 'Anime Village' were the DDR Machines, which were surrounded by a crowd even bigger than MVM's (and considering the two were pretty much right opposite each other with a fairly small walkway between them, this caused many congestion problems). They were noisy, too. Once I'd secured my DVDs and such I blundered around the massive hall for a bit, trying to avoid getting sucked into queues to meet the Enterprise crew or Leonard Nimoy and trying not o look too interested in stuff that people had for sale- lots of sci-fi trading cards there, strangely. I had no idea they were that collectable, or even that they existed. One of the guys from ADV was shouting about a special anime preview- Gravion -being shown in the 'anime theatre' in a couple of minutes' time. I managed to completely forget until I unintentionally wandered in to find people watching an anime series with a lot of girls watching a red-haired guy break into a building. I sat, watched and enjoyed. Then came my first meeting with someone I consider a significant celebrity- Richad Epcar. I didn't know who he was until Jeremy and I ran an IMDB search the night before we came up, and to my shock and amazement I discovered that he'd played Seijiro Hiko in the Kenshin series. He was signing autographs at a table by the Manga stand- I didn't know it was a queue at first, until I took a peek at what everyone was waiting for. Readying one of my Kenshin postcards, I waited eagerly for him to sign it for me (my sister, actually- I asked him to address it to her, which he did ^_^). It was quite an experience, but I feel a little silly about it now- I must have come across as an idiot. Maybe everyone tends to think that about themselves when they come across someone who they really look up to, but I still think I could have presented myself better, heh. I get flustered quite easily at times ^_^; After that, and after meeting up with some impressive cosplayers, Jeremy and I found each other (he'd been getting autographs from Matt Hardy and Rob Van Dam) and we went for lunch. The queue was still there by lunchtime, although since the FastTrack people had all gone in, there was only one line of anxious-looking people trailing across the complex. It still stretched back a very long way, as did our search for food. It was muchly worth it, though- I had one of the best toasted sandwiches I've ever tasted- roast beef with mushrooms, lettuce onions and cheddar cheese. It shall forever live on in my memory. After coming back inside, I watched a Presentation on the latest Robotech series, which did look very impressive. Had I but seen the rest of it, I'm sure I'd be more interested... but Richard Epcar was there too. I asked around for Tom Bateman to tell him 'Panda says Hi' but nobody knew who he was. I thought it'd be rude to ask the guy giving the presentation if that him, but I'd have thought the people at the information desk would have known who was talking anyway. Ah well. Looking around in more detail at the stalls, we found this: Captain Planet's Geo Cruiser! And lo and behold- inside was The Man Himself! Ah, what nostalgic tat. There were also robots, but nobody seemed to be paying any attention to them at all. I did feel kind of sorry for them in a way- I know what it's like to be somewhere where nobody's really that interested in seeing you (during the short-lived days of Actus Productions and our street art)- most people who walked over there as far as I saw just completely blanked them. You did have to get your card stamped there if you wanted to enter the prize draw for Star Wars Premiere tickets, though, so it wasn't as if they had no interaction whatsoever. As we were making our way out we found Richard Epcar signing more posters on the Robotech stand. We talked to him again (and Jeremy is much, much better at this than I am) and after we had our photos taken with him (he's really quite tall ^_^;), we went back to our hotel room for a rest before the party. Here is everything I'd gained after the first day. We have: -Richard Epcar-signed Robotech Poster and Postcard (free!) -Massive War of the Worlds poster that I didn't really want (they were being handed out free too) -Kiddy Krade poster (also free) -FMA poster (free, but I had to ask for it) -Last Exile poster. I'm not the biggest Last Exile fan, but I got it for filling out a survey at the ADV stand -R.O.D The TV soundtracks (not free, unfortunately) -R.O.D The TV Vol 1 DVD -Fullmetal Alchemist Vol 1 DVD -Chrono Crusade Vol 2 DVD -Nightwatch T-Shirt (free- Jeremy was given it but didn't want it) -Clone Trooper figurine (free- given to us while we were waiting in the queue to come in) -Manga Club card and preview DVD (also free) -Seven packets of Garnier's Manga Hair putty (all free, surprisingly. I kept walking past the three or so people handing them out, so by the end i had quite a large collection ^_^) -Six rubber bands (free, given to me by Richard Epcar. He had a whole cup of them to be given out with the posters he was signing. He asked us what we called them in England, because someone had asked him for an elastic band and he didn't know what it was. When e were leaving he gave me a whole handful of 'elastic-containing rubber bands', as he called them. Cool beans ^_^) I'll go through the party and second day updates tomorrow. they should hopefully take up less room, hehe. See you then ^_^

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