I wrote a long explanation of what happened at Anime Central and it died. I’m so sad. Somehow my mad keyboarding skillz hurt me and I managed to close an entire instance of Firefox with tabs open bypassing all of the warning dialogs and not noticing that I was invoking menu commands before that. Damn.
Anime Central was a lot of fun this last year. Despite arriving in town late Thursday night, we did not get to the convention until 5:00 PM the next day. By the time that was got there, I was so ready to do the convention thing it was insane! Somehow we got uncollated books without a time schedule. Since we didn’t really know what was going on, we went to the dealer’s room.
Our first journey through the hamster trail was not too bad. We got down there and couldn’t figure out which door lead into the dealer’s room and which lead into registration. Nothing had been labeled at that point, and we didn’t want to make the fatal mistake of getting into the registration line that Beth, Amy and Chris had braved for hours on end. We also didn’t want IRT getting all bitchy about us using a doorway that we weren’t supposed to be using.
While standing there, this guy says to Mandar something along the lines of, “Hey, you look familiar. Where do I know you from?” At first, we thought he was the Guitar Hero cosplayer from Anime Nebraskon. Then it hit me, it was the minor stripper kid that came into our room out of nowhere because he thought we were having a room party at Anime Iowa 2005, Mike! How hilarious is that? Out of 12,769 registered attendants, we aren’t even there an hour and we run into Mike. He had scalped some person’s badge because he was still a minor or was poor or something and was pretending to be this Bidkar Rodriguez that the badge belonged to. That was funny stuff.
We got into the dealer’s room, and Jess tried on some silly hats. The token pagan vendor had some cool buttons and bumper stickers. I wanted to get some of the bumper stickers for the trash can that we use in claims at the store, but I didn’t at that time. They were hilarious, though. Zach tried some bartering to see if she had any buttons that were slightly off center that he could buy for cheap. She did not, but they eventually had a pretty long conversation about who knows what. We continued to wander around for a bit, and we got kicked out because the dealer’s room was closing. It was probably before or just finally 7:00 PM. Who closes the dealer’s room at seven? I need more than that small amount of time—and more than that one trip—to properly conquer any dealer’s room, especially one the size of Anime Central’s.
On the way out of the dealer’s room, we saw Yoshi. As he was walking, someone decided that Yoshi was meant to be ridden and mounted him. Poor Yoshi.
We also saw two new flavors of Mokona-chan ramen. Mmm.. Yaoi and Menchi flavored ramen. This brings the total number of known flavors in the galaxy to four.
We made it back to the room and watched some Dr. Tran shorts on You Tube, ate some delicious curry, and then headed out to Jan Scott-Frazier’s panel. Jan is totally awesome to listen to talk. She never seems to have too much of a plan, but she can talk forever. We were supposed to have an hour in the room, but it was the last panel of the night in that room so Jan talked for two. The best thing to come out of that panel? Snack Time Buddies: World Dictator Edition. That’s right, we were discussing Karl Marx, Joseph Stalin, Fidel Castro and company shooting out snacks and more. Fidel, I believe, was to shoot out cigars. It was hilarious. Jan is so creative.
After Jan’s panel, some decided to opt for sleep and others decided to watch fandub parodies. While I’ve seen these before, it’s fun to see them in a crowd. Prince’s 1999 played with the whole “It’s Gendo!” thing and the audience clapping every time that it happens is just fun. We ended up catching the end of Fanboy Bebop and ReDeath Redux. I left when Fisting the North Star came on because I don’t find that one to be that funny, and I really was getting tired.
Saturday, we got up and watched some anime music videos, which was fun. I always like to see some. We did not stay the entire time that the contest ran, though, which was fine by me. Since they have music videos playing for most of the convention, we could always come back, and we’ve all seen anime music videos before. We saw some of ACen Idol as well. That’s always neat when the singers are into what they’re doing. The judges weren’t nearly as harsh this year from what we saw. There wasn’t any blood on the walls or anything.
Eventually, we left and got some lunch, visited the Voices for Peace booth, where I got my CD from Jan, and Mandar and I split to head back out of the dealer’s room and artist’s alley for the Utena panel. The Utena panel was pretty good, but it was freezing in there. It was interesting to hear all of the different interpretations that people had of the series since the series was so ambiguous. There were some amazing Utena cosplayers at that panel. It’s good to see Utena fans representing! It should also be noted that before leaving the dealer’s room we did see Dr. Tran in the artist’s alley. When we yelled out his name, he said, “Are you talking to me?”
After that, we briefly met up with Judgy, Sandy, and Allison. We went to the dealer’s room for a bit. I got myself the Japanese version of Xenogears, because I need a game that I will never play or be able to even read. Whatever. Judgy and I also got our very own yaoi smacks from some random girl in the dealer’s room with a yaoi paddle. She chose the hardcore side, and you could tell when she hit you. However, this was definitely one of the most hilarious moments of the entire convention. Definitely a memorable series of pictures. Then they kicked us out of the dealer’s room again because it was closing at like 6:00 PM! Either on the way our or on the way in, I did find a treasure chest and treasure. I thought it was hilarious that that kid had a sack of coins to give to people that opened the chest.
We did not make to the masquerade, because they decided to ticket the event this year and there weren’t tickets when we finally found that out. Jess, Mandar, and I hung out with Judgy, Sandy, and Allison in their room while we waited to to to the Voices for Peace concert.
The Voices for Peace concert was pretty sweet. It was cool to see all of those voice actors rocking out. We had to leave early, though, because the concert started late and the Giordano’s guy called with the pizza. Giordano’s pizza was to die for, as usual.
After dinner, we went back up to Judgy’s room and hung out a bit. Judgy needed foundation, so my sister brought that because he wanted to look all pretty for a boy at the dance. The line for the dance was forming outside, and it was mega long. We actually yelled “Marco!” down to the line from the room’s balcony on the ninth floor and the line yelled back “Polo!” Good times.
At this point, we realized that the whole line thing made people realize that we weren’t going to the dance any time soon anyway. We ended up meandering the halls yelling “toy store!” We wanted to get into a hentai panel, but the line for that was so long that we weren’t going to get into that room anyway. We decided to wait an hour and go to My Girlfriend’s Obsessed with Yaoi, which was hilarious.
In the interim, some of us went back upstairs to help Beth’s David get into drag, because her and Amy decided that he needed to do this. It was decently entertaining, and he was a really good sport about the whole thing, even if he didn’t go downstairs and parade around in the whole outfit. He did get some looks at the yaoi panel when he came in with a feather boa and I think even a wig.
After the yaoi panel, we did end up going to the dance after wandering around for a long time. Finally, there was a lot of question over whether or not we should go to the dance or not. Finally, I just said, “We’re going! Let’s get in line!” and we did. They did the techno to the Cutey Honey theme and the Air theme, which was cool. I would have loved to be in there for the Cutey Honey bit, because it’s just a hilarious show. Alas, we were in line at that point. When we did get in there, Judgy and I immediately joined a passing conga line. I lost my badge, but somehow in a room that can hold 2,000 people Sandy or Amy found my badge on the floor with the lights off. Very nice! We didn’t really dance at the dance, as we never do. However, we danced even less this time. I’m not sure why, but whatever. It’s not like I can dance anyway. I really, really can’t.
Eventually, we left the dance and were going to go watch hentai, but we had no room to do such in, so most people went to bed. I hung out in the lobby with Judgy and Sandy for maybe another hour and went back up to go to bed. Too bad, because hentai would have been absolutely awesome. I’m not all into the hentai or anything, but watching with groups is funny as long as it’s not the crazy incestuous rape stuff that Zach and Mandar brought over to my place that one time. I didn’t like that at all. Ew.
Sunday morning, we made another final small trip to the dealer’s room. We ran into Judgy and Sandy. They said, “We thought you were in here. We kept hearing ‘toy store.’” That is our battle call. In the dealer’s room, we did an awesome photo shoot with Steve Bennett. I only got one picture of it, but he says that he’s going to post them on his web site and e-mail us when he does. I can’t wait for that. Again, those were some of the most memorable photos of the convention right there. He had his personal photographer doing all of the photos and he took the time to do one on one photos with each of us rock star style! As a matter of fact, he even recognized our people from previous conventions, but said he was sorry that he didn’t remember our names. I’m impressed that he recognized our faces. As many conventions as that man is a guest at, I’m seriously impressed.
We did the luggage thing after that, and pretty much parted ways. I wanted to stay longer on Sunday, but there really wasn’t anything going on, and it was Mother’s Day and Jess wanted to try and get back to have a late dinner (which didn’t work out with mom, actually).
This year’s convention was a ton of fun, and it has me all the more stoked for Anime Iowa!