Fanime 2006 Report!
Jun. 3rd, 2006 06:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pacificpikachu Fanime 2006 Convention Report!
I’m still mad at myself for never finishing last years Anime Expo report (especially seeing as that’s where I got to see Maaya Sakamoto and everything), but let’s see if I can actually sit down and write this whole thing. I know I’m inevitably going to leave things out because my memory isn’t the greatest, so if those who were there could please correct me on things and add memories, I’d appreciate it very much. I don’t imagine this is going to be nearly as long as last year’s Fanime report, as things seemed to happen in larger chunks with less subtlety, but I suppose we’ll just have to see how long it is when I finish. Anyway, on with the show!
Friday
About an hour after I made my pre-Fanime entry, Mom, Ryan, Nicole, and Zoe finally showed up again in the rental car. We immediately started getting all of our bags together and stuffing them into the slightly-too-small trunk, and we eventually managed to get everything crammed in. Meanwhile, while Mom was getting ready, Zoe took a “before-the-convention” picture of the three of us, we waited in the car, and I randomly attacked everyone with a plastic fork. Nicole sat on the right side, Zoe in the middle, and myself on the left side.
Once we got everything together and took off, the ride went very smoothly. It was a nice day, there was little traffic, and we had good music for the whole ride down. After about an hour or so of just coasting along, listening to music, looking at the scenery, and talking about various things, we started playing anime Mad Libs. This turned out very amusing and the game lasted for about forty-five minutes. Once we finished this, we started on our signs. We had three of them to draw on—“Honk if you’re going to Fanime”, “Fanime 2006 or Bust!”, and “Fanime: Welcome home, Otaku!” I didn’t do a lot on them because the angle I was at was awkward, but Zoe and Nicole worked on them like crazy. They all turned out…like a bad acid trip. Funny, colorful, and very strange. As we started getting closer to the convention center, we began showing off the signs out our windows. Unfortunately, we got no honks as usual, but it was still funny watching the reactions of random people to the signs.
As we got closer to the convention center, we started seeing patches of otaku and cosplayers. The first one I spotted was Mugen, though I think Nicole saw Link first. It was a large clump, that first group. Mom got a little lost, but luckily I know my way to the convention center by now and I righted her. As we were driving around lost for about five minutes, we spotted another big group of con-goers, so we waved our “Fanime: Welcome home, Otaku!” sign at them, cheered, and waved. We got cheers and waves back.
We arrived at the hotel at about 4 PM. After some delays relating to whether or not Mom wanted to pay for parking (during which we went in the lobby and met up with some convention friends of ours), we checked in to our room and brought up all our mass amounts of stuff. We started out in room 1215, but Mom didn’t like that we were all the way on the 12th floor, so she had us moved to 823. 823 ended up being bigger than 1215 anyway, so that worked out well enough. I think there were some problems with us gathering our stuff for registration, but I don’t remember what the problems were exactly (and they’re not interesting to begin with) so I won’t bother to recount them. As we were waiting for Mom to show up so we could go to registration, Nicole was standing in the hall and got in an amusing discussion with some guys who were going to the pool. They wanted her to go swimming with them but she didn’t have a bathing suit and it was all quite random.
Anyway, we went and got in line for registration. We were all anxious to get going into the convention, so the line wasn’t exactly appreciated, but it wasn’t a very long line. We spent about fifteen or twenty minutes in it, during which we scoped out some cosplayers and figured out what to do about our lacks of photo ID. Picking up our badges went well, and even Nicole who had neither her printout nor a photo ID got her badge because Mom vouched for her.
Once we got our badges, as per usual we went for our preliminary sweep of the dealer’s room. Because I was anxious and excited and because the plushies called to me, I ended up buying five Naruto plushies within this short period of time. XD;; I bartered down one dealer in allowing me to buy three of the Naruto plushies, so I got a good deal on them. The other two were only about $9, so that was a great deal, too. I got foxsuit!Naruto, catsuit!Sasuke, deersuit!Shikamaru, a new normal Shikamaru plushie, and Yondaime. They’re so cute! I think I bought another thing or two in the first day, but I don’t remember what they were.
When we were finished looking through the dealer’s room for the day, we went through the artist’s alley. There, I met up with a girl I had talked to on LiveJournal and bought her really pretty art piece of Team Seven. It was somewhat expensive for such a small print, but it was so gorgeous I couldn’t help myself. I’m really glad I bought it, actually. For whatever reason, the artists didn’t seem to be as impressive the first day as they were the other days. No idea why.
Once I was done shopping, I decided randomly to change into my costume. My friends followed me up, helped me get in it, and I went back down the elevator. The responses to my costume were pretty much instant—I had tons of pictures taken of me, lots of hug requests, and love in general. It made the scorching hotness and awkwardness of the costume okay. ^^;
When we went outside to cool me down, we randomly ran into Kathryn, Ciera, and Makayla…the first two of which had randomly bought gothic lolita maid outfits and were parading around in them. XD;; It was very humorous, and apparently they got a lot of uh…attention in them.
From there, we went to get in line for Evangelion: Redeath Redux. It was about 8 PM at that point—an hour before the fandub actually started. We had a good time in the line, however. I was still in my costume, so I was a little hot, but I remedied that by removing the head and gloves while we sat there. Zoe and I started watching the guys in the line, who were obviously checking out Kathryn and Ciera but trying to hide it. Their attempts made us laugh really hard—even Ryan was noticing how much the guys were staring at them and then looking away. Steven got all excited when we told him we had run into an awesome Rei (he’s a Rei fanboy), and just as we were showing him a picture I had taken of her, Rei walked by. XD; So, we encouraged him to go after her and get a picture (which he did).
Redeath Redux was…glorious, to put it mildly. I absolutely love going to it, as no matter how many times I see it, it never stops being a fun and entertaining event. There was much cheering, clapping along with music, a few recitals of lines with the characters, singing along with songs, near-constant laughter, and the best headbang session I’ve had in a long time. There were some guys who were being annoying at the beginning (being rude to the directors and insisting that they start the movie when they were having slight technical problems), but overall…it was one of those “Fanime: Defined” moments. When it ended, there was still some time left over so the creators kindly let the audience headbang to Bohemian Rhapsody one more time (everyone stood up and headbanged the second time, instead of just doing it in their seats), and also played favorite parts of the movie with Engrish subtitles. I’m pretty sure we also watched the Big Balls Pokémon AMV (which is in the middle) twice, with everyone attempting to sing along the second time. Anyway, a great time was had by all. I love Redeath Redux so much—I hope there is never a Fanime in which I don’t go to it.
After some fanboying (I would say fangirling, but it doesn’t quite fit and implies something different) over Redeath Redux for a little while, we stepped out of the theater and located several Naruto cosplayers with a boombox, playing “What is Love?” and all doing the characteristic headbob (we ran into these guys countless times throughout the convention, and it cracked me up every time). Well, seeing as I was a Naruto cosplayer, too, I jumped in and did a little dancing to the song in my Akamaru suit. Unfortunately, this made me really, really hot, so I immediately ran off to the hotel room to change out of my costume and shower. On my way, I met up with a Toboe cosplayer I had been talking to on the Fanime forums, so we chatted briefly about how we couldn’t find the Cher we had also been talking to. I was kind of dying of heatstroke in my costume after the dancing, though, so I had to excuse myself from that conversation pretty quickly.
I braved the [friendly] insanity that is the elevators, got in the room, finished my showering, dressed in normal clothes, and Zoe and I spent a little while merely wandering the convention. We dropped by the karaoke and found it was as godawful and amusing as it had always been, but didn’t stay all that long because the singing was so bad. Shortly afterwards, we dropped by the rave and danced for approximately fifteen minutes (just for the fun of it), made total fools of ourselves, and left.
I’m hitting a blank spot in my memories at this point, because I know I somehow ended up at the hotel room again, and Zoe came into the room at about 11 PM to inform me the Swap Meet was happening. So, I grabbed my wallet and headed down to the Swap Meet.
I’m so glad I did, too! I ended up spending less than $20 there, but I got a lot of great deals. I picked up the limited edition Gunslinger Girl Vol. 1 (perfect condition—brand new) for $10, the first volume of Arjuna for $2, RahXephon OST 2 for $3, two English Pokémon CDs that I had been missing since they were stolen for $4, and lots of free stuff. Namely, a toy Bulbasaur, a Japanese Naruto data book, Rurouni Kenshin Vol. 5, and some entirely random shoujo manga in Japanese. And other stuff, but I don’t remember what it was. Zoe scored there, too—she got a bunch of Phoenix and Uzumaki manga for $2 each. The Swap Meet was in the gaming room, but because there was a lot of free space in the room, some people started a game of Pikachu volleyball. It is exactly what it sounds like. A bunch of people playing volleyball with a plush Pikachu. I considered joining the game, but in the end decided against it.
I have no memories after the Swap Meet, so I’m just going to assume we went to bed after that. At like, 1 AM. I don’t know if this is true or not, but seeing as I can’t remember I figure it’s safe to assume. XD;;
Saturday
Zoe and I were eager to look through some doujinshi in the dealer’s room on Saturday morning, but seeing as we were out and about at about 9 AM and the dealer’s room didn’t open until 10 AM, we ended up browsing the Asian Drama rooms. Somehow, we went and sat down in this random Chinese drama, and that effectively sucked us in for quite a while. It was really bizarre, but really amusing at the same time and it entertained us for quite a while. It was about these four people, two guys and two girls, who couldn’t make up their minds at all, and there was this weird psychologist lady trying to get them to make up their minds as to who they wanted to marry. However, they switched their preferences about every thirty seconds. I can’t even describe to you the chaos within this show. It was…there are no words for it. XD; Zoe and I eventually had to leave because it was giving us headaches and the suspense was too much. Anyway, that was a thoroughly strange and enjoyable experience. I wonder what that was called…?
I think we went into the dealer’s room after that. I bought a really cute Naruto pillow that caught my eye the day before, from the same dealers who gave me a deal on the three Naruto plushies the previous day. We spent quite a while at the YaoiCon booth browsing doujinshi and talking to the nice girls working there. Even Zoe, who is not a particular fan of shounen-ai/yaoi, enjoyed the experience a lot. I bought one Naruto doujinshi which claimed to be shounen-ai but actually wasn’t (but I like the art, so that’s okay), and Zoe bought a few Gankutsuou and FFVII doujinshi. I wanted more doujinshi, but all the really pretty Naruto and Gankutsuou doujinshi were hard yaoi. No thanks. Zoe also bought a little fanart coin pouch of Cloud. It’s so cute. XD
If you’re wondering where Nicole was this whole time, she spent about half her time with us at the convention, and the other half with Chad, so she wasn’t around for quite a few of the events. Just in case you were like “But, WTF, wasn’t Nicole with you?”
I shopped for a little while for presents for Hitchi’s birthday. I got her two things, though later something else caught my eye so I ended up buying her three things. ^^; After I found her presents, though, I found I was very undecided and didn’t end up buying anything else in the dealer’s room for that day (though I browsed it quite a few times).
Not too long after that, we went to the AMV contest. This…had its ups and downs, but overall was wonderful. ^^; The action category…wasn’t all that creative in the music it chose, but it had decent synching and nice editing, so that evened out its quality. The next category was Free Form, which was amazing. There was this one Princess Tutu AMV that was breathtaking, in addition to an awesomely edited video to some random robot series, a combination video between Noir and The Professional, a great Gankutsuou AMV, and other videos I can't remember at this particular moment. Greatest category for this year, in my opinion. I had so much trouble picking which one to vote for. Drama was decent and maybe even better than that, though my favorite video from that category ended up being a video I've seen many, many times already. Comedy started off not-so-well, but ended up great in the end. There was a wonderful video called something to the effect of "Get out of your apartment and stop watching anime already!" (not exact wording, but you get the idea), and two miscellaneous, obviously AMV Hell-inspired videos, which were hilarious. I also loved this funny video set to "Fish Heads" and featuring Magical Play. Very cute. Another favorite moment was in a video called Montage--one of the segments was some random video game character lip-synching and dancing to Dragostea Din Tei--and naturally, everyone watching the contest burst out singing it.
I also want to note that before the AMVs started, there was this great warning. It said something like "Warning: This contest may contain offensive materials, such as: Blood and gore! Harsh language! Cute girls in bras and panties! Cute boys in bras and panties! Mild nudity! And worst of all... SPOILERS. I know, you're offended. In fact, if we weren't running this contest we'd leave, too!" It was made especially funny by everyone applauding and cheering for each inappropriate thing.
After the AMV contest ended and we submitted our votes, we were seriously considering getting straight into the MusicFest line, but seeing as the contest ended at 3:30 PM instead of 4 PM, we decided to browse the dealer's room again for a few minutes. Zoe ended up getting sucked into the dealer's room, so when 4 PM came, I went off on my own to get into the (at the time) very small line. I placeheld for about twenty minutes before Zoe and eventually Makayla, Ciera, and Kathryn showed up, and during that twenty minutes I settled myself comfortably on the stairs and read (to whatever extent I could) the Naruto databook. Discovered some interesting things from the bits I could read, and enjoyed it quite a lot. I was especially amused and overjoyed by diagrams of Naruto's apartment. That'll come in handy for fanfiction. I think I said a few things to the guy directly ahead of me in line, but I can't remember what the topic or anything could have been at this point. When Zoe joined me, she began reading some manga and I continued reading my Naruto databook. It was very quiet. However, at some point (I think it might have been the point at which I began to point out bizarre, silly things in said databook) the peace was interrupted and the snapping and placing of the glowsticks commenced. In the end of my glowsticking adventures, I had a large green glowstick around my neck, a pink glowstick necklace, a three glowstick bracelets on each wrist (red-yellow-red). Pretty hardcore. XD;; We even gave some of the glowsticks to the three guys in front of us in line.
It was rather miraculous when we got in there. Okay, the set up was such: there was a large group of chairs starting about thirty feet from the stage. However, the first three or four rows (at least) were for staffers and press only. In fact, the first row appeared to be nothing but press. There was a staffer standing in the isle redirecting non-press-people to where they were supposed to sit, however he was mildly distracted when we came by and we ended up pushing past him ang going straight to the front. For whatever reason, it also just so happened that the front-center seats were open. SO, we did what any anime fan would do and sat in them. We started to get a little paranoid because staffers were stalking around, so we all turned our badges around as to look inconspicuous. Hahaha. We weren't caught.
A few minutes before the concert started, the announcer guy said we were welcome to take the "mosh pit" space up front, so there was a veritable stampede of anime fans. Guess who got front-center for the second time in a row? You betcha we did. Ten feet from the stage, baby. Closest, best area in the entire place. You literally could not have been standing in a better place than I was unless you were real, actual press. The only downside to this was that the staffer guy making sure no one overcrossed the tape that was the boundary got in a lot of my pictures, but that was a small price to pay for best seats in the house.
The concert? Completely awesome. Totally awesome. Epically awesome. By now everyone has decided who they liked and did not like in the concert, but to be honest, I liked everyone for different reasons. I'm not going to go into long, rambling explanations about each of the bands because, well, it would take too long and I was too busy jumping up and down and being way too excited to notice any of the really small details. I do know that Zoe refused to dance but occasionally did the contributed to the hand-moshing (or whatever the hell that would be called), Nicole danced mildly through much of the concert, and Makayla, Kathryn, and Ciera were all dancing rather wildly.
Goofy Style was the opener. The lead singer looked a little like a hippy, but I'm definitely not counting that against him. XD;; They were a metal band, with some...I don't know how to describe it. Almost Buddist-chant like aspects in it, I guess. It took the audience a little time to warm up and loosen up, but once they did, we all started having a blast.
The second band was Miami--a group of two really adorable Japanese women who who wonderfully random and eccentric. They did really fast, amusing J-pop. One played violin, one did the synthesizer, and they both sang. They didn't really fit in with the general music style of the rest of MusicFest, but they were oh-so-funny. They had this stuffed beatle they kept waving at the audience and dancing with, and at one point one of the girls used the microphone stand to hit the drums. Repeatedly. XD; I kept hoping they'd throw the beatle into the audience, but they never did. T_T
The next band was called Swinging Popsicle, and they were really good. I want their CD really badly now. ^^; They were maybe a little less wild than the Pillows, but kind of a similar style, but with a female lead. Anyway, I really enjoyed them and took about a twenty-second video of the concert. Their CD sold out really, really fast.
After that, Poplar. Poplar was a really cool mix of rock, rap, and traditional Japanese music, and it really worked. So cool. The performers also had awesome costumes--the lead singer had a pretty pink kimono on, the guitarist had on this weird wrestler-like mask, and...I don't remember what the other performers were wearing. I liked them a ton, too--they were so unique and the styles of music they mixed somehow fit together really well. I want their CD.
The next band was Mothercoat, who I (yet again) really enjoyed. I definitely want their CD, too. They were a great just-plain-rock band. Not quite metal, but really, really nice rock. Their singer was frickin' awesome, too. He reminded me a little of Raito in how he looked, but he was very eccentric in his actions. He would start shaking randomly like he was having a seizure, he would lie on the floor and sing, he hopped like a frog across the stage, and all but jumped into the crowd. In fact, he took a lap around the audience (the staffers had to race after him) and when he got right near us, this random girl in the crowd initiated a kiss, and he ended up reciprocating before security dragged him out of the vertiable mob that resulted. XD;; Very amusing.
The last band (and by far the most hardcore metal) was Uphold. Apparently, they did some songs in Beck. Anyway, by then my feet were aching and I was absolutely exhausted, but it was worth it to stay. I can't say a lot about their music, because I was rather...er...distracted...by their guitarist. The man was like...GORGEOUS. Now don't take me lightly here--I don't normally say this about real men, and I'm even selective with my J-rockers. But I was oogling him the entire frickin' time he was on stage thinking about how I'd give my mortal soul for him. SHMEXY. XD;; Haha. I kept trying to take pictures of him while being discreet about it, because this whole time I thought I was just delusional and the only one who was completely obsessed with the man. XD;;; Turns out Nicole agreed with me, and we fangirled, wibbled, and squeed over him for the rest of the convention and beyond.
After the concert, Nicole and I in our half-deaf glory tottered to the foyer. There, we got to meet the bands, talk to them, take pictures of them, and give them hugs if we asked nicely. ^^;; Nicole and I both got hugs from and pictures of our shmexy guitar man, which made our YEAR (we even told him he was sexy in Japanese, which he understandably seemed a little embarrassed by), and I took pictures of, talked to, and received hugs from virtually everyone else. I considered getting autographs, but I had nothing to get autographed and figured the pictures and hugs and such were enough, so I refrained.
Mentally, I was still plenty active at this point, and I figured Nicole and I could go hang out at the convention somewhere, but physically... No, just no. I had to get back to the hotel room as soon as I possibly could because I figured cutting my feet off was a good alternative to their aching. So, no more events for the night. Instead, I sat in bed and looked at manga and merchandise and had a good time. Nicole went back out, but Zoe and I went to bed after a little while of looking over everything.
Sunday
You know, I'm not sure if this is actually where this happened or not, so I could be wrong, but I'll just recount this part of the convention here. Zoe and I went into the gaming room just for the fun of it, as not much else shopping-wise was open yet, and there we ended up playing a random crack!game and one of the Naruto fighting games. Zoe beat me all three times, but I figured out how to Chidori with Sasuke. ...Um, exciting? I think I played as Naruto, Sasuke, and Kiba. Zoe and I were just hitting random buttons, so it wasn't much of a strategic match, but those games are always fun to play if only just to watch the characters do things. XD; In the gaming room, we also watched the Para-Para dance machine (very amusing), and ran into cute little kids cosplaying as Naruto and Sakura. Awww. -^^- I almost left my digital camera under a chair in that room, too. @_@ 'Twas scary.
We got in line for Nescaflowne at 10 AM (which started at 11 AM). Zoe and I passed the time quickly by reading manga. Because I left my manga in the hotel room, Zoe let me borrow a random shoujo manga she had on her--Socrates in Love. Skeptical as I am of shoujo manga, this was really good. ♥ It was a little condensed because it was only one volume and a little clichéd, but it was really poignant and I enjoyed it a lot. I'm really glad I read it--it reminded me very slightly of Narcissu. Zoe, meanwhile, re-read Death Note Vol. 1. We got into a small chat about something-or-other with the girl next to us, and at one point the line exploded because suddenly random friends of people showed up. To cut a [not-so-long] story short, I ended up literally squished against the wall at one point. XD;;
Anyway, Nescaflowne was brilliant and funny, as all Studio Sokodei works are. Not as funny as Redeath Redux, but so far I don't think anything is. There were certainly some giggle-fit moments, though--and at least one hysterical laughter moment. I'm not going to write it up because I don't know the exact words, but it was BEAUTIFUL. I'll give you a clue--it involved Hitomi ("Hitme" in the fandub), Van ("Juan"), Allen (uh...I don't remember his name in the fandub), and the moleman. XD;;
So, after that ended I think we browsed the dealer's room and artist's alley yet again. I think it was somewhere around this point (though it might have been Saturday) that I spotted a Fullmetal Alchemist military outfit in perfect shape for $50. I seriously considered buying it just for the sake of having it and wearing it to random functions (not anime conventions--I'd only do that if I were to cosplay a specific character, which I probably wouldn't) because I was imagining the amusement this would cause, but in the end I decided to leave it up to fate and buy it the last day if it was still there. It wasn't, so I figured it wasn't meant to be. XD;; I don't know exactly what I would have done with it anyhow. As Zoe and I wandered and chatted, we actually ran into someone who reads Zoe's LiveJournal--![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
moogleborg! So, that was amusing. He actually only knew this because he heard me say Zoe's name, and I thought it was funny. He took a picture of the two of us, and I just friended him back. So, yay for new friends!
Speaking of LiveJournal users, I was browsing the artist's alley when I ran across a girl who had really cute, awesome SasuNaru art AND Haruhi art! So I got all excited and we started talking, and it turns out it wascutemew from the ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
sasuxnaru community! Funny, because I'd seen her posts tons of times. So, that was really amusing. We ended up having an awesome conversation about SasuNaru, Haruhi, Pokémon, and other things. It was so cool to meet her! I feel bad because I didn't have time to buy any of her art on Monday... Oh well. Maybe next year or at Anime Expo. In the artist's alley, I also bought a "Yaoi fan: Sasuke/Naruto" badge for $5. It's cute. :)
When 1:30 PM rolled around, I ran up to the hotel room to drop off all of my stuff and get in my Akamaru suit. I managed to do this without any help, though I had some brief paranoia about whether or not the hood was on fully. @_@ From there, I headed straight down the elevator and out into the fountain area, where the Naruto gathering was beginning. Unfortunately, I missed Ninja Twister (which I assume was held a while before the gathering), but the response I got was immediate. I got hugged by and squeed over by Anbu members (XD;;) and several other cosplayers, and right away people starting snapping pictures of me. There was a lady there taking pictures of the Naruto gathering before we migrated to the park, and she pulled aside the awesome Kyuubi cosplayers, Jiraiya, and myself for a few group pictures (because she noted we were in fur and probably getting hot). Mom found me right before these preliminary pictures started happening, and I gave her the stuff I was carrying because it’s rather difficult to carry stuff in my costume. Several more people took group pictures, there were lots of cameras flashing, and it was all quite fun despite how not-fun it is to crouch in one spot for too long.
The Naruto Gathering coordinator (he even had his title on the back of his jacket) then informed us that it was time to migrate to the park for more specific pictures. It was a lot of fun crossing the street in all the outfits—there were well over one hundred of us there, and therefore we took a long time to cross the street. It was like a ninja parade. I waved at the cars we passed and noted with amusement the confused looks on their faces. As I was walking, one Kiba cosplayer in particular became attached to me and kept petting me. ^^;
We eventually settled at this nice area in the park by a tree, and the theme pictures began! Before that, though, one of the Kiba cosplayers (and a Dosu cosplayer, too) scrambled up the tree, so I went down to the base of the tree and got on all fours, looking up at Kiba. Everyone started chanting “Pee! Pee! Pee!” so I lifted my leg on the tree to satisfy them. I did several embarrassing things for the sake of the audience, but it was worth it. Provided they don’t come back to me in the form of blackmail, at least.
Obviously, I was in the Kiba pictures, Team Eight pictures, and “critter” pictures, and I did several poses for each of those. One of these was…um…doggie-style. @_@ Or, alternatively, a big ol’ Kiba sandwich. I think my favorite picture of my costume, though, was when (during the Team Eight photoshoot) Hinata gave me a big hug. I found a picture of it while surfing the internet, and it turned out so cute. ^^
During the photoshoot, the “What is love?” cosplayers brought their boombox, so there were Naruto themes playing for the whole gathering. It was a lot of fun singing along with most of the cosplayers, though I’m pretty sure I couldn’t be heard through my head. Most of the people didn’t know all the lyrics, but there were a few fellow devotees who could sing the songs all the way through.
A lot of other amusing things happened throughout this whole thing—for one, Itachi and Kyuubi started majorly making out against a tree, there was much Gai-posing, pairing wars, Orochimaru wrapping his tongue around Kabuto and Sasuke at the same time, the Coordinator inviting himself into the Hinata gathering because she’s his favorite character, dead characters, lots of ZabuHaku, and—my favorite part—lots of normal people watching. Because we were in a public park, there were random, non-anime convention people who stuck around for most of the gathering, watching with perplexity on their faces as we sang in Japanese, exclaimed names they didn’t know, and generally acted like freaks in costumes.
Also, the two really cute little Naruto and Sakura cosplayers were standing right next to me shyly. They were so cute! Everyone tried to get them to go up for the Naruto, Sakura, and Team Seven photoshoots, but they were too shy and refused. Awww.
A while into the gathering, I started getting hot, but mostly ignored it. I think it would have been easier to ignore if the popsicle man didn’t come, though. Most of the fellow cosplayers got popsicles, but because of the nature of my costume I couldn’t get one. ^^;;
Eventually, the gathering wound down (though it was at least two hours long—yikes!) and we crossed the street for the final time. I was oh-so-tempted to get out of my costume, but at the same time I figured this would probably be my last time at the convention wearing it, so I just sucked it in and continued to wear it. I remembered that Nicole and Zoe had decided to go to the How to Talk to Girls panel (just out of curiosity), so I went to find them there.
During the half-hour or maybe more we were in the panel, I took off my head so I could breathe better and watched in amusement as the poor boys asked the panelists questions on how to treat women. It was a funny panel, all-in-all, though after a while it simply dissolved into a relationship advice discussion, basically. We left as it was winding down, and I wandered around for a while just to strut my costume. This only lasted so long, though, because I was getting really, really hot and also wanted to get some shopping done.
I went up to the hotel room with Zoe, only to discover neither of us had keys and couldn’t get in. x_x I was too hot to do any more wandering, so Zoe took off to the Asian Dramas while I waited for Mom to come back (she was picking Nolan up at the bus station) in front of the hotel room. Luckily, about five minutes after Zoe left, housekeeping came by and let me in. *Phew* That was a big relief. I changed out of my costume, grabbed the bag with my wallet in it, and went to fetch Zoe.
Zoe had actually managed to walk into the Asian Dramas during the last episode of Densha Otoko, so needless to say she didn’t want to leave. I would have joined her, but I had a lot of money left over to spend and there was less than an hour until the dealer’s room closed, so she said she’d just meet me there. So, I literally ran to the dealer’s room, only to discover Mom had taken my wallet. ._.;; I was very, very unhappy about this.
I traversed back across the convention center to fetch Zoe before she ran to find me and happened to walk into Densha Otoko exactly as it ended. So, we essentially just went back to the hotel room, ate, and sat around until Mom came back with Nolan and Nicole (which was after the dealer’s room closed).
There’s another blank in my memory at this point—I know a few things happened, though. For one, we discovered that Bishounen Pictionary, which was our planned activity for the evening, was ID check only, so that dashed our plans. It sucks being eighteen but not being able to prove it. ._.; I also know that we ran into a group of really awesome Gankutsuou cosplayers buying sushi. We had to wait a little while to get their pictures, as they had to finish purchasing their food and setting it down, but they were so great. I was totally happy we found them. ^_^
Zoe and I started to realize there was nothing of interest going on, and not a lot of people were around… Previously, we had decided not to go to Der Cosplay because of how lame it was last year, but eventually we buckled to the pressure and went. Because we were about fifteen or twenty minutes late, there was obviously no line, though it was so crowded we had to go find a seat upstairs. We ended up sitting next to one of the guys who made the Pocky box costume we had signed previously, so we ended up sitting next to the [empty] costume.
Most of the skits were…mediocre, though there were the occasional well-choreographed dances and amusing skits. There were way too many walk-ons, in my opinion. One of the first ones we saw—involving Roy and Hughes dancing together while Hughes was singing about his daughter—was easily the funniest and most charming skit the whole evening. However, there were other cute ones—especially a pair of three or four-year-old Ichigo and Ishida cosplayers, who held a mock battle on the stage all by themselves (complete with little weapons) while the entire audience went “Awww!” It was SO adorable. I also really liked this skit of a bunch of Prince of Tennis cosplayers in really shiny outfits dancing with their tennis rackets (it was well-choreographed and amusing). Another classic was Gainax Boy with a Shinji puppet performing Schadenfreude (from Avenue Q) with lyrics modified to completely fit Eva, along with Asuka (SO fitting). I’m sure there were others I enjoyed, but because I can’t remember any of them, I’ll refrain from writing about them. As Der Cosplay went on, the audience slowly whittled down to about 1/3 of its original size. Because Zoe and I had nothing better to do, we ended up staying for the whole thing, though. It was…probably three hours long.
One all the skits were over, we got to see the winning AMVs while the judges made their decisions. It was really nice to see the best AMVs over again, and our admiration of the awesome, awesome Princess Tutu AMV increased. The whole audience singing Dragostea Din Tei again was fun, too. I mostly agreed with the AMV choices, though I admit there were several I did not agree with. That made sitting all those skits worth it! We then watched the award ceremonies for Der Cosplay and left.
We spent a while wandering the halls, just absorbing that this was our last night there. We went by the karaoke, where some guys performed GO!! from Naruto terribly. They knew a little of the English parts, but that was all. WTF. We walked past the rave but decided against going in.
I think at that point it was about midnight or 1 AM, so we went back to the hotel room. While waiting for the elevators, we ran into a bunch of the Der Cosplay participants, including teh shinee PoT cosplayers, who I decided I needed to take a picture of just for their shininess. Once we got up to the hotel room unscathed, I showered, we talked to Nicole and Nolan for a while, and Nicole and Nolan left the room to go do whatever. Mom was a little miffed because Nolan missed the bus back to his college (on purpose?) so he had to share the room, too. Mom was a little unhappy because of the complications of this, but she wasn’t actually mad. I think she was a little irritated with me for some reason, too, but I can’t remember what it was.
I read manga and organized stuff (got partway packed, too), then went to bed.
Monday *Weeps*
The last day didn’t involve a lot… Everyone packed and got things together, and then we went for our last shopping spree in the dealer’s room. Zoe and I got in line about fifteen minutes before it opened. While there, one girl was reading something on her laptop, so I asked her “That wouldn’t happen to be fanfiction, would it?” It was, and not only that but Naruto fanfiction. We got in a discussion with the girl about SasuNaru, favorite characters (Shikamaru is a favorite of hers, too), and the AMV contest. However…I got total fanbrat vibes from her. *Shudder* For one, she couldn’t pronounce the characters names. She said Shikamaru like it was obviously an American word (Shi (with an ‘I’ like in ‘ship’)-kuh-ma-roo, with improper emphasis and everything), and there was just something about her that screamed ‘n00b!’ Maybe it was the gryphon plushie on her shoulder or something. Anyway, she was nice enough. Just a little…yeah.
I spent most of the dealer’s room time just…buying stuff. I bought the rest of Gunslinger Girl and Arjuna for really cheap, Gankutsuou Vol. 4, $18 worth of pocky, a Naruto shirt, a Wolf’s Rain tote bag, and…um…maybe other stuff, but I don’t remember. I actually decided to save about $70 for Copic markers, though that money may be spent on the chicken coop and/or Pillows tickets instead. I also made a quick trip into the artist’s alley to buy a “Yaoi: Because real men don’t cut it” shirt. By that time, though, it was getting close to time to leave. So, I took a bunch of last pictures, and we marched up to the hotel room to get all of our stuff. We finished our packing, and because Mom was driving Nolan back to the bus station, we all ended up sitting around in the hotel room for a while. Zoe and Ryan watched random things on TV, while I sat in the sun, gazing wistfully out the window and falling asleep slightly because of the warm glow of the sun.
Not too long after that, we literally stuffed everything in the rental car, said our sad goodbyes to the con for the year (;_;), and took off.
During the car ride we (of course) listened to lots of anime music, and alternated between sleeping and talking animatedly about—what else?—anime. I didn’t sleep, but Nicole and Zoe sure did. On the way home, we stopped by my Grandma’s house in Davis (there, Nicole and Zoe mainly talked about UC Santa Cruz).
I’m starting to trail off at this point, seeing as there is not a lot left to tell, so I guess I’ll just wrap this up with a summary of the convention.
Overall, it was completely wonderful. In fact, I don’t think there was anything that wasn’t completely wonderful about it (maybe, maybe excepting Der Cosplay, but that’s…to be expected). I admit, I felt last year was more magical in feeling and possibly a little less funny, but this year had this very…grounded, reasonable happiness that was just as fulfilling, but in a different way. I mean that, too. I’m not just being optimistic—this year was really, really great. I’m so grateful for FanimeCon. :) I'm noticing, though, that this report is a lot shorter than last year's report... I think this is because there were less little random stories to tell, and no incidents like "mystery can". In general, it was a lot more of a...big events convention, as opposed to last year, which was all about the random stories.
I’m sure I’m leaving important/funny/meaningful moments out, so this may or may not be edited later, but…I guess that’s all for now. Haha, nice going if you made it this far. XD;;
Pictures will come at…some undetermined point.
Now…only twenty-seven days ‘til AX! Paku Romi is coming, too--woohoo!
I’m still mad at myself for never finishing last years Anime Expo report (especially seeing as that’s where I got to see Maaya Sakamoto and everything), but let’s see if I can actually sit down and write this whole thing. I know I’m inevitably going to leave things out because my memory isn’t the greatest, so if those who were there could please correct me on things and add memories, I’d appreciate it very much. I don’t imagine this is going to be nearly as long as last year’s Fanime report, as things seemed to happen in larger chunks with less subtlety, but I suppose we’ll just have to see how long it is when I finish. Anyway, on with the show!
Friday
About an hour after I made my pre-Fanime entry, Mom, Ryan, Nicole, and Zoe finally showed up again in the rental car. We immediately started getting all of our bags together and stuffing them into the slightly-too-small trunk, and we eventually managed to get everything crammed in. Meanwhile, while Mom was getting ready, Zoe took a “before-the-convention” picture of the three of us, we waited in the car, and I randomly attacked everyone with a plastic fork. Nicole sat on the right side, Zoe in the middle, and myself on the left side.
Once we got everything together and took off, the ride went very smoothly. It was a nice day, there was little traffic, and we had good music for the whole ride down. After about an hour or so of just coasting along, listening to music, looking at the scenery, and talking about various things, we started playing anime Mad Libs. This turned out very amusing and the game lasted for about forty-five minutes. Once we finished this, we started on our signs. We had three of them to draw on—“Honk if you’re going to Fanime”, “Fanime 2006 or Bust!”, and “Fanime: Welcome home, Otaku!” I didn’t do a lot on them because the angle I was at was awkward, but Zoe and Nicole worked on them like crazy. They all turned out…like a bad acid trip. Funny, colorful, and very strange. As we started getting closer to the convention center, we began showing off the signs out our windows. Unfortunately, we got no honks as usual, but it was still funny watching the reactions of random people to the signs.
As we got closer to the convention center, we started seeing patches of otaku and cosplayers. The first one I spotted was Mugen, though I think Nicole saw Link first. It was a large clump, that first group. Mom got a little lost, but luckily I know my way to the convention center by now and I righted her. As we were driving around lost for about five minutes, we spotted another big group of con-goers, so we waved our “Fanime: Welcome home, Otaku!” sign at them, cheered, and waved. We got cheers and waves back.
We arrived at the hotel at about 4 PM. After some delays relating to whether or not Mom wanted to pay for parking (during which we went in the lobby and met up with some convention friends of ours), we checked in to our room and brought up all our mass amounts of stuff. We started out in room 1215, but Mom didn’t like that we were all the way on the 12th floor, so she had us moved to 823. 823 ended up being bigger than 1215 anyway, so that worked out well enough. I think there were some problems with us gathering our stuff for registration, but I don’t remember what the problems were exactly (and they’re not interesting to begin with) so I won’t bother to recount them. As we were waiting for Mom to show up so we could go to registration, Nicole was standing in the hall and got in an amusing discussion with some guys who were going to the pool. They wanted her to go swimming with them but she didn’t have a bathing suit and it was all quite random.
Anyway, we went and got in line for registration. We were all anxious to get going into the convention, so the line wasn’t exactly appreciated, but it wasn’t a very long line. We spent about fifteen or twenty minutes in it, during which we scoped out some cosplayers and figured out what to do about our lacks of photo ID. Picking up our badges went well, and even Nicole who had neither her printout nor a photo ID got her badge because Mom vouched for her.
Once we got our badges, as per usual we went for our preliminary sweep of the dealer’s room. Because I was anxious and excited and because the plushies called to me, I ended up buying five Naruto plushies within this short period of time. XD;; I bartered down one dealer in allowing me to buy three of the Naruto plushies, so I got a good deal on them. The other two were only about $9, so that was a great deal, too. I got foxsuit!Naruto, catsuit!Sasuke, deersuit!Shikamaru, a new normal Shikamaru plushie, and Yondaime. They’re so cute! I think I bought another thing or two in the first day, but I don’t remember what they were.
When we were finished looking through the dealer’s room for the day, we went through the artist’s alley. There, I met up with a girl I had talked to on LiveJournal and bought her really pretty art piece of Team Seven. It was somewhat expensive for such a small print, but it was so gorgeous I couldn’t help myself. I’m really glad I bought it, actually. For whatever reason, the artists didn’t seem to be as impressive the first day as they were the other days. No idea why.
Once I was done shopping, I decided randomly to change into my costume. My friends followed me up, helped me get in it, and I went back down the elevator. The responses to my costume were pretty much instant—I had tons of pictures taken of me, lots of hug requests, and love in general. It made the scorching hotness and awkwardness of the costume okay. ^^;
When we went outside to cool me down, we randomly ran into Kathryn, Ciera, and Makayla…the first two of which had randomly bought gothic lolita maid outfits and were parading around in them. XD;; It was very humorous, and apparently they got a lot of uh…attention in them.
From there, we went to get in line for Evangelion: Redeath Redux. It was about 8 PM at that point—an hour before the fandub actually started. We had a good time in the line, however. I was still in my costume, so I was a little hot, but I remedied that by removing the head and gloves while we sat there. Zoe and I started watching the guys in the line, who were obviously checking out Kathryn and Ciera but trying to hide it. Their attempts made us laugh really hard—even Ryan was noticing how much the guys were staring at them and then looking away. Steven got all excited when we told him we had run into an awesome Rei (he’s a Rei fanboy), and just as we were showing him a picture I had taken of her, Rei walked by. XD; So, we encouraged him to go after her and get a picture (which he did).
Redeath Redux was…glorious, to put it mildly. I absolutely love going to it, as no matter how many times I see it, it never stops being a fun and entertaining event. There was much cheering, clapping along with music, a few recitals of lines with the characters, singing along with songs, near-constant laughter, and the best headbang session I’ve had in a long time. There were some guys who were being annoying at the beginning (being rude to the directors and insisting that they start the movie when they were having slight technical problems), but overall…it was one of those “Fanime: Defined” moments. When it ended, there was still some time left over so the creators kindly let the audience headbang to Bohemian Rhapsody one more time (everyone stood up and headbanged the second time, instead of just doing it in their seats), and also played favorite parts of the movie with Engrish subtitles. I’m pretty sure we also watched the Big Balls Pokémon AMV (which is in the middle) twice, with everyone attempting to sing along the second time. Anyway, a great time was had by all. I love Redeath Redux so much—I hope there is never a Fanime in which I don’t go to it.
After some fanboying (I would say fangirling, but it doesn’t quite fit and implies something different) over Redeath Redux for a little while, we stepped out of the theater and located several Naruto cosplayers with a boombox, playing “What is Love?” and all doing the characteristic headbob (we ran into these guys countless times throughout the convention, and it cracked me up every time). Well, seeing as I was a Naruto cosplayer, too, I jumped in and did a little dancing to the song in my Akamaru suit. Unfortunately, this made me really, really hot, so I immediately ran off to the hotel room to change out of my costume and shower. On my way, I met up with a Toboe cosplayer I had been talking to on the Fanime forums, so we chatted briefly about how we couldn’t find the Cher we had also been talking to. I was kind of dying of heatstroke in my costume after the dancing, though, so I had to excuse myself from that conversation pretty quickly.
I braved the [friendly] insanity that is the elevators, got in the room, finished my showering, dressed in normal clothes, and Zoe and I spent a little while merely wandering the convention. We dropped by the karaoke and found it was as godawful and amusing as it had always been, but didn’t stay all that long because the singing was so bad. Shortly afterwards, we dropped by the rave and danced for approximately fifteen minutes (just for the fun of it), made total fools of ourselves, and left.
I’m hitting a blank spot in my memories at this point, because I know I somehow ended up at the hotel room again, and Zoe came into the room at about 11 PM to inform me the Swap Meet was happening. So, I grabbed my wallet and headed down to the Swap Meet.
I’m so glad I did, too! I ended up spending less than $20 there, but I got a lot of great deals. I picked up the limited edition Gunslinger Girl Vol. 1 (perfect condition—brand new) for $10, the first volume of Arjuna for $2, RahXephon OST 2 for $3, two English Pokémon CDs that I had been missing since they were stolen for $4, and lots of free stuff. Namely, a toy Bulbasaur, a Japanese Naruto data book, Rurouni Kenshin Vol. 5, and some entirely random shoujo manga in Japanese. And other stuff, but I don’t remember what it was. Zoe scored there, too—she got a bunch of Phoenix and Uzumaki manga for $2 each. The Swap Meet was in the gaming room, but because there was a lot of free space in the room, some people started a game of Pikachu volleyball. It is exactly what it sounds like. A bunch of people playing volleyball with a plush Pikachu. I considered joining the game, but in the end decided against it.
I have no memories after the Swap Meet, so I’m just going to assume we went to bed after that. At like, 1 AM. I don’t know if this is true or not, but seeing as I can’t remember I figure it’s safe to assume. XD;;
Saturday
Zoe and I were eager to look through some doujinshi in the dealer’s room on Saturday morning, but seeing as we were out and about at about 9 AM and the dealer’s room didn’t open until 10 AM, we ended up browsing the Asian Drama rooms. Somehow, we went and sat down in this random Chinese drama, and that effectively sucked us in for quite a while. It was really bizarre, but really amusing at the same time and it entertained us for quite a while. It was about these four people, two guys and two girls, who couldn’t make up their minds at all, and there was this weird psychologist lady trying to get them to make up their minds as to who they wanted to marry. However, they switched their preferences about every thirty seconds. I can’t even describe to you the chaos within this show. It was…there are no words for it. XD; Zoe and I eventually had to leave because it was giving us headaches and the suspense was too much. Anyway, that was a thoroughly strange and enjoyable experience. I wonder what that was called…?
I think we went into the dealer’s room after that. I bought a really cute Naruto pillow that caught my eye the day before, from the same dealers who gave me a deal on the three Naruto plushies the previous day. We spent quite a while at the YaoiCon booth browsing doujinshi and talking to the nice girls working there. Even Zoe, who is not a particular fan of shounen-ai/yaoi, enjoyed the experience a lot. I bought one Naruto doujinshi which claimed to be shounen-ai but actually wasn’t (but I like the art, so that’s okay), and Zoe bought a few Gankutsuou and FFVII doujinshi. I wanted more doujinshi, but all the really pretty Naruto and Gankutsuou doujinshi were hard yaoi. No thanks. Zoe also bought a little fanart coin pouch of Cloud. It’s so cute. XD
If you’re wondering where Nicole was this whole time, she spent about half her time with us at the convention, and the other half with Chad, so she wasn’t around for quite a few of the events. Just in case you were like “But, WTF, wasn’t Nicole with you?”
I shopped for a little while for presents for Hitchi’s birthday. I got her two things, though later something else caught my eye so I ended up buying her three things. ^^; After I found her presents, though, I found I was very undecided and didn’t end up buying anything else in the dealer’s room for that day (though I browsed it quite a few times).
Not too long after that, we went to the AMV contest. This…had its ups and downs, but overall was wonderful. ^^; The action category…wasn’t all that creative in the music it chose, but it had decent synching and nice editing, so that evened out its quality. The next category was Free Form, which was amazing. There was this one Princess Tutu AMV that was breathtaking, in addition to an awesomely edited video to some random robot series, a combination video between Noir and The Professional, a great Gankutsuou AMV, and other videos I can't remember at this particular moment. Greatest category for this year, in my opinion. I had so much trouble picking which one to vote for. Drama was decent and maybe even better than that, though my favorite video from that category ended up being a video I've seen many, many times already. Comedy started off not-so-well, but ended up great in the end. There was a wonderful video called something to the effect of "Get out of your apartment and stop watching anime already!" (not exact wording, but you get the idea), and two miscellaneous, obviously AMV Hell-inspired videos, which were hilarious. I also loved this funny video set to "Fish Heads" and featuring Magical Play. Very cute. Another favorite moment was in a video called Montage--one of the segments was some random video game character lip-synching and dancing to Dragostea Din Tei--and naturally, everyone watching the contest burst out singing it.
I also want to note that before the AMVs started, there was this great warning. It said something like "Warning: This contest may contain offensive materials, such as: Blood and gore! Harsh language! Cute girls in bras and panties! Cute boys in bras and panties! Mild nudity! And worst of all... SPOILERS. I know, you're offended. In fact, if we weren't running this contest we'd leave, too!" It was made especially funny by everyone applauding and cheering for each inappropriate thing.
After the AMV contest ended and we submitted our votes, we were seriously considering getting straight into the MusicFest line, but seeing as the contest ended at 3:30 PM instead of 4 PM, we decided to browse the dealer's room again for a few minutes. Zoe ended up getting sucked into the dealer's room, so when 4 PM came, I went off on my own to get into the (at the time) very small line. I placeheld for about twenty minutes before Zoe and eventually Makayla, Ciera, and Kathryn showed up, and during that twenty minutes I settled myself comfortably on the stairs and read (to whatever extent I could) the Naruto databook. Discovered some interesting things from the bits I could read, and enjoyed it quite a lot. I was especially amused and overjoyed by diagrams of Naruto's apartment. That'll come in handy for fanfiction. I think I said a few things to the guy directly ahead of me in line, but I can't remember what the topic or anything could have been at this point. When Zoe joined me, she began reading some manga and I continued reading my Naruto databook. It was very quiet. However, at some point (I think it might have been the point at which I began to point out bizarre, silly things in said databook) the peace was interrupted and the snapping and placing of the glowsticks commenced. In the end of my glowsticking adventures, I had a large green glowstick around my neck, a pink glowstick necklace, a three glowstick bracelets on each wrist (red-yellow-red). Pretty hardcore. XD;; We even gave some of the glowsticks to the three guys in front of us in line.
It was rather miraculous when we got in there. Okay, the set up was such: there was a large group of chairs starting about thirty feet from the stage. However, the first three or four rows (at least) were for staffers and press only. In fact, the first row appeared to be nothing but press. There was a staffer standing in the isle redirecting non-press-people to where they were supposed to sit, however he was mildly distracted when we came by and we ended up pushing past him ang going straight to the front. For whatever reason, it also just so happened that the front-center seats were open. SO, we did what any anime fan would do and sat in them. We started to get a little paranoid because staffers were stalking around, so we all turned our badges around as to look inconspicuous. Hahaha. We weren't caught.
A few minutes before the concert started, the announcer guy said we were welcome to take the "mosh pit" space up front, so there was a veritable stampede of anime fans. Guess who got front-center for the second time in a row? You betcha we did. Ten feet from the stage, baby. Closest, best area in the entire place. You literally could not have been standing in a better place than I was unless you were real, actual press. The only downside to this was that the staffer guy making sure no one overcrossed the tape that was the boundary got in a lot of my pictures, but that was a small price to pay for best seats in the house.
The concert? Completely awesome. Totally awesome. Epically awesome. By now everyone has decided who they liked and did not like in the concert, but to be honest, I liked everyone for different reasons. I'm not going to go into long, rambling explanations about each of the bands because, well, it would take too long and I was too busy jumping up and down and being way too excited to notice any of the really small details. I do know that Zoe refused to dance but occasionally did the contributed to the hand-moshing (or whatever the hell that would be called), Nicole danced mildly through much of the concert, and Makayla, Kathryn, and Ciera were all dancing rather wildly.
Goofy Style was the opener. The lead singer looked a little like a hippy, but I'm definitely not counting that against him. XD;; They were a metal band, with some...I don't know how to describe it. Almost Buddist-chant like aspects in it, I guess. It took the audience a little time to warm up and loosen up, but once they did, we all started having a blast.
The second band was Miami--a group of two really adorable Japanese women who who wonderfully random and eccentric. They did really fast, amusing J-pop. One played violin, one did the synthesizer, and they both sang. They didn't really fit in with the general music style of the rest of MusicFest, but they were oh-so-funny. They had this stuffed beatle they kept waving at the audience and dancing with, and at one point one of the girls used the microphone stand to hit the drums. Repeatedly. XD; I kept hoping they'd throw the beatle into the audience, but they never did. T_T
The next band was called Swinging Popsicle, and they were really good. I want their CD really badly now. ^^; They were maybe a little less wild than the Pillows, but kind of a similar style, but with a female lead. Anyway, I really enjoyed them and took about a twenty-second video of the concert. Their CD sold out really, really fast.
After that, Poplar. Poplar was a really cool mix of rock, rap, and traditional Japanese music, and it really worked. So cool. The performers also had awesome costumes--the lead singer had a pretty pink kimono on, the guitarist had on this weird wrestler-like mask, and...I don't remember what the other performers were wearing. I liked them a ton, too--they were so unique and the styles of music they mixed somehow fit together really well. I want their CD.
The next band was Mothercoat, who I (yet again) really enjoyed. I definitely want their CD, too. They were a great just-plain-rock band. Not quite metal, but really, really nice rock. Their singer was frickin' awesome, too. He reminded me a little of Raito in how he looked, but he was very eccentric in his actions. He would start shaking randomly like he was having a seizure, he would lie on the floor and sing, he hopped like a frog across the stage, and all but jumped into the crowd. In fact, he took a lap around the audience (the staffers had to race after him) and when he got right near us, this random girl in the crowd initiated a kiss, and he ended up reciprocating before security dragged him out of the vertiable mob that resulted. XD;; Very amusing.
The last band (and by far the most hardcore metal) was Uphold. Apparently, they did some songs in Beck. Anyway, by then my feet were aching and I was absolutely exhausted, but it was worth it to stay. I can't say a lot about their music, because I was rather...er...distracted...by their guitarist. The man was like...GORGEOUS. Now don't take me lightly here--I don't normally say this about real men, and I'm even selective with my J-rockers. But I was oogling him the entire frickin' time he was on stage thinking about how I'd give my mortal soul for him. SHMEXY. XD;; Haha. I kept trying to take pictures of him while being discreet about it, because this whole time I thought I was just delusional and the only one who was completely obsessed with the man. XD;;; Turns out Nicole agreed with me, and we fangirled, wibbled, and squeed over him for the rest of the convention and beyond.
After the concert, Nicole and I in our half-deaf glory tottered to the foyer. There, we got to meet the bands, talk to them, take pictures of them, and give them hugs if we asked nicely. ^^;; Nicole and I both got hugs from and pictures of our shmexy guitar man, which made our YEAR (we even told him he was sexy in Japanese, which he understandably seemed a little embarrassed by), and I took pictures of, talked to, and received hugs from virtually everyone else. I considered getting autographs, but I had nothing to get autographed and figured the pictures and hugs and such were enough, so I refrained.
Mentally, I was still plenty active at this point, and I figured Nicole and I could go hang out at the convention somewhere, but physically... No, just no. I had to get back to the hotel room as soon as I possibly could because I figured cutting my feet off was a good alternative to their aching. So, no more events for the night. Instead, I sat in bed and looked at manga and merchandise and had a good time. Nicole went back out, but Zoe and I went to bed after a little while of looking over everything.
Sunday
You know, I'm not sure if this is actually where this happened or not, so I could be wrong, but I'll just recount this part of the convention here. Zoe and I went into the gaming room just for the fun of it, as not much else shopping-wise was open yet, and there we ended up playing a random crack!game and one of the Naruto fighting games. Zoe beat me all three times, but I figured out how to Chidori with Sasuke. ...Um, exciting? I think I played as Naruto, Sasuke, and Kiba. Zoe and I were just hitting random buttons, so it wasn't much of a strategic match, but those games are always fun to play if only just to watch the characters do things. XD; In the gaming room, we also watched the Para-Para dance machine (very amusing), and ran into cute little kids cosplaying as Naruto and Sakura. Awww. -^^- I almost left my digital camera under a chair in that room, too. @_@ 'Twas scary.
We got in line for Nescaflowne at 10 AM (which started at 11 AM). Zoe and I passed the time quickly by reading manga. Because I left my manga in the hotel room, Zoe let me borrow a random shoujo manga she had on her--Socrates in Love. Skeptical as I am of shoujo manga, this was really good. ♥ It was a little condensed because it was only one volume and a little clichéd, but it was really poignant and I enjoyed it a lot. I'm really glad I read it--it reminded me very slightly of Narcissu. Zoe, meanwhile, re-read Death Note Vol. 1. We got into a small chat about something-or-other with the girl next to us, and at one point the line exploded because suddenly random friends of people showed up. To cut a [not-so-long] story short, I ended up literally squished against the wall at one point. XD;;
Anyway, Nescaflowne was brilliant and funny, as all Studio Sokodei works are. Not as funny as Redeath Redux, but so far I don't think anything is. There were certainly some giggle-fit moments, though--and at least one hysterical laughter moment. I'm not going to write it up because I don't know the exact words, but it was BEAUTIFUL. I'll give you a clue--it involved Hitomi ("Hitme" in the fandub), Van ("Juan"), Allen (uh...I don't remember his name in the fandub), and the moleman. XD;;
So, after that ended I think we browsed the dealer's room and artist's alley yet again. I think it was somewhere around this point (though it might have been Saturday) that I spotted a Fullmetal Alchemist military outfit in perfect shape for $50. I seriously considered buying it just for the sake of having it and wearing it to random functions (not anime conventions--I'd only do that if I were to cosplay a specific character, which I probably wouldn't) because I was imagining the amusement this would cause, but in the end I decided to leave it up to fate and buy it the last day if it was still there. It wasn't, so I figured it wasn't meant to be. XD;; I don't know exactly what I would have done with it anyhow. As Zoe and I wandered and chatted, we actually ran into someone who reads Zoe's LiveJournal--
moogleborg! So, that was amusing. He actually only knew this because he heard me say Zoe's name, and I thought it was funny. He took a picture of the two of us, and I just friended him back. So, yay for new friends!Speaking of LiveJournal users, I was browsing the artist's alley when I ran across a girl who had really cute, awesome SasuNaru art AND Haruhi art! So I got all excited and we started talking, and it turns out it was
cutemew from the sasuxnaru community! Funny, because I'd seen her posts tons of times. So, that was really amusing. We ended up having an awesome conversation about SasuNaru, Haruhi, Pokémon, and other things. It was so cool to meet her! I feel bad because I didn't have time to buy any of her art on Monday... Oh well. Maybe next year or at Anime Expo. In the artist's alley, I also bought a "Yaoi fan: Sasuke/Naruto" badge for $5. It's cute. :)When 1:30 PM rolled around, I ran up to the hotel room to drop off all of my stuff and get in my Akamaru suit. I managed to do this without any help, though I had some brief paranoia about whether or not the hood was on fully. @_@ From there, I headed straight down the elevator and out into the fountain area, where the Naruto gathering was beginning. Unfortunately, I missed Ninja Twister (which I assume was held a while before the gathering), but the response I got was immediate. I got hugged by and squeed over by Anbu members (XD;;) and several other cosplayers, and right away people starting snapping pictures of me. There was a lady there taking pictures of the Naruto gathering before we migrated to the park, and she pulled aside the awesome Kyuubi cosplayers, Jiraiya, and myself for a few group pictures (because she noted we were in fur and probably getting hot). Mom found me right before these preliminary pictures started happening, and I gave her the stuff I was carrying because it’s rather difficult to carry stuff in my costume. Several more people took group pictures, there were lots of cameras flashing, and it was all quite fun despite how not-fun it is to crouch in one spot for too long.
The Naruto Gathering coordinator (he even had his title on the back of his jacket) then informed us that it was time to migrate to the park for more specific pictures. It was a lot of fun crossing the street in all the outfits—there were well over one hundred of us there, and therefore we took a long time to cross the street. It was like a ninja parade. I waved at the cars we passed and noted with amusement the confused looks on their faces. As I was walking, one Kiba cosplayer in particular became attached to me and kept petting me. ^^;
We eventually settled at this nice area in the park by a tree, and the theme pictures began! Before that, though, one of the Kiba cosplayers (and a Dosu cosplayer, too) scrambled up the tree, so I went down to the base of the tree and got on all fours, looking up at Kiba. Everyone started chanting “Pee! Pee! Pee!” so I lifted my leg on the tree to satisfy them. I did several embarrassing things for the sake of the audience, but it was worth it. Provided they don’t come back to me in the form of blackmail, at least.
Obviously, I was in the Kiba pictures, Team Eight pictures, and “critter” pictures, and I did several poses for each of those. One of these was…um…doggie-style. @_@ Or, alternatively, a big ol’ Kiba sandwich. I think my favorite picture of my costume, though, was when (during the Team Eight photoshoot) Hinata gave me a big hug. I found a picture of it while surfing the internet, and it turned out so cute. ^^
During the photoshoot, the “What is love?” cosplayers brought their boombox, so there were Naruto themes playing for the whole gathering. It was a lot of fun singing along with most of the cosplayers, though I’m pretty sure I couldn’t be heard through my head. Most of the people didn’t know all the lyrics, but there were a few fellow devotees who could sing the songs all the way through.
A lot of other amusing things happened throughout this whole thing—for one, Itachi and Kyuubi started majorly making out against a tree, there was much Gai-posing, pairing wars, Orochimaru wrapping his tongue around Kabuto and Sasuke at the same time, the Coordinator inviting himself into the Hinata gathering because she’s his favorite character, dead characters, lots of ZabuHaku, and—my favorite part—lots of normal people watching. Because we were in a public park, there were random, non-anime convention people who stuck around for most of the gathering, watching with perplexity on their faces as we sang in Japanese, exclaimed names they didn’t know, and generally acted like freaks in costumes.
Also, the two really cute little Naruto and Sakura cosplayers were standing right next to me shyly. They were so cute! Everyone tried to get them to go up for the Naruto, Sakura, and Team Seven photoshoots, but they were too shy and refused. Awww.
A while into the gathering, I started getting hot, but mostly ignored it. I think it would have been easier to ignore if the popsicle man didn’t come, though. Most of the fellow cosplayers got popsicles, but because of the nature of my costume I couldn’t get one. ^^;;
Eventually, the gathering wound down (though it was at least two hours long—yikes!) and we crossed the street for the final time. I was oh-so-tempted to get out of my costume, but at the same time I figured this would probably be my last time at the convention wearing it, so I just sucked it in and continued to wear it. I remembered that Nicole and Zoe had decided to go to the How to Talk to Girls panel (just out of curiosity), so I went to find them there.
During the half-hour or maybe more we were in the panel, I took off my head so I could breathe better and watched in amusement as the poor boys asked the panelists questions on how to treat women. It was a funny panel, all-in-all, though after a while it simply dissolved into a relationship advice discussion, basically. We left as it was winding down, and I wandered around for a while just to strut my costume. This only lasted so long, though, because I was getting really, really hot and also wanted to get some shopping done.
I went up to the hotel room with Zoe, only to discover neither of us had keys and couldn’t get in. x_x I was too hot to do any more wandering, so Zoe took off to the Asian Dramas while I waited for Mom to come back (she was picking Nolan up at the bus station) in front of the hotel room. Luckily, about five minutes after Zoe left, housekeeping came by and let me in. *Phew* That was a big relief. I changed out of my costume, grabbed the bag with my wallet in it, and went to fetch Zoe.
Zoe had actually managed to walk into the Asian Dramas during the last episode of Densha Otoko, so needless to say she didn’t want to leave. I would have joined her, but I had a lot of money left over to spend and there was less than an hour until the dealer’s room closed, so she said she’d just meet me there. So, I literally ran to the dealer’s room, only to discover Mom had taken my wallet. ._.;; I was very, very unhappy about this.
I traversed back across the convention center to fetch Zoe before she ran to find me and happened to walk into Densha Otoko exactly as it ended. So, we essentially just went back to the hotel room, ate, and sat around until Mom came back with Nolan and Nicole (which was after the dealer’s room closed).
There’s another blank in my memory at this point—I know a few things happened, though. For one, we discovered that Bishounen Pictionary, which was our planned activity for the evening, was ID check only, so that dashed our plans. It sucks being eighteen but not being able to prove it. ._.; I also know that we ran into a group of really awesome Gankutsuou cosplayers buying sushi. We had to wait a little while to get their pictures, as they had to finish purchasing their food and setting it down, but they were so great. I was totally happy we found them. ^_^
Zoe and I started to realize there was nothing of interest going on, and not a lot of people were around… Previously, we had decided not to go to Der Cosplay because of how lame it was last year, but eventually we buckled to the pressure and went. Because we were about fifteen or twenty minutes late, there was obviously no line, though it was so crowded we had to go find a seat upstairs. We ended up sitting next to one of the guys who made the Pocky box costume we had signed previously, so we ended up sitting next to the [empty] costume.
Most of the skits were…mediocre, though there were the occasional well-choreographed dances and amusing skits. There were way too many walk-ons, in my opinion. One of the first ones we saw—involving Roy and Hughes dancing together while Hughes was singing about his daughter—was easily the funniest and most charming skit the whole evening. However, there were other cute ones—especially a pair of three or four-year-old Ichigo and Ishida cosplayers, who held a mock battle on the stage all by themselves (complete with little weapons) while the entire audience went “Awww!” It was SO adorable. I also really liked this skit of a bunch of Prince of Tennis cosplayers in really shiny outfits dancing with their tennis rackets (it was well-choreographed and amusing). Another classic was Gainax Boy with a Shinji puppet performing Schadenfreude (from Avenue Q) with lyrics modified to completely fit Eva, along with Asuka (SO fitting). I’m sure there were others I enjoyed, but because I can’t remember any of them, I’ll refrain from writing about them. As Der Cosplay went on, the audience slowly whittled down to about 1/3 of its original size. Because Zoe and I had nothing better to do, we ended up staying for the whole thing, though. It was…probably three hours long.
One all the skits were over, we got to see the winning AMVs while the judges made their decisions. It was really nice to see the best AMVs over again, and our admiration of the awesome, awesome Princess Tutu AMV increased. The whole audience singing Dragostea Din Tei again was fun, too. I mostly agreed with the AMV choices, though I admit there were several I did not agree with. That made sitting all those skits worth it! We then watched the award ceremonies for Der Cosplay and left.
We spent a while wandering the halls, just absorbing that this was our last night there. We went by the karaoke, where some guys performed GO!! from Naruto terribly. They knew a little of the English parts, but that was all. WTF. We walked past the rave but decided against going in.
I think at that point it was about midnight or 1 AM, so we went back to the hotel room. While waiting for the elevators, we ran into a bunch of the Der Cosplay participants, including teh shinee PoT cosplayers, who I decided I needed to take a picture of just for their shininess. Once we got up to the hotel room unscathed, I showered, we talked to Nicole and Nolan for a while, and Nicole and Nolan left the room to go do whatever. Mom was a little miffed because Nolan missed the bus back to his college (on purpose?) so he had to share the room, too. Mom was a little unhappy because of the complications of this, but she wasn’t actually mad. I think she was a little irritated with me for some reason, too, but I can’t remember what it was.
I read manga and organized stuff (got partway packed, too), then went to bed.
Monday *Weeps*
The last day didn’t involve a lot… Everyone packed and got things together, and then we went for our last shopping spree in the dealer’s room. Zoe and I got in line about fifteen minutes before it opened. While there, one girl was reading something on her laptop, so I asked her “That wouldn’t happen to be fanfiction, would it?” It was, and not only that but Naruto fanfiction. We got in a discussion with the girl about SasuNaru, favorite characters (Shikamaru is a favorite of hers, too), and the AMV contest. However…I got total fanbrat vibes from her. *Shudder* For one, she couldn’t pronounce the characters names. She said Shikamaru like it was obviously an American word (Shi (with an ‘I’ like in ‘ship’)-kuh-ma-roo, with improper emphasis and everything), and there was just something about her that screamed ‘n00b!’ Maybe it was the gryphon plushie on her shoulder or something. Anyway, she was nice enough. Just a little…yeah.
I spent most of the dealer’s room time just…buying stuff. I bought the rest of Gunslinger Girl and Arjuna for really cheap, Gankutsuou Vol. 4, $18 worth of pocky, a Naruto shirt, a Wolf’s Rain tote bag, and…um…maybe other stuff, but I don’t remember. I actually decided to save about $70 for Copic markers, though that money may be spent on the chicken coop and/or Pillows tickets instead. I also made a quick trip into the artist’s alley to buy a “Yaoi: Because real men don’t cut it” shirt. By that time, though, it was getting close to time to leave. So, I took a bunch of last pictures, and we marched up to the hotel room to get all of our stuff. We finished our packing, and because Mom was driving Nolan back to the bus station, we all ended up sitting around in the hotel room for a while. Zoe and Ryan watched random things on TV, while I sat in the sun, gazing wistfully out the window and falling asleep slightly because of the warm glow of the sun.
Not too long after that, we literally stuffed everything in the rental car, said our sad goodbyes to the con for the year (;_;), and took off.
During the car ride we (of course) listened to lots of anime music, and alternated between sleeping and talking animatedly about—what else?—anime. I didn’t sleep, but Nicole and Zoe sure did. On the way home, we stopped by my Grandma’s house in Davis (there, Nicole and Zoe mainly talked about UC Santa Cruz).
I’m starting to trail off at this point, seeing as there is not a lot left to tell, so I guess I’ll just wrap this up with a summary of the convention.
Overall, it was completely wonderful. In fact, I don’t think there was anything that wasn’t completely wonderful about it (maybe, maybe excepting Der Cosplay, but that’s…to be expected). I admit, I felt last year was more magical in feeling and possibly a little less funny, but this year had this very…grounded, reasonable happiness that was just as fulfilling, but in a different way. I mean that, too. I’m not just being optimistic—this year was really, really great. I’m so grateful for FanimeCon. :) I'm noticing, though, that this report is a lot shorter than last year's report... I think this is because there were less little random stories to tell, and no incidents like "mystery can". In general, it was a lot more of a...big events convention, as opposed to last year, which was all about the random stories.
I’m sure I’m leaving important/funny/meaningful moments out, so this may or may not be edited later, but…I guess that’s all for now. Haha, nice going if you made it this far. XD;;
Pictures will come at…some undetermined point.
Now…only twenty-seven days ‘til AX! Paku Romi is coming, too--woohoo!
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Date: 2006-06-04 01:52 am (UTC)Wait a minute....it was you in that Akamaru suit!? I think I took a piccy of that! ^_^ Kawaii! ^_^
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Date: 2006-06-04 02:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-04 03:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-04 04:24 pm (UTC)