Token Asian’s Anime Blog

This is a PARTIAL list of what I bought. There are still a few bags I have to unpack (no, really, it’s been a week and I’m not done yet). What I’m most excited about is that I managed to get volume one of the R1 DVD of Aa! Megami Sama TV a month ahead of the actual release date. For once, Media Blasters is being cool instead of stupid.

-Belldandy wallscroll (there was only one cruddy one and it took me three days to find it… in a dirty can, no less)
-AMS TV Vol. 1 special early release edition (two copies)
-Banpei and Siegel figurines
-Skuld figurine
-Terzetto Goddess trio figurines
-animetoonz Kikuko Inoue CD… it’s basically Belldandy rave music. Terrible.
-AMS Vol. 21
-Alpha Shade Vol. 1
-the Indigo CD… autographed to “Deniel.” D’oh!
-Goddess mouse pad
-Newtype USA, Belldandy cover
-original Dark Horse resease of “Pretty in Scarlet” (Skuld gets her angel)
-Gunslinger Girl ganshapon set (on top of the Newtype)
-lots and LOTS of anime t-shirts.
-”9 mm” Airsoft sidearm
-State Alchemists’ watch
-Otakon laptop bag
-Ah! My Goddess playing cards
-Piano Squall t-shirt and poster

I forgot to tell the story about Scott. I met up with him and Jenn on Friday and we decided to head out for a meal together. It wasn’t too bad, just mall-quality Chinese food. The funny thing was that these Chinese people had ripped off the Otakon logo and made their own t-shirts. One wonders why they weren’t hit with a lawsuit… anyway, after a rather unfulfilling and rather expensive meal, we went on to the dealers’ room. Scott helped me on my search for goddess merchandise and it was… not successful. But thanks to him anyway!

He came up with the idea of holding a panel on anime blogging next year. If he initiated something like that, I would definitely support him. Heck, maybe I’d give a brief lecture or something. I wonder if that costs anything…

PS: Jenn is probably the cutest Chun Li cosplayer I’ve seen!

It took me three days of scouring the dealers’ room at Otakon to find a single AMG wallscroll. I still have the papercuts to prove it! And I found it in this dirty trash can at a dealer’s booth… I was like… I’ve been searching three days for a Belldandy wallscroll… and I finally found her… in a dirty and dusty trash can with cobwebs and sticky black gunk all over the place. After seeing her in such a poor state, I walked up to the dealer and told him I’d pay whatever price he wanted for that wallscroll. I HAD to rescue Bell from that dreadful… wastebasket. Anyway, to make a long story short, I paid my $10 and took Bell home with me. She’s going on the wall now, all cleaned up and polished… the way she should be. After accomplishing the mission of finding a scroll with Bell on it, I felt satisfied and proceeded to max out my Discover card on other things… kidding! We also met “Al.” Heh. This picture of our club president will go down in history.

After thrashing our way out of the crowded Dealers’ Room, we made it to the Piano Squall concert. He’s basically a pianist who cosplays as Squall and plays anime and game music. He’s really talented and I thought it was a good way to end the weekend. During the concert, he invited a young couple onto the stage… and the guy proposed to his girlfriend. Awwwww…

At the end of the show, Piano Squall was selling some stuff at the front and basically a mob pressed forward. They eventually had to move it outside, so the front of the line suddenly became the back of the line. Thankfully, I have an Asian’s crowd instincts and basically forced my way out to the front. I think we should invite him to Bethlehem to play… Hey, I think the guy got mobbed more than Vic. How about that?

And so, that ends our Otakon 2005 adventure. Of course, the fun doesn’t stop there. I still had to go home and organize all the stuff I bought. Then there’s the rest and recovery part…

Update: We did invite Piano Squall to Lehigh University. So far, things look promising.

On Saturday morning, we went to the Dealers’ Room early to get some shopping in. I got myself a State Alchemists’ watch (from Full Metal Alchemist) and a “9 mm” handgun. Heh, it was an Airsoft, don’t worry. I also got those three expensive Terzetto AMG figurines for $75… *cringes*

After that, we got in line for the FMA autographs. I had the misfortune to wait in line next to an annoying kid pretending he was all jaded. Anyway, we got into the actual room and saw this girl leap over the table and tackle Vic Mignogna (Ed’s VA). When it was my turn, I told Vic how much I admired his work outside of voice acting and how I was praying for him. He gave me a very nice autograph!

We then went to the Bandai panel to get good seats for the event after that one… the Full Metal Fantasy panel. We managed to get front row seats. It was a video where the English VA cast for FMA got together with some cosplay outfits and acted out a fanboy’s fantasy (*cough* Vic’s fantasy). I wonder if Vic really drives a Hummer with the license plate “FULL MTL?” And guess what? For some reason, nobody sat next to me in the front and when Vic was looking for a seat I offered him mine. Some other female voice actress stole it, though. I had no clue who she was… I’m a subtitled kind of guy, I guess, though I respect Vic’s work a lot. She eventually left and Vic got his seat. I think I felt the stares of a lot of jealous fangirls… eep!

The voice actors’ panel was pretty good. All of the voice actors were from the English dubs and it was pretty entertaining to hear them answer questions. When they were asked about the weirdest thing a fan ever did to them, my friend and I just started cracking up and pointed at Vic, prompting him to tell the story of the glomping girl. Of course, he was a gentleman about it and treated that girl like his biggest fan… well, she probably was. The panel went on for a long time… even bumping out the next panel. Whoops. Well, without Vic and his VA buddies, I think Otakon 2005 might have gone into history as one of the worst anime events I’ve been to.

We ended the day with some viewings of “Tenjho Tenge” and “Ninja Scroll TV.” Tenjho Tenge was awesome but Ninja Scroll is too weird for my tastes. Our anime club at Lehigh should watch Tenjho Tenge. On that line of thought, our anime club’s president got the English VA for Motoko from Ghost in the Shell to sign his registration badge. “Best wishes from Section 9. Love, Motoko.” I’m jealous!

If it wasn’t for Vic and the rest of the English VA panel, I think this day would have royally sucked. It’s a good thing that these guys and gals were all funny, polite, fascinating, and downright flamboyant. Best quote of the evening? “Roy Mustang is dead sexy… in a MINISKIRT!” Yeah… Vic.

Let’s end this post with some of the better cosplay photos I took on Day 3.

Friday was the actual first day of the convention. Personally, I thought the crowds were getting ridiculous and that the panels and video rooms were lacking in quality. For example, “Otaku no Video” was okay while “Fafner” just tanked. We had some serious shopping to do as I went around and spent hundreds of dollars in the Dealers’ Room (details later). While I was in the Dealers’ Room getting some posters autographed by Lanzer, I heard the Indigo playing at the Geneon booth. While the Indigo isn’t the greatest musical group, they were notable for doing the OP and ED for Ai Yori Aoshi. I got them to autograph one of their CDs that I had just bought… though they spelled my name wrong. “Deniel?”

In the Video Game Room, I didn’t get any slots for the Halo tournament, but my friend (who is better than me) got in and lost badly in the first round. Some people dropped out so I got a chance to play in the first round too… and I made it to the second round! Maybe if I had brought my own controller and it hadn’t been a level that I hated, I might have had a chance.

The amount of good cosplayers this year was also pretty low. What a shame. Well, there was a good Sakura Taisen cosplay and a few good Final Fantasy ones too. And only one Belldandy. Boo!

Friday Night Fan Parodies was something I had high expectations for. The funniest video was one where the DDR Club at Cornell made a video about… well, DDR. Any DDR video that co-stars Mario and Hercules is a good video! There was also one about… driving to Otakon… and that was it. The main event was “Final Fantasy vs. Kaiju Big Battle.” It started out well but then just went to pieces. Best quote: “Tidus, your wife just called and asks where the f*** you are with the g**damn milk!”

While I was disappointed with the show, I suppose it could have been worse. Man, at this point, I was thinking that Otakon 2005 was getting sort of lame. I was getting depressed by this point.

It was a crazy drive down to Baltimore. Our friend decided that it was for the best to try to break our other friend’s previous speed record. To make a long story short, his car had a limiter that didn’t let him exceed 110 MPH. So he didn’t get to break the record. Oh well. After we got to Baltimore, we checked into the hotel and scoured the Inner Harbor for eats. We ended up at this place called Phillip’s Buffet. It was a seafood buffet and we pretty much stayed for at least 90 minutes of chowing down guy-style in a no-holds barred eating contest. Now, I haven’t done that in more than a decade (swimmers can’t overeat like that) so I obviously lost.

We then walked around the Inner Harbor for a while, browsing in bookstores, checking out the boats, etc. After doing this for a while, we went back to the hotel and just hung out for a while. We went and got our pre-registration packets. Now, I could have gone at 15:00 to avoid waiting two hours when the doors opened at 17:00… or I could have waited two hours in line at 17:00 until 19:00. OR I could just go late at night to avoid any lines whatsoever. It was about 9:30 after we got out of registration. After that, we met up with the president of my university’s anime club. A few of us got together and we had a late dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe. That was probably my last bite of “real food” that wasn’t a ball of grease of packaged until Sunday… We were all exhausted, so we took care of our daily hygiene and went to bed.

Most people say that otaku are worthless people that are barely members of society. Unfortunately for our critics, we are the basis of a billion dollar industry in America. According to the article linked to by ANN, Otakon attendees, staff, vendors, industry people, etc. bring in a haul of $22 million for the city of Baltimore in the time frame of a single three-day weekend. With Otakon practically bursting at the seams this year, they are considering changing the venue. Apparently the city of Baltimore doesn’t want to lose that sweet $22 million, so Otakon is one of the primary reasons that they want to build a new hotel next to the convention center.

Ignore the fact that the actual article the site refers to is a poorly-written article, some of the comments in the video clip are worth a look at. If anything, it is worth a few laughs. Dang, we must look like aliens to the locals. At the Inner Harbor, I heard a little girl ask her mom (presumably it was her mother) why there was a girl dressed as Lulu (FFX) at the food court.

“She’s Asian, they all dress like that.”

Hilarious, but stereotyping shouldn’t be funny.

(note: the video mentions that there were 70,00o+ people at Otakon. They go by the numbers that enter each day, not the actual total, so that’s like multiplying the actual number of people by three, so it’s not because of the fact that cosplayers look like an invading horde from a distance.)

Linkage:

Otakon Cited in Baltimore Hotel Plans

Well, I’m back from Otakon… and a lot poorer.

Well, I’m off to Baltimore, Maryland for Otakon in about seven or so hours. It’ll be my second time there, but this time I’m taking along some people from our university anime club. Maybe I’ll even meet up with my fellow anime blogger, Scott. It should be fun!

So no other updates this week! Sorry!