I think my interest in anime and cosplay has made me more observant of fashion in general and hair styles in particular. Yesterday I had the pleasure of seeing a woman near the Apple Store with her hair spiked in the back like the soul reaper Kenpachi on the anime series Bleach. The spikes weren’t as big as his, and there weren’t any bells on the ends, but it did look pretty good. On a related note, I have a feeling that this is the year I’m going to see more pink hair…just a feeling.
My oldest daughter recently returned from Japanese camp and now we are both eagerly watching the Gravitation anime series which I was quite happy to find at Otakon this year. I’ve always enjoyed the weirdness of my life in general, so it is with a great deal of pleasure that I find myself watching a romantic comedy anime that involves two guys with my teenage daughter. We both happened upon Gravitation by way of the monthly New Type USA DVD. I was a bit shocked that a shonen ai story would be included on the disk, but Gravitation is really that good and once you get past the boy meets boy aspect of it, you can take it for what it is, one of the best romantic comedies you’ll find anywhere, anime or live action!
Once we finish the watching the anime, I’m going to borrow my daughter’s manga too. I’ve only read the first two volumes so far and started the novel. And with so many crazy outfits, I think there may be a Shuichi cosplay in the future! Oh, and did I mention that the music is great too! I heard the opening theme, Super Drive on the J-Pop CD, long before I knew anything about the Gravitation anime. Great story, characters, and music, I’m totally sold! And being able to enjoy it with my daughter puts me in the double bonus!
As I’ve been making my way through season two of Super Gals, a series that really grows on you, I’ve found another hauntingly beautiful song in the closing theme, Dakishimetai (I Want A Hug). And I was lucky enough to find the video on YouTube.
Inspired by some others, and a little bored, I decided to remix my Otakon pictures as a YouTube slideshow.
On the whole, the fun I had at Otakon this year is still resonating within me days after the event ended. Friday was a good start, but little did I know the hotel horrors that awaited me the rest of the weekend! This year I stayed at the Sheraton Baltimore Inner Harbor, formerly the Wyndham. When I checked in, I wasn’t surprised that with the convention crowd and what looked like a family reunion group, the elevators were slow and I had to wait a long time for one. But I definitely wasn’t prepared for hookers and being locked out of my room.
I left the BCC around 1:30am after over an hour of dancing in shoes that were too small. Needless to say, my feet hurt and I was really looking forward to getting back to the hotel to rest. I was heading back along with a group of other convention goers and the walk was largely uneventful, until I was about a block from the hotel. At that point I noticed a blonde woman in a white tube top, shorts, and boots approaching me from the hotel. Sorry, but in my experience, I was pretty sure I was looking at a hooker. I was still in my Kaname outfit, so I’m not really sure what she thought she was looking at as we passed. But the women in similarly provocative dress closer to the hotel definitely had some opinions and let out what I’ll describe as derisive sounds as I passed them. All I could think of was the irony that I was being judged by hookers. My vanity let the brief thought that they were worried by a little competition cross my mind. It takes all kinds you know!
After talking to some other Otakon attendees, I reached my room and discovered that my key card didn’t work. Ugh! I really wasn’t looking forward to going down to the desk. So I used the hall phone to call down and about 10 minutes or so later a hotel staffer came up. I suppose a hotel full of anime fans had already prepared him for anything because my outfit didn’t seem to phase him a bit, nor did he ask any questions about it for which I was grateful. A few minutes later I was happily in my room. It had been a fun day indeed!
Saturday:
I woke up Saturday feeling a lot more confidence and looking forward to another fun day. The only real challenge was very sore feet. Fortunately I didn’t have to go down 16 flights of stairs as I had done the day before. Today I was going out in my favorite crossplay, Kagome Higurashi from Inuyasha. This particular outfit would also garner the most compliments, including that of a UPS lady who said I had nice legs!
Last year I had been lucky enough to get a number of autographs, but this year I totally struck out. No worries though, the panels I went to for Vic Mignogna and Steve Blum, and manga-ka Maki Murakami were a lot of fun. Murakami-san is probably best known as the author of Gravitation and we were all warned, numerous times, that photography would not be allowed. She’s very camera shy, but I was lucky enough to be sitting near the door where she came in and could see that she was also very cute!<3<3<3 Later, when I hit dealers room, I was quite happy to find the Gravitation thinpack DVD set which I'd been wanting to get for a long time anyway. These days, I don't usually want to bother with buying individual volumes. I just wait for the complete set to come out. The cost per episode is usually lower that way. I've learned that the dealers room is also another great place to take cosplay pictures, and I got a few requests as well. Particular memorable was a conversation I had with an older man who made a reference to Flip Wilson’s Geraldine as I passed by. Amused, I turned to him and said that I was actually old enough to know the reference. So we spent a couple of minutes chatting about Flip Wilson. LOL
Later I’d go to the Masquerade and get a lot more cosplayer pictures, but I think I had to most fun doing karaoke. I love singing my favorite songs, and I’d been really looking forward to doing it in costume. And in particular, I was hoping to see Alissa (see photo below) sing again this year. She didn’t make it as far in Otaku Idol this time around, but I guess there’s always next year. In any case, seeing her perform was a real treat!
Once again, I didn’t get back to the hotel until very late. And once again my key card didn’t work and I was locked out of my room…ugh… This time the phone in the hall didn’t work either. So I had to use my cell phone to call for some help. I don’t even remember if it was the same person who helped me before, I just thought later on that the scene must have looked really weird.
Sunday:
The last day of a con is usually pretty quiet for me, but this year a major event was scheduled, the Eminence concert. To put it simply, they totally rocked! I’ve been wanting so long to see anime and game music performed by classically trained musicians, but every time I made plans and bought tickets something would happen. It was like I was cursed! But after hearing Eminence, it was more like I’d been blessed to hear the music I love played by the very best! It was truly worth the wait, and a great way to end the convention, this is especially true after having had to carry luggage down 16 flights of steps, cross the street, go down 3 more flights to the car, all on very sore feet! I certainly won’t be going to that hotel again, if I can avoid it!
Before the concert, I made my traditional dealers room run to get gifts for the wife and kids. I got a bell ribbon for my goth grrl, Sonic, Shadow, and Kirara caps for the younger kids, and a “Your kung fu is weak” t-shirt for my wife who always kicks ass. I love what has become my annual solo vacation trip, but I’m always very happy to get back home. Guys like me aren’t supposed to have pretty wives and kids. I’m supposed to be living at home in my mother’s basement! With all of the difficulty of getting to Otakon this year, perhaps someone upstairs just wanted to remind me of how far I’ve come and who I have to thank for it. Right now I can’t wait until next year’s Otakon, but in the meantime, I’ve got 3 months to prepare for Youmacon!
This year getting to Otakon seemed to be fraught with peril. The washer and dryer broke and nearly caught fire. I had to fix brakes and air conditioning in the car, and of course the AC broke again before I left promising a potentially very hot 700 mile drive to Baltimore. And on the morning that I was already late leaving and feeling awful, I discovered that the wheel lock bolt had not be replaced by the repairman, meaning that if I needed to change the tires on the highway, it would be impossible. So instead of hitting the road on Thursday morning, I was sitting in the Firestone parking lot waiting for it to open.
Things seemed pretty dark that morning, then some miracles started happening. The first one was when the shop owner/manager suggested replacing the lock bolts with regular bolts until we could address the issue after I got back. Yay! I was finally on my way. I was so happy at the realization that I nearly had tears in my eyes when I hit the Chicago Skyway. I still felt awful, but at last I was on the way.
The next miracle was the weather. Somehow, for 700 miles I had mostly overcast skies and nice cool air. It was awesome! Not only was it cool, I had virtually no traffic delays. The worst I had was a scary rain storm that lasted for maybe 10 minutes.
Finally, the car performed well and I settled down enough to get some food down and started to feel much better. I felt like my old self and really began to enjoy the drive. There’s something scary and beautiful about being out on the open road which keeps bringing me back year after year.
So even arriving much later than I had wanted, I was able to pick up my badge and meetup with some cool people from the MegaTokyo forums. The first thing I did though, upon entering my room, was fall to my knees and thank God that I made it in one piece after so much drama.
Friday:
My first challenge after waking up was to get cleaned up and into costume. This ended up taking me about an hour more than I had hoped. I was planning to wear my Kaname Chidori costume the first day (blue wig yay!) and while I had worn it at ACen months earlier, I was a bit nervous about going out in it because I hadn’t had to walk on the street that way with “normal” people around. Luckily, I was rooming next door to three young ladies (see photo) who were leaving at the same time as I, so I tagged along with them part of the way to the convention center. After that, I was good to go!
Friday was a lot of fun! I got to see my AMV in the AMV Overflow and it was well received and I also got to do karaoke in costume, something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. Best of all was the rave later that night where Kaname got a chance to really shake her groove thang! I scored some bonus points by making sure to send a few extra shakes in the direction of some BCC staff who probably didn’t really know what to make of me. Personally, I don’t think my features are delicate enough for me to pass as a woman under normal conditions, but I’m not really sure what the staff people, who kept passing nearby, thought. So I decided to mess with them a little, lol! ^_^ My dancing was good enough to attract a female partner for a little while, yay!
All of this fun though, would come at a high price. The shoes for my Kaname outfit are about a half size too small for me. They were the best I could get at the time, and I’d been able to endure them at ACen, so I didn’t think much about getting bigger shoes. Big mistake! I only had the Kaname outfit on a few hours at ACen. I had it on 17 hours at Otakon which included an hour or more of dancing. So by the time I left the rave to return to the hotel, my feet were on fire with pain and they still hurt even as I write this! I will never again wear shoes that are too small, but I will also never forget how much fun I had! :3
I got back from Otakon late last night and boy do my feet hurt! Never never never spend a whole day in cosplay wearing shoes that are a half size too small! Owwwww! Oh, and don’t dance later that night in the same shoes! >.< On the whole, it was a miraculous trip. So many things went wrong before the trip, but it all worked out. I'm still pretty loopy after the drive home, so more later. Update: Here are the pictures I took, not edited for quality. Gomen nasai. Otakon 2007 Pictures
Otakon starts in a few days, and I’m starting to get all of those crazy feelings I get when it’s go time! The last week has consisted of fixing cars and broken appliances, including, most sadly, the washer-dryer unit! But I anticipate/hope/pray for success. This year promises to be my busiest Otakon ever because I’m doing two cosplays (maybe a third if not too hot) and I’m hoping to meet up with a bunch of people too. And of course there’s karaoke!^_^
The latest drama is the now broken AC in the car and the still broken washing machine. The replacement washer arrived broken too! *deep breaths* I can still operate the washer on manual override, so to speak. It’s a hassle, but works. So now I need to do some costume checks and pray that the road from Chicago to Baltimore won’t be too hot for 270 AC (2 windows down at 70 miles per hour). Nothing like teh dr4m4.
Looks like I’ve fallen in love with a new song! Well actually Silly Go Round has been growing on me since I started watching .hack//roots. But it’s only today that I finally heard the full song with lyrics and translation in a YouTube video performance. Here’s a link to the lyrics at the Cherryblossom.
Sakura by NIRGILIS is one of my favorite songs and especially fits the way I feel today. The mix of sadness with a spark of hope is just perfect and I found the perfect AMV for it as well.
Bumping about YouTube looking for episodes of .hack//roots in Japanese, I ran across something I did not know existed. I found a fandub of the show. Yep, a fandub in which the English dub audio has been replaced by fan produced English dubbing. Given the religious wars in anime fandom concerning dub vs sub, I would never imagine anyone would produce something like this. But for the fan wanting to get into voice acting, or just wants to have a little fun with their favorite characters, sure, why not. So enjoy it while it says up!
My kids like to sing, and it’s a wonderful thing. Though sometimes it gets a little annoying when they latch on to a single song and won’t let it go. Right now their favorite seems to be Crawling by Linkin Park. I like the song too, but 3 small children singing it over and over again is a bit much! They discovered the song in the form of a Naruto anime music video on YouTube. Earlier I’d discovered Linkin Park’s With You, also in an AMV featuring clips from Gunslinger Girl. So I bought both tracks from iTunes.
The real fun and lulz are had when kids are singing things that just don’t fit. One of my favorite AMV discovered songs is 4ever by The Veronicas which was used in a Haruhi Suzumiya music video made by AUN Studios. The kids like the video and sing the song too. But there’s something just too funny about a 6 year old singing “come on baby we ain’t gonna live forever”. LOL BTW, the media companies should take note that I bought 3 songs that I probably would never have heard of were it not for fan created music videos which exist in the grey areas of copyright law!
Speed Racer was one of those anime I grew up watching long before I realized it was anime. And now a live action movie of this old favorite is right around the corner due out next year. There are of course sooooo many ways this can go wrong, but on the surface at least it is shaping up to be a film I’ll pay full price for as the Mach 5 is revealed on Filmwad. It looks like one sweet ride!
Since the convention ended, I’ve been browsing a buttload of picture galleries of photos people took at the convention. These are from this Anime Central Forum thread. So I figured I’d start a link list here for easy reference. These links may or may not work for long, so enjoy while you can! Thanks to everyone who has posted pictures!^_^
Wow! That’s a lot of links! I feel like I’m spamming my own blog!
I watched the last episode of Inuyasha again last night on Adult Swim. I really hope that someday Rumiko Takahashi will write a proper ending to the story. I really love these characters and they deserve a proper ending to their stories! Yeah, just silly fanboy ranting, a fanboy who still doesn’t have any ACen pictures of his Kagome cosplay, waaaah! Oh well, I did have one woman come up to me and tell me I looked cute, so that’ll have to do. I was joking with my mom that women only seem to notice me when I’m in drag! That happened to me in costume at Reactor last year too so I’ll just take it as a plus.
