Monday, August 28, 2006

   Anime Evolution 2006: Day One
Let's get on with this already . . . it's been over a week now!


Being a first-time cosplayer who pretty much hid the entire costume project from the people in the house, I woke up as early as possible that Saturday morning so I could shower, dress, colour/gel my hair and get the hell out of the house before anyone woke up and saw me (I'm lame like that). I had slept for about an hour all night. I got into the car, and hauled ass to the campus of Simon Fraser University, where Anime Evolution is held. By the time I got to the parking lot which the school had allotted to convention goers, I was maybe among the first 10 or 20 cars to park. In any case, I got out of the car, sat down in the trunk of the wagon, and attached nose bandage, forehead protector, and swords. Just as I got out of the parking lot, I became someone's first cosplay photograph.

It was maybe 7:30am or 8:00am by the time I got into the line-up for registration; I seriously need to pre-reg' next year even though the line was just as bad. But yeah, could have been worse. I didn't really chat up with anyone since my friends were still en route to the con' (they had a much further drive than I did) and mostly just stood quietly or leaned against an open door in a lazy attempt to nap or something (yeah, the line went out a door of the building). Once the line finally started moving, I spent my time either figuring out how to comfortably wear swords, posing for really quick pictures (maybe about 3 or so), or just looking around at who else was here so far. So yeah, $40 and a gigantic bag later, I was in and set.

Which, of course, is why I spent the next hour and a half or so just sitting or standing on a set of stairs that lead up the Academic Quadrangle of the school, which was where the majority of the con' took place. I didn't take any pictures even though I totally should have; mostly I was just waiting for my friend from work to arrive. In any case, it was nice to just start to get used to who I was going to get very familiar with for the next three days. I did end up being in a lot of random video pans, though . . . well, two or three, in any case.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FmbqgrUsj4
(7-9 second mark)

Eventually I gave up on that and walked around inside the quad' to maybe find food (again, what happens when you try to get out of the house really fast). It was during these random patrols, however, that I made three of my brand new friends. The first, a girl dressed up as Itachi from "Naruto", saw me and basically freaked out. "Omigod, you're Kenpach-... no, wait! No... oh! Oh! Sh-...Shinpachi!" she finally got out. So yeah, we hugged, chatted a bit - I was boring, though, since I was still tired and hungry, and I felt guilty about that for a bit afterwards. We ended up hanging out a lot during the con', but we'll get more on that later, maybe. The other two were a couple girls dressed up as Soifon and Hitsugaya from "Bleach"; they saw me, excitedly asked if they could hug me (I was still trying to figure out of they were looking at me or not), and then after I gave the go-ahead they both slammed into me simultaneously. These two . . . well, I ended up seeing these two a lot over the weekend. And every time we saw each other, we always went in for the glomp . . . . . gotta tell ya, there's some definitely fun in dressing up for these things . . .

Anyways, buddy arrived at about 10:30 or 11 or so, we hooked up, and . . . I dunno, walked around or something? Noon came around soon enough, though, and opening ceremonies kicked in. They were MC'ed by The 404's, an Alberta-based improv group getting more and more famous on the convention track in Western Canada, parts of Ontario, and even in Seattle at this year's Sakura-Con. They were pretty silly, whapped each other with someone's yaoi-paddle (those things are nuts), and basically introduced us all to what we could expect throughout the con'. They mentioned the guests: a lot of local talent like Alistair Abell (Trunks, Djbril-"Gundam Seed Destiny"), Trevor Devall (Mu La Flaga, Scourge-"Transformers: Energon, Pyro-"X-Men: Evolution"), Michael Dobson (Starscream-"Transformers Armada", Nappa, Dryden-"Escaflowne"), Vic Mignogna (do I really need to answer this one?), Keith Miller (Kuzzey-"Gundam Seed", Kimihiro-"Hikaru no Go"), Kirby Morrow (Miroku, Goku, Trowa, Cyclops), Brad Swaile (Mousse, Quatre, Dearka, Gohan, Nightcrawler), and Cathy Weseluck (Cybersix, Shampoo). And that's just the voice actors!


I lined up for the dealer's room right after the opening ceremonies. We knew it'd be a long-assed line-up for overpriced stuff. Buuuut, we figured we get there early, we can at least see stuff before it's sold out. Not like the line-up was uninteresting, or anything . . . more random chatting with other people, the guy dressed up as Zack from FFVII walked by and shouted "I'm not Cloud!", and we had a quick chat about "Snakes on a Plane" with others. Anyways, the actual dealer's room wasn't that great, but it was nice to learn that this one gaming store is actually homebased in my city!

After we left, my friend left to do some volunteer work, so I went (with another guy) to watch the last half of the Hong Kong "Initial D" movie. It seemed like it could have been alright, except I kept dozing off in the dark lecture theater. Hehe . . . seemed neat, though.

After the movie we went to the Kirby Morrow, Allistair Abell and Scott McNeil voice actor panel; incidentally, Scott McNeil was running late. Thus, I felt it important to ask my one ultra-definitive question which I kept asking all con':

"Before Scott gets here . . . [checks door] . . . hypothetically, who do you think would win in a fight between Scott McNeil and David Kaye?"

Heh, on paper you'd think that'd actually be a pretty interesting fight: Koga vs Sesshomaru, or Wolverine vs . . . well, Professor X . . . . . well, everyone picked David Kaye, being that David Kaye apparently does kickboxing, and the guy who taught him was a bouncer with Alistair one time. But yeah, everyone had fun with that one. Half an hour later, Scott DID arrive finally to the pleasure of everyone. More regular questions here and there, more voice requests . . . then some dude to my right humped me out and asked Scott if he thought he'd win in a fight against David Kaye. Incidentally, even Scott thinks David Kaye would kill him.

My other big question of the con' was, "If you were to start a new Kingdom Hearts game, would you choose strength, defense, or magic?" - this was extra funny because I was actually sitting next to a Sora cosplayer at the time. Anyways, Alistair picked magic because magic is cool, and Scott picked defense because "in real life, I'm a total wuss" or something; I think Kirby dodged the question entirely. But yeah, great panel, lots of fun. I gotta tell ya, it's great to have so many voice actors in your home town.


Oh, and for the record . . . . . "OCEAN STUDIOS IS NOT SOME KIND OF MAGIC PLACE WHERE EVERYONE LIVES AND WORKS TOGETHER WITH PIXIES AND STUFF DANCING AROUND". Heh . . . it's just one studio where people record their stuff - everything is entirely singular and contracted, and the voice recording just happens to be at Ocean. The actors aren't part of some sort of actors' stable: they just happen to work on a lot of the same shows. They all felt this was important to make clear . . . and thus, my article about anime dubs is now incorrect in that one part.


After that, my friends wanted to go check on something or another which I can't remember; I wanted to go to this "Rapier sword fighting Workshop" some fencing academy was putting on, though, so again we split up and did our own things. The actual academy people were running two workshops: rapier and longsword. Now I kinda wish I did rapier, but damn, learning longsword techniques was fun! I was like, doing the motions for them with my bokken all through the rest of the con' . . . so yes, "Academy Duello", look them up, they're cool and one of their top pupils took Arthurian Lit' and Beowulf with me at UBC.

By this point it was coming to the evening . . . and there was a concert by ZZ being put on at the main stage! I didn't know who they were, but they did an opening theme for One Piece, and something else, I think . . . . . in any case, there were too many chairs for the audience - it was a rock concert, you're supposed to be standing! BUt yeah, despite too many chairs, ZZ was awesome. Heh . . . and afterwards, we once again spent time in a long-assed line-up to buy ZZ merchandise and have them autograph it. I tried to be nice, and after they all signed my stuff I said to them "Arigatou! Minna no laibu wa . . . saikou da!" In retrospect, I should have said "kimi-tachi" instead of "minna" to tell them that their concert was "the best" . . . ah well, they knew how I felt.


I think . . . I more or less went home after that. I was hungry, sleepy, and my feet were killing me (crappy home-made sandals). Now obviously there was a ton of stuff that happened that I didn't end up seeing, like Round 1 of the "Anime Walkoff", or the "Anime Chess Game" (I still don't know what that was exactly). There were tons of screening rooms, some workshops for webcomics, yaoi, and voice acting. There was "Anime Idol", the 404s had a show, and at the end there was a dance. Yeah, I missed all of that. I hear it was pretty good, though . . . well, except for the Anime Walkoff, which was nasty the first two days in a row . . . I'll talk about that more later, though.


So yeah, that was Saturday and Day one. And I have no pictures of it at all. I'm sorry. Search around the site's forum if you wanna look around, maybe. You might find some cool outfits:

http://animeevolution.com/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=25


Hopefully I get to day 2 sooner than later. 'Til then, then!
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