Dateline :
Cleveland, January 26-28
Life has a lot of firsts.
Your first kiss, first pet, first emotional
nervous breakdown, et cetera, et cetera... Why
the awkward segue, you ask? Well just recently I
attended my first anime convention, taking my
first(or final?) steps into geek-dom. God help us
all.
Actually, if you enjoy being a geek, anime
conventions aren't that bad. And believe it or
not, you WILL find people there geekier than you.
Trust me on this one, when you hear an arguement
of which fictional character would win in a
fight, you breathe a say of relief and say,
"Hey, I'm all right." But I digress.
This is a supposed review of the convention, so
let's get a reviewin'.
We arrived there Thursday night and did get the
chance to kill some time in the lobby with none
other than Steve
Bennett!
MY FRIEND
That's Steve Bennett!
ME
Who?
MY FRIEND
I dunno.
Well, at the time I knew he was funny as hell.
But later I found out he was an animator that I
could've had draw me a picture of Lum... Regrets.
Actually, there were a few voice actors there but
I hadn't seen any of their works(Crusher Joe,
Golden Boy, etc.). So my drooling fanboy switch
was turned off at the time. Anyhoo, Thursday was
the only night that I slept in a bed, due to the
sharing of a room by our entire anime club the
next three days. There would be no
"sleep" for the rest of the convention.
There were three video rooms, two with projectors
and one with a big-screen TV. The second one I
dubbed "Ice
Station Zebra"
due to the evident fact the hotel stuff was using
it to store giant sides of beef in. Well maybe
not, but I didn't determine why they kept that
room 40 degrees cooler than all of the others.
The schedules were pretty good, but by Saturday
night they were pretty much all out of whack. The
most popular show would probably be Trigun, as
video room three was always crammed full of
people whenever Vash the Stampede was doing his
thing. One surprise of the show was something
I've never seen before, a girly relationship show
called Karekano(and
some more Japanese words). Really funny, and
interesting. I'm not sure who picked it up, but I
know it'll be out on DVD soon.
Props to Right
Stuf, probably the only studio
sponsor for showing up with some neat stuff. I
caught the Irresponsible Captain Tylor box set
preview, hosted by translator extrordinare, Neil
Nadelman. Of course he's my hero because of the
awesome job he did with Slayers.
We caught an episode dubbed in Spanish, which for
some reson seemed highly appropiate(and a tad
better than the English dub... sorry Crispin
Freeman). I cheered when Neil refused to play the
theme song in English, seeing as its a total
violation of the awesome Japanese version. I'm
definately pre-ordering it ASAP. Maybe CPM can do
half as good a job with their upcoming Slayers
TRY box set. Nahhh....
So cold. Even though it was about 20 degrees
outside, for some reason it was about negative 20
waiting in line for the Q&A session with
Atsuka Nakajima and Tomohiro Hirata. Damn you
video room two! The Q & A session rocked,
though I was dissappointed that so few people
showed up. I was maybe tenth in line, and got a
card which somehow allowed me to get an original
sketch from Atsuko. Of course the 6 people in
front of me wanted Ranma pictures and everyone
behind me wanted Ranma pictures, so my
iconoclastic tendencies kicked in and I asked for
a sketch of Haruto from Haunted Junction. Was she
amazed that I was the only person not interested
in Ranma? The world may never know.
NOTE : I do love Ranma,
but Haunted Junction is a personal favorite of
mine.
And now we move onto the
cosplay. I could just imagine what this would
look like to someone not well versed in anime.
Since there will so many great moments, I'll try
to list some of the cooler parts of it.
-Ten from Urusei Yatsura. Sort of a George
Carlin-esque take on the anime scene of today,
from an 80s anime character.
-Tron Bonne. The skit was non-existant, but
SOMEONE DRESSED UP AS TRON BONNE!
-Those two girls doing the J-Pop number. The urge
to throw some article of clothing on stage was
hard to fight.
-(BAD THING)The four people with the best Slayers
costumes didn't take part in the cosplay!
Travesty!
-Vash. All he needed was three words. Love and
Peace.
-Rinoa and Selphie on stage and the reaction from
Squall and Seifer in the audience.
-The man in the giant cabbit suit. I think that
suit was tried on by 37 different people by the
end of the night.
The cosplay then ended and judging began. Well in
my opinion, the judges went to the hotel bar to
get plastered since there was about two hours of
auctions before we saw the winners announced. But
the profits did go to a cancer foundation, so I
guess I shouldn't complain. All around, a good
show.
The game room was kinda small, but I did finally
get a chance to try Dance Dance Revolution! And
fail miserably! Well it didn't help that Kenshin
Shirt Wearing Dancing Master played some insane
songs that my legs couldn't compete with. If only
my Samba de Amigo and maracas were there... I'd
show him. But I digress. FYI, they also had
Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Magical Drop and a few other
fighting games for play there. People were really
good about sharing and giving turns in there(I
guess we were all picked last at dodgeball in
middle school), but my friend told me the
foot-stink was unbearable when the room was full.
Vendors were cool and friendly, but the selection
was kinda slim. There were maybe 6 or 7 different
vendors, and most the the transactions involved
me putting the item back and saying, "Too
rich for my blood." I did find some cool
stuff, obviously, but some of the rarer stuff I
was looking for was nowhere to be seen. Alas, no
import Saturn games either. Good try, but I'm
hoping for a little more selection next year.
SPECIAL BONUS NEGATIVITY SECTION
- Where to eat? Good question. I made the mistake
of paying ten dollars for the "breakfast
bar" which consisted of 3 waffles and a
stone cold sausage link. On the lighter side,
four Slayers characters sat next to our table to
eat, which was surreal in itself. Of course
walking to the airport was our only option.
- Getting kicked out of video room one in the
middle of Haunted Junction to be informed we
would have to get in line to watch the video
contest in the same room. The line stretched to
the lobby.
-Sleeping on my keys. Ouch.
-Sharing a bathroom with 8-9 people.
Well, that's about all there was to the con. I
had a great time, as did all of my friends that
came with me. Special thanks to all of the
planners, coordinators, and staff of the
convention. You guys made spending 300 dollars
over a 3 day weekend fun! Hopefully, I'll see you
all next year. If you went to the con, feel free
to e-mail me and tell me what you thought. I will
leave you now with these words.
We had joy,
We had fun,
We had pictures drawn of Lum.
-Bob Mackey
2/5/2001
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