Fanime 2005 Report
Jun. 9th, 2005 09:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pacificpikachuToday not much happened other than eating, watching movies, and hanging out at Cody's house and playing with his awesome tablet, so I figure I have no more excuses for starting my Fanime report. XD Also, I owe people DVDs, so I have to burn those anyway.
OH! And before I start, I must add this because I think it's really cool. XD
I missed it, but apparently Ricky and a bunch of the other guys from the Anime Club did me a GIANT drawing of Naruto in chalk on the ground by the library, and wrote "Kristin-sama, thank you for everything!" next to it. I never got to see it, though, because it rained and Ricky just told me today. *Sniffle* I wish I had gotten to see it... I thought that was cool, though. :D Ricky says he has pictures, so if he gives those to me I'll post them.
So...let's start before the actual con started.
Friday
I stayed home from school on Friday, so when I woke up at about 8 AM I automatically started packing and trying to arrange things. Mom was talking on the phone with the parents of my friends who were coming, and we were trying to arrange how they would get to my house, which was where the departure was set to take place.
Mom and I left at about 11 PM to pick up Ryan and Nicole and get my costume. Mom picked Ryan up and dropped me off at the seamstress' store, where I went in and got my costume. Unfortunately, my seamstress wasn't there so I didn't get the chance to thank her, but the total came to about twenty or thirty dollars less than I expected it to. :O YES, more money to spend on anime junk! Also, Mom dropped me off there for about forty-five minutes, but all I had to do was go grab the costume in its bag and pay for it, so I spent a long time just sitting out in front of the fabric store, staring at the woodchips and trying to stay out of the baking sun. -_-
After that, we picked Nicole up and went to Sister's, which is an awesome consignment store in downtown Nevada City. Nicole had ordered a second purple wig there (because her one purple wig wasn't enough hair to make Noriko's spiral-y pigtail things). A minor problem arose with this--the wig came, but it was about ten shades darker than Nicole's other wig. She bought it anyway, and when we got out of the store, Mom was nowhere to be found. O_o; It took about five minutes for her to show up again. Apparently, she went driving around in search of shade because Tia was in the car and she was hot.
When we returned back at my house, it was to quite a scene. We walk in, and in our living room is Cody, KK, Makayla, Roya, and Zoe, all laughing hysterically at Naruto episode 101. XD We finished the episode and began preparing for takeoff. Cody was already totally ready to go, so he was just waiting for us. KK brought this book called "Making Out in Japanese", which has all these funny, awkward sayings in Japanese, so this was used as entertainment while we waited to get everyone packed.
In my car was my Mom (obviously, as it's her car and she was driving it), my little brother, Nicole, KK, and myself. Between the luggage that belonged to the five of us, the four costumes (Nicole's two and my two), and all the food we brought, we could barely fit it all in the trunk. XD It took a great deal of squishing and rearranging, but we finally managed to accomplish this feat. Of course, Nicole, KK, and I sat in the back, while Mom and Ryan had the front.
For the first...maybe forty-five minutes of the ride, KK read the book Dave Barry Does Japan aloud. It was hilarious, so that was a lot of fun. When KK felt she had read enough, Nicole stole the book and was reading it on her own.
After that, it was mostly just listening to anime music for a long time. Singing along to some songs, but I was nervous about losing my voice like last year, so I wasn't as loud and didn't sing as much as I normally would. KK became weirdly obsessed with Nyaasu no Party, and made us listen to it several times, though we protested. XD;;
We made several signs to hold up at people. At first it was the typical "Fanime or Bust!" sign, but that got kind of boring because no one knew what to think of it, so we made another one that said "HELLO! How are you doing? :)" and we got a lot of great reactions and smiles and waves for that one. XD
While we were on the highway, Cody-tachi pulled over (he was behind us the whole time, and we kept waving at him and such) and, because we didn't know what he was doing, we pulled over, too. Nicole and KK got out of the car and--get this--on the side of the highway, they began to tango with each other. XD A couple people honked at them because it was so funny.
At some point in the drive, we decided we needed to do something else to keep us amused, so we took out KK's math notebook and started playing a game of...well, the game doesn't have a name. It's basically where you draw something as quickly and badly as you possibly can, and the other people try to guess what it is until they get it right. The game is just asking for everyone to start cracking up majorly, which we did. There were several that were just so weird that we would be guessing everything under the sun for more than a half hour until we got it right. Nicole and I had a particularly hard time with KK's interpretation of herself, and Ryan's drawing of...I forget what it was. I know at one point, KK was literally guessing whatever she could think of (including political figures my brother has never even heard of). The point is-- the game was fun. XD We did it for at least a few hours, and in fact only stopped when we spotted our first cosplayer and got too excited to continue.
At one point in the drive, our car and Cody's car stopped at a gas station briefly, and it was a funny little stop because we were all kind of zombie-like as we milled aimlessly around the gas station to stretch our legs. Makayla and Zoe were attempting to explain this mysterious "Puddle conversation" Roya had started, but I can't say I really understood what was going on just then. XD
Anyway, back to the first cosplayer. We spotted our first cosplayer--a random kitsune, complete with tail--more than a mile from the convention. At this point we got all crazy and started peeking out the window, hoping to spot more. Eventually, we did, and many more started showing up as we got closer to the con.
First, Mom pulled into the front of the Hilton so we could arrange our stuff and check in quickly. Once we got all of our stuff on the guy's golden cart-thing, Mom decided to go take Zoe, Roya, and Makayla to their hotel, because (due to money reasons) they decided to stay at a Travelodge about a mile away. Meanwhile, Nicole and I skipped off with Cody to park his car. It was really exciting doing this, because in the parking lot (which was under the hotel), there were so many otaku cars! A bunch of people had plushies arranged on their dashboards, one person's license plate said "NERV"[something I can't remember], and SO many people had "Got Yaoi?" bumper stickers. XD
When we returned to the lobby, KK, Nicole, and I were hanging around, just waiting for my Mom to get back. As we were doing this, KK happened to mention that she had a fuku with her. XD Nicole and I automatically started scheming to get Cody to wear it. It was funny, because as we were in this conversation, Cody walked up and flicked his hair all bishounen-like and the three of us all started giggling.
At this point, we journeyed up to our hotel room on the 5th floor (room 504, in case you were wondering) where there was a little scene going on. Mom was mad at me for leaving Ryan with the bellhop to bring the stuff up to our room because Ryan tipped the bellhop $10 when she had intended for him to give him $3. Somehow, this was our fault and Ryan was crying and freaking out and acting like he was traumatized.
Anyway, once this whole scene was over, we arranged our stuff in the hotel room and I tried my costume on briefly. I automatically concluded it was awesome, which it is. It fits perfectly, and other than the fact that it's hot, it's quite comfortable. It's also very accurate to Kumagorou. :D Well, I didn't want to wear it on Friday, so I took it off.
It took everyone a long time to decide what they were going to wear. At this point, we proposed the fuku to Cody. He agreed, but only on one condition--KK had to wear pigtails, too. This was a big deal, because KK HATES pigtails for some unknown reason. So, KK, after some persuasion, agreed.
We were worried the fuku would be too small for Cody, which it kind of was, but we improvised and it worked out just fine. Not only did he wear the blue fuku, he also wore a tiny (much too small) pink tank top over his own gray shirt, rainbow socks, a bow around his neck, and, oddly enough, a kendo stick. XD He looked LOVELY, I must say. I love that boy. XD;;;
Though disgruntled, KK wore the pigtails and was very self-conscious about it, even though no one even cared at all.
Cody was a little embarrassed to leave the hotel room like that, but he did anyway, and we all traversed down to registration. As we were walking through artist's row, Cody attracted plenty of stares and giggles. Also, Cody was talking to one of the guys with a booth at Artist's Row, and it was obvious the guy was trying not to laugh at Cody as he was talking to him. The guy could barely keep a straight face. XD
We went to registration, and it really was no problem at all. The small lines moved very quickly, and it took maybe three minutes all in all. Of course, it helped I was pre-registered. I seem to recall seeing the three Sand-nins while in the registration line. Not sure why that stood out, as I saw literally thousands of cosplayers at Fanime, and literally hundreds of Naruto characters, but it did stand out. XD
As we walked up the stairs back to Artist's Row, I freaked out for a second and thought I forgot my badge, but then I realized it was in my bag with all my freebees. Baka.
I don't know how or why, but for some reason we ended up standing around the free preview manga tables (kind of by the escalator), figuring out what to do first. By the time we were in the convention, the Dealer's Room was closed, so that was out of the question. As we were standing there, we heard a familiar voice go "Cody?!" We look up, and there's a sort of familiar boy standing there. Hey, it's Chad from Anime Expo! Every time we see him, he looks totally different. XD He couldn't believe Cody was in a skirt. Chad had no place to stay, so Nicole was trying to talk me into letting him stay in our hotel room, but I wasn't sure if Mom would be okay with that.
I know at one point we found our other friends (Ciera included, as she came down with her parents and cousin), but I can't remember at which point this was. @_@
Everyone kind of split up, and Nicole, Chad, Ryan, and I ended up in the Swap Meet, checking things out. I didn't really find anything I wanted (even after four or five rounds), but Nicole bought .hack//sign 3 and 4 for $10 for both, so now I have to get Vol. 2 so we can watch them. XD She also bought a Ranma tape and...probably other stuff, but I can't remember.
We went to the karaoke, and most people were...meh. Someone sang Inner Universe, which I thought was ironic because I had that song stuck in my head when I walked in the karaoke room. XD One guy reminded us of Gackt for unknown reasons, even though he didn't really look like him and wasn't even singing a Gackt song.
We also went and watched Evangelion: Redeath Redux. OMG...It was even funnier than I remembered it. XD So brilliant. "It's Gendo..." will be one of our in-jokes for the rest of our lives. XD Unfortunately, those people who we had wanted to see it weren't with us at the time, so they missed out on it... Another year of them being confused whenever we mention the Gendo jokes. *Sigh* My poor little brother is so naive that he didn't get half of the jokes the fandub made. And...er...we didn't want to explain them to him.
After that, I think we met up with people and went to watch some FMA. KK was tired, and fell asleep in FMA. XD She's already seen all of it, so she didn't miss anything.
I think we went and asked Mom if Chad could stay in our room at that point. Mom was reluctant at first, but she said if Cody was okay with staying in the other room at the Travelodge, it was okay. ;_; We wanted Cody in our room, but Chad really needed a place to stay and Nicole was kind of pressuring us (she even paid Mom some so he could stay), so we asked Cody, he was okay with it, and we went down to parking to get Chad's stuff.
Geez, Chad has so much stuff. O_o He was telling us all about how you can interpret his Gaara gourd in disgusting ways, and then he made me hold it. XD He had a laptop with tons of music and anime on it, so we had that in the hotel room the whole time, which was nice. Anyway, he had four boxes of costumes, in addition to his luggage and his laptop bag. When the whole moving-in was complete, we went back to wandering the con.
This is entertaining. KK and I were wandering kind of near the Marriott, and we spotted a Sasuke and Naruto walking together. Automatically, we went "OMG WE MUST HAVE THE SASUNARU!" so we started stalking them. Meanwhile, as we were hiding behind walls and plants, and surely stalking them, we were wondering "Er...how are we going to ask them for this?! Just go up and be like 'Hi! Will you two pose in the suggestive ways for us?'" We were kind of shy, so we just continued stalking them for quite a while. When we concluded we really aren't brave at all, we started running up and down the escalators gleefully. XD Repeatedly. For a very long time. By the time we were done, our Sasuke and Naruto had escaped. ;_;
Nicole, KK, and I naturally wanted to go to the shounen-ai screening at midnight. Chad was with us, and he wasn't very happy about it, but he agreed so long as he could sleep during it. We all kind of wished we knew where Cody was, because we were sure he would've been fine with watching the shounen-ai with us... There was a HUGE line for the shounen-ai. *_* Huuuge. So, we went and got in the line and somehow got in a bizarre discussion about shounen-ai and Hellsing. I have no idea how that came about or why, but it was kind of amusing. When the staff announced the room was opening, all the fangirls started cheering.
I wasn't sure what the expect, as I had never even heard of the series "Loveless". At first, they accidentily started playing a really dorky old anime, and I was like "No way! This CANNOT be the shounen-ai we're watching!" but they eventually got it to the right track, causing great relief.
I'm not going to go into a detailed review of Loveless at the moment, but in short, I liked it, although I'm not sure how I feel on the shounen-ai in the show, as it is somewhat shota and kind of creepy. The plot seems good, the animation is fairly nice, and it has nice music. I'm currently downloading it. XD KK didn't like it because she thought it was a little too stereotypical, but neither Nicole nor myself thought it was. Anyway, it seems like a good show, although perhaps not phenomenal. Maybe I'll change my mind. I still haven't seen past episode 2, though I have 6 and am currently downloading 7.
At the point that episode two ended, it was past one in the morning and KK and I were a little tired, so, even though I wanted to watch more, we left and went back to the room.
So, um, we went to bed. ^^;; The sleeping arrangements were as follows for that night: Nicole and I in one bed, Mom and Ryan in the other bed, and KK and Chad on the floor. Friday, Cody slept at the Travelodge. We missed him so much! ;_; KK and I in particular.
Saturday
I woke up sort of early... Every single day of the con, I was the first one awake. ^^;; Everyone took a lot of showers Saturday morning, so we kept running out of towels and having to get more from the maid. I think that was the hardest part about rooming with six other people, was managing the showers and everyone changing in and out of costumes. @_@ Luckily, my costume I can just put over my clothes, so I never had to use the bathroom for my costume.
Saturday morning, we spent a lot of time getting all of Cody's costume together and on him. It turned out totally awesome, by the way. :D Nicole was trying to get his hair to stick up correctly, and it kept turning out funny. XD Also, the dye on the boots kept getting all over the towels, so they looked bloody.
Throughout this whole day, I changed in and out of my costume frequently. As usual, I got lots of pictures taken of me, and Nicole (as Noriko) and I got recognized a LOT more than we thought we would. O_o; Apparently, more people know about Gravitation than we thought. The costume is fairly comfortable other than the gloves, which for some reason make the whole costume seem about ten degrees hotter. *Sizzle* Also, if I put the nose on in such a way that the string goes just above my ears, it can get rather painful after about a half hour of wearing the costume. ><
I spent a LOT of Saturday in the Dealer's Room. I think it was about this point that I started digging around in the clean doujinshi, couldn't help but buy a few, and now I'm addicted to doujins. *_* Addicted, I tell you. I spent SO much time at the con trying to find clean SasuNaru...There wasn't a lot of it, thought there was plenty of KakaIru, which is cute. I don't have enough interest in KakaIru to buy exclusively KakaIru, so I continued my search for SasuNaru. I did, indeed, find some and buy it. :D It's so cute! ♥ I bought some cute Wolf's Rain doujinshi, too.
I'll have to hunt down everything I bought at Fanime so I can make a list...
I went in and out of the Dealer's Room many times, sometimes with my friends and sometimes without. I kept forgetting my badge in the hotel room when I changed in and out of my costume, though. Baka.
I also wandered the Artist's Row for quite a while, just looking at everyone's wonderful art, when I suddenly did a double-take of recognition. 'Hmmm...I know that picture of Lee and Gai from somewhere!' Then I realized that--hey!--the owner of tastygraphite.net was there! It was awesome getting to meet her, because I've adored her art for quite a while. I have it all saved on my hard drive. XD So I was telling her how much I love her art and her website, and she was really nice. So I commissioned SasuNaru and she promised to have it to me by the next day. Yay~! I also bought a little Naruto and Sasuke keychain from her.
As I was there, I noticed Nicole was talking to a clump of people, so I went over and joined the conversation. One of the people in the conversation was a Sasuke cosplayer...in fact, the Sasuke cosplayer KK and I had been stalking Friday night. Nicole told me, "Hey Kristin! Look at Sasuke closely...does he look familiar?" I said he didn't, so she was like "OMG Kristin, it was my first husband!"
And it was! YES! It was the nice Kamui who glomped us all last year, and Nicole married him in an elaborate ceremony last year. Most of you know the story, so I'll refrain from telling it right now.
And now he was Sasuke. Awesome.
He and his girlfriend/female friend/whoever she was came up to our hotel room with us and was helping us with our costumes, which we randomly decided we wanted to wear for a while before MusicFest. I told him that I had seen some Sharingan contacts in the Dealer's Room for $55, so he went down and got some red contacts. They were SO cool. He kept popping up in random places and staring at us with the weird eyes. He said if we could find a willing Naruto, he'd happily SasuNaru for us.
I know at some point during this day, Nicole, Chad, and I were rocking out to Naruto music and Ayumi Hamasaki in the hotel room, and singing along loudly and badly and just having the greatest time, but I have no idea when this actually took place.
At some point during the day, towards the evening, Nicole and I found a really, really good Chouji cosplayer (seriously--looked EXACTLY like him) and ended up having a long discussion with him. THIS is irony if I have ever heard it. We had been talking to him for about an hour, and he asked, "Hey, where are you two from, anyway?" We were automatically like "Oh, you wouldn't have heard of it... It's this little tiny town up between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe..."
He went, "Huh... Try me. What's it called?"
"Grass Valley."
"No way! I live there, too!"
What are the chances?! Darn slim, if I do say so myself. O_O So then we had a long discussion about his life, Nevada Union High School (he is 22 and graduated from it five years ago), and other random stuff. It was so cool! XD Seriously, who would've thought? His name is Sean, by the way.
After finishing the conversation, we changed out of our costumes and concluded we needed to gather our friends for MusicFest. We managed to get Roya, Zoe, Makayla, and Ciera (and her cousin), but KK and Cody were elsewhere (I think they were at a panel, if I'm remembering correctly).
The line was HUGE, although after having been to AX, no line can even compete. XD It was hard standing in line because my legs were kind of hurting from my shopping expeditions. We all got in line almost last. x.x
This didn't turn out to be that big of a deal, however, because as soon as we got in, it was pretty much a free-for-all as to where we sat. We automatically went towards the front, where a few brave souls with glowsticks had risked being kicked out or pushed back by sitting IN FRONT of the chairs for the concert. We decided we were these types of brave souls, so we went straight up to the very front and situated ourselves there. We were a little afraid that the staff would tell us to leave, but they didn't. They did, however, put a line of tape about ten feet from the stage that we couldn't cross. We automatically scooted up to the very line of tape and sat right, directly behind it. By then, a lot of people had taken the idea and there was quite a crowd up at the front with us.
I'm not even joking when I say Nicole and I had the best seats in the entire audience. We had the direct front center two spots, so we were about ten feet from the performers the whole time, and were leading the mosh-pit-dancing-ness. While waiting for the show to start, Nicole took out a pen and wrote "Got yaoi?" on the tape.
Before the concert started, two random guys came up towards the front with a sign that said "Will Yaoi For $" Makayla ROCKS, so she said "This is for you two!" to Nicole and I, and threw them a dollar. Bwahaha, they started MAKING OUT, and did for at least a minute. All the fangirls in the area, ourselves concluded, started cheering and whooping. YES! We keep spectulating, "Errr...if they did that much for a dollar, what would they have done for a $20...?" O_o;; We don't want to know.
So, just as they were finishing their make-out session the lights went out for the concert. Everyone was all disappointed because the shounen-ai went in the dark, but once they realized the concert was starting, everyone started cheering and screaming. I would say there were about 2000 people in the Civic Auditorium, total.
The first act was a seiyuu and singer, Maria Yamamoto. She was SO adorable. *_* You could tell, just from her voice, that she's a seiyuu, and she was even cosplaying as a character she voices. I was totally impressed with myself, because I basically understood everything she said in Japanese. ^^ Anyway, she taught the audience a little dance to do while she was singing the theme song. Of course, I'm a klutz and incapable, so I couldn't get it down, but it was fun nonetheless. She sang about three genki J-pop songs before she introduced that Ramen and Rice would be the next act.
Of course, I've seen Ramen and Rice plenty of times, but this...was SO awesome. I can't even stress it enough. I get a rush just thinking about it.
The first song they played was Haruka Kanata, which is the second Naruto opening theme. This was one of my favorite moments in my whole life, possibly. More than half of the audience--in fact, probably more than two thirds, started singing along with it, and it was just...so powerful and awesome. I was on cloud nine. Makayla and I were loudly singing along, and it just sounded SO COOL with more than a thousand people singing the song.
Next, they played a bunch of songs, that, admittedly, I didn't know. ^^;; Makayla recognized one as "Asterisks" by Orange Range, and she got all excited about that. XD
At one point during the songs, I turned to Makayla and Ciera (who is an FMA NUT) and said, "Hey, what do you guys bet they play something from FMA?"
Makayla nodded, and added, "What do you bet it's Ready Steady Go?" and I said "Definitely!"
Of course, they did, and again, everyone sang along and it was just incredible. XD SO COOL, I tell you!
Like with Anime OD, they played the Super Smash Bros. Melée Suite, and it was great because everyone hummed along and danced. XD Everyone in the whole audience humming and dancing was just...hilarious. I tried to do the "PIKA!" again at the Pokémon part, but the audience was too loud and I couldn't get it across even though I was in the very front.
After that was over to thunderous applause and cheering, Kumiko Kato came on. She was cool and sweet, and sang lots of J-Pop. Admittedly, I was distracted by her shiny bracelets. XD;; She was pretty good at speaking English, too.
Next came the main act--ZZ! I had never heard them before at all, but right off the bat I decided I really liked them. Admittedly, the lead singer Sotaro was completely sexy, even to ME! At the beginning of the concert, he was in a samurai outfit that was rather reminscent of Kenshin. Mmmm. *_* Anyway, they were COMPLETELY awesome. We were all dancing and jumping and clapping the entire concert (as was everyone else), and it was a sea of excitement and enthusiasm. Makayla, Nicole, and I (and maybe even Ciera too) all yelled "DAISUKI!" and "WE LOVE YOU!" as loudly as we could on various occasions. This caused lots of cheering (presumably in agreeance) and yelling, and it was just totally awesome.
Of course, they did the customary leave-and-come-back-for-encore-after-lots-of-screaming. They were SO great--I want to get one of their CDs, and I would've after the concert if the CDs didn't sell out in about thirty seconds. @_@
After the concert, we were all kind of hearing "crickets" for a while from the volume.
Everyone else left, but Nicole and I lingered in the lobby, hoping to meet some of the participants in the concerts. Our patience paid off--after about fifteen minutes of waiting, we got to hug, talk to, get pictures with, and get the autograph of Sotaro (the sexy one). We also talked to the cool keyboardist of ZZ, and she was really nice. :) We also chatted with Kumiko Kato for a while. We got autographs and pictures from everyone, and they were all so sweet! It was great. We spoke to them in Japanese, and we had a great time. In fact, we were so busy socializing with the stars that we were the last ones there, and a policeman had to escort us out of the building so he could close the building up.
It was only 10:30 PM at this point, so we located KK out by the fountains and went and wandered the convention center. When we went up the escalator, at one of the Artist’s Row tables [vacated because of the hour] we found these five or so fanboys with a label-less, unopened tin can, and they had a sign that said “Guess what’s in the mystery can correctly and win $5 or a dance.” We instantly started interrogating them about how specific the guess had to be in order to win the prize, and the guys basically said it didn’t have to be that specific at all.
At this point—and I had NO idea of what this was going to set in motion—I said “Hey, instead of $5 or a dance, will you yaoi for us if we guess it right?”
At first they went “Sure!” but then they suddenly went, “Wait…uh, before we agree to anything…what’s yaoi?”
We all started laughing evilly and were flabbergasted that anyone could be at an anime convention and not know what yaoi is. When we explained to them what it was, they were shocked and horrified and decided “No way!” However, we kept working at it, and eventually one of them piped up and said, “Well…what’s in it for us?” At this point, Nicole and KK offered to yuri in exchange (ironic, because earlier they had almost carried a sign around that said “Will yuri for yaoi!”).
After a lot of persuasion, we started a chant of “YA-O-I! YA-O-I!” Which, in turn, attracted a bunch of other fangirls and random people in the area, who joined our cause. One of these people was a guy with a camcorder who began to document the whole spectacle as it played out. He shall be referred to, from now on, as “camcorder boy.” There were probably about twenty people as the audience by now.
Eventually, one of the two guys we were targeting agreed to yaoi for us, which caused much happiness. However, the other guy was still too reluctant. A random guy walked up and volunteered to kiss not-so-reluctant guy, which they did. However, we the fangirls decided this kiss did not fulfill our agreement because both of the guys weren’t involved.
So, they both seemed to agree at this point. Or so we thought. They claimed that they were coming out from behind their table so everyone could see, and then they sprinted off in opposite directions. Ohhh no, you’re not getting away that easily! KK and camcorder boy dashed off after them and managed to drag them back, panting and flailing, after about fifteen minutes.
At this point, we played a mean prank on them. We claimed that they had missed some major yuri between Nicole and a random fangirl (who played a big role in this whole thing, and therefore shall be labeled “random fangirl” from now on). We even got a bunch of the guys around to testify as to how hot it was. XD They totally fell for it, and were all disappointed. “Awww, we missed it!”
At this point, the whole weird thing got back on track. They tried to get out of it by repeatedly changing the subject to the mystery can again, so we guessed that what was in the mystery can was “food” and insisted we wanted our yaoi. They tried to get out of this, too, by saying that wasn’t specific enough, so we sent KK (the debater) off on them about our earlier conversation regarding how specific it had to be. KK is an awesome debater, so they were quickly defeated.
Eventually, we managed to persuade them to a quick kiss on the lips. Unfortunately, it was so quick I didn’t even manage to get a picture! ;_;
We left for a little while at this point to see what was going on in the screening rooms, thinking the whole thing was over. Boy, were we mistaken. We returned about three minutes later, as nothing was playing in the screening rooms that was of interest.
I honestly have no clue how this went, because it was basically pure chaos and it made very little sense, but basically we the fangirls ruled that the conditions we had set had not been met by the first kiss. Those conditions were the agreement that KK and Nicole would kiss for three seconds, and so would they. Their kiss had lasted less than half a second, so we wanted a re-kiss.
This angle didn’t exactly work, however, even with the bribe of more yuri, so it turned into a trial about the more reluctant boy’s sexuality. XD Myself (being the one who started the whole thing) and camcorder boy were appointed judges, while the audience of mainly fangirls became the jury. We confiscated the “evidence”, which consisted of the mystery can sign (modified to include terms of yaoi) and the mystery can itself.
To retaliate, the boys took KK’s flipflops hostage (they were on the ground since when she kicked them off when she was pursuing the boys when they fled. We eventually agreed that they could have the mystery can back if they gave KK’s flipflops back, and they agreed eventually.
After a little discussion, we concluded that our terms were as follows—to prove he was straight, reluctant boy would kiss his male friend, random fangirl (who took a big role in the whole trial, along with camcorder boy, my friends, and I), and, just to make up for it, random fangirl and Nicole would kiss for them, too. All three kisses were supposed to last three whole seconds, as counted by myself and camcorder boy. We had a big audience now.
The trial started, and after about twenty minutes of arguing and denial, he did indeed kiss his friend. It wasn’t for three seconds, but we were pleased with it nonetheless. Then random fangirl kissed him, Nicole and random fangirl kissed, etc.
While we judges were discussing the verdict with the jury (AKA fangirls), random fangirl kissed his friend and concluded that the second was a better kisser.
Our verdict, by the way, was that reluctant boy was gay and in denial about it, hence why he was so freaked out over it. He kept trying to refute this, but he kept accidentally saying things that…didn’t quite come out right, which lead us to believe he was not only gay and in denial about it, but also an uke and a bad kisser.
After much discussion of this and yaoi in general, the trial, which had been at least an hour long and very entertaining, came to an end with us fangirls delivering our closing statements into the camera. Basically, we talked about how the lesson of the story was that yaoi is the single best way to attract girls at an anime convention and how the guys were good sports for surviving our entertaining and sadistic trial. We even kind of apologized for traumatizing them so. XD Kind of. Oh well. They’re probably scarred for life now. We never saw them at the con again, leading us to conclude that they were afraid of us. KK got the mystery can back and is planning on opening it eventually, just to see what’s in it.
We wandered for a while after that, still buzzing from the weird trial. It was about one in the morning at that point, but we still weren’t tired.
Eventually, we found an entirely random group of cosplayers dancing to music in the empty Artist’s Row and eating Pocky. When we approached them, they told us that they were playing a game of “What will YOU do for Pocky?!” and daring each other to do silly things for pocky. In between dares, they danced to the random J-pop and anime music they were playing on their boombox. The dares were really quite funny—one of the girls went and glomped a guy who was playing DDR (while he was playing), and another person went and snuck up to the people holding the 24-hours Super Smash competition and turned off their Gamecube without the people who were playing noticing.
One of these cosplayers was a pajama-clad Naruto (yay! ^^), and she was dancing to the music. Her hat and wig fell off part of the way through her dancing, though, and so everyone started freaking out and going “You’re not Naruto! You’re an IMPOSTER!” XD She smiled sheepishly and put her hat and wig back on.
I think it was after this whole thing that KK and I were sitting on the spheres by the fountain philosophizing. As we were philosophizing, Haku (from Naruto, not Spirited Away) randomly showed up and was hanging out near us, so we complimented him (actually a her) on the costume, and were saying things like “We love you, Hakuuu! Wahhh, why did you have to die?!” ;_;
I went back to the hotel room and went to bed at about 2 AM. Admittedly, as I was falling asleep I felt a little sick. I concluded it was probably because I literally hadn’t eaten anything all day. I fell asleep anyway, though. I was happier because Mom let Cody sleep in our hotel room, making seven people in one room. XD
Sunday
Again, I got up earlier that morning than anyone else. I was shaky from lack of food, so the first thing I did was eat two mini-muffins, hoping this would get the shakiness away. I tried to remind myself to eat something else later (but failed and completely forgot). I got the chance to take a shower before everyone else got up, and then I got dressed and, once everyone else got up and got ready, went down to the convention.
The first thing we found when we got out of the hotel and into Fanime was Ricky! Yay, he and his girlfriend were there playing DDR. We talked to him for a while happily, vowed to find him again when we were in costume, and went off towards Artist’s Row again.
There, I picked up my wonderful SasuNaru commission from tastygraphite, thanked her, etc.
I think I browsed the Dealer’s Room for a little while after that, and then ran up to the hotel room to grab my camera in preparation for the Naruto gathering.
By the time we got down there for the Naruto gathering, there were flocks of Naruto characters migrating across the street to a nearby park. The Naruto gathering was fascinating and amusing, and I took fifty-plus pictures. *_* Let’s see…interesting points of the Naruto gathering…
Well, Chad was in his Gaara costume, which is just totally awesome. He was kind of helping to organize all the picture sessions. There was a lot to organize—there were at least 150 Naruto cosplayers there, if not 200, and they weren’t even all the Naruto cosplayers I had seen throughout the convention. There was also this girl cosplaying as Kyuubi, and she was just so cool. Her costume was awesome, and she had a great personality. She kept doing hilarious poses during the pictures.
There were also a couple of other very original Naruto cosplayers. One girl was dressed as Kakashi’s Icha Icha Paradise, and she had a sign that said “Kakashi bait!” She also had a Kakashi plushie. XD One boy was, according to his sign, “Sasuke/Haku’s lovechild.” Oookay… I don’t even want to know how that works. Someone made a huge “Konoha” sign/flag thing that was about fifteen feet tall, and was totally awesome looming over the sea of Naruto cosplayers.
I found a really wonderful Shikamaru cosplayer, and I think she was kind of surprised at how hard I glomped her. XD It made me happy.
A lot of the themes for the pictures we took were funny, too. One picture was all the dead characters playing dead on the ground, one was the Sannin doing the can-can, one was “Characters with Ambiguous Genders!”-themed.
Including Nicole’s husband, we gathered a Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura, and Kakashi and took some Team 7 pictures. One is really cute, where it’s Sasuke and Sakura trying to strangle Naruto, while Kakashi halfheartedly tries to stop it while reading Icha Icha Paradise. We tried to get the Naruto, who was female and an excellent cosplayer, to do shounen-ai poses with Nicole’s husband, who was happy to do shounen-ai for us, but she explained politely that she’s opposed to SasuNaru and wouldn’t do it. ;_; We never did get any SasuNaru pictures…
All together, I couldn’t fit all of the Naruto cosplayers into one picture from across the street. ><
When the gathering was reaching its end at about 2 PM (it started at 12 PM), a guy showed up with a sign that said “Naruto sucks and so do you!” He instantly got attacked. XD I got some great pictures of Kakashi about to use “Thousand Years of Pain” on him, Kyuubi baring her teeth at his bottom, and other characters holding kunais to…strategic locations…on his body. XD
So, in short, it was lots of fun.
When that was clearly over, we went off to watch Fanboy Bebop. Fanboy Bebop was brilliant—I loved how it put into perspective just how dorky otaku are. It was hilarious—if otaku know how to laugh at anything, it’s themselves. They had this whole creepy thing with Diglett being a phallic symbol (WTF?), and Faye was obsessed with Fushigi Yuugi. They kept playing on anime conventions, and it was just great. I can’t describe it all…it’s impossible.
I went and bought more doujinshi in the Dealer’s Room, and as I was wandering I heard Kiseki no Umi playing, so I went and lurked around that table, singing along. The guy who was working at the booth was like “Hey, you know this song?”
I nodded and said “Kiseki no Umi. Maaya Sakamoto. Composed by Yoko Kanno.”
Then he asked, “Do you know which anime it’s from?”
“Record of the Lodoss Wars.”
He was impressed, and said I was the first one to get that right at the convention so far. XD Go me.
I also found a pretty good Tsume in the Dealer’s Room and took a picture of him. *Sniffle* The only Wolf’s Rain cosplayer I saw through the whole convention. *Sulk*
When it came time, I ran up to the hotel room and changed into my costume quickly and Nicole and I went dashing down to the Gravitation cosplay gathering (meeting up with Ricky again on the way and glomping him), which was small but fun. We took pictures of pairings in the show, I got pictures with a girl dressed as Ryuichi, and we just had a good time. I wish Cody had worn his Ryuichi costume… He didn’t because he was ashamed of the fact that it wasn’t totally finished, and he just likes his Lloyd costume better. Oh well, we can do Kumagorou and Ryuichi pictures anytime.
As I was wandering around near the spheres during the Gravitation cosplay gathering, a girl with a kendo stick approached me and challenged me to a duel. I wasn’t quite sure about it (as I was in a pink rabbit suit and wasn’t sure if this would restrict my mobility), but I accepted her challenge anyway. She gave me a choice of using two short weapons or one long one, and I chose the long one. Despite her being much more experienced and my being in a rabbit suit, by fighting her furiously and fast, I managed to defeat her in less than two minutes.
The guy who was watching, presumably her friend, was laughing and saying I was a good fighter because I never stopped moving. I thanked her for the fun experience, wished her luck in finding new challengers, and went back to talking to the nice girl in the Shuichi dog suit.
Ryan later told me that she said I was the first one who defeated her in the whole convention. w00t, I pwned! Go me!
At the last minute of the Gravitation cosplay gathering, a girl cosplaying as Tatsuha showed up. She was in boxer shorts decorated with Ryuichi-worship types of things, and it was really funny. So we did get some TatsuhaxRyuichi after all!
Once the Gravitation cosplay gathering ended, we realized Der Cosplay was going to start in about forty-five minutes. There was already a HUGE line growing out of the Civic Auditorium and we didn’t want to wait in line, so we stayed across the street, watching the line for signs of movement so we could get in. As we were waiting, KK went a little crazy and went swimming in the fountain in her Ninja shirt, so then she had to go back to the hotel room and change into dry clothes. She was completely sopping. XD
When she got back, we all relocated to closer to the line, and we were scoping out the cosplayers who were passing us. To amuse ourselves, Makayla and I started singing Naruto songs loudly and badly, and we had a great time doing this. “Haruka KANATA~~!”
When the line finally got to the point where we could get in, we got seats up in the second floor on the far right, next to the screens. When the lights turned off—this was really cool—everyone who had cell phones in the auditorium held them up and waved them back and forth in the darkness. It was spectacularly beautiful. Think of a completely black, HUGE building with the lights of a thousand (maybe more) cell phones waving back and forth in unison, in different colors and different levels of brightness. It was mesmerizing.
The skits started off badly and…well, they didn’t get much better. There were a few good ones and a few really funny ones, but for the most part they were just abysmal. The host—the guy with the fake German accent from last year—was pretty funny, but most of the skits weren’t. A lot of them seemed to rely on knowledge of obscure series and video games, which I’m generally pretty good with…but these, I guess, were just *really* obscure. O_o;
One great one, though, was a tentacle monster creeping on stage with ominous music playing. When he got to the middle, all the sudden the music switched to the Spongebob Squarepants theme song, and the tentacle monster started dancing to it. XD Very entertaining.
KK kept falling asleep, Makayla went into the hall to read Demon Diary, and after about an hour of this we’d had enough. We all left and went back to the hotel room to relax for a little while before the Naruto game tournament at 11 PM.
In the hotel room, we mostly read doujinshi… There was one part that caused a freak-out. XD The doujinshi I bought were supposedly rated PG and therefore perfectly innocent, except… KK was reading this cute SasuNaru one I read, and on the last page, there’s only one way it can be described… “CHIBI SEX!” KK yelled. “There’s chibi sex!” Well, that’s one way to cause an uproar…
Nicole was in the bathroom then doing something with her costume, and she immediately went “Ooo, ooo, I want to see!” so KK rushed off into the bathroom with it and everyone else in the hotel room followed out of curiosity, while I facepalmed. XD Much squealing commenced.
My Mom was in the room at the moment, so she was kind of like, “Err…is there something I should know about here?” I had to convince her that it really wasn’t a big deal. Not that she really cares. XD
At this point, I adorned my Naruto in his pajamas plushie with an “I ♥ yaoi!” pin, which I thought was a fitting thing to do.
We decided to leave the hotel room a little earlier than we thought we would, so we went down to the fountains, doujinshi still with us, and were sitting on the spheres talking. Cody went and was interpreting a cute SasuNaru doujin I had in interesting ways, and thus “Beg for Sex no Jutsu!” was invented. Poor Roya was overwhelmed by all the yaoi, and at that point…she snapped. She said the most uncharacteristic thing she could ever say at that point.
“I think I’m going to go find the closest male head I can and shove my tongue in it.” WTF, Roya?
She didn’t actually make out with anyone random, of course, and instead found a Lee cosplayer who turned out to be a friend of Nicole’s husband, and she was hanging around with him. We found her, sat at a table with her, and we all started playing with Lee’s metal kunai. Our table, for whatever reason, attracted a couple of fellow Naruto fans, so we ended up with Cody, KK, Nicole, Roya, Lee, Nicole’s husband, a female Sasuke, and probably other people, but I can’t remember them all. @_@ KK and I were squeeing over LeeSaku as a pairing and how cute it is.
We started playing a game of “Spin the Kunai” for hugs. Entertaining, especially when the kunai decided it loved Cody and pointed at him every single time. XD Even when he was walking from Lee’s side of the table to my side of the table, it still followed him.
We went to the Naruto game tournament after this. KK and I were too short to see the actual tournament over the tall fanboys that had gathered around it, so we camped out next to a Naruto game that wasn’t being used in the tournament. We continued reading doujinshi and got in a two-or-so hour passionate conversation about Naruto. As we were sitting there, openings to play the game opened up, so we played a little. I did sort of okay as Haku, but when I played as Shikamaru, I sucked. I couldn’t get him to do anything but slouch forward slowly or hop up and down. XD I don’t do well with slow characters, so Shika and I weren’t compatible in that sense.
Eventually, at about two in the morning, we finally went up and went to bed.
Monday
Awww, the last day of the convention… We spent most of it getting last-minute shopping done, and saying goodbye to everyone. Before I went to the Dealer’s Room for the last time, though, Mom had me get all of my stuff and put it in the car. She sent me down to the parking lot, expecting me to be able to find our car. She said it was in the “first row”.
I soon discovered, weighed down with about fifty pounds of stuff, that the parking lot was HUGE and I wandered around with all that stuff for at least an hour. >< I never did find it, and I was majorly miffed. I returned to the room and we were watching random things on Chad’s computer (Air, Inuyasha AMVs, and listening to more Ayumi Hamasaki and singing along), and he was showing us that his cell phone’s ring is Wind. Yay!
I’ve noticed a funny trend as of late. The guys seem to like the shoujo shows better than the girls, and the girls seem to like the shounen shows better then the guys. Am I the only one who has noticed this? I know I like almost exclusively shounen shows, and Chad likes mostly shoujo. Cody seems to like shoujo, too. Maybe I just have weird male friends.
I bought some final doujinshi and a Naruto poster that is shiny and pretty and has Naruto and Sasuke standing back to back. It’s a rare promo poster, too.
Nicole, Roya, and I, who were the only ones left (everyone else left a little earlier) went and watched the semi-finals of the AMVs. They were pretty good…I don’t think there were any that really stood out, but these were the SEMI-finals and not the finals (I missed the finals because the Naruto gathering was going on. I’m planning on downloading those AMVs soon.)
We also went and watched…some random show that took place in ancient Japan, and though we weren’t really enjoying it that much, we played a game of “Guess that seiyuu!” I think we did well, though we didn’t stay for the credits to find out.
On the screens last year that had the “Gendo Likes…” things, they were playing FLCL, and then Gunbuster when FLCL ended.
Well, with my last dollar, I bought at ice cream sandwich from a vendor right outside of the convention center. Nicole and I went and found Chouji outside of the convention center, kind of near the spheres.
This was really great—when we came up, Chouji was eating potato chips while Shikamaru sat next to him and stared at the ground. They weren’t trying to be in-character at all is the funny thing. I was talking to Shikamaru, and she was totally acting like Shikamaru. She’s the only I glomped earlier. Not to mention, both of their costumes were spot-on, and it was just…perfect. :D
Well, we said goodbye to them, and that was just about it. We went and found Mom, did some final preparations for the end, and went down the elevator to the parking garage. This wasn’t, however, before Nicole and I literally kissed the wall of the convention center. We didn’t really want to leave, but the convention was really ending at this point.
The car ride back was very entertaining. We were all confused and delusional, especially Roya. Roya started talking about really weird things because she was so sleep-deprived, and it was really funny. She was trying to tell Nicole something about her husband, but she completely scrambled the word order beyond recognition, so we were like “Errr…okay, Roya…”
We stopped at Taco Bell for lunch, and I got a fiesta taco salad like I always do on the way back from anime conventions.
We had a very funny conversation with Roya about Naruto pairings, and she was sick of pairings so she gave this intelligible and funny comment on the whole thing, “You know, I don’t really care who ends up with who. I don’t care if Naruto loves Sakura or Sakura loves Sasuke or Naruto loves Sasuke or there’s a toad in their love triangle/pentacle/polygonal thing.” Okay there, Roya. XD
We all almost fell asleep, though I didn’t actually fall asleep. As usual, we listened to anime music the whole ride back.
As we were on the road back, I got that feeling of peace and contentment that washes over you in waves…it was very…nostalgic, happy, enjoying the beauty of the moment. I was so happy…but not in the wild, crazed anime-convention kind of happy. Just that gentle happiness that’s so overwhelming. That feeling that you’re happy to be alive.
It was really weird—at a few parts of the drive, I drifted into this almost-sleep state in which nothing really existed except the magic and the energy of the music we were listening to. It was like my whole existence was swallowed by the music. Awesome.
When Roya woke up, she told us her amusing dream. In it, she was marrying Sasuke and the sailor scouts from Sailor Moon were singing the music for the wedding. XD We teased her about this for almost the whole ride back (or at least, the few parts of the drive where everyone was awake.)
We got back to my house and sat on my couch and discussed what would happen if Roya’s dream came true, and Roya said the Dragonball Z characters would have to sing at their divorce.
And, that was Fanime folks! Give yourself a pat on the back and a psychiatric evaluation if you actually read that far. XD
I have been working on this darn thing since 2 PM. It’s currently 9:30 PM. It would’ve been much shorter if it weren’t for the setbacks and the several breaks I took, but still. I need to go do something unrelated to computers. @_@
Who wants to bet I'll go back and add things someday?
OH! And before I start, I must add this because I think it's really cool. XD
I missed it, but apparently Ricky and a bunch of the other guys from the Anime Club did me a GIANT drawing of Naruto in chalk on the ground by the library, and wrote "Kristin-sama, thank you for everything!" next to it. I never got to see it, though, because it rained and Ricky just told me today. *Sniffle* I wish I had gotten to see it... I thought that was cool, though. :D Ricky says he has pictures, so if he gives those to me I'll post them.
So...let's start before the actual con started.
Friday
I stayed home from school on Friday, so when I woke up at about 8 AM I automatically started packing and trying to arrange things. Mom was talking on the phone with the parents of my friends who were coming, and we were trying to arrange how they would get to my house, which was where the departure was set to take place.
Mom and I left at about 11 PM to pick up Ryan and Nicole and get my costume. Mom picked Ryan up and dropped me off at the seamstress' store, where I went in and got my costume. Unfortunately, my seamstress wasn't there so I didn't get the chance to thank her, but the total came to about twenty or thirty dollars less than I expected it to. :O YES, more money to spend on anime junk! Also, Mom dropped me off there for about forty-five minutes, but all I had to do was go grab the costume in its bag and pay for it, so I spent a long time just sitting out in front of the fabric store, staring at the woodchips and trying to stay out of the baking sun. -_-
After that, we picked Nicole up and went to Sister's, which is an awesome consignment store in downtown Nevada City. Nicole had ordered a second purple wig there (because her one purple wig wasn't enough hair to make Noriko's spiral-y pigtail things). A minor problem arose with this--the wig came, but it was about ten shades darker than Nicole's other wig. She bought it anyway, and when we got out of the store, Mom was nowhere to be found. O_o; It took about five minutes for her to show up again. Apparently, she went driving around in search of shade because Tia was in the car and she was hot.
When we returned back at my house, it was to quite a scene. We walk in, and in our living room is Cody, KK, Makayla, Roya, and Zoe, all laughing hysterically at Naruto episode 101. XD We finished the episode and began preparing for takeoff. Cody was already totally ready to go, so he was just waiting for us. KK brought this book called "Making Out in Japanese", which has all these funny, awkward sayings in Japanese, so this was used as entertainment while we waited to get everyone packed.
In my car was my Mom (obviously, as it's her car and she was driving it), my little brother, Nicole, KK, and myself. Between the luggage that belonged to the five of us, the four costumes (Nicole's two and my two), and all the food we brought, we could barely fit it all in the trunk. XD It took a great deal of squishing and rearranging, but we finally managed to accomplish this feat. Of course, Nicole, KK, and I sat in the back, while Mom and Ryan had the front.
For the first...maybe forty-five minutes of the ride, KK read the book Dave Barry Does Japan aloud. It was hilarious, so that was a lot of fun. When KK felt she had read enough, Nicole stole the book and was reading it on her own.
After that, it was mostly just listening to anime music for a long time. Singing along to some songs, but I was nervous about losing my voice like last year, so I wasn't as loud and didn't sing as much as I normally would. KK became weirdly obsessed with Nyaasu no Party, and made us listen to it several times, though we protested. XD;;
We made several signs to hold up at people. At first it was the typical "Fanime or Bust!" sign, but that got kind of boring because no one knew what to think of it, so we made another one that said "HELLO! How are you doing? :)" and we got a lot of great reactions and smiles and waves for that one. XD
While we were on the highway, Cody-tachi pulled over (he was behind us the whole time, and we kept waving at him and such) and, because we didn't know what he was doing, we pulled over, too. Nicole and KK got out of the car and--get this--on the side of the highway, they began to tango with each other. XD A couple people honked at them because it was so funny.
At some point in the drive, we decided we needed to do something else to keep us amused, so we took out KK's math notebook and started playing a game of...well, the game doesn't have a name. It's basically where you draw something as quickly and badly as you possibly can, and the other people try to guess what it is until they get it right. The game is just asking for everyone to start cracking up majorly, which we did. There were several that were just so weird that we would be guessing everything under the sun for more than a half hour until we got it right. Nicole and I had a particularly hard time with KK's interpretation of herself, and Ryan's drawing of...I forget what it was. I know at one point, KK was literally guessing whatever she could think of (including political figures my brother has never even heard of). The point is-- the game was fun. XD We did it for at least a few hours, and in fact only stopped when we spotted our first cosplayer and got too excited to continue.
At one point in the drive, our car and Cody's car stopped at a gas station briefly, and it was a funny little stop because we were all kind of zombie-like as we milled aimlessly around the gas station to stretch our legs. Makayla and Zoe were attempting to explain this mysterious "Puddle conversation" Roya had started, but I can't say I really understood what was going on just then. XD
Anyway, back to the first cosplayer. We spotted our first cosplayer--a random kitsune, complete with tail--more than a mile from the convention. At this point we got all crazy and started peeking out the window, hoping to spot more. Eventually, we did, and many more started showing up as we got closer to the con.
First, Mom pulled into the front of the Hilton so we could arrange our stuff and check in quickly. Once we got all of our stuff on the guy's golden cart-thing, Mom decided to go take Zoe, Roya, and Makayla to their hotel, because (due to money reasons) they decided to stay at a Travelodge about a mile away. Meanwhile, Nicole and I skipped off with Cody to park his car. It was really exciting doing this, because in the parking lot (which was under the hotel), there were so many otaku cars! A bunch of people had plushies arranged on their dashboards, one person's license plate said "NERV"[something I can't remember], and SO many people had "Got Yaoi?" bumper stickers. XD
When we returned to the lobby, KK, Nicole, and I were hanging around, just waiting for my Mom to get back. As we were doing this, KK happened to mention that she had a fuku with her. XD Nicole and I automatically started scheming to get Cody to wear it. It was funny, because as we were in this conversation, Cody walked up and flicked his hair all bishounen-like and the three of us all started giggling.
At this point, we journeyed up to our hotel room on the 5th floor (room 504, in case you were wondering) where there was a little scene going on. Mom was mad at me for leaving Ryan with the bellhop to bring the stuff up to our room because Ryan tipped the bellhop $10 when she had intended for him to give him $3. Somehow, this was our fault and Ryan was crying and freaking out and acting like he was traumatized.
Anyway, once this whole scene was over, we arranged our stuff in the hotel room and I tried my costume on briefly. I automatically concluded it was awesome, which it is. It fits perfectly, and other than the fact that it's hot, it's quite comfortable. It's also very accurate to Kumagorou. :D Well, I didn't want to wear it on Friday, so I took it off.
It took everyone a long time to decide what they were going to wear. At this point, we proposed the fuku to Cody. He agreed, but only on one condition--KK had to wear pigtails, too. This was a big deal, because KK HATES pigtails for some unknown reason. So, KK, after some persuasion, agreed.
We were worried the fuku would be too small for Cody, which it kind of was, but we improvised and it worked out just fine. Not only did he wear the blue fuku, he also wore a tiny (much too small) pink tank top over his own gray shirt, rainbow socks, a bow around his neck, and, oddly enough, a kendo stick. XD He looked LOVELY, I must say. I love that boy. XD;;;
Though disgruntled, KK wore the pigtails and was very self-conscious about it, even though no one even cared at all.
Cody was a little embarrassed to leave the hotel room like that, but he did anyway, and we all traversed down to registration. As we were walking through artist's row, Cody attracted plenty of stares and giggles. Also, Cody was talking to one of the guys with a booth at Artist's Row, and it was obvious the guy was trying not to laugh at Cody as he was talking to him. The guy could barely keep a straight face. XD
We went to registration, and it really was no problem at all. The small lines moved very quickly, and it took maybe three minutes all in all. Of course, it helped I was pre-registered. I seem to recall seeing the three Sand-nins while in the registration line. Not sure why that stood out, as I saw literally thousands of cosplayers at Fanime, and literally hundreds of Naruto characters, but it did stand out. XD
As we walked up the stairs back to Artist's Row, I freaked out for a second and thought I forgot my badge, but then I realized it was in my bag with all my freebees. Baka.
I don't know how or why, but for some reason we ended up standing around the free preview manga tables (kind of by the escalator), figuring out what to do first. By the time we were in the convention, the Dealer's Room was closed, so that was out of the question. As we were standing there, we heard a familiar voice go "Cody?!" We look up, and there's a sort of familiar boy standing there. Hey, it's Chad from Anime Expo! Every time we see him, he looks totally different. XD He couldn't believe Cody was in a skirt. Chad had no place to stay, so Nicole was trying to talk me into letting him stay in our hotel room, but I wasn't sure if Mom would be okay with that.
I know at one point we found our other friends (Ciera included, as she came down with her parents and cousin), but I can't remember at which point this was. @_@
Everyone kind of split up, and Nicole, Chad, Ryan, and I ended up in the Swap Meet, checking things out. I didn't really find anything I wanted (even after four or five rounds), but Nicole bought .hack//sign 3 and 4 for $10 for both, so now I have to get Vol. 2 so we can watch them. XD She also bought a Ranma tape and...probably other stuff, but I can't remember.
We went to the karaoke, and most people were...meh. Someone sang Inner Universe, which I thought was ironic because I had that song stuck in my head when I walked in the karaoke room. XD One guy reminded us of Gackt for unknown reasons, even though he didn't really look like him and wasn't even singing a Gackt song.
We also went and watched Evangelion: Redeath Redux. OMG...It was even funnier than I remembered it. XD So brilliant. "It's Gendo..." will be one of our in-jokes for the rest of our lives. XD Unfortunately, those people who we had wanted to see it weren't with us at the time, so they missed out on it... Another year of them being confused whenever we mention the Gendo jokes. *Sigh* My poor little brother is so naive that he didn't get half of the jokes the fandub made. And...er...we didn't want to explain them to him.
After that, I think we met up with people and went to watch some FMA. KK was tired, and fell asleep in FMA. XD She's already seen all of it, so she didn't miss anything.
I think we went and asked Mom if Chad could stay in our room at that point. Mom was reluctant at first, but she said if Cody was okay with staying in the other room at the Travelodge, it was okay. ;_; We wanted Cody in our room, but Chad really needed a place to stay and Nicole was kind of pressuring us (she even paid Mom some so he could stay), so we asked Cody, he was okay with it, and we went down to parking to get Chad's stuff.
Geez, Chad has so much stuff. O_o He was telling us all about how you can interpret his Gaara gourd in disgusting ways, and then he made me hold it. XD He had a laptop with tons of music and anime on it, so we had that in the hotel room the whole time, which was nice. Anyway, he had four boxes of costumes, in addition to his luggage and his laptop bag. When the whole moving-in was complete, we went back to wandering the con.
This is entertaining. KK and I were wandering kind of near the Marriott, and we spotted a Sasuke and Naruto walking together. Automatically, we went "OMG WE MUST HAVE THE SASUNARU!" so we started stalking them. Meanwhile, as we were hiding behind walls and plants, and surely stalking them, we were wondering "Er...how are we going to ask them for this?! Just go up and be like 'Hi! Will you two pose in the suggestive ways for us?'" We were kind of shy, so we just continued stalking them for quite a while. When we concluded we really aren't brave at all, we started running up and down the escalators gleefully. XD Repeatedly. For a very long time. By the time we were done, our Sasuke and Naruto had escaped. ;_;
Nicole, KK, and I naturally wanted to go to the shounen-ai screening at midnight. Chad was with us, and he wasn't very happy about it, but he agreed so long as he could sleep during it. We all kind of wished we knew where Cody was, because we were sure he would've been fine with watching the shounen-ai with us... There was a HUGE line for the shounen-ai. *_* Huuuge. So, we went and got in the line and somehow got in a bizarre discussion about shounen-ai and Hellsing. I have no idea how that came about or why, but it was kind of amusing. When the staff announced the room was opening, all the fangirls started cheering.
I wasn't sure what the expect, as I had never even heard of the series "Loveless". At first, they accidentily started playing a really dorky old anime, and I was like "No way! This CANNOT be the shounen-ai we're watching!" but they eventually got it to the right track, causing great relief.
I'm not going to go into a detailed review of Loveless at the moment, but in short, I liked it, although I'm not sure how I feel on the shounen-ai in the show, as it is somewhat shota and kind of creepy. The plot seems good, the animation is fairly nice, and it has nice music. I'm currently downloading it. XD KK didn't like it because she thought it was a little too stereotypical, but neither Nicole nor myself thought it was. Anyway, it seems like a good show, although perhaps not phenomenal. Maybe I'll change my mind. I still haven't seen past episode 2, though I have 6 and am currently downloading 7.
At the point that episode two ended, it was past one in the morning and KK and I were a little tired, so, even though I wanted to watch more, we left and went back to the room.
So, um, we went to bed. ^^;; The sleeping arrangements were as follows for that night: Nicole and I in one bed, Mom and Ryan in the other bed, and KK and Chad on the floor. Friday, Cody slept at the Travelodge. We missed him so much! ;_; KK and I in particular.
Saturday
I woke up sort of early... Every single day of the con, I was the first one awake. ^^;; Everyone took a lot of showers Saturday morning, so we kept running out of towels and having to get more from the maid. I think that was the hardest part about rooming with six other people, was managing the showers and everyone changing in and out of costumes. @_@ Luckily, my costume I can just put over my clothes, so I never had to use the bathroom for my costume.
Saturday morning, we spent a lot of time getting all of Cody's costume together and on him. It turned out totally awesome, by the way. :D Nicole was trying to get his hair to stick up correctly, and it kept turning out funny. XD Also, the dye on the boots kept getting all over the towels, so they looked bloody.
Throughout this whole day, I changed in and out of my costume frequently. As usual, I got lots of pictures taken of me, and Nicole (as Noriko) and I got recognized a LOT more than we thought we would. O_o; Apparently, more people know about Gravitation than we thought. The costume is fairly comfortable other than the gloves, which for some reason make the whole costume seem about ten degrees hotter. *Sizzle* Also, if I put the nose on in such a way that the string goes just above my ears, it can get rather painful after about a half hour of wearing the costume. ><
I spent a LOT of Saturday in the Dealer's Room. I think it was about this point that I started digging around in the clean doujinshi, couldn't help but buy a few, and now I'm addicted to doujins. *_* Addicted, I tell you. I spent SO much time at the con trying to find clean SasuNaru...There wasn't a lot of it, thought there was plenty of KakaIru, which is cute. I don't have enough interest in KakaIru to buy exclusively KakaIru, so I continued my search for SasuNaru. I did, indeed, find some and buy it. :D It's so cute! ♥ I bought some cute Wolf's Rain doujinshi, too.
I'll have to hunt down everything I bought at Fanime so I can make a list...
I went in and out of the Dealer's Room many times, sometimes with my friends and sometimes without. I kept forgetting my badge in the hotel room when I changed in and out of my costume, though. Baka.
I also wandered the Artist's Row for quite a while, just looking at everyone's wonderful art, when I suddenly did a double-take of recognition. 'Hmmm...I know that picture of Lee and Gai from somewhere!' Then I realized that--hey!--the owner of tastygraphite.net was there! It was awesome getting to meet her, because I've adored her art for quite a while. I have it all saved on my hard drive. XD So I was telling her how much I love her art and her website, and she was really nice. So I commissioned SasuNaru and she promised to have it to me by the next day. Yay~! I also bought a little Naruto and Sasuke keychain from her.
As I was there, I noticed Nicole was talking to a clump of people, so I went over and joined the conversation. One of the people in the conversation was a Sasuke cosplayer...in fact, the Sasuke cosplayer KK and I had been stalking Friday night. Nicole told me, "Hey Kristin! Look at Sasuke closely...does he look familiar?" I said he didn't, so she was like "OMG Kristin, it was my first husband!"
And it was! YES! It was the nice Kamui who glomped us all last year, and Nicole married him in an elaborate ceremony last year. Most of you know the story, so I'll refrain from telling it right now.
And now he was Sasuke. Awesome.
He and his girlfriend/female friend/whoever she was came up to our hotel room with us and was helping us with our costumes, which we randomly decided we wanted to wear for a while before MusicFest. I told him that I had seen some Sharingan contacts in the Dealer's Room for $55, so he went down and got some red contacts. They were SO cool. He kept popping up in random places and staring at us with the weird eyes. He said if we could find a willing Naruto, he'd happily SasuNaru for us.
I know at some point during this day, Nicole, Chad, and I were rocking out to Naruto music and Ayumi Hamasaki in the hotel room, and singing along loudly and badly and just having the greatest time, but I have no idea when this actually took place.
At some point during the day, towards the evening, Nicole and I found a really, really good Chouji cosplayer (seriously--looked EXACTLY like him) and ended up having a long discussion with him. THIS is irony if I have ever heard it. We had been talking to him for about an hour, and he asked, "Hey, where are you two from, anyway?" We were automatically like "Oh, you wouldn't have heard of it... It's this little tiny town up between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe..."
He went, "Huh... Try me. What's it called?"
"Grass Valley."
"No way! I live there, too!"
What are the chances?! Darn slim, if I do say so myself. O_O So then we had a long discussion about his life, Nevada Union High School (he is 22 and graduated from it five years ago), and other random stuff. It was so cool! XD Seriously, who would've thought? His name is Sean, by the way.
After finishing the conversation, we changed out of our costumes and concluded we needed to gather our friends for MusicFest. We managed to get Roya, Zoe, Makayla, and Ciera (and her cousin), but KK and Cody were elsewhere (I think they were at a panel, if I'm remembering correctly).
The line was HUGE, although after having been to AX, no line can even compete. XD It was hard standing in line because my legs were kind of hurting from my shopping expeditions. We all got in line almost last. x.x
This didn't turn out to be that big of a deal, however, because as soon as we got in, it was pretty much a free-for-all as to where we sat. We automatically went towards the front, where a few brave souls with glowsticks had risked being kicked out or pushed back by sitting IN FRONT of the chairs for the concert. We decided we were these types of brave souls, so we went straight up to the very front and situated ourselves there. We were a little afraid that the staff would tell us to leave, but they didn't. They did, however, put a line of tape about ten feet from the stage that we couldn't cross. We automatically scooted up to the very line of tape and sat right, directly behind it. By then, a lot of people had taken the idea and there was quite a crowd up at the front with us.
I'm not even joking when I say Nicole and I had the best seats in the entire audience. We had the direct front center two spots, so we were about ten feet from the performers the whole time, and were leading the mosh-pit-dancing-ness. While waiting for the show to start, Nicole took out a pen and wrote "Got yaoi?" on the tape.
Before the concert started, two random guys came up towards the front with a sign that said "Will Yaoi For $" Makayla ROCKS, so she said "This is for you two!" to Nicole and I, and threw them a dollar. Bwahaha, they started MAKING OUT, and did for at least a minute. All the fangirls in the area, ourselves concluded, started cheering and whooping. YES! We keep spectulating, "Errr...if they did that much for a dollar, what would they have done for a $20...?" O_o;; We don't want to know.
So, just as they were finishing their make-out session the lights went out for the concert. Everyone was all disappointed because the shounen-ai went in the dark, but once they realized the concert was starting, everyone started cheering and screaming. I would say there were about 2000 people in the Civic Auditorium, total.
The first act was a seiyuu and singer, Maria Yamamoto. She was SO adorable. *_* You could tell, just from her voice, that she's a seiyuu, and she was even cosplaying as a character she voices. I was totally impressed with myself, because I basically understood everything she said in Japanese. ^^ Anyway, she taught the audience a little dance to do while she was singing the theme song. Of course, I'm a klutz and incapable, so I couldn't get it down, but it was fun nonetheless. She sang about three genki J-pop songs before she introduced that Ramen and Rice would be the next act.
Of course, I've seen Ramen and Rice plenty of times, but this...was SO awesome. I can't even stress it enough. I get a rush just thinking about it.
The first song they played was Haruka Kanata, which is the second Naruto opening theme. This was one of my favorite moments in my whole life, possibly. More than half of the audience--in fact, probably more than two thirds, started singing along with it, and it was just...so powerful and awesome. I was on cloud nine. Makayla and I were loudly singing along, and it just sounded SO COOL with more than a thousand people singing the song.
Next, they played a bunch of songs, that, admittedly, I didn't know. ^^;; Makayla recognized one as "Asterisks" by Orange Range, and she got all excited about that. XD
At one point during the songs, I turned to Makayla and Ciera (who is an FMA NUT) and said, "Hey, what do you guys bet they play something from FMA?"
Makayla nodded, and added, "What do you bet it's Ready Steady Go?" and I said "Definitely!"
Of course, they did, and again, everyone sang along and it was just incredible. XD SO COOL, I tell you!
Like with Anime OD, they played the Super Smash Bros. Melée Suite, and it was great because everyone hummed along and danced. XD Everyone in the whole audience humming and dancing was just...hilarious. I tried to do the "PIKA!" again at the Pokémon part, but the audience was too loud and I couldn't get it across even though I was in the very front.
After that was over to thunderous applause and cheering, Kumiko Kato came on. She was cool and sweet, and sang lots of J-Pop. Admittedly, I was distracted by her shiny bracelets. XD;; She was pretty good at speaking English, too.
Next came the main act--ZZ! I had never heard them before at all, but right off the bat I decided I really liked them. Admittedly, the lead singer Sotaro was completely sexy, even to ME! At the beginning of the concert, he was in a samurai outfit that was rather reminscent of Kenshin. Mmmm. *_* Anyway, they were COMPLETELY awesome. We were all dancing and jumping and clapping the entire concert (as was everyone else), and it was a sea of excitement and enthusiasm. Makayla, Nicole, and I (and maybe even Ciera too) all yelled "DAISUKI!" and "WE LOVE YOU!" as loudly as we could on various occasions. This caused lots of cheering (presumably in agreeance) and yelling, and it was just totally awesome.
Of course, they did the customary leave-and-come-back-for-encore-after-lots-of-screaming. They were SO great--I want to get one of their CDs, and I would've after the concert if the CDs didn't sell out in about thirty seconds. @_@
After the concert, we were all kind of hearing "crickets" for a while from the volume.
Everyone else left, but Nicole and I lingered in the lobby, hoping to meet some of the participants in the concerts. Our patience paid off--after about fifteen minutes of waiting, we got to hug, talk to, get pictures with, and get the autograph of Sotaro (the sexy one). We also talked to the cool keyboardist of ZZ, and she was really nice. :) We also chatted with Kumiko Kato for a while. We got autographs and pictures from everyone, and they were all so sweet! It was great. We spoke to them in Japanese, and we had a great time. In fact, we were so busy socializing with the stars that we were the last ones there, and a policeman had to escort us out of the building so he could close the building up.
It was only 10:30 PM at this point, so we located KK out by the fountains and went and wandered the convention center. When we went up the escalator, at one of the Artist’s Row tables [vacated because of the hour] we found these five or so fanboys with a label-less, unopened tin can, and they had a sign that said “Guess what’s in the mystery can correctly and win $5 or a dance.” We instantly started interrogating them about how specific the guess had to be in order to win the prize, and the guys basically said it didn’t have to be that specific at all.
At this point—and I had NO idea of what this was going to set in motion—I said “Hey, instead of $5 or a dance, will you yaoi for us if we guess it right?”
At first they went “Sure!” but then they suddenly went, “Wait…uh, before we agree to anything…what’s yaoi?”
We all started laughing evilly and were flabbergasted that anyone could be at an anime convention and not know what yaoi is. When we explained to them what it was, they were shocked and horrified and decided “No way!” However, we kept working at it, and eventually one of them piped up and said, “Well…what’s in it for us?” At this point, Nicole and KK offered to yuri in exchange (ironic, because earlier they had almost carried a sign around that said “Will yuri for yaoi!”).
After a lot of persuasion, we started a chant of “YA-O-I! YA-O-I!” Which, in turn, attracted a bunch of other fangirls and random people in the area, who joined our cause. One of these people was a guy with a camcorder who began to document the whole spectacle as it played out. He shall be referred to, from now on, as “camcorder boy.” There were probably about twenty people as the audience by now.
Eventually, one of the two guys we were targeting agreed to yaoi for us, which caused much happiness. However, the other guy was still too reluctant. A random guy walked up and volunteered to kiss not-so-reluctant guy, which they did. However, we the fangirls decided this kiss did not fulfill our agreement because both of the guys weren’t involved.
So, they both seemed to agree at this point. Or so we thought. They claimed that they were coming out from behind their table so everyone could see, and then they sprinted off in opposite directions. Ohhh no, you’re not getting away that easily! KK and camcorder boy dashed off after them and managed to drag them back, panting and flailing, after about fifteen minutes.
At this point, we played a mean prank on them. We claimed that they had missed some major yuri between Nicole and a random fangirl (who played a big role in this whole thing, and therefore shall be labeled “random fangirl” from now on). We even got a bunch of the guys around to testify as to how hot it was. XD They totally fell for it, and were all disappointed. “Awww, we missed it!”
At this point, the whole weird thing got back on track. They tried to get out of it by repeatedly changing the subject to the mystery can again, so we guessed that what was in the mystery can was “food” and insisted we wanted our yaoi. They tried to get out of this, too, by saying that wasn’t specific enough, so we sent KK (the debater) off on them about our earlier conversation regarding how specific it had to be. KK is an awesome debater, so they were quickly defeated.
Eventually, we managed to persuade them to a quick kiss on the lips. Unfortunately, it was so quick I didn’t even manage to get a picture! ;_;
We left for a little while at this point to see what was going on in the screening rooms, thinking the whole thing was over. Boy, were we mistaken. We returned about three minutes later, as nothing was playing in the screening rooms that was of interest.
I honestly have no clue how this went, because it was basically pure chaos and it made very little sense, but basically we the fangirls ruled that the conditions we had set had not been met by the first kiss. Those conditions were the agreement that KK and Nicole would kiss for three seconds, and so would they. Their kiss had lasted less than half a second, so we wanted a re-kiss.
This angle didn’t exactly work, however, even with the bribe of more yuri, so it turned into a trial about the more reluctant boy’s sexuality. XD Myself (being the one who started the whole thing) and camcorder boy were appointed judges, while the audience of mainly fangirls became the jury. We confiscated the “evidence”, which consisted of the mystery can sign (modified to include terms of yaoi) and the mystery can itself.
To retaliate, the boys took KK’s flipflops hostage (they were on the ground since when she kicked them off when she was pursuing the boys when they fled. We eventually agreed that they could have the mystery can back if they gave KK’s flipflops back, and they agreed eventually.
After a little discussion, we concluded that our terms were as follows—to prove he was straight, reluctant boy would kiss his male friend, random fangirl (who took a big role in the whole trial, along with camcorder boy, my friends, and I), and, just to make up for it, random fangirl and Nicole would kiss for them, too. All three kisses were supposed to last three whole seconds, as counted by myself and camcorder boy. We had a big audience now.
The trial started, and after about twenty minutes of arguing and denial, he did indeed kiss his friend. It wasn’t for three seconds, but we were pleased with it nonetheless. Then random fangirl kissed him, Nicole and random fangirl kissed, etc.
While we judges were discussing the verdict with the jury (AKA fangirls), random fangirl kissed his friend and concluded that the second was a better kisser.
Our verdict, by the way, was that reluctant boy was gay and in denial about it, hence why he was so freaked out over it. He kept trying to refute this, but he kept accidentally saying things that…didn’t quite come out right, which lead us to believe he was not only gay and in denial about it, but also an uke and a bad kisser.
After much discussion of this and yaoi in general, the trial, which had been at least an hour long and very entertaining, came to an end with us fangirls delivering our closing statements into the camera. Basically, we talked about how the lesson of the story was that yaoi is the single best way to attract girls at an anime convention and how the guys were good sports for surviving our entertaining and sadistic trial. We even kind of apologized for traumatizing them so. XD Kind of. Oh well. They’re probably scarred for life now. We never saw them at the con again, leading us to conclude that they were afraid of us. KK got the mystery can back and is planning on opening it eventually, just to see what’s in it.
We wandered for a while after that, still buzzing from the weird trial. It was about one in the morning at that point, but we still weren’t tired.
Eventually, we found an entirely random group of cosplayers dancing to music in the empty Artist’s Row and eating Pocky. When we approached them, they told us that they were playing a game of “What will YOU do for Pocky?!” and daring each other to do silly things for pocky. In between dares, they danced to the random J-pop and anime music they were playing on their boombox. The dares were really quite funny—one of the girls went and glomped a guy who was playing DDR (while he was playing), and another person went and snuck up to the people holding the 24-hours Super Smash competition and turned off their Gamecube without the people who were playing noticing.
One of these cosplayers was a pajama-clad Naruto (yay! ^^), and she was dancing to the music. Her hat and wig fell off part of the way through her dancing, though, and so everyone started freaking out and going “You’re not Naruto! You’re an IMPOSTER!” XD She smiled sheepishly and put her hat and wig back on.
I think it was after this whole thing that KK and I were sitting on the spheres by the fountain philosophizing. As we were philosophizing, Haku (from Naruto, not Spirited Away) randomly showed up and was hanging out near us, so we complimented him (actually a her) on the costume, and were saying things like “We love you, Hakuuu! Wahhh, why did you have to die?!” ;_;
I went back to the hotel room and went to bed at about 2 AM. Admittedly, as I was falling asleep I felt a little sick. I concluded it was probably because I literally hadn’t eaten anything all day. I fell asleep anyway, though. I was happier because Mom let Cody sleep in our hotel room, making seven people in one room. XD
Sunday
Again, I got up earlier that morning than anyone else. I was shaky from lack of food, so the first thing I did was eat two mini-muffins, hoping this would get the shakiness away. I tried to remind myself to eat something else later (but failed and completely forgot). I got the chance to take a shower before everyone else got up, and then I got dressed and, once everyone else got up and got ready, went down to the convention.
The first thing we found when we got out of the hotel and into Fanime was Ricky! Yay, he and his girlfriend were there playing DDR. We talked to him for a while happily, vowed to find him again when we were in costume, and went off towards Artist’s Row again.
There, I picked up my wonderful SasuNaru commission from tastygraphite, thanked her, etc.
I think I browsed the Dealer’s Room for a little while after that, and then ran up to the hotel room to grab my camera in preparation for the Naruto gathering.
By the time we got down there for the Naruto gathering, there were flocks of Naruto characters migrating across the street to a nearby park. The Naruto gathering was fascinating and amusing, and I took fifty-plus pictures. *_* Let’s see…interesting points of the Naruto gathering…
Well, Chad was in his Gaara costume, which is just totally awesome. He was kind of helping to organize all the picture sessions. There was a lot to organize—there were at least 150 Naruto cosplayers there, if not 200, and they weren’t even all the Naruto cosplayers I had seen throughout the convention. There was also this girl cosplaying as Kyuubi, and she was just so cool. Her costume was awesome, and she had a great personality. She kept doing hilarious poses during the pictures.
There were also a couple of other very original Naruto cosplayers. One girl was dressed as Kakashi’s Icha Icha Paradise, and she had a sign that said “Kakashi bait!” She also had a Kakashi plushie. XD One boy was, according to his sign, “Sasuke/Haku’s lovechild.” Oookay… I don’t even want to know how that works. Someone made a huge “Konoha” sign/flag thing that was about fifteen feet tall, and was totally awesome looming over the sea of Naruto cosplayers.
I found a really wonderful Shikamaru cosplayer, and I think she was kind of surprised at how hard I glomped her. XD It made me happy.
A lot of the themes for the pictures we took were funny, too. One picture was all the dead characters playing dead on the ground, one was the Sannin doing the can-can, one was “Characters with Ambiguous Genders!”-themed.
Including Nicole’s husband, we gathered a Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura, and Kakashi and took some Team 7 pictures. One is really cute, where it’s Sasuke and Sakura trying to strangle Naruto, while Kakashi halfheartedly tries to stop it while reading Icha Icha Paradise. We tried to get the Naruto, who was female and an excellent cosplayer, to do shounen-ai poses with Nicole’s husband, who was happy to do shounen-ai for us, but she explained politely that she’s opposed to SasuNaru and wouldn’t do it. ;_; We never did get any SasuNaru pictures…
All together, I couldn’t fit all of the Naruto cosplayers into one picture from across the street. ><
When the gathering was reaching its end at about 2 PM (it started at 12 PM), a guy showed up with a sign that said “Naruto sucks and so do you!” He instantly got attacked. XD I got some great pictures of Kakashi about to use “Thousand Years of Pain” on him, Kyuubi baring her teeth at his bottom, and other characters holding kunais to…strategic locations…on his body. XD
So, in short, it was lots of fun.
When that was clearly over, we went off to watch Fanboy Bebop. Fanboy Bebop was brilliant—I loved how it put into perspective just how dorky otaku are. It was hilarious—if otaku know how to laugh at anything, it’s themselves. They had this whole creepy thing with Diglett being a phallic symbol (WTF?), and Faye was obsessed with Fushigi Yuugi. They kept playing on anime conventions, and it was just great. I can’t describe it all…it’s impossible.
I went and bought more doujinshi in the Dealer’s Room, and as I was wandering I heard Kiseki no Umi playing, so I went and lurked around that table, singing along. The guy who was working at the booth was like “Hey, you know this song?”
I nodded and said “Kiseki no Umi. Maaya Sakamoto. Composed by Yoko Kanno.”
Then he asked, “Do you know which anime it’s from?”
“Record of the Lodoss Wars.”
He was impressed, and said I was the first one to get that right at the convention so far. XD Go me.
I also found a pretty good Tsume in the Dealer’s Room and took a picture of him. *Sniffle* The only Wolf’s Rain cosplayer I saw through the whole convention. *Sulk*
When it came time, I ran up to the hotel room and changed into my costume quickly and Nicole and I went dashing down to the Gravitation cosplay gathering (meeting up with Ricky again on the way and glomping him), which was small but fun. We took pictures of pairings in the show, I got pictures with a girl dressed as Ryuichi, and we just had a good time. I wish Cody had worn his Ryuichi costume… He didn’t because he was ashamed of the fact that it wasn’t totally finished, and he just likes his Lloyd costume better. Oh well, we can do Kumagorou and Ryuichi pictures anytime.
As I was wandering around near the spheres during the Gravitation cosplay gathering, a girl with a kendo stick approached me and challenged me to a duel. I wasn’t quite sure about it (as I was in a pink rabbit suit and wasn’t sure if this would restrict my mobility), but I accepted her challenge anyway. She gave me a choice of using two short weapons or one long one, and I chose the long one. Despite her being much more experienced and my being in a rabbit suit, by fighting her furiously and fast, I managed to defeat her in less than two minutes.
The guy who was watching, presumably her friend, was laughing and saying I was a good fighter because I never stopped moving. I thanked her for the fun experience, wished her luck in finding new challengers, and went back to talking to the nice girl in the Shuichi dog suit.
Ryan later told me that she said I was the first one who defeated her in the whole convention. w00t, I pwned! Go me!
At the last minute of the Gravitation cosplay gathering, a girl cosplaying as Tatsuha showed up. She was in boxer shorts decorated with Ryuichi-worship types of things, and it was really funny. So we did get some TatsuhaxRyuichi after all!
Once the Gravitation cosplay gathering ended, we realized Der Cosplay was going to start in about forty-five minutes. There was already a HUGE line growing out of the Civic Auditorium and we didn’t want to wait in line, so we stayed across the street, watching the line for signs of movement so we could get in. As we were waiting, KK went a little crazy and went swimming in the fountain in her Ninja shirt, so then she had to go back to the hotel room and change into dry clothes. She was completely sopping. XD
When she got back, we all relocated to closer to the line, and we were scoping out the cosplayers who were passing us. To amuse ourselves, Makayla and I started singing Naruto songs loudly and badly, and we had a great time doing this. “Haruka KANATA~~!”
When the line finally got to the point where we could get in, we got seats up in the second floor on the far right, next to the screens. When the lights turned off—this was really cool—everyone who had cell phones in the auditorium held them up and waved them back and forth in the darkness. It was spectacularly beautiful. Think of a completely black, HUGE building with the lights of a thousand (maybe more) cell phones waving back and forth in unison, in different colors and different levels of brightness. It was mesmerizing.
The skits started off badly and…well, they didn’t get much better. There were a few good ones and a few really funny ones, but for the most part they were just abysmal. The host—the guy with the fake German accent from last year—was pretty funny, but most of the skits weren’t. A lot of them seemed to rely on knowledge of obscure series and video games, which I’m generally pretty good with…but these, I guess, were just *really* obscure. O_o;
One great one, though, was a tentacle monster creeping on stage with ominous music playing. When he got to the middle, all the sudden the music switched to the Spongebob Squarepants theme song, and the tentacle monster started dancing to it. XD Very entertaining.
KK kept falling asleep, Makayla went into the hall to read Demon Diary, and after about an hour of this we’d had enough. We all left and went back to the hotel room to relax for a little while before the Naruto game tournament at 11 PM.
In the hotel room, we mostly read doujinshi… There was one part that caused a freak-out. XD The doujinshi I bought were supposedly rated PG and therefore perfectly innocent, except… KK was reading this cute SasuNaru one I read, and on the last page, there’s only one way it can be described… “CHIBI SEX!” KK yelled. “There’s chibi sex!” Well, that’s one way to cause an uproar…
Nicole was in the bathroom then doing something with her costume, and she immediately went “Ooo, ooo, I want to see!” so KK rushed off into the bathroom with it and everyone else in the hotel room followed out of curiosity, while I facepalmed. XD Much squealing commenced.
My Mom was in the room at the moment, so she was kind of like, “Err…is there something I should know about here?” I had to convince her that it really wasn’t a big deal. Not that she really cares. XD
At this point, I adorned my Naruto in his pajamas plushie with an “I ♥ yaoi!” pin, which I thought was a fitting thing to do.
We decided to leave the hotel room a little earlier than we thought we would, so we went down to the fountains, doujinshi still with us, and were sitting on the spheres talking. Cody went and was interpreting a cute SasuNaru doujin I had in interesting ways, and thus “Beg for Sex no Jutsu!” was invented. Poor Roya was overwhelmed by all the yaoi, and at that point…she snapped. She said the most uncharacteristic thing she could ever say at that point.
“I think I’m going to go find the closest male head I can and shove my tongue in it.” WTF, Roya?
She didn’t actually make out with anyone random, of course, and instead found a Lee cosplayer who turned out to be a friend of Nicole’s husband, and she was hanging around with him. We found her, sat at a table with her, and we all started playing with Lee’s metal kunai. Our table, for whatever reason, attracted a couple of fellow Naruto fans, so we ended up with Cody, KK, Nicole, Roya, Lee, Nicole’s husband, a female Sasuke, and probably other people, but I can’t remember them all. @_@ KK and I were squeeing over LeeSaku as a pairing and how cute it is.
We started playing a game of “Spin the Kunai” for hugs. Entertaining, especially when the kunai decided it loved Cody and pointed at him every single time. XD Even when he was walking from Lee’s side of the table to my side of the table, it still followed him.
We went to the Naruto game tournament after this. KK and I were too short to see the actual tournament over the tall fanboys that had gathered around it, so we camped out next to a Naruto game that wasn’t being used in the tournament. We continued reading doujinshi and got in a two-or-so hour passionate conversation about Naruto. As we were sitting there, openings to play the game opened up, so we played a little. I did sort of okay as Haku, but when I played as Shikamaru, I sucked. I couldn’t get him to do anything but slouch forward slowly or hop up and down. XD I don’t do well with slow characters, so Shika and I weren’t compatible in that sense.
Eventually, at about two in the morning, we finally went up and went to bed.
Monday
Awww, the last day of the convention… We spent most of it getting last-minute shopping done, and saying goodbye to everyone. Before I went to the Dealer’s Room for the last time, though, Mom had me get all of my stuff and put it in the car. She sent me down to the parking lot, expecting me to be able to find our car. She said it was in the “first row”.
I soon discovered, weighed down with about fifty pounds of stuff, that the parking lot was HUGE and I wandered around with all that stuff for at least an hour. >< I never did find it, and I was majorly miffed. I returned to the room and we were watching random things on Chad’s computer (Air, Inuyasha AMVs, and listening to more Ayumi Hamasaki and singing along), and he was showing us that his cell phone’s ring is Wind. Yay!
I’ve noticed a funny trend as of late. The guys seem to like the shoujo shows better than the girls, and the girls seem to like the shounen shows better then the guys. Am I the only one who has noticed this? I know I like almost exclusively shounen shows, and Chad likes mostly shoujo. Cody seems to like shoujo, too. Maybe I just have weird male friends.
I bought some final doujinshi and a Naruto poster that is shiny and pretty and has Naruto and Sasuke standing back to back. It’s a rare promo poster, too.
Nicole, Roya, and I, who were the only ones left (everyone else left a little earlier) went and watched the semi-finals of the AMVs. They were pretty good…I don’t think there were any that really stood out, but these were the SEMI-finals and not the finals (I missed the finals because the Naruto gathering was going on. I’m planning on downloading those AMVs soon.)
We also went and watched…some random show that took place in ancient Japan, and though we weren’t really enjoying it that much, we played a game of “Guess that seiyuu!” I think we did well, though we didn’t stay for the credits to find out.
On the screens last year that had the “Gendo Likes…” things, they were playing FLCL, and then Gunbuster when FLCL ended.
Well, with my last dollar, I bought at ice cream sandwich from a vendor right outside of the convention center. Nicole and I went and found Chouji outside of the convention center, kind of near the spheres.
This was really great—when we came up, Chouji was eating potato chips while Shikamaru sat next to him and stared at the ground. They weren’t trying to be in-character at all is the funny thing. I was talking to Shikamaru, and she was totally acting like Shikamaru. She’s the only I glomped earlier. Not to mention, both of their costumes were spot-on, and it was just…perfect. :D
Well, we said goodbye to them, and that was just about it. We went and found Mom, did some final preparations for the end, and went down the elevator to the parking garage. This wasn’t, however, before Nicole and I literally kissed the wall of the convention center. We didn’t really want to leave, but the convention was really ending at this point.
The car ride back was very entertaining. We were all confused and delusional, especially Roya. Roya started talking about really weird things because she was so sleep-deprived, and it was really funny. She was trying to tell Nicole something about her husband, but she completely scrambled the word order beyond recognition, so we were like “Errr…okay, Roya…”
We stopped at Taco Bell for lunch, and I got a fiesta taco salad like I always do on the way back from anime conventions.
We had a very funny conversation with Roya about Naruto pairings, and she was sick of pairings so she gave this intelligible and funny comment on the whole thing, “You know, I don’t really care who ends up with who. I don’t care if Naruto loves Sakura or Sakura loves Sasuke or Naruto loves Sasuke or there’s a toad in their love triangle/pentacle/polygonal thing.” Okay there, Roya. XD
We all almost fell asleep, though I didn’t actually fall asleep. As usual, we listened to anime music the whole ride back.
As we were on the road back, I got that feeling of peace and contentment that washes over you in waves…it was very…nostalgic, happy, enjoying the beauty of the moment. I was so happy…but not in the wild, crazed anime-convention kind of happy. Just that gentle happiness that’s so overwhelming. That feeling that you’re happy to be alive.
It was really weird—at a few parts of the drive, I drifted into this almost-sleep state in which nothing really existed except the magic and the energy of the music we were listening to. It was like my whole existence was swallowed by the music. Awesome.
When Roya woke up, she told us her amusing dream. In it, she was marrying Sasuke and the sailor scouts from Sailor Moon were singing the music for the wedding. XD We teased her about this for almost the whole ride back (or at least, the few parts of the drive where everyone was awake.)
We got back to my house and sat on my couch and discussed what would happen if Roya’s dream came true, and Roya said the Dragonball Z characters would have to sing at their divorce.
And, that was Fanime folks! Give yourself a pat on the back and a psychiatric evaluation if you actually read that far. XD
I have been working on this darn thing since 2 PM. It’s currently 9:30 PM. It would’ve been much shorter if it weren’t for the setbacks and the several breaks I took, but still. I need to go do something unrelated to computers. @_@
Who wants to bet I'll go back and add things someday?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2005-06-10 02:01 pm (UTC)I like your Lugia icon! It's really pretty.
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Date: 2005-06-11 01:29 am (UTC)I think you've inspired me to write a Fanime Report now...... Damn you. ...We'll see.
Much love
-K
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Date: 2005-06-11 06:08 pm (UTC)I don't know what dance is which. *Cries* I'm clueless.
Ah, that'd be great if you wrote one, too. If you get the time... I'd love to read it!
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Date: 2005-06-11 06:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-12 05:40 am (UTC)Naw, that wouldn't make a great deal of sense... But yeah, we sure should!
Are you doing anything this week? I would love to have a long Christianity rant where we had no real time limit. And cons can be really busy. @_@ I'll call you tomorrow (Sunday) okay?
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Date: 2005-06-12 01:04 am (UTC)Kristin, this picture is for you. ^_^
http://img158.echo.cx/img158/643/randomsotarozzhewassohot7eo.jpg
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Date: 2005-06-12 05:38 am (UTC)YES, we should totally do a group-con report! And then we should do something with it! Like... Um... Er... I have no idea. Something.
Thanks for the clarification on the group that night. That was funny. XD
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Date: 2005-06-12 02:07 am (UTC)I'm probably going to write my own version of my Fanime report, after giving an inspirational speech of my graduation report.
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Date: 2005-06-12 05:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-12 11:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-13 05:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-13 05:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-14 03:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-16 11:44 pm (UTC)Tango? That's really random. XD
So, it was basically Pictionary? Wow, how long is the drive there? O_o
Oooh, I need a pic of spiffy Cody. XD
That SasuNaru thing is entertaning. XD I can relate to being that shy.
That's so ironic...I watched shounen-ai (Gravitation) at midnight the first night of a con, too. Long live shounen-ai! ^_^
Darn it...I always get so wrapped up in cons that I forget to marry people, even though I had teh cheap plastic rings both times. Well, maybe it's because Jennifer actually had the rings, but they were easily accessible. You have to do something to make me remember! XD
Sometimes I wish I were a guy so I could yaoi and just make money like that. XD
You get to meet all the cool people. >D
Those boys asking about yaoi...heheh, that was a lmao-moment for me. :D
Aww, I want to give denial-uke-bad kisser a hug. XD
I played "What would you do for Pocky?" XD Well, we just said what we'd do, but we didn't actually do it. That girl who turned of the Gamecube...I'm surprised she's still alive.
Yay, you win! Tis teh power of Kumagorou! ^.^
Squee, we played spin the Bawls for hugs! Aren't spin for hugs games the best? ^_^
Oh, I love when music does that. ^___^
I think I need that psychiatric evaluation, anyhow. XD Now I really want to go to a con again, even though I just got back from one. XD That completely rocked, so one day I will have to join you, if you don't mind. =D *hugs*
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Date: 2005-06-17 06:22 am (UTC)I have a pic of skirt-clad Cody, I just have to remember to post it sometime. I don't think I ever have it cropped or anything yet. Cody was thrilled when I told him I hadn't made the skirt-pictures public yet. XD;;
Hooray for late-night shounen-ai! I hope there'll be a shounen-ai-athon at AX...
Oh, trust me--I'm willing to bet you could yuri for money, too. Just don't let your parents find out. XD
Denial-uke-bad-kisser (as you have so cleverly dubbed him) would probably run from anyone with any relation to me at all, so good luck hugging him. XDDD;; I wonder if he'll ever be seen at a convention again...
YESSS! You should save up and come to Anime Expo next year! It IS the biggest anime convention in the world, after all. That way, I could remind you to marry people. XD
Gamecube-turner-offer was alive. I wish I could've been there to see the reaction...
We both need psychiatric evalutions. In fact, almost everyone who befriends me does, at least after a little while. I tend to do that to people. ^_~ You and I are both insane.
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Date: 2005-06-17 01:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-18 01:03 am (UTC)Yeah, I sympathize with the "no flow of income" thing. I don't have a job, and most of my money comes off of my relatives at holidays. Although my DVD-burning has been good to me lately. ^_~
You'd be welcome to stay with us if you could come to AX06! We normally have people who want to stay with us pay $30 a night to help pay for the hotel room, but I could always help you with that if it was a problem. ^_~ And my Mom is like an uber-chaperone. Your Mom could always talk to my Mom if there were trust issues. XD
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Date: 2005-06-18 01:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-18 01:42 am (UTC)My Mom would be fine with talking to your Mom, so if you want to try... You will be 16, after all. XD And I'll be 18. *Dies* I can't believe I'll be 18 next year. x.x
Anyway, we should try it! There's plenty of time (a YEAR) to communicate to a point where I can prove irrefutably that I am a harmless 17-year-old and it would work out for you to come to Anime Expo.
Oh, kids can fly by themselves! My friend Louisa flew out here by herself, and she's my age, so I'm sure that wouldn't be a problem.
Yeah! Now I'm getting all excited, though we're both probably jumping a little ahead of the gun here. XD Like I said, if it does somehow work out, we have plenty of time for preparations and working things out. ^.^
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Date: 2005-06-18 02:13 am (UTC)Oh, Kristin-chan, I have to tell you a secret. But not now...I'll write a letter in the package with the yaoi images. XD
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Date: 2005-06-18 02:24 am (UTC)Hmmm... My Mom could always bring it up when they talk. XD We might want to wait a little bit, though, 'til it's a bit closer. I mean, right now we're mostly concerned with planning for AX05... Once that's over, there'll be less chaos.
Ooo, a secret! I like secrets. XD
Go watch Naruto. [/random]