What up people. I'm here to talk about the AnimeCentral convention I went to last week. I haven't been in much of a writing mood lately, but I was told to put this up. So here we go.
A little side before we get to the meat of the post. They were playing House fo the Dead on tv yesterday and I sat down and watched it. I've had a hatred for Uwe Boll for a long time now. I've never seen any of his movies before, but I don't need to in order to tell they are absolute piles of shit. Alone in the Dark is the movie that made me hate him so much. I loved that game and it had the storyline potential to be a seriously creepy lovecraftian type movie. Uwe Boll took all of the established game background and wiped his ass with it. So what did I think of House of the Dead now that I actually saw it? The movie was so bad that I think it gave me severe brain damage. I wouldn't have been suprised to see a little blood trickle out of my ears after watching it. I won't even get into why it was so bad, because I'd be here all day. Stay away from this movie at all costs. All copies need to be sealed in lead crates and buried miles below the earth.
Ok, with that out of the way, on with the adventure!
First things first, I started out the day arguing with the construction people hired to build the new addition to my neighbor's house. They have the bad habit of blocking me in the driveway every damned morning with their equipment and trucks. It's been nice lately. With all the rain we've been getting I haven't had to put up with the construction people. Once it gets a little nicer it'll be right back to yelling at them every morning.
Got that all taken care of and I went to pick up Lisette at her house. She introduced me to her little kitten who, like all kittens, was too cute. Out the door, a quick stop at the atm where she made me drive up the wrong way so she could grab some money, and we are on our way to the Stephenson Convention Center. I've never been there before, but it was nice and easy to get to. It was great driving up and seeing all these people in anime costumes. First I saw someone dressed like a samurai complete with swords and all. Then we pass up someone dressed like Vash from Trigun. Grab a parking spot in the garage and a girl dressed like one of the sailor moon characters gets out of the truck next to us. I could already tell this was going to be an interesting weekend. Now we get the first of many long walks through the skyway ramps on our way to the convention. After some wandering we find out where to get our badges and wait in line. I was loving all the costumes I was seeing. I kept pointing out people to Lisette. *point* omg its rock lee. *point* omg its all the sora's from kingdom hearts. Then after we get our badges *point* omg its an out of shape megaman with man boobs. Not all the costumes were pretty
. I'll tell you about some others as the story unfolds.
Time for us to wander around the convention. There were tons of booths with everything imaginable to buy that had to do with anime and anime culture. I ended up buying some anime while wandering through the booths. Gantz and FLCL if you're interested. More costumes everywhere, I'm really liking the some of the more revealing ones the women are wearing. Something which got me The Look(tm) from Lisette. I ended up getting The Look(tm) quite a few times from her over the weekend. I can't help it, sometimes my mouth goes off before my brain can stop it.
We head on over to the artists alley and check out some of the art. Some of it was good and some of it I could draw with my left hand and a broken pencil. How do some of these people get spots? Anyway, we find one of Lisette's friends at the alley and talk to her for a little bit. She was one of the good artists. We head over to the hotel area and catch a showing of Final Fantasy: Advent Children. I already have a fansubbed copy burned, and I bought it when it came out on dvd here, but one more viewing of it couldn't hurt. If you haven't had a chance to see this movie yet, go out and watch it. Even if you've never played Final Fantasy 7 and have no idea what's going on in the story, watch it for the excellent cg animation and great fight scenes.
After the movie we find Chris (or biff or shades or whatever he is called) and Kyle. I've met Chris before, but this was the first time I have ever met Kyle. My impression of him? He is, hands down, the biggest anime fan I have ever talked to. I'm sure there were bigger ones at the convention, but I didn't talk to them because most of them are creepy and smell weird. Especially the ones browsing the yaoi hentai *shudder*
We, once again, head to the convention area and wander around. This time around there are more booths set up. We all browse some more. If I had more money, I would have bought truckloads of stuff at this place. Thankfully I had a rein on my impulses to max out my credit card. Kyle buys some Japanese books from this booth that had the best dude running the place. He was this little Japanese guy who was super enthusiastic about everything. I went to ask him a question about a figure he had for sale and I was like "Hi" and he turns to me and goes "HAI!!" and I swear he was going to jump down off his little chair and hug me or something. He really really wanted to be helpfull to me.
Ok, getting distracted by the little Japanese dude. We decide to grab something to eat after Chris is finished browsing for swords. We end up at this little mexican restaurant a block or so away from the convention center. The food was pretty good even though I didn't eat much of it. Those enchiladas are more filling than I expected. The waiter was horrible. We asked for Chris to have a separate check because he was paying by credit card, and the waiter acted like we were asking him to cut off a finger. Plus he never came back to refill glasses or check up on us. Kyle wanted to give him a penny tip with a note saying "you suck" written on it. Which was hillarious considering the waiter was standing a table over when he said it. I was planning on giving him the 60 cents change I got back as his tip. Lisette was nice and added a dollar to the pile. Then Chris mentions on the way out that he gave him a $2 tip. That guy got a nice tip for a crap job. You people need to be a little meaner!
Back to the convention center. We separate from Chris and Kyle because we need to find the people Lisette is staying with for the night. we head back to the garage and grab Lisette's things and go off to look for her friends. We find one of them easy enough in the hotel area and she's dressed like Duo from Gundam Wing (I'm almost finished watching it, episode 42!). Time for us to head back to the convention center. After some wandering around, made better by the funny 5 minute track of nothing but Gir quotes on Lisette's friend's iPod, we find the people Lisette is crashing with. We get the keycard, one of the girls tells us not to have sex on their bed which I found funny. I found out later that she is from the Ukraine. Now that's a dedicated anime fan. She was pretty cool too.
Dump off Lisette's stuff, off to see Howl's Moving Castle. It was a good movie, but the ending was just terrible. Groan worthy terrible. Still a fun watch for younger kids I guess. We meet up with Chris and Kyle again after the movie and wander around the hotel area.
Omg, hold up a sec, I'm skipping things. I said I was going to tell you about some of the other terrible costumes I saw at the convention. Well two of the worst happened while we were with Chris and Kyle. The first time was when we went to see a program the two of them wanted to see. It was some program about stage fighting and it wasn't that great. It probably would have been better if we got involved like some of the others, but we left instead. On the way back we saw a catgirl in the hallway. No wait, thats not a catgirl, THATS NOT A CATGIRL!! It was a husky dude dressed in a tight catgirl outfit. The problem with a dude wearing a catgirl outfit is the furry bikini bottom is designed to cover woman parts not man parts. What's that mean for the innocent observer? That means you can clearly see his junk through the fabric, that's what! *claws at eyes* Heh, the other costume wasn't nearly as bad. On the way to the convention area to browse for goods we passed a dude dressed like a girl. Which is so common that you don't even give it a second glance by the end of the day. What made this guy so special was he had breasts. He was a dude. Stubble and the package and everything...with breasts. Real breasts. Yeah, anime attracts all kinds.
Back to the weekend recap. We wandered down to the bottom floor where they had anime series playing in a bunch of rooms all weekend. We watched a few episodes of a show called eureka 7. It was entertaining, nothing too special though. Kyle, of course, knew everything about the show and was able to explain the whole storyline to us. We wandered around a bit, saw a fantastic catgirl at one point (I have to point this one out, I mean seriously, she had the perfect body to be wearing this outfit. Drool worthy to the extreme) I can feel myself getting The Look(tm) while writing this.
They had a free arcade set up in another part of the bottom floor which was cool. If your into those rhythm games and fighting games. One thing I've discovered by playing ddr and guitar heroes is that I have no rhythm. Well, maybe not so much no rhythm, as no coordination to pull off any kind of good score in any of those games. They had a dance machine set up with a setting on it that allowed you to used both pads to play through the levels. So when you're dancing away on the pad you move back and forth between the two pads. We saw this one guy doing it and he was amazing. I've never seen anyone play the game as well as this guy. His feet were a blur of motion. I saw one of the top costumes, in my opinion, at the arcade. It was a pair of guys dressed like soldiers from metal gear, and they had big exclamation points over their head. You need to play the metal gear games to truely appreciate those costumes.
It getting to be about the time for an improve comedy programs to start. We get our seats and sit back to enjoy the show. It had its funny moments, but the suggestions people yelled out had a theme throughout the night. The audience was obsessed with our many fun orifices and body parts. I will admit the bit about the blow up doll made out of jello was kinda funny. The next program was called WTB?WTF? in the same room. We had to leave and wait outside so we could show our id's again. Don't want any youngsters going into this program. WTB?WTF? stands for Where's the banquet? What the fuck? it was basically a panel where members of the group Where's the Banquet? tell stories of some of the fucked up things they've experienced at anime conventions. See, they're the people who run the hentai panels at these conventions. They also have a parents guide to anime panel earlier in the day to make them look more legit and not a bunch of perves who like to look at animated porn. This is how the panel went
"blah blah blah, I'm drinking and I'm going to tell you funny stories about stuff"
*bam, pervy pictures on the screen*
"haha, yeah those are disgusting, blah blah blah, another story"
*omg more perv*
"haha, you think those are bad, well how about these"
*OMG HARDCORE HENTAI*
*Jason's brain* "my eyes, why won't the images go away when I close my eyes!!!"
"Blah Blah Balh, dumb stories by audience members who then win tootsie pops"
Then we leave. Lisette was thoroughly corrupted in that panel. Even I saw stuff I never ever want to see again. After that Chris and Kyle head on home. It was around 1:30 am by that time so I figured I'd head on out too. Quick hug goodbye to Lisette and I'm on my way home.
I normally don't like driving on expressways and tollways because they're always crowded and filled with careless people who can kill me. In the early morning hours, though, they are the best roads to drive on ever. There's hardly anyone on them and you can zoom up to 100+ if the coast is clear ^_^. I make it home around 2, make it to bed around 3. End day one *whew*
I ran out of time. Day two later.
A little side before we get to the meat of the post. They were playing House fo the Dead on tv yesterday and I sat down and watched it. I've had a hatred for Uwe Boll for a long time now. I've never seen any of his movies before, but I don't need to in order to tell they are absolute piles of shit. Alone in the Dark is the movie that made me hate him so much. I loved that game and it had the storyline potential to be a seriously creepy lovecraftian type movie. Uwe Boll took all of the established game background and wiped his ass with it. So what did I think of House of the Dead now that I actually saw it? The movie was so bad that I think it gave me severe brain damage. I wouldn't have been suprised to see a little blood trickle out of my ears after watching it. I won't even get into why it was so bad, because I'd be here all day. Stay away from this movie at all costs. All copies need to be sealed in lead crates and buried miles below the earth.
Ok, with that out of the way, on with the adventure!
First things first, I started out the day arguing with the construction people hired to build the new addition to my neighbor's house. They have the bad habit of blocking me in the driveway every damned morning with their equipment and trucks. It's been nice lately. With all the rain we've been getting I haven't had to put up with the construction people. Once it gets a little nicer it'll be right back to yelling at them every morning.
Got that all taken care of and I went to pick up Lisette at her house. She introduced me to her little kitten who, like all kittens, was too cute. Out the door, a quick stop at the atm where she made me drive up the wrong way so she could grab some money, and we are on our way to the Stephenson Convention Center. I've never been there before, but it was nice and easy to get to. It was great driving up and seeing all these people in anime costumes. First I saw someone dressed like a samurai complete with swords and all. Then we pass up someone dressed like Vash from Trigun. Grab a parking spot in the garage and a girl dressed like one of the sailor moon characters gets out of the truck next to us. I could already tell this was going to be an interesting weekend. Now we get the first of many long walks through the skyway ramps on our way to the convention. After some wandering we find out where to get our badges and wait in line. I was loving all the costumes I was seeing. I kept pointing out people to Lisette. *point* omg its rock lee. *point* omg its all the sora's from kingdom hearts. Then after we get our badges *point* omg its an out of shape megaman with man boobs. Not all the costumes were pretty
. I'll tell you about some others as the story unfolds.
Time for us to wander around the convention. There were tons of booths with everything imaginable to buy that had to do with anime and anime culture. I ended up buying some anime while wandering through the booths. Gantz and FLCL if you're interested. More costumes everywhere, I'm really liking the some of the more revealing ones the women are wearing. Something which got me The Look(tm) from Lisette. I ended up getting The Look(tm) quite a few times from her over the weekend. I can't help it, sometimes my mouth goes off before my brain can stop it
.
We head on over to the artists alley and check out some of the art. Some of it was good and some of it I could draw with my left hand and a broken pencil. How do some of these people get spots? Anyway, we find one of Lisette's friends at the alley and talk to her for a little bit. She was one of the good artists. We head over to the hotel area and catch a showing of Final Fantasy: Advent Children. I already have a fansubbed copy burned, and I bought it when it came out on dvd here, but one more viewing of it couldn't hurt. If you haven't had a chance to see this movie yet, go out and watch it. Even if you've never played Final Fantasy 7 and have no idea what's going on in the story, watch it for the excellent cg animation and great fight scenes.
After the movie we find Chris (or biff or shades or whatever he is called) and Kyle. I've met Chris before, but this was the first time I have ever met Kyle. My impression of him? He is, hands down, the biggest anime fan I have ever talked to. I'm sure there were bigger ones at the convention, but I didn't talk to them because most of them are creepy and smell weird. Especially the ones browsing the yaoi hentai *shudder*
We, once again, head to the convention area and wander around. This time around there are more booths set up. We all browse some more. If I had more money, I would have bought truckloads of stuff at this place. Thankfully I had a rein on my impulses to max out my credit card. Kyle buys some Japanese books from this booth that had the best dude running the place. He was this little Japanese guy who was super enthusiastic about everything. I went to ask him a question about a figure he had for sale and I was like "Hi" and he turns to me and goes "HAI!!" and I swear he was going to jump down off his little chair and hug me or something. He really really wanted to be helpfull to me.
Ok, getting distracted by the little Japanese dude. We decide to grab something to eat after Chris is finished browsing for swords. We end up at this little mexican restaurant a block or so away from the convention center. The food was pretty good even though I didn't eat much of it. Those enchiladas are more filling than I expected. The waiter was horrible. We asked for Chris to have a separate check because he was paying by credit card, and the waiter acted like we were asking him to cut off a finger. Plus he never came back to refill glasses or check up on us. Kyle wanted to give him a penny tip with a note saying "you suck" written on it. Which was hillarious considering the waiter was standing a table over when he said it
. I was planning on giving him the 60 cents change I got back as his tip. Lisette was nice and added a dollar to the pile. Then Chris mentions on the way out that he gave him a $2 tip. That guy got a nice tip for a crap job. You people need to be a little meaner!
Back to the convention center. We separate from Chris and Kyle because we need to find the people Lisette is staying with for the night. we head back to the garage and grab Lisette's things and go off to look for her friends. We find one of them easy enough in the hotel area and she's dressed like Duo from Gundam Wing (I'm almost finished watching it, episode 42!). Time for us to head back to the convention center. After some wandering around, made better by the funny 5 minute track of nothing but Gir quotes on Lisette's friend's iPod, we find the people Lisette is crashing with. We get the keycard, one of the girls tells us not to have sex on their bed which I found funny. I found out later that she is from the Ukraine. Now that's a dedicated anime fan. She was pretty cool too.
Dump off Lisette's stuff, off to see Howl's Moving Castle. It was a good movie, but the ending was just terrible. Groan worthy terrible. Still a fun watch for younger kids I guess. We meet up with Chris and Kyle again after the movie and wander around the hotel area.
Omg, hold up a sec, I'm skipping things. I said I was going to tell you about some of the other terrible costumes I saw at the convention. Well two of the worst happened while we were with Chris and Kyle. The first time was when we went to see a program the two of them wanted to see. It was some program about stage fighting and it wasn't that great. It probably would have been better if we got involved like some of the others, but we left instead. On the way back we saw a catgirl in the hallway. No wait, thats not a catgirl, THATS NOT A CATGIRL!! It was a husky dude dressed in a tight catgirl outfit. The problem with a dude wearing a catgirl outfit is the furry bikini bottom is designed to cover woman parts not man parts. What's that mean for the innocent observer? That means you can clearly see his junk through the fabric, that's what! *claws at eyes* Heh, the other costume wasn't nearly as bad. On the way to the convention area to browse for goods we passed a dude dressed like a girl. Which is so common that you don't even give it a second glance by the end of the day. What made this guy so special was he had breasts. He was a dude. Stubble and the package and everything...with breasts. Real breasts. Yeah, anime attracts all kinds.
Back to the weekend recap. We wandered down to the bottom floor where they had anime series playing in a bunch of rooms all weekend. We watched a few episodes of a show called eureka 7. It was entertaining, nothing too special though. Kyle, of course, knew everything about the show and was able to explain the whole storyline to us. We wandered around a bit, saw a fantastic catgirl at one point (I have to point this one out, I mean seriously, she had the perfect body to be wearing this outfit. Drool worthy to the extreme) I can feel myself getting The Look(tm) while writing this
.
They had a free arcade set up in another part of the bottom floor which was cool. If your into those rhythm games and fighting games. One thing I've discovered by playing ddr and guitar heroes is that I have no rhythm. Well, maybe not so much no rhythm, as no coordination to pull off any kind of good score in any of those games. They had a dance machine set up with a setting on it that allowed you to used both pads to play through the levels. So when you're dancing away on the pad you move back and forth between the two pads. We saw this one guy doing it and he was amazing. I've never seen anyone play the game as well as this guy. His feet were a blur of motion. I saw one of the top costumes, in my opinion, at the arcade. It was a pair of guys dressed like soldiers from metal gear, and they had big exclamation points over their head. You need to play the metal gear games to truely appreciate those costumes.
It getting to be about the time for an improve comedy programs to start. We get our seats and sit back to enjoy the show. It had its funny moments, but the suggestions people yelled out had a theme throughout the night. The audience was obsessed with our many fun orifices and body parts. I will admit the bit about the blow up doll made out of jello was kinda funny. The next program was called WTB?WTF? in the same room. We had to leave and wait outside so we could show our id's again. Don't want any youngsters going into this program. WTB?WTF? stands for Where's the banquet? What the fuck? it was basically a panel where members of the group Where's the Banquet? tell stories of some of the fucked up things they've experienced at anime conventions. See, they're the people who run the hentai panels at these conventions. They also have a parents guide to anime panel earlier in the day to make them look more legit and not a bunch of perves who like to look at animated porn. This is how the panel went
"blah blah blah, I'm drinking and I'm going to tell you funny stories about stuff"
*bam, pervy pictures on the screen*
"haha, yeah those are disgusting, blah blah blah, another story"
*omg more perv*
"haha, you think those are bad, well how about these"
*OMG HARDCORE HENTAI*
*Jason's brain* "my eyes, why won't the images go away when I close my eyes!!!"
"Blah Blah Balh, dumb stories by audience members who then win tootsie pops"
Then we leave. Lisette was thoroughly corrupted in that panel. Even I saw stuff I never ever want to see again. After that Chris and Kyle head on home. It was around 1:30 am by that time so I figured I'd head on out too. Quick hug goodbye to Lisette and I'm on my way home.
I normally don't like driving on expressways and tollways because they're always crowded and filled with careless people who can kill me. In the early morning hours, though, they are the best roads to drive on ever. There's hardly anyone on them and you can zoom up to 100+ if the coast is clear ^_^. I make it home around 2, make it to bed around 3. End day one *whew*
I ran out of time. Day two later.