[AX] [99] Really-Damn Long and Delayed like Lunar Convention Report from a Seattleite, Part 1
Navaash Fenwylde
*cracks open the Ubiquitous White Folder*
*special note: if anyone has a live camcorder tape of the Masquerade
shot at close range, please E-mail me!*
Well, it's been (just over) 3 weeks since this year's AX began, so it's
time to bust out a Gigantic Con Report. You may know me from my earlier
in the year Baka-Con 2 report; even if you don't, I'll just give you
the skinny on myself. WSU collegiate student with a huge interest in
anime should fit the bill just fine. :)
Anyway, my odyssey began at 2 PM Wednesday PDT, in which our two-car,
five-man caravan from the Anime Cafe began the 1100+ mile drive to
Anaheim. Some advice: if you're sitting in the back seat of a car, bring
a hand fan. Sometimes the air conditioner doesn't reach the back of the
car. >B^)
"right right RIGHT!" -- me, after the driver began driving over the
barrier in my car before finally heeding my advice and pulling into
the rest area. Poor guy was half-asleep.
In any case, after surviving a long, hot drive, our caravan pulled into
L.A. just before 3 PM, at which time we made a brief layover at Books
Nippan and immediately began buying stuff before we had reached the
convention's dealer room. Fortunately Books Nippan had (recently, I
guess) relaxed their membership policies and extended the 20% discount
to all customers, so I picked up on some nice goodies, including a life-
size Card Captor Sakura poster and a life-size authentic Ruri wallscroll
(the latter of which I did not see in the convention's dealer room and
thus didn't miss my opportunity on ^_^).
After some fun finding the right way on US 101, we got back on track and
got to the Hilton before 4 PM. This is a very nice place. The foyer
consisted of a very wide-open space with ample walking room, a recessed
reclining area, a streaming water fountain, and some shooting water
fountains. I immediately knew I was not going to have any trouble
getting around.
We checked into our rooms, and then set about doing our own things until
8 PM, which is when the pre-registration pickup was set for. The line
itself actually began to form on or before 6 PM, though, meaning poor
Sempai was the guy who took it upon himself to secure our spot in the
line ahead of time.
8 PM arrives, and the line has now snaked itself around both walls of a
very long hallway, extending into the second floor main area of the
Hilton. There was a rather obvious lack of coordination here; I later
heard that the signs for indicating where to register had been placed
incorrectly. To make matters worse, the line was not moving, due to the
implementation of a new registration system that had been inplemented
to do away with the alphabetically-sorted lines. In any case, I think
it took until 9:30 before the line actually began to move; before then,
staffers had manipulated the line to the point where it was snaking
very tightly in the small hallway, with almost all of the standing room
teeming with humanity...
I caught 5 costumes while waiting to get my badge; that would be a
pittance compared to how many I would ultimately get.
I don't remember at what time I finally got my badge. In any case, we
just got the badge, not the neck badge holders or the plastic badge
holders (which never arrived due to a warehouse error). It's been a long
night, and I just want to get to sleep, which I do.
If you ever saw a guy wandering around making notes into a white folder
and wearing Akari and Multi (and later Ruri, Nergal, Rishu, and an AX
99 pin), it was me.
The First Night: The Land of Many Otaku
---------------------------------------
Opening Ceremonies began at 10 AM. Like a fool, I overslept and didn't
wake up until 10:30. ^^;;;;;;; Quickly, I got myself tidied up and raced
downstairs, only to discover that the ceremonies were almost over. So
I can't really say anything much about it. ^^;;;;
Sat down, waited an hour at the Premieres room to get into the premiere
of El-Hazard: The Alternative World. While it is generally acknowledged
that the second OAV series was a bit flat, this series (which picks up
right after that) proved to be much more entertaining, what with the
antics of the new Priestess of Water and the incoming brother of
Alielle. I only got to catch the first episode (because I wasn't aware
of the fact that on subsequent days, subsequent episodes would be
played), but if the first episode was indicative of the quality of the
rest of the series, I'm going to have to pick it up.
Afterwards I head for the dealers' room. Entry is initially into the
companies' area; the strongest showings were by ADV and Pioneer/Bandai,
sporting some impressive banners and posters which I wish I could've
struck deals to acquire after the convention. 8) Oh yeah, they were
selling tapes, (some of which weren't even on the open market yet!),
but I didn't come here for tapes; I came for merchandise.
So after a quick detour into Artist's Alley to pick up the "Convergence"
manga anthology (which I mainly acquired because Chika was part of it),
I strolled into the Dealers' Room, which was more like the Dealers'
Arena because of its freaking huge size. There were easily at least 50
dealers (the actual count was proabbly closer to 75) present, all
offering their brand of goods and services. Some of the more notable
stands:
- Books Nippan, who I'd already dealt with the other day
- AnimeNation was taking a rather unusual tack; they didn't actually
sell anything, (prefering to leave that to the website) but were
giving away a hell of a lot of free stuff
- A booth with model Esther Hwang - I mention this only because on
Saturday, she was dressed up in a Tira Misu costume *drool*
- Fanime Con was taking preregistration
- One of the booths put up this gigantic VPMiyu TV wall scroll which I
would have bought if the price tag had read "$25" and not "$125".
I saw it when it went up and apparently sold as fast as it went up,
because when I returned 5 minutes later it was gone
I ended up buying a whole lot of Ruri and Ryoko (of Nadesico) merchan-
dise. ^__^
After spending a lot of time and money (the bulk of my purchases were
actually on Saturday), I headed back into the hotel to check out the
game room. Atlus had a whole booth on one side of the room; I can't
remember for the life of me what games they had showcased. On the back
wall (where the room doors were), an N64 with the Evangelion game was
being played; it was very amusing seeing people screw up and rewrite
the ending of Eva. ^_^ (case in point: any of the sequences in the
Dance Like You Want To Win! episode - at several points in this level,
you have to hit some buttons real quick. Failure gets Asuka screeching
at you - the funniest one was Shinji stumbling over while trying to
dash and fire a machine gun at the same time)
On the right was the staple Marvel vs. Capcom. I guess that the staffer
that was playing had managed to win 125 (!!!) games in a row before
finally losing. Shouldn't he have been working?
Finally, Bust-a-Move 2, Dance Dance Revolution, and Lords of Lunar (the
WD remake of Battlelords) were in full force.
I spent a lot of time walking around, getting food, looking in and out
of the karaoke contest, and most importantly socializing. Getting to
know your fellow otaku is a very nice thing.
"Damn power lines" -- One of the cosplayers was dressed up as one of
the Men in Black from Serial Experiments Lain, replete with headgear
and all. When he said this line, me and the two guys with me doubled
over laughing. If you've seen Lain, you'll understand too.
Oh yeah, I checked out the art show, and briefly considered bidding on
some of the entries before I realized how I had budgeted myself. There
was some very nice stuff in the art show: the models (of course), for
one thing. One of the pieces of artwork struck me as exceptionally
funny; it was the front of a fake magazine called "Blades and Daggers".
Text was: "The Legendary Sword of Light - Its New Owner Tells ALL!"
Lina was smiling and holding the sword up. In the corner was a SD
embarassed Gourry. ^_^
There was a very large canvas rendering of Rei from Eva, with the towel
hanging down over her (she had just emerged from the shower). Also there
were some very, very nice metallic engravings of anime characters,
including Ryo-ohki and Pikachu.
A little later, I head downstairs and have a meeting with some members
of the Ryoko Forever Fan Club (RFFC). We (allegedly) discuss tactics
for tomorrow's "Goodbye Tenchi" panel.
Anyway... the next part of my report deals with the 35mm premiere of
Tenchi Muyo in Love 2: Harukanaru Omoi aka "Tenchi Forever".
Technically, this is going to go down as one of the biggest botches
at AX ever. The film itself was freaking awesome; however, this is what
I have written down as the actual showing timeline:
- Before film starts, AX staffer asks crowd if they would prefer to see
it dubbed, subbed, or raw. (House is packed at this point.) First
gets cries of "subbed", but when told it might be raw, I hear a lot of
"dubbed".
- Room lights darken.
- Film starts.
- Film doesn't start.
- The film has broken. There is a nervous ten-minute wait while the
film is repaired.
- Film starts - raw. There is a round of walkouts.
- Thirty minutes in, there is a scene that instantly gets the audience's
attention.
- IMMEDIATELY after, the film FALLS OFF THE REEL! The picture shifts to
the side (very ugly effect), and they have to stop the reel. Second
round of walkouts occurs - the room is suddenly only half full, but
at least very spacious.
"The film couldn't take it!" -- a wag after the previous event.
- 7 minutes later, film continues on without a hitch, but by now the
damage has been done; half of th crowd has walked out, making this
the biggest fiasco at the convention apart from the masquerade delay.
Incidentally, the film was shown three times; once in the Premieres room
(dubbed), once at Film A1 (raw), and once at Video Room 5 (subbed).
All three showings were stuffed to the gills. From what I heard,
though, the non-raw showings did not have walkouts (for obvious reasons
- they were using videotape).
It is now midnight; time to sleep.
"She's my girlfriend." -- Mika Akitaka, one of the Guests of Honor
and totally drunk off his ass (for those who don't know, he drew the
Gundam suit girls and made Galaxy Fraulein Yuna); he at the time was
pointing at a picture he had drawn of the cast of To Heart (a game/
anime of which he is a very big fan); right in the middle was the
green-haired robo-girl Multi. A little too knackered up, eh Mika? =)
The Second Night: The Land of Infinite Lines
--------------------------------------------
I wake up at 10 AM, earlier than last time (but still that would have
helped more the day BEFORE =). I get up, get moving, and first head
to the videogame room to watch the opening stages of the Marvel vs.
Capcom tournament. One of the guys early on attempted to use one of the
infamous "infinity combos", and was very unpopular from that point on.
11 AM arrives, and it's time for the "Goodbye Tenchi" panel.
Present from Pioneer are Yuji Moriya, Jeremy Johnson, and Chad Kine.
First thing is a video; it is the "Animage Tenchi Muyo in Love 2 All-
Nighter Special". Primarily, it is a promotional video for the third
film, with interviews with director Hiroshi Negishi and Yuji Moriya
(albeit with different hair). The video was subbed except for the
commercials. We got only two truly useful piece of information out of
the video:
This film was always planned, but it took Negishi a while to think of
a good plot for it
and
Near the end of the video, Moriya said that there would probably be
new OAV releases in the first few years of the new decade.
Needless to say, this got the one question off of everyone's mind.
After the video ended, the Q&A session began for the second half-hour.
I'm going to list only the most relevant questions:
Q. Why was the art style so different between this and all other Tenchi
projects?
A. As alluded to in the video, director Negishi was looking for a more
mature stule of animation.
Q. Why was there no Mihoshi Special in the Tenchi OAV DVD box?
A. When the OAV THX LD box was mastered in Japan, the Mihoshi Special
was not present. Because the DVDs were mastered from that box set,
there was no Mihoshi Special.
(IMHO, big mistake. Mihoshi Special LDs became a huge collector's
item with that move.)
Q. Plans for 1st TV series DVDs?
A. In planning, but Pioneer has a gigantic backlog with all of their
new acquisitions to sort through.
Q. Will the Sound File make it to this side of the States?
A. No.
Q. Any plans for Pretty Sammy TV dubs?
A. Maybe. Sales of the PSTV subs have been outperforming everybody's
expectations, especially in light of the lousy sales of the OAVs.
Q. Can't you get Tenchi TV on the broadcast networks in the US?
A. It would be very difficult and not profitable. (KTMA was brought
up; how ironic I hear they are filing for bankruptcy)
Q. [I asked this question point-blank to Mr. Moriya]. Did TMiL2 bomb
theatrically in Japan?
A. Yuji laughed nervously, then alluded to the film being more mature,
more artsy, something different from the Tenchi norm. In short, he
indirectly admitted that it did bomb.
Q. Someone brought up that the TV DVDs in Japan were bilingual, and why
didn't they just bring them straight over?
A. Two words: quality control.
Q. Why don't we get all the rest of the merchandise, including the
Soundfile, drama CDs, novels, etc., etc.?
A. Pioneer as a video and audio company cannot handle the miscellaneous
merchandising, and would need merchandising partners.
[Final question, and a very pointed one]
Q. If we're going to see new OAVs "soon", why the hell have they been
so long in coming?
A. [I'm not sure if I heard this right, but the audience's reaction was
a muffled "holy shit" so...] The video [OAV] staff was paid to not
release any new OAVs until both TV series and the films had fully
run their course.
Though with a controversial end to the panel, on the way out we got a
lovely bonus: the original Japanese program handed out at the TMiL1
premiere, so we got in on a bit of missed goods. ^_^
Right after, it was noon. However, though I wanted to go to the ADV
panel (which was in the same room), it was time to get tickets for the
Masquerade Ball.
Here's how the ticketing worked:
In a nutshell, we had to "stand in line to stand in line".
Less brevity:
There were a fixed number of tickets handed out for seating for three
significant events: the Mari Iijima concert, the Yoko Kanno piano
recital, and the Masquerade Ball.
The idea is that you got a ticket, and with your ticket you were seated
in a position in the hall where the event taking place. In the case of
the Masquerade, you had:
+---------------------------------------------------------------------+
| +-------------------+ |
| | stage | |
| +-------------------+ |
| |
| +-------------------+ +-------------------+ +-------------------+ |
| | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | |
| | RED | | WHITE | | YELLOW | |
| | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | |
| +-------------------+ +-------------------+ +-------------------+ |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------+
The red tickets were handed out first, the white second, and finally
the yellow. What ticket you got was entirely dependent on when you
got a ticket.
Or that's how it worked in theory. In reality, a long line formed
ahead of time, sometime before noon, trying to get one of the Red
tickets. However, what a lot of these people may not have been aware
of was this fact: This event was not being seated by row position as
opposed to the Iijima concert and the Kanno piano recital. This was
a big mistake. Not drawn in on the above diagram are partitions which
hid the back room from sight, where cosplayers were milling around.
There was one in the way of the red AND the yellow sections. This
resulted in the white ticketholders actually getting better seats
than people who were first or last in line.
As for the waiting in line to wait in line bit: I'll get to that later.
After finally getting my ticket around 1:30 PM (half an hour after the
line started moving - I got a white ticket), it was time to hit the
dealers' room again, at which time the great Ruri-buying orgy commenced.
But anyway... ^_-
I heard from some others that the Mayumi Iizuka panel was very tightly
controlled. Whatshisname that runs www.fansview.com was told that
Pioneer was strict about no picture-taking in the panel, hence no story
on her. Also my buddies who did attend the panel told me that her
agent radiated "bitch" -- and she was a bitch, by all accounts.
Not only that, she was there the least of any of the Guests of Honor.
She wasn't there on Friday. She flew in Saturday, went to the panel,
rushed right to the autograph session (which are usually a long way
timewise from the panel), and left. I don't even want to know what kind
of strict time schedule she was being kept on...
Anyhoo, after more buying, wandering, and socializing, I went to the
fanfic panel.
The panelists were (someone I didn't catch the name of - she writes
Kenshin fics), Tricia Speshin (sic?), Ryan Mathews, MegaZone, Jim Lazar,
Stephen Tsai, Monica Shin, and Natalie Vaughn.
The topics that came up were:
- Vulcanization of fanfic sites. (Ryan thought it was good, and plugged
GenSao's Tenchi fic site [as will I - members.xoom.com/gensao/];
another school of thought was that it made it easier for plagarism
to go detected. Zoner brought up the issue of someone taking an
a.s.s. story and trying to turn it into a KOR lemon; his comment was
that "someone didn't use eMacs very well")
- Importance of research (use it, except when it pokes holes into the
plot of your source story)
- Post pieces as they are done, but make sure you keep track of your
continuity
- Don't make your first story an uber-long one. [At this point every-
body in the room looked at Dennis Carr.]
- When is a fanfic done? * When you don't feel like writing it
anymore
* When you post it to raac as opposed to
the FFML
* Don't make revisions forever
* Indicate where the story breaks
- Good beginning, great end, no middle!
* Identify small parts of your plot
* Don't write sequentially if you can handle
not writing sequentially
- Musical influences
"There is nothing more depressing than realizing that, after listening
to a 3-5 minute song, you only have written 10 words." - Ryan M.
- Sometimes stories go unfinished; it happens, move on
- Issue of shorts/character pieces
- Self-insertions. There was a LOT of discussion about this, esp. the
DJ Croft/John Ellison paradigm.
"[NXE] has been the most divisive of [Eyrie's] works, due to the DJ/
John thing (...) You get mail saying, 'This is really great!' or 'You
should die and burn in hell...'" - Zoner
- Crossovers, and what their place is
- The importance of responses, and how they can indicate if anyone is
interested in your story
[At this point Natalie left for the masquerade pre-meeting]
- Names of characters, and why they have to be named carefully. There
were notes on how fantasy/sci-fi names didn't have to be coherent,
and Gaelic and Celtic names were popular choices for fresh-sounding
names
- Do you read fanfics?
RK girl: Lots, esp. anything by Sekihara Tai
Tricia: RAAC only; likes Magical Mystery Hibiki-chan and Garden of EVA
Ryan: starts with anecdote about how Aikan Muyo (Tenchi mega-story)
was the only timne he'd seen an in-characrter lemon; otherwise
doesn't read fics because not only does he write them a lot, he
doesn't like to read text on-screen for long periods of time
MZ: hates Ranma ficcage, also has little time -- and little water (?)
Jim: big [scrawled word] cuts into reading time; but likes Daigakusei
no Ranma and Girl Days
Tsai: not for a while; last read was Lawson's What Life So Dear (KOR)
Monica: not much, looks for authors to read than fics
[the water boys delivered some more water - this was a 2 hr. panel]
- Do characters tell you you're writing them wrong? (a unanimous "all
the time" from the panel :)
- What do you think of self-insertion?
RK girl: doesn't want to read OR write them
Tricia: they can be done well, without becoming a Mary Sue; mentioned
TimeRunner's SI parody
Ryan: noted that by inserting new flaws and motivations, a supposed SI
can become original
MZ: does not have much against it [and noted NXE wasn't a SI]
Jim: said that all 'original' characters had a part of the author in
them, but wreck the story if they are written badly
Tsai: hard-line SI hater due to "fantasy power trip" - then noted he
did insert Hitoshi Doi in one of his stories to wreck his house =)
Monica: doesn't read them
Then we got stuck on the SI thing for a while, then we ran out of time.
There was one last thing about the importance of a good-looking Web site
was, though, for people who put their stories there.
Now it was time to get to the Masquerade line.
The Masquerade
--------------
Remember what I said earlier about getting in line to get in line?
Around 6 PM, the lines began to seriously form for entry into the
Masquerade seating. There were 7 lines, arranged in priority of seating:
Red 1-3, White 1-2, Yellow 1-2. At 7 PM, the line began to move, and we
headed up through the back stairwell and into the now-connected Live
Programming 1 and Video Room 1 rooms, complete with jury-rigged sound
system and floor speakers on the stage.
I'm going to spare the extra detilas because this is a con report, not
a technical manual. In any case, after all the seating had taken place
and the non-ticket people who wanted to come in had come in, everything
seemed set, 5 minutes before the scheduled start time of the show.
But then there was a problem.
On the back wall, two projectors were rigged, showing the live-feed from
the closed-circuit Hilton TV channel. Every so often they would throw
in a music video from a previous AX competition. Except for one prob--
--no audio.
15-30 minutes pass and the crowd is getting testy, sometimes shouting
that the audio isn't working. At this point, Mike Tatsugawa gets on
stage and announces (with only his voice to amplify) that there is an
"audio problem" and AX sound engineers are working to fix it.
We found out later that, due to the LP 1 and Video 1 sound systems
having different transformer types blah blah blah, the main mixer
*blew up*. Therefore instead of the masquerade starting on time for
once, there was a two-hour delay while the sound enigneers had to
frantically rush and replace *everything* -- including the floor
speakers, which forced the use of some stand-up speakers (this unfor-
tunately sabotaged certain skits).
Finally, after a tremendous amount of work, the sound system was up and
working, the house lights dimmed, and the show was on in full force:
(The video stream of the Masquerade is available at
http://www.pixelshow.com/axlive/archive.html. This is a guide to the 47
acts, arranged in order:)
01 Fei Fong Wong from Xenogears and Chibi-Chibi from Sailor Moon. Fei
came out first and did some karate; then Chibi-Chibi wanders out and
Fei says "Why hello, little girl!" "Chibi-chibi!" is all Chibi-Chibi
says. Unfortunately I couldn't hear half of this, due to the fact
that the audio was being picked up on the standing mics - which
weren't very efficient.
02 An Ultimate Fighting bout between "Kekko Ramen" and "Kikko Man".
Yes, the costumes were exactly what you think they were. KR even
had fishcakes. ^_^
03 One of the duels from Utena (I think it was the Utena vs. Miki one);
almost all of the core cast were accounted for (I don't think I saw
Juri though).
04 Eagle Vision from Rayearth does karaoke. The music doesn't come on
at first, though, and at one point while standing around she says
nervously, "Track 3?", which got a nice laugh. Going over the video,
she was really singing, and not lip-synching, it seems.
(looking over Fan's View now, though, she was reading the lyrics off
of cue cards. so much for memorization. ^^;)
05 The "Little Sailor" team was two young girls dressed up in two of
Sakura Kinomoto's (Card Captor Sakura) outfits; a blue one and a pink
one, IIRC. They began with a dance to the 1st season ED, "Groovy".
Then one of them whips out Sakura's baton (!), and chants the chant
(in Japanese!) that Sakura does when she unleashes a Clow Card.
Very cute.
06 A very large Giant Robo costume, assembled with plastic. It was so
big and unwieldy that an AX staffer had to help the poor guy move
on and off the stage. ^^;;; Someone joked that it was "Immobile
Suit Giant Robo"
07 Masquerade moderator Wydia "sydney2k" Santoso read off the name of
this skit as "Sailor Moon meets the Spice Girls". Thankfully, it
wasn't really like that. It was just Usagi and Chibi-Usa dancing
to some song whose name I can't remember.
08 Solid Snake and Meryl from the PSX game Metal Gear Solid. After
posing, as they walked off the stage, Snake held Widya at "knife"-
point for a second. :)
09 "I'm Too Sexy For My Sword" Loooong skit. In a mock version of the
Ricki Lake show, on one side we had Aoshi Shinomori just standing
there for a while. Meanwhile, Ricki had Lina Inverse come out and
explain why she was "too sexy for her sword". Then Ricki said that
someone else claimed she was an impostor, and lo and behold, ANOTHER
Lina walks out! (this is great - the difference between the two is
that one Lina is 1st season costume, and the other is 2nd (Next)
season costume). Xelloss comes out and, as usual, refuses to say
anything about who is the "real" Lina. Some Urusei Yatsura chara
ran across the stage in a cameo; don't remember which one.
Very funny skit.
10 Another long skit using Marvel vs. Capcom characters -- Jin Saotome,
Chun-Li, and Morrigan, to be precise. Jin comes out first and poses,
then asks the audience who he should take as his teammate. Then Chun
(normal, not Alpha, outfit) and Morrigan wander in. He gets the
audience's opinion (which seems to favor Morrigan), then Vega (the
guy with the claw) wanders in. Classic line from Jin: "You're in the
wrong game, Vega! Street Fighter Alpha 3 is over *there*! (points)"
Then he uses a Blodia Punch to knock Vega off the stage (the Blodia
is his huge bot) - he uses a big cardboard prop in doing this. :)
He once again asks the audience for opinion, then begins to move
towards Chun - but then Morrigan does her Eternal Slumber super on
him (with curtain prop and all), and he is obviously swayed. :)
Vega comes on stage again, but Chun removes his mask and socks him in
the face (of course, he is very protective of it). A skit that
admittedly can only be appreciated by gamesplayers.
11 The canine-guy from Escaflowne, complete with authentic-looking
prosthesis to resemble a canine face. (I later found out he was
played by a she.)
12 KareKano skit starring Yukino, Arima, and Asaba. The costumes in
this skit were very well-done. Yukino and Arima are strolling along,
holding hands, when Asaba bursts onto stage and tries to woo someone.
It turns out to be Arima. Arima knocks him down and he runs, then
Arima and Yukino engage in a serious liplock.
13 Sailor Senshi dance skit with Neo-Queen Serenity and the sailors
with the purple, green, red, and blue fukus. (So sue me, I'm bad with
the individual names.)
14 Dancing skit starring characters from Bust-a-(Move/Groove): Heat,
Strike, Gas-O, and 3 versions of Shorty, dancing to "Chemical Love"
(Gas-O's song from the game).
15 Six or seven characters from Violinist of Hamelin put on a big dance
skit.
16 Something about a "Princess Firework". I really couldn't ID this very
well, but she did have a Pikachu stuffy. ^^;
17 A Fushigi Yuugi skit with Nuriko standing off to the side, and masked
Nakago and Miaka (???) doing the karaoke.
18 Meimi-chan from St. Tail in full kaitou costume. Another case of bad
musical timing here. (Someone from the audience yelled, "Track 3!")
19 Oh good God.
Remember the Pen-Pen from ACen? He's back. And dancing to "If you
like my body, and I think I'm sexy, c'mon sugar, let me know"
And to make thinks better (worse?), moderator Widya (who is dressed
like Gendou Ikari, BTW) pulls an Amanda Winn Lee and begins to lewdly
dance with Pen-Pen for a while.
The crowd was just totally cracking up at this. ^_^
Afterwards, Widya takes a sip of water like it was nothing. ^^;;;;
20 Oprhen (Sorcerous Stabber Orphen) yells to the crowd about how the
"demons" have ranscaked the villages, and taken captives, then yells,
"Look! There's one now!" Then someone tosses a Pikachu stuffy on-
stage. ^_^ The crowd is totally rolling. At one point Orphen is
poised to slay the Pikachu with one swift stroke - but then suddenly
he is drawn down to the stuffy, then comes up holding it to his head
and blabbering, "pika! pika!" Ah well, it *almost* ended the way we
wanted it to. :)
21 Some of the characters from Gundam Wing assemble and do parody comedy
for the audience. Mostly the mains.
22 X:1999 pillow fight. That's all I really need to say. Actually, no:
"the incredible revival Pocky".
23 Jupiter, Usagi, and Mars have a catfight with Luna - literally.
Very weird. At one point you can hear "Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!" *sigh*
24 Miaka and Yui stand next to each other. As usual, they cannot
maintain standing next to each other. Once again, the Springer chant
ensues in the fight.
25 I couldn't ID this one for the life of me.
26 An AD Police officer begins talking to his superiors on the radio.
This was a very funny skit, illustrating what everyone thinks of the
About-to-Die Police. =)
27 A Jion soldier does a recruiting drive speech. Also very funny.
I have some quotes in the Quotefile section from his speech.
28 Filia and whatshisnuts (forgot) from Slayers Try.
29 Starring San from Mononoke-hime in "The Crossing", which is half of
a parody of the Black Knight sequence from Monty Python and the Holy
Grail, and half a parody of the Bridge of Death sequence from the
same film. I think the guy with the bokken was supposed to be Kuno
Tatewaki...
Widya got "skewered" by Kuno's bo as Kuno left the stage. ^_^
30 Tenchi Masaki in Jurai light-hawk-wing super armor. As he left the
stage, a dead ringer for Yumi Takada yelled out, "Tenchi-sama!"
31 Mink, Dick Saucer, the evil sorceress, and a powder slipped into
Dick's drink that gives him diarrhea. You can guess the rest.
32 Ryu-Gatchaman, with green costume.
33 Parody of a video game, with Van, Merle, Dilandau, and Folken.
It's a dance sequence, and Dilandau and Folken win because Van won't
dance with Merle. ^^;
34 It's Ryoji Kaji: The Spy Who Shagged Me!
This was easily one of the funniest skits of the night, what with
Kaji copping a British accent, Gendou as Dr. Evil, Mini-You ("half
the size with twice the hair")... this was some great sketch comedy.
If you watch only one thing on the Real stream, make it this.
35 Pai from 3x3 eyes makes a couple of bad jokes. (like: "How I take a
picture")
36 San (Mononoke), two Mai Shiranuis (with decent proportions), and
a couple of Magic cards (from which set I am not sure) take on
Sailor Moon.
37 Babbit (in a really freaking HUGE costume) does the Hokey Pokey.
38 A Japanese cosplayer dressed as Rei in a plugsuit plugs her websuit
- oops, I mean website. :) (an address which nobody caught very well)
39 I don't know. But someone made a particularly cruel comment after-
wards - "Spandex is a privilege, not a right!" From what I heard he
was summarily dealt with.
40 A nice Sailor Mars costume.
41 Marle and Van have a 'love spat' - I joke that they are arguing about
the handling of the dance game. :)
42 Lady Whatshername from Gundam Wing.
43 Alex of Burg from Lunar. Has a stinging denoument - "I realized some-
thing while I was standing here. Lunar was just like this masque-
rade -- delayed."
44 Ranma-kun and Mousse fight, but it ends as Mousse vs. Ranma-chan.
(this one was obvious)
45 Ryouko and Aeka surround a nervous Tenchi, holding a Ryo-ohki plush.
Someone in the audience yells "Tenchi's cute!", and the fighting
begins in earnest. Once again the Springer chant comes in.
46 This turned out being funnier than it had any right to be.
The announced skit is a performance by Fire Bomber. An AX staffer
brings two chairs, back facing audience, out and walks away.
The Fire Bomber cosplayers take forever to get onto stage.
In the meantime, the crowd is getting testy, then suddenly someone
yells "Chaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaair!" This quickly degenerated
into chanting of "Chair! Chair! Chair! Chair! Chair! Chair! Chair!"
If anyone happened to see someone literally ROTFL that day, it was
me. I nearly died laughing. ^____^ And to top things off, Widya
walked over to the chairs, sat facing the audience, and struck the
Gendou-with-gloves-over-face pose. 8)
Finally, the Fire Bomber members assemble on stage, and do their
song. It was a looooooooooooong song. It was, though, just enough
time for me to catch my breath. ^_^
47 (final skit) It's Dan Hibiki's Saikyou-ryuu Dojo! With Chuji-Wu of
Tobal beathing the crap out of Genma Saotome! Throw in Ash and
Pikachu (very funny part: James/Kojiro runs on stage, says "Give me
Pikachu!" Ash tosses the stuffy to James and says, "Here, have it!")
And you have the masters of the Saikyou-ryuu Style! :) Even Happosai
put in an appearance!
In all, the cosplayers did the best they could with the audio problems,
and a good time was had.
While the judges dove out of the room to distribute awards, they had
a few more surprises up their sleeve. First, before anything happened,
a self-motorized Doraemon popped on stage, and AX staffers had to chase
it off. Oooooooooookay. ^^;
Then we got to see a preview of the Starship Troopers CG series. This
is what the film *should* have been.
Then we got to see the opening movie of Final Fantasy 8 rendered right
off the Square machines. (They were going to show the ending CG as well,
but it contains HUGE spoilers, so they stopped at the last second ^^;).
Then we got a real treat.
Akira Kamiya, who was the convention's "secret weapon" (since he wasn't
on the announced GoH list), brought along a bunch of his students to
give a demonstration of the voice-acting process, using a clip from
(presumably) the first episode of "George's Mini-Mini Big Detective
Agency", with chara designs by the same team behind Detective Conan.
They went through demoing 3 times - the first time, it was all Kamiya's
students, doing on-the-fly voice acting for the opening clip. The second
time through, they inserted some lucky people from the audience as the
black-suited bad guys, and some of their attempts (especially when you
could see lips flapping and no voice) reminded us of the bad dubs of the
old days. The third time through, different crowd members did the bad
guys' voices, but the guy playing George (the mini-detective) ad-libbed
some of his lines in English. Oh god it was hilarious. ^_^ Finally they
showed the finished product.
After this, the judges came back in and announced the awards. I will
recap this in Closing Ceremonies.
Between the end of the Masquerade and the start of the Music Video
Contest - it was well after midnight now - some freak snapped. He was
up on the stage, when suddenly he screamed, "YOU'RE ALL FUCKING
PATHETIC! WHAT ARE YOU STILL DOING UP?! GET A LIFE!" and walked -
*walked* - from the room. From what I heard he was also summarily dealt
with.
-------------------------------END PART 1------------------------------
valerie with her veggie plush
>There was a very large canvas rendering of Rei from Eva, with the towel
>hanging down over her (she had just emerged from the shower). Also there
>were some very, very nice metallic engravings of anime characters,
>including Ryo-ohki and Pikachu.
ACK! You forgot that very nice watercolor of every single CLAMP
character done by these teenage girls I met at the door. It wasn't for
sale of course, but if you'd seen it you'd know why. They also did an
Eva painting.
>- 7 minutes later, film continues on without a hitch, but by now the
> damage has been done; half of th crowd has walked out, making this
> the biggest fiasco at the convention apart from the masquerade delay.
Yeah, I missed the music video contest because of that. I was too
tired after the Masquerade to stay up for it. Damn. Someone fill me
in....
>Right after, it was noon. However, though I wanted to go to the ADV
>panel (which was in the same room), it was time to get tickets for the
>Masquerade Ball.
>
>Here's how the ticketing worked:
>
>In a nutshell, we had to "stand in line to stand in line".
Ha ha, I didn't have to stand in line at all. I just walked in around
1:30 or 2 and picked two up. Unfortunately, I was Yellow One, but I
could see everything fine anyway.
>On the back wall, two projectors were rigged, showing the live-feed from
>the closed-circuit Hilton TV channel. Every so often they would throw
>in a music video from a previous AX competition. Except for one prob--
>
>--no audio.
Heh heh...
>01 Fei Fong Wong from Xenogears and Chibi-Chibi from Sailor Moon. Fei
> came out first and did some karate; then Chibi-Chibi wanders out and
> Fei says "Why hello, little girl!" "Chibi-chibi!" is all Chibi-Chibi
> says. Unfortunately I couldn't hear half of this, due to the fact
> that the audio was being picked up on the standing mics - which
> weren't very efficient.
I could make out some "Chibi-chibi" and that was it.
>02 An Ultimate Fighting bout between "Kekko Ramen" and "Kikko Man".
> Yes, the costumes were exactly what you think they were. KR even
> had fishcakes. ^_^
^__^ Guess where they were located?
>03 One of the duels from Utena (I think it was the Utena vs. Miki one);
> almost all of the core cast were accounted for (I don't think I saw
> Juri though).
MmmMMMmm...TOUGA.
>05 The "Little Sailor" team was two young girls dressed up in two of
> Sakura Kinomoto's (Card Captor Sakura) outfits; a blue one and a pink
> one, IIRC.
Uh, that was Tomoyo. Didn't you see the camera?
> They began with a dance to the 1st season ED, "Groovy".
> Then one of them whips out Sakura's baton (!), and chants the chant
> (in Japanese!)
Well wasn't she Japanese anyway?
>13 Sailor Senshi dance skit with Neo-Queen Serenity and the sailors
> with the purple, green, red, and blue fukus. (So sue me, I'm bad with
> the individual names.)
They danced to "La Soldier"!! ALA the musicals! ;_; I was very
impressed.
>15 Six or seven characters from Violinist of Hamelin put on a big dance
> skit.
Bah, Violinist of Hamelin. Saw some fansubs of it at AX and I hated
it. Does it have any REAL animation? For chrissakes...
>16 Something about a "Princess Firework". I really couldn't ID this very
> well, but she did have a Pikachu stuffy. ^^;
That's "Princess Fireball" from Sailorstars.
>17 A Fushigi Yuugi skit with Nuriko standing off to the side, and masked
> Nakago and Miaka (???) doing the karaoke.
No, those were Seiryuu seishi, Soi and....damn I forgot the other's
name. Hehehh, "I want Nakago..."
>18 Meimi-chan from St. Tail in full kaitou costume. Another case of bad
> musical timing here. (Someone from the audience yelled, "Track 3!")
Oh shit, I forgot about that. Too bad none of my pictures came out.
> And to make thinks better (worse?), moderator Widya (who is dressed
> like Gendou Ikari, BTW) pulls an Amanda Winn Lee and begins to lewdly
> dance with Pen-Pen for a while.
LOL
>23 Jupiter, Usagi, and Mars have a catfight with Luna - literally.
> Very weird. At one point you can hear "Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!" *sigh*
Oh yeah, that was the one with "Wicked Lady". Ewww...dub terminology,
even as a joke, scares the shit out of me.
>26 An AD Police officer begins talking to his superiors on the radio.
> This was a very funny skit, illustrating what everyone thinks of the
> About-to-Die Police. =)
Even though I never saw that anime it was funny. Well done, IMO.
>29 Starring San from Mononoke-hime in "The Crossing", which is half of
> a parody of the Black Knight sequence from Monty Python and the Holy
> Grail, and half a parody of the Bridge of Death sequence from the
> same film. I think the guy with the bokken was supposed to be Kuno
> Tatewaki...
Don't forget the Princess Bride reference! "You killed my forest,
prepare to die." Heheheheh. Indigo Montoya is cool.
>34 It's Ryoji Kaji: The Spy Who Shagged Me!
>
> This was easily one of the funniest skits of the night, what with
> Kaji copping a British accent, Gendou as Dr. Evil, Mini-You ("half
> the size with twice the hair")... this was some great sketch comedy.
> If you watch only one thing on the Real stream, make it this.
I agree.
>43. Lady Whatshername from Gundam Wing.
There's ladies in Gundam Wing??
> In the meantime, the crowd is getting testy, then suddenly someone
> yells "Chaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaair!" This quickly degenerated
> into chanting of "Chair! Chair! Chair! Chair! Chair! Chair! Chair!"
> If anyone happened to see someone literally ROTFL that day, it was
> me. I nearly died laughing. ^____^
The funniest thing was that the camera zoomed in to get a good picture
of the chairs...
> Finally, the Fire Bomber members assemble on stage, and do their
> song. It was a looooooooooooong song. It was, though, just enough
> time for me to catch my breath. ^_^
As much as I hate Macross 7, it was funny because of the cheesy 80's
music video effects used on the screen.
<snipped by accident>
Kojiro? Was that the skit with the "NEW GINYU FORCE!!" ?? Damn, I took
a picture of that too, but it didn't come out. My flash wasn't
working.
>Then we got to see a preview of the Starship Troopers CG series. This
>is what the film *should* have been.
That sucked.
>Then we got to see the opening movie of Final Fantasy 8 rendered right
>off the Square machines. (They were going to show the ending CG as well,
>but it contains HUGE spoilers, so they stopped at the last second ^^;).
Random female audience member: "Get away from him, he's MINE!"
>Then we got a real treat.
>
>Akira Kamiya, who was the convention's "secret weapon" (since he wasn't
>on the announced GoH list), brought along a bunch of his students to
>give a demonstration of the voice-acting process, using a clip from
>(presumably) the first episode of "George's Mini-Mini Big Detective
>Agency", with chara designs by the same team behind Detective Conan.
Oh yeah, I loved this. My sisters, who are crazier about Detective
Conan than I am, were really jealous.
>They went through demoing 3 times - the first time, it was all Kamiya's
>students, doing on-the-fly voice acting for the opening clip. The second
>time through, they inserted some lucky people from the audience
No, they were picked from the voice-acting panel from earlier that
day.
>Between the end of the Masquerade and the start of the Music Video
>Contest - it was well after midnight now - some freak snapped. He was
>up on the stage, when suddenly he screamed, "YOU'RE ALL FUCKING
>PATHETIC! WHAT ARE YOU STILL DOING UP?! GET A LIFE!" and walked -
>*walked* - from the room. From what I heard he was also summarily dealt
>with.
Heheheh. Baka.
-valerie
http://members.tripod.com/~valerie
----------
Like rescuing precious stones that are confined in a safe...
It would be unjust to leave a girl here to be made a bride...
I will tell you the tale of the green fields.
This is the work of every thief. --Lupin, Cagliostro no Shiro