Anime Central 2006 Writeup
This was easily my best ACen ever. So much happy.
If you are here just for the Metal Gear Solid photoshoot stuff, click here.
Friday
Left for the airport just after 8 a.m. By 9:05 I was through security and in the waiting area for my 10:15 flight. ^_^; So I read Owen Meany and played with the DS. Things went well and we landed around 11:05 Eastern time - from here forward, everything will be on Chicago time. So that's 10:05 Chicago time, and it was scheduled to be like 10:25. Then it got to the gate, and I deplaned and found my baggage claim area. Finally the luggage conveyor started moving, and my bag showed up about five minutes in. Then, off to the great adventure of catching the Hyatt shuttle. This took a while because it's a pretty long walk, and I stopped occasionally to rest because my duffel was kinda heavy.
But I get to the shuttle center, and the Hyatt shuttle arrived in another five or ten minutes. Fifteen or twenty minutes after that, it gets to the Hyatt O'Hare. I went in the lobby, looked around, no Aaron... then checked the time. It was only 11:05. Made excellent time - I had hoped to arrive at the hotel by 11:30 or noon Chicago time.
I took up a waiting position by a pillar at the bottom of the escalators. I called my parents to let them know I arrived, then called Mecha to let him know where I was in case he saw Aaron before I did.
Started snapping pictures of cosplayers - all pictures from Friday are linked here - then Cham and Mecha came downstairs to greet me. I got their room number and Cham's cell phone number, then they were off again. A few more cosplayer photos, including the King of All Cosmos, and then I saw Aaron coming down the escalator.
After taking my bags (just a backpack and duffel bag) to his truck, we headed to the convention center to pick up our badges. The line wasn't too bad, and I took a few more pictures on the way.
After registering, we went back to the hotel and checked in. Ninth floor, east tower, just like in 2004 - in fact, we were only two rooms down the hall from our previous room in that area. We retrieved our luggage and discussed the programming schedule, then grabbed Aaron's copy of MGS2:Substance and went to the convention center for the 3 p.m. autograph session with Quinton Flynn. Not because we like Raiden or anything, but more because this was the year of Metal Gear Solid for us and there was a guest vaguely relevant to our interests. On the way, I realized I'd left my program book in the room and had nothing for him to sign; in the end we resolved it by me using the MGS2 manual as my item-to-sign.
Ahead of us in line we saw another guy with MGS2:Substance, and behind us was a girl with MGS2:Sons of Liberty. We were delighted to see another female MGS fan, but the fact that she found MGS1 too difficult to finish had me a little discouraged. We mentioned to the latter that we'd be switching to Sniper Wolf and Otacon costumes after the autograph session. She seemed interested, and we let her know about the MGS photoshoot I'd set up for Saturday afternoon. (We also made a point of informing every MGS cosplayer we saw throughout the weekend - mostly Snakes. I'll get to the others in a bit.)
Eventually we got to the head of the reasonably short line, and good thing we went to his Friday session, since his Saturday autograph session had a long, long, long line of Naruto, KH2, and FF7:AC fans. He was extremely pleasant and polite. I had him sign Aaron's MGS2 manual, Aaron had him sign the cover insert, and the three of us had a nice brief conversation in which he expressed relief that someone was familiar with his video game work (and "older" work at that; and also, kind of, unspoken relief that not everyone in line was a raving squealing fangirl). Then we shook his hand and stepped to the side to get our pictures.
As a final note on the Quinton Flynn line - I know I was deeply amused by the girl who asked her friend, "Who's the silver-haired guy in Kingdom Hearts 2?" (Because as far as I'm aware, silver-haired guys are pretty much a dime a dozen these days, and she was specifically saying THE silver-haired guy.)
From there, back to the room to stash the signed copy of MGS2 and to change into our costumes, which looked great. We stopped at the game room to sign up for that evening's Katamari Damacy tournament, and ran into some Impropeople on the atrium level. Said hello, hugged Ard, showed off costumes. Then we went back to the convention center.
Now. When discussing the dealer room, it is instructive to first see the list of things I had hoped to find:
- FF9 Piano Collection
- The Art of Metal Gear Solid, version 1.5
- Sniper Wolf action figure
- Meryl Silverburgh action figure
- Solid Snake action figure (MGS2 version)
Which individually are fairly expensive, but this is as opposed to years when I had a long ordered list of things to look for. In other words, there weren't a lot of prioritizing decisions to make, and I knew ahead of time two of the dealers I would definitely need to stop at (Sasuga Bookstore and Digital Discs LLC).
Our first trip through the dealer room was purely a scouting mission to see what was there and what we might need to buy. Our first stop, though, was at the booth for Youmacon, a Detroit-area anime convention in November (note to Falc: I will need one of those flyers for my scrapbook). As we approached the booth, the attendant said, "You're Sniper Wolf, right?" In my glee at being recognized, I smiled and nodded and said thank you, even though I should've maintained character and informed him that yes, I'm Sniper Wolf and I always kill what I aim at. Anyway, he recognized Falc's Otacon costume as well, and we stopped to speak to him, because attention made me happy I'd already been considering attending Youmacon anyway.
We continued looking, and the #1 thing we discovered was that there were exactly two MGS series action figures in the entire dealer room, and neither were ones I wanted. But Sasuga Bookstore did have the MGS1 artbook, and that was happy. Didn't buy it yet, though.
One of the yaoi vendors was hawking his wares loudly again this year, which bugged me for several reasons:
- I've read the exhibitor contract, and it kinda expressly prohibits active vocal hawking of adult product (partially because it's hard to know the ages of a lot of attendees just by looking and you don't want to get nabbed for selling or promoting porn to minors, and partially because of trying to maintain the whole "family-friendly con" facade).
- The guy had enormous signs as well, and the dealer room map detailed the types of products that each vendor specialized in. So anyone who was actively in pursuit of adult material could have found it easily anyway.
- The poor parents who have to deal with a five-year-old asking "What's hentai?"
About halfway through the dealer room, two things happened almost at once - the container of tic-tacs I was carrying as mock diazepam fell from my pocket and opened, and a pair of Lunar 1 cosplayers walked by. As Aaron retrieved my scattered prop (my costume didn't leave me able to bend or squat easily), I ran after Alex and Luna to fetch them for a quick photo op.
By the time that was resolved, my feet were starting to hurt. I walked a little slower, and we finished scouting the dealer room. Back to the hotel and down to the video gaming room, where we played a quick round of Guitar Hero ("Iron Man"). Then we sat on the floor to wait for the Katamari Damacy tournament to start. In the meantime, however, as Sniper Wolf reclined against her Otacon while holding a baby wolf, I glanced across the room and it took me a few moments to realize I was looking at a Ramza cosplayer (chapter 1). Aaron and I got her picture in pretty short order and let her know we'd be the FFT Oracles at the FF photoshoot the following day.
There wound up being about twenty people in the KD tournament - one of whom was a five-year-old girl who didn't meet the first stage goal but was extremely cute and enthusiastic nonetheless, and about five of whom (other than her) were female. Ramza was among the crowd as well! And the tournament meant this was the first Aaron-visit since December in which we've played ANY katamari games - since mid-January, we've been on a hot streak with Metal Gear Solid.
The first round was on Make a Star 1, and the top 50% proceeded to round 2. Although I didn't do so well, I was among the ten entrants who proceeded to round 2 (as was Falc) - and the only girl to do so.
Round 2 was Make a Star 4, which I LOVE, but I tanked because it'd been so long since I've played (which doesn't explain how Falc did so well - neither of us has touched the game since November). Two people proceeded to the finals (Make a Star 7) from there, and again, one of them was Falc, who wound up winning the whole thing. <3
During the tournament, someone in plainclothes had his picture taken with us in costume, which was cool. However, at one point, while balancing my toy plastic sniper rifle between my hip and the back of Falc's chair, the gun fell and the butt of it snapped clean off. Understand, I do bring a cosplay repair kit - but it's things like safety pins, thread, scissors, hairpins - no glue. So after the tournament, we stopped at the hotel gift shop for overpriced super glue. At this point, my feet didn't just hurt, they were genuinely painful, due to my heels rubbing against the hard surfaces of my jungle boots. So I was walking very slowly, since standing didn't hurt - just the part of walking where my feet moved. :P (My knees didn't hurt at all, thanks to the knee braces that were an actual part of the costume - but walking was OW.)
The second we left the gift shop, I bent down and unlaced my jungle boots, and spent the rest of the night sock-footed. As we headed for the elevators, Aaron spotted a pair of MGS2 guards, complete with exclamation points, holding an Inuyasha character at gunpoint. We didn't get a picture at the time (that pic is from Saturday morning in the dealer room), but we gleefully told them about Saturday's MGS gathering, and they said they'd be there with two more guard buddies.
Back to the room. By this time it was past 9:30. I fixed my toy rifle, Aaron ordered pizza, and we dorked around with Emma's parrot in MGS2 for a while. Spray coolant on it, and it declares "This sucks! This sucks!"; fire weapons at it, and although they're deflected Fortune-style, the bird squawks "Enemy sighted, requesting backup"; also, I fetched the enormous porn stash the bird refers to by saying "Top of locker!" We had discussed how to get that item with Todd outside the church after Jay's wedding, but he never told us it was a whole BUNDLE of porn mags. hee hee hee awesome.
After a slight miscommunication about where to meet the pizza guy, we had dinner and talked for a while. I was going to play some MGS3 - I only got as far as watching EVA pwn Ocelot during the wedding trip - but the TV screen was much too dark for me to do anything successfully, so no.
And that was Friday. I had a horrible near-tears cramp in my calf in the middle of the night thanks to walking around all day, including five or six hours in jungle boots, and then it was Saturday.
And at some point - don't remember whether it was Friday or Saturday - we were in costume and ran into Ard and some of the others in the dealer room. Arwen introduced us, and when she called me Andrea, everyone was like wait, real name, what is this? :P
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Saturday
With nothing specific scheduled on Saturday until the Final Fantasy photoshoot at 1 p.m., we had some time to dawdle. While I showered, he went down to the gift shop to buy me a package of band-aids for my cosplay-blistered heels.
Before we left the room, the TV channel we were watching started to air an interesting documentary on a family of red-tailed hawks that took up residence in a high-class area of New York City. We watched with great interest as we ate breakfast and plotted out where we needed to go in the dealer room. Upon finding out that the male hawk attracted his mate by fetching her a pigeon, I turned on Aaron and demanded to know where MY pigeon was.
Later in the segment, it was explained that the hawks in question, living across the street from Woody Allen, ate pigeons on a regular basis. "Aha," I said. "Basically, he bought her dinner. She's easy. Female red-tailed hawks put out on the first date."
We started the day with a trip to the dealer room, calculated to hit only those vendors we had genuine interest in. Our favorite music dealer had FF9 Piano Collection, but I didn't want to pay that much ($37), leaving the MGS1 artbook as the only thing from my list that I'd be picking up. Other discoveries of interest at that vendor included: 1) learning that the Estpolis Biography OST (that's Lufia here in North America) got re-released recently, expanded to four discs to include the music from Lufia: The Legend Returns, and 2) learning that the FFT soundtrack also got a re-release - still two discs, but packed into a single-wide case with no fancy slipcover and no job class art poster. Still cool though.
So instead of buying the FF9 piano thing, I got a t-shirt that says "Warning: I have a vocabulary in excess of 75,000 words and I'm not afraid to use it," and a mad cow germ plushie from the Giant Microbes product line for Mom.
And then I bought my MGS1 artbook (from a stack of eight or nine of them) as my flagship purchase of the con, marking the third year one of us has bought something from Sasuga Bookstore (2004: Haibane Renmei artbook; 2005: Valkyrie Profile artbook; 2006: MGS1 artbook), and Aaron bought one of the two MGS figures in the entire room - the 4-inch MGS2 Otacon. (The other, which we didn't get, was Olga, who still hadn't been sold by the time we made our last dealer room run on Sunday.)
We got a number of interesting pictures during that dealer room run - again, all pictures from Saturday are linked here. Most notable was the FFT Time Mage we saw on our way out. We quickly reminded her about the FF gathering, then headed back to our room to change into our Oracle costumes.
The FF gathering went nicely. Highlights were an FF4 Cid, a great female Zell, and a SeeD uniform Quistis. I also got some group shots for FF6, FF7, FF8, FF9, and the FF7:AC group for kicks, the highlight of which was this tiny Marlene. Quoth Ramza: "She's so cute! I just wanna stick her in my boot and take her home!"
As we four FFT cosplayers (two Oracles, Ramza, and the Time Mage) were making our way forward, I asked an FF1 Black Mage to take our picture for us... and he declined, saying he was going to join the FFT group (since the costume concept is pretty much identical). Full party of five units, woo! After the shoot, we had one of Ramza's friends take a picture of our little group... somewhat separated from the main group, however, as two Rosemont Public Safety vehicles had just pulled up to it.
On our way back to the room, we piled onto an elevator with Advent Children Tifa (I love that costume!) and a number of other people, and Tifa remarked, "These elevators are starting to smell like fanboy." Hee.
Back in the room, I had a little time to skim through the MGS1 artbook. Version 1.5 is a reprinting that took place to coincide with the release of Twin Snakes, and the primary difference between it and the original is that the original ended with an interview between Shinkawa and Yoshitaka Amano, and this one ends with an interview between Shinkawa and some French comic artist whose name I don't remember. I'd've loved to read the Amano interview, but the original version of the artbook wasn't at ACen and costs almost double anyway - and I'm not sure it has the nifty bonus feature of being fully bilingual - all captions, as well as the interview, are in both Japanese and English, so I can get actual reading value out of this one.
At 2:15 Saturday, we changed into our costumes (mine takes a while because of the lace-up jungle boots; thank you to Aaron for helping speed that process) and headed downstairs to the MGS photoshoot (links to all photos from the shoot are here; thanks to Mecha's diligence, there are multiple versions of many shots, not all of which are linked in the writeup itself). We congregated near two Snakes who were already talking, and drew a crowd based on our Snake quotient alone. Mike showed up to camera-wench for me and Aaron (thank you Mecha!), and the girl we'd spoken with in the Quinton Flynn line came to see the group as well. We got a number of photo requests... okay, mostly the Snakes did, although at one point one of them said, "Wait, let's get the chick who shot Meryl in the picture too!" <3
The guards were late arriving, but when they did, it was joy - a girl walked past, made the connection between the guards she'd recently seen and the group of Snakes she was now passing, and announced "The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!" GLEE. A mock shootout began between the Snakes and the guards. Then a guard lobbed a toy grenade! It was fantastic.
Total turnout for the shoot was eleven cosplayers (five Snakes, four MGS2 guards, Otacon, and me), and as many, if not more, camera-people. Yay.
We decided to move out to the parking garage for a more industrial background for our geekery - a few Snakes wanted to go outside with it, but I was wary - we were only a small group, but we were a group with lots of weapon replicas, and I'd already seen two Public Safety vehicles show up to check on the FF group. And it wasn't just us cosplayers who'd be moving - just as many people were following us around to get pictures of the group.
Walking through the corridor to the parking garage was, if I may be so bold, totally badass. Large group of people with tactical gear and toy guns on a march to save and/or destroy the world = love. ^_^
On arrival in the garage, one Snake began leveling his grip gauge by doing pullups on the cement overhangs. We found an empty-ish area - an unused handicap parking spot - and set to work. First a few full group shots (one Snake borrowed Otacon's ketchup), then split into bad guys and good guys. After the bad guy shoot was over and Otacon and the Snakes grouped together for the good guy pictures, the guards and I hid out of frame and trained our weapons on the good guys.
One of the MGS2 guards had a speaker strapped to his shoulder, and on Saturday, at least, he had MGS music coming through it. During the full group shots, the awesome version from MGS2 kicked in. Off to my right, MGS2 Snake piped up with "haha, my game has a better version of the theme than the rest of you," and was answered with a chorus of "nyehh"s and grudging agreement. ^_^
Then we did some scene reenactments. We started with the bit in MGS1 - specifically, some Twin Snakes choreography - where Snake reaches the end of the sniper corridor and performs some serious snake fu on three guards, holding two at gunpoint and the other held off with his foot, and Wolf walks up and more or less says "Down, boy" with the laser sight of her rifle. ^_^ The MGS1 Snake in the group didn't have the agility to pull it off, but an MGS2 Snake had similar costume coloring and the ability to hold the pose, so I trained my rifle on his head while he and three of the guards held their positions. I spent the whole pose trying not to laugh - between that and Snake balancing on one foot, there was a whole lot of self-control there. :P
The Snakes lined up and struck Codec pose, then we did the part where Wolf scratches Snake and tells him he's her special prey. "You can go ahead and scratch me," he says, "anything for the sake of cosplay." After the shoot, looking through the pictures, Aaron said, "Snake's expression looks funny." Me: "Of course it does, he's a red-blooded American boy being simultaneously seduced and marked for death by a hot Kurd." ^_^
Then Otacon and MGS2 Snake posed for their special post-spoiler handshake, and MGS3 Snake held one guard in a chokehold. There was much awesome.
Then someone made an offhand remark about going to a bathroom and holding up a guard at a urinal. At least two problems with this:
1) Enormous group unlikely to fit in a bathroom and likely to attract unwanted attention.
2) Significant portion of the group - one cosplayer and several photographers - were female and would be unable to join the fun. (Well, we could, but I'm not sure it would be strictly legal. If we have a Meryl next year, though, I am definitely voting for clearing out a bathroom for about five minutes while people do urinal holdups and "That's the second time I've snuck up on the legendary Solid Snake.")
I don't think he was serious anyway, but I suggested that a guard could face the wall and assume the appropriate pose while Snake held him up. (Okay, so what I actually said was "Why don't we just get one to stand by the wall and pretend to take a piss?") That worked. Then Snake stood a few feet down the wall and posed similarly, for comedic purposes and it was very funny, but I do not have a picture of this (my glasses were off the whole time and Mecha did all the photo-taking - and some MGS3 CQC poses were going on in a different spot).
Then three guards flopped on the floor in a pile and Snake stood victorious over them. This was also awesome.
(Note: Monday night, I told Mom the story about the "holdup at a urinal" picture, and went down the list of reasons why we couldn't have done it in a real bathroom. Mom: "Oh, you could've all gone in, just made sure no one was in there using the bathroom." She sounded serious. I laughed. Maybe next year. ^_~ )
Someone asked whether Wolf had any diazepam. Sadly no - I had left the container back in the hotel room, not wanting to deal with it falling out of my pocket again. I felt bad - that would've been great for a giggle.
It did not occur to me until Tuesday night, but between me, Snake, Otacon, and the baby wolf plushie, we also had the full cast from the "Bring me my gun" sequence. Just as well - that would've been all kinds of weird, and I didn't have the snowfield uniform anyway.
At this point we headed back to the hotel to go our separate ways. Earlier I had been looking at the sketches of Wolf's boots in the artbook and comparing them to my boots. When I looked down at the boots of the Snake walking next to me (MGS2 Spandex Snake), I noticed the piece of material at the heel was the same shape as mine, so we briefly discussed our army surplus boots. A couple of Snakes snuck through the atrium, and chased the guards to appreciative applause from bystanders. <3
The gathering was really a major highlight on the con for me; anyone who drops by who was there, thanks so much for coming to the shoot, I know I had a great time.
Then Aaron and Mecha and I went to the Improsuite so Aaron and I could give Cham the chicken poop lip balm (and show off costumes again, and show off Falc's Katamari Damacy prizes). Guys - you really can call me Andrea, it's okay. ^_~
Back to the room, where we got pictures of each other in costume, then changed and went to a panel on Video Game Voice Acting, mostly to see Quinton (who walked right past us before it started, on his way to the water pitchers we were sitting near). It was okay. Falc was unwilling (and I was too shy) to ask him whether he was slated to reprise the role of Raiden in MGS4. heh. Afterwards, we made the decision to just eat in the room instead of walking to Denny's, which was kinda sad, but we had plenty of food.
We hit up the game room, but I don't think we did anything - unless this was the night we played "Iron Man" on Guitar Hero. On our way, we were stopped by Snake. I think it was the MGS2 Snake - it was one of the ones in gray, and it wasn't the one with the cigarette (the one I'd pretended to scratch for the "special prey" picture). Poor guy was still wearing the jungle boots and still wearing his certainly-looked-like-spandex sneaking suit. Even I'm not that dedicated. Anyway, he was the one who'd asked about an MGS ACen gathering in the MGS thread on cosplay.com, and I told him I'd get my gallery up ASAP and mention it in the thread once I'd done so. Which I'd've done anyway, but at least there's going to be SOME networking of pictures. I wish I'd thought to collect e-mail addresses of everyone at the shoot so we could get pictures passed around.
That said, I'd like to consider both Meryl and Snake (or, as a compromise, Sneaking Suit Meryl) for my next cosplay. We could really have used a Meryl at ours, for Wolf to shoot at, and for the Snakes to hit on - and Meryl training her Desert Eagle at Snake's head would've been another reason to fake a trip to a bathroom - but also I was really envious of the Snakes and guards for being able to sneak around (and also to use handguns. :P
Couple of E3-inspired edits:
- Having seen the new trailer for MGS4, let me just clarify that I mean MGS1 Meryl and either MGS1 or MGS2 Snake.
- And now having seen the trailer for Super Smash Brothers Brawl, let me just clarify that I don't mean that Snake either.
In the late evening, we went back to the Improsuite, where I gave Arwen her annual penguin and Aaron paid Kate for a copy of Vanguard Bandits (a Working Designs game, and the last title we needed to complete our PS1 TRPG collection). Also, I arranged to sell part of my AnimEigo release of Macross to Cham once I get a chance to see Max and Milia in the arcade one more time. He pulled out his wallet to pay me at the time, then shook his head: "I don't have enough on me right now, but when we get back I'll e-mail you a check." Yeah, Cham, and I'll e-mail you the DVDs. :P
Also: Eternal Sailor Goomba!
On a run to get ice, or throw out garbage, or something, Aaron saw another group of Lunar 1 cosplayers - this time, Luna, Jessica, and Xenobia - but didn't have his camera equipped. Poor Falc. :(
At some point Saturday, I don't remember when, I heard someone say something about removing a plush tonberry's tunic, followed by the phrase "hot tonberry-on-tonberry lemon action!" Which I thought was funny. ^_^
We had big plans for Saturday night - doing a postmortem copyedit of the programming book, reading the manual for Vanguard Bandits (and maybe starting it up to take a look), poking at Twin Snakes boss rush - but we both randomly fell asleep watching ESPN around 10 p.m., despite loud drunken people outside our room, though I did wake long enough to shush them without moving by yelling "Shut up, people are sleeping in here." I hate the part where we behave like adults. :P
Falc was hopped up on sinus medication, and when we both woke around 1 a.m. - an opportunity we took to turn off the TV and lights so we could sleep for reals - he was at first amusingly and incoherently surreal, as is usual when he is overtired, saying things that started off making sense and then went weird, nonsensical, usually geeky places. I remarked to him that he was reminding me of late-game MGS2 Campbell, at which point he became completely lucid and rattled off perfectly the entire bit that ends with "I need scissors! 61!" <3
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Sunday
We genuinely intended to see at least part of the full run of AMVs, but it didn't fit into our Friday schedule (happened before we got there) or our Saturday schedule (interfered with our photoshoots), so we planned on Sunday, when it was scheduled from 8-11 a.m. We figured on dropping in around 9:30 or 10. hahaha no. In the end we said "screw it, we'll check amv.org," and went ahead and packed and checked out and went to the dealer room for one last go, getting a few pictures on the way, which can all be found here.
On our way, we stopped at the gift shop one last time - Falc to buy some juice, me to buy a souvenir Chicago cow for Mom (she has another just like it that says Michigan). Then, off.
At the dealer room, Falc took a good long look through a stack of older mint-in-box import games, notably Star Ocean - and we saw Japanese versions of other Kojima games (Snatcher and Policenauts). I looked through some pencil boards, and I considered buying either an FF7:AC Tifa pin or an FF11 riding chocobo pin; in the end I didn't add anything to my own stash, but we did pick up a present for Courtney. I'll let Aaron decide when we'll tell her what it is. ^_^
We dropped by the Red Octane booth again and tried Medium difficulty on Guitar Hero for the first time, on "Take Me Out." Didn't do too terribly, either - in the 70-80% range. Talked about maybe picking up the two-player bundle even though their special at-con price for it hadn't dropped due to Sunday. Swung by our "favorite" music dealer, who doesn't even deal in anime music anymore (but does have a nice game music stash), and Falc considered the re-release of the Estpolis Biography set (now with 100% more Lufia 3).
We stopped to sit for a bit, so he could decide what he wanted to get as his major purchase of con. What finally pulled us from our chairs, still indecisive, was a Ritz cosplayer (FFTA), whose picture we felt we needed. Then we decided we'd at least ask Red Octane whether that special bundle price applied on their website, or what, since it might influence our decision. On the way, I stopped at another dealer of figures and plushies to take one more look for MGS1 toys and Azumanga Daioh UFO dolls (they'd had some the day before). No such luck, but then I felt Falc behind me - he spotted a stack of Ys figurines, $5 each. So suddenly he had his centerpiece purchase for the con, the "omg woot" thing to remember it by. We intended to stop at Wizzywig's across the aisle for Sunday markdowns, but didn't.
Now with great cheer, we continued, and I stopped at another booth. No figurines I wanted, but Falc handily spotted a box of Appleseed figurines, which we checked out on Courtney's behalf, even though we'd already bought her something. ^_^ But the only two characters I know for sure that she really likes are Briareos and Deunan, and it turned out they were out of both of them. But well-spotted, love.
And just kitty-corner across the aisle from there was Red Octane. We asked, they said stuff was at normal price plus tax and shipping if you get it from the website...
So Falc caved and handed over $100, half of which I'll reimburse him for eventually, and we're now the proud owners of Guitar Hero and two controllers. Like the PS3, this is an investment in our future. ^_~ Back to the truck to stash those, making a cheerful matched set as we marched through the hamster tunnel and then the hotel, him carrying the box with the basic Guitar Hero bundle and me carrying the box with our second controller.
I chugged my last can of Slim-Fast and we went back to the hotel. Loitered outside Main Programming listening to the Spoony Bards, which was most pleasant, then went in to watch the AMV awards. Which, uh, meh. To wit:
Romance Winner: Much to Falc's delight, a Kimagure Orange Road video called "And So It Begins." As far as I know, this was pretty much the highlight for him.
Drama Winner: A Saikano video called "Weapons with Silver Wings." Falc and I need to cosplay Shuji and Chise sometime. :P This was pretty much the highlight for me, if only because it was the only winning video that fulfilled BOTH conditions a) not sucking and b) being familiar with the anime.
Staff Winner: Really whacked FF7:AC thing that was more of a fan parody dub (using what I assume were lines from a movie) than an AMV.
Theme Winner: "The Azumanga Daioh Animated Fanfic." Again - not an AMV. (Theme this year was "Stealing the Scene.")
Dance/Upbeat Winner: The anime was Dual. Video here.
Action: A video that used the Berserk MANGA, which was cool in and of itself. Didn't care for the music and knew nothing about the story, but the production values were impressive. Video here.
Comedy: A rather poor multiple-song Azumanga Daioh thing. If that was the best comedy, I'm almost glad we missed the full run.
Best in Show: "The Wedding Rings," by the same guy who made last year's Best in Show winner, "Still Preoccupied with 1985" (a primarily Azumanga video full of multi-genre awesome, which we are in love with). A secondary highlight of the contest for us - probably diminished because we expected SO much out of it due to our love for his previous work. Anyway, it used Katamari Damacy as a plot device. And there were at least two MGS references. Last year's video was still better, though.
After this, we went to the game room again. It was too crowded to get to Guitar Hero, so we wandered the rest of the room, stopping to watch Mario play Para Para Paradise, and finally ending up at a machine for what was apparently Dance Maniax 2nd Mix.
We watched a few people take their turns (and practiced from behind), then it was us, with like one spectator. I put four quarters in the machine and we gave it a try. The "easiest" set was rated four stars (out of eight), but I was familiar with everything on a five-star set ("Tubthumping," "Butterfly," "Boom Boom Dollar," and "Boys"), and he was familiar with at least a couple, so we went with that - figured that even if we failed, it would at least be more fun using songs we knew. We got fully through the first two songs - I carried us through "Tubthumping" with a 30-something combo; Aaron carried us through "Butterfly" with the same - and then neither of us could find the right beat in "Boom Boom Dollar" (it was a remix, which threw us off), so we failed. It's a shame; I used to be able to get an A on a four-foot routine of "Boys" in DDR, and as it wasn't labeled as a remix, I probably could've carried us through it. But we had fun.
We sat around for a while, then headed out to the truck to get my stuff unloaded so I could get ready for the airport. When it was time, we went to the front of the hotel, where the shuttle was waiting. Worried that it was about to leave, we hurried... turned out it had been there a while and I was the only person who needed it just then. Last hug and a quick goodbye, then off to the airport.
Self-service check-in continues to be of the win. On the way to my gate, I stopped at "Burrito Beach" for a "roasted vegetable quesadilla," which I ate once I got to the gate. Nothing special, but not too bad either. I was in the last group to board (which is actually an advantage - means you're closer to the front of the plane, ergo you can deplane sooner), but there was quite a line of planes ahead of us, something I couldn't really see till it was down to the last three or four - and once it was our turn to take off, I could see the line of six or seven planes behind us. We arrived back in Detroit only a couple minutes late, and on my way to baggage claim I called Mom and Aaron to let them know I was back on the ground. Got my duffel and prepared to look for Dad.
Unlike O'Hare, however, where even Burrito Beach is open till 10 p.m., Detroit Metro is practically dead by early evening. At least, Smith Terminal is. Dad was one of the only non-passengers and non-employees in the place.
Interesting baggage claim story - American shares a claim area with Northwest, and they have little offices down there to take care of luggage that's unclaimed, lost, or incompatible with the conveyor. In the Northwest office - and I nearly took a picture - perched on a chair, was a plush standing bear, 30-36" high, wearing a cloth dress and a pink feather boa. o_O
And then home. Gave the overview, distributed cows to Mom, hopped online, unloaded pictures from the camera, and got a few pictures of my loot, my diazepam bottle, and my wolf plushie.
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And that was ACen. It was genuinely awesome. This whole week is like concentrated nerdiness, since we're barely back from ACen and E3's coming right at us with information we care about, forcing us to consider things like how long we're willing to wait for a PS3 price drop and what it might cost to just rent one for a couple weeks so we can play MGS4 at release. *_*
Pictures follow, or you can browse the selection at your leisure here - 79 images across four directories.
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Friday
- Ness
- Lulu and Moogle
- Gunner Moogle
- Spike Spiegel | 2
- King of All Cosmos
- Katamari
- Seras Victoria
- Quinton Flynn | 2 | 3 | 4
- Alex and Luna
- Chapter 1 Ramza
- Young Female Gamer
- Aaron in the KD final round
Saturday
- MGS2 Guards | 2
- Ramen
- 8-bit Link
- Pocky and son
- Kana and her sister Rakka
- Azumanga Daioh girl
- FFT Time Mage
- Rydia and Rosa | Another pair | another Rydia
Saturday - Final Fantasy photoshoot
- FF4 - Cid
- FF6 - Setzer and moogles
- FF7 - classic group, FF7:AC group, Marlene
- FF8 - full group, female Zell, SeeD Quistis, Quistis again
- FF9 - Garnet and moogles
- FFT group
Saturday - Metal Gear Solid photoshoot
- The Russians are coming!
- Grip Gauge level 2
- Full group | 2
- Bad guys | 2 | 3
- Good guys | 2
- MGS1 snake-fu holdup
- Codec moment | 2
- "You are my special prey" | 2
- MGS2 Snake/Otacon handclasp | 2 | 3
- MGS3 CQC | 2
- "Freeze!" "Aah!"
- Pile o' guards | 2
From our hotel room, after the shoot:
- "A friend of mine. He's a real gearhead."
- "She likes dogs. She must be a good person."
- "I always kill what I aim at." | 2
- Wolf kneeling | 2
- Wolf with the MGS1 artbook
- Sniper Wolf's diazepam, cleverly disguised as tic-tacs! >_>
- Otacon's ID badge
- Baby wolves say <3
- Also they pee on boxes
Sunday
- Ichigo
- Odeko
- Ritz Malheur
- Para Para Mario
- Female Zell again, with her buddy Squall
- The t-shirt I bought
- The MGS1 artbook
If you are here just for the Metal Gear Solid photoshoot stuff, click here.
Friday
Left for the airport just after 8 a.m. By 9:05 I was through security and in the waiting area for my 10:15 flight. ^_^; So I read Owen Meany and played with the DS. Things went well and we landed around 11:05 Eastern time - from here forward, everything will be on Chicago time. So that's 10:05 Chicago time, and it was scheduled to be like 10:25. Then it got to the gate, and I deplaned and found my baggage claim area. Finally the luggage conveyor started moving, and my bag showed up about five minutes in. Then, off to the great adventure of catching the Hyatt shuttle. This took a while because it's a pretty long walk, and I stopped occasionally to rest because my duffel was kinda heavy.
But I get to the shuttle center, and the Hyatt shuttle arrived in another five or ten minutes. Fifteen or twenty minutes after that, it gets to the Hyatt O'Hare. I went in the lobby, looked around, no Aaron... then checked the time. It was only 11:05. Made excellent time - I had hoped to arrive at the hotel by 11:30 or noon Chicago time.
I took up a waiting position by a pillar at the bottom of the escalators. I called my parents to let them know I arrived, then called Mecha to let him know where I was in case he saw Aaron before I did.
Started snapping pictures of cosplayers - all pictures from Friday are linked here - then Cham and Mecha came downstairs to greet me. I got their room number and Cham's cell phone number, then they were off again. A few more cosplayer photos, including the King of All Cosmos, and then I saw Aaron coming down the escalator.
After taking my bags (just a backpack and duffel bag) to his truck, we headed to the convention center to pick up our badges. The line wasn't too bad, and I took a few more pictures on the way.
After registering, we went back to the hotel and checked in. Ninth floor, east tower, just like in 2004 - in fact, we were only two rooms down the hall from our previous room in that area. We retrieved our luggage and discussed the programming schedule, then grabbed Aaron's copy of MGS2:Substance and went to the convention center for the 3 p.m. autograph session with Quinton Flynn. Not because we like Raiden or anything, but more because this was the year of Metal Gear Solid for us and there was a guest vaguely relevant to our interests. On the way, I realized I'd left my program book in the room and had nothing for him to sign; in the end we resolved it by me using the MGS2 manual as my item-to-sign.
Ahead of us in line we saw another guy with MGS2:Substance, and behind us was a girl with MGS2:Sons of Liberty. We were delighted to see another female MGS fan, but the fact that she found MGS1 too difficult to finish had me a little discouraged. We mentioned to the latter that we'd be switching to Sniper Wolf and Otacon costumes after the autograph session. She seemed interested, and we let her know about the MGS photoshoot I'd set up for Saturday afternoon. (We also made a point of informing every MGS cosplayer we saw throughout the weekend - mostly Snakes. I'll get to the others in a bit.)
Eventually we got to the head of the reasonably short line, and good thing we went to his Friday session, since his Saturday autograph session had a long, long, long line of Naruto, KH2, and FF7:AC fans. He was extremely pleasant and polite. I had him sign Aaron's MGS2 manual, Aaron had him sign the cover insert, and the three of us had a nice brief conversation in which he expressed relief that someone was familiar with his video game work (and "older" work at that; and also, kind of, unspoken relief that not everyone in line was a raving squealing fangirl). Then we shook his hand and stepped to the side to get our pictures.
As a final note on the Quinton Flynn line - I know I was deeply amused by the girl who asked her friend, "Who's the silver-haired guy in Kingdom Hearts 2?" (Because as far as I'm aware, silver-haired guys are pretty much a dime a dozen these days, and she was specifically saying THE silver-haired guy.)
From there, back to the room to stash the signed copy of MGS2 and to change into our costumes, which looked great. We stopped at the game room to sign up for that evening's Katamari Damacy tournament, and ran into some Impropeople on the atrium level. Said hello, hugged Ard, showed off costumes. Then we went back to the convention center.
Now. When discussing the dealer room, it is instructive to first see the list of things I had hoped to find:
- FF9 Piano Collection
- The Art of Metal Gear Solid, version 1.5
- Sniper Wolf action figure
- Meryl Silverburgh action figure
- Solid Snake action figure (MGS2 version)
Which individually are fairly expensive, but this is as opposed to years when I had a long ordered list of things to look for. In other words, there weren't a lot of prioritizing decisions to make, and I knew ahead of time two of the dealers I would definitely need to stop at (Sasuga Bookstore and Digital Discs LLC).
Our first trip through the dealer room was purely a scouting mission to see what was there and what we might need to buy. Our first stop, though, was at the booth for Youmacon, a Detroit-area anime convention in November (note to Falc: I will need one of those flyers for my scrapbook). As we approached the booth, the attendant said, "You're Sniper Wolf, right?" In my glee at being recognized, I smiled and nodded and said thank you, even though I should've maintained character and informed him that yes, I'm Sniper Wolf and I always kill what I aim at. Anyway, he recognized Falc's Otacon costume as well, and we stopped to speak to him, because attention made me happy I'd already been considering attending Youmacon anyway.
We continued looking, and the #1 thing we discovered was that there were exactly two MGS series action figures in the entire dealer room, and neither were ones I wanted. But Sasuga Bookstore did have the MGS1 artbook, and that was happy. Didn't buy it yet, though.
One of the yaoi vendors was hawking his wares loudly again this year, which bugged me for several reasons:
- I've read the exhibitor contract, and it kinda expressly prohibits active vocal hawking of adult product (partially because it's hard to know the ages of a lot of attendees just by looking and you don't want to get nabbed for selling or promoting porn to minors, and partially because of trying to maintain the whole "family-friendly con" facade).
- The guy had enormous signs as well, and the dealer room map detailed the types of products that each vendor specialized in. So anyone who was actively in pursuit of adult material could have found it easily anyway.
- The poor parents who have to deal with a five-year-old asking "What's hentai?"
About halfway through the dealer room, two things happened almost at once - the container of tic-tacs I was carrying as mock diazepam fell from my pocket and opened, and a pair of Lunar 1 cosplayers walked by. As Aaron retrieved my scattered prop (my costume didn't leave me able to bend or squat easily), I ran after Alex and Luna to fetch them for a quick photo op.
By the time that was resolved, my feet were starting to hurt. I walked a little slower, and we finished scouting the dealer room. Back to the hotel and down to the video gaming room, where we played a quick round of Guitar Hero ("Iron Man"). Then we sat on the floor to wait for the Katamari Damacy tournament to start. In the meantime, however, as Sniper Wolf reclined against her Otacon while holding a baby wolf, I glanced across the room and it took me a few moments to realize I was looking at a Ramza cosplayer (chapter 1). Aaron and I got her picture in pretty short order and let her know we'd be the FFT Oracles at the FF photoshoot the following day.
There wound up being about twenty people in the KD tournament - one of whom was a five-year-old girl who didn't meet the first stage goal but was extremely cute and enthusiastic nonetheless, and about five of whom (other than her) were female. Ramza was among the crowd as well! And the tournament meant this was the first Aaron-visit since December in which we've played ANY katamari games - since mid-January, we've been on a hot streak with Metal Gear Solid.
The first round was on Make a Star 1, and the top 50% proceeded to round 2. Although I didn't do so well, I was among the ten entrants who proceeded to round 2 (as was Falc) - and the only girl to do so.
Round 2 was Make a Star 4, which I LOVE, but I tanked because it'd been so long since I've played (which doesn't explain how Falc did so well - neither of us has touched the game since November). Two people proceeded to the finals (Make a Star 7) from there, and again, one of them was Falc, who wound up winning the whole thing. <3
During the tournament, someone in plainclothes had his picture taken with us in costume, which was cool. However, at one point, while balancing my toy plastic sniper rifle between my hip and the back of Falc's chair, the gun fell and the butt of it snapped clean off. Understand, I do bring a cosplay repair kit - but it's things like safety pins, thread, scissors, hairpins - no glue. So after the tournament, we stopped at the hotel gift shop for overpriced super glue. At this point, my feet didn't just hurt, they were genuinely painful, due to my heels rubbing against the hard surfaces of my jungle boots. So I was walking very slowly, since standing didn't hurt - just the part of walking where my feet moved. :P (My knees didn't hurt at all, thanks to the knee braces that were an actual part of the costume - but walking was OW.)
The second we left the gift shop, I bent down and unlaced my jungle boots, and spent the rest of the night sock-footed. As we headed for the elevators, Aaron spotted a pair of MGS2 guards, complete with exclamation points, holding an Inuyasha character at gunpoint. We didn't get a picture at the time (that pic is from Saturday morning in the dealer room), but we gleefully told them about Saturday's MGS gathering, and they said they'd be there with two more guard buddies.
Back to the room. By this time it was past 9:30. I fixed my toy rifle, Aaron ordered pizza, and we dorked around with Emma's parrot in MGS2 for a while. Spray coolant on it, and it declares "This sucks! This sucks!"; fire weapons at it, and although they're deflected Fortune-style, the bird squawks "Enemy sighted, requesting backup"; also, I fetched the enormous porn stash the bird refers to by saying "Top of locker!" We had discussed how to get that item with Todd outside the church after Jay's wedding, but he never told us it was a whole BUNDLE of porn mags. hee hee hee awesome.
After a slight miscommunication about where to meet the pizza guy, we had dinner and talked for a while. I was going to play some MGS3 - I only got as far as watching EVA pwn Ocelot during the wedding trip - but the TV screen was much too dark for me to do anything successfully, so no.
And that was Friday. I had a horrible near-tears cramp in my calf in the middle of the night thanks to walking around all day, including five or six hours in jungle boots, and then it was Saturday.
And at some point - don't remember whether it was Friday or Saturday - we were in costume and ran into Ard and some of the others in the dealer room. Arwen introduced us, and when she called me Andrea, everyone was like wait, real name, what is this? :P
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Saturday
With nothing specific scheduled on Saturday until the Final Fantasy photoshoot at 1 p.m., we had some time to dawdle. While I showered, he went down to the gift shop to buy me a package of band-aids for my cosplay-blistered heels.
Before we left the room, the TV channel we were watching started to air an interesting documentary on a family of red-tailed hawks that took up residence in a high-class area of New York City. We watched with great interest as we ate breakfast and plotted out where we needed to go in the dealer room. Upon finding out that the male hawk attracted his mate by fetching her a pigeon, I turned on Aaron and demanded to know where MY pigeon was.
Later in the segment, it was explained that the hawks in question, living across the street from Woody Allen, ate pigeons on a regular basis. "Aha," I said. "Basically, he bought her dinner. She's easy. Female red-tailed hawks put out on the first date."
We started the day with a trip to the dealer room, calculated to hit only those vendors we had genuine interest in. Our favorite music dealer had FF9 Piano Collection, but I didn't want to pay that much ($37), leaving the MGS1 artbook as the only thing from my list that I'd be picking up. Other discoveries of interest at that vendor included: 1) learning that the Estpolis Biography OST (that's Lufia here in North America) got re-released recently, expanded to four discs to include the music from Lufia: The Legend Returns, and 2) learning that the FFT soundtrack also got a re-release - still two discs, but packed into a single-wide case with no fancy slipcover and no job class art poster. Still cool though.
So instead of buying the FF9 piano thing, I got a t-shirt that says "Warning: I have a vocabulary in excess of 75,000 words and I'm not afraid to use it," and a mad cow germ plushie from the Giant Microbes product line for Mom.
And then I bought my MGS1 artbook (from a stack of eight or nine of them) as my flagship purchase of the con, marking the third year one of us has bought something from Sasuga Bookstore (2004: Haibane Renmei artbook; 2005: Valkyrie Profile artbook; 2006: MGS1 artbook), and Aaron bought one of the two MGS figures in the entire room - the 4-inch MGS2 Otacon. (The other, which we didn't get, was Olga, who still hadn't been sold by the time we made our last dealer room run on Sunday.)
We got a number of interesting pictures during that dealer room run - again, all pictures from Saturday are linked here. Most notable was the FFT Time Mage we saw on our way out. We quickly reminded her about the FF gathering, then headed back to our room to change into our Oracle costumes.
The FF gathering went nicely. Highlights were an FF4 Cid, a great female Zell, and a SeeD uniform Quistis. I also got some group shots for FF6, FF7, FF8, FF9, and the FF7:AC group for kicks, the highlight of which was this tiny Marlene. Quoth Ramza: "She's so cute! I just wanna stick her in my boot and take her home!"
As we four FFT cosplayers (two Oracles, Ramza, and the Time Mage) were making our way forward, I asked an FF1 Black Mage to take our picture for us... and he declined, saying he was going to join the FFT group (since the costume concept is pretty much identical). Full party of five units, woo! After the shoot, we had one of Ramza's friends take a picture of our little group... somewhat separated from the main group, however, as two Rosemont Public Safety vehicles had just pulled up to it.
On our way back to the room, we piled onto an elevator with Advent Children Tifa (I love that costume!) and a number of other people, and Tifa remarked, "These elevators are starting to smell like fanboy." Hee.
Back in the room, I had a little time to skim through the MGS1 artbook. Version 1.5 is a reprinting that took place to coincide with the release of Twin Snakes, and the primary difference between it and the original is that the original ended with an interview between Shinkawa and Yoshitaka Amano, and this one ends with an interview between Shinkawa and some French comic artist whose name I don't remember. I'd've loved to read the Amano interview, but the original version of the artbook wasn't at ACen and costs almost double anyway - and I'm not sure it has the nifty bonus feature of being fully bilingual - all captions, as well as the interview, are in both Japanese and English, so I can get actual reading value out of this one.
At 2:15 Saturday, we changed into our costumes (mine takes a while because of the lace-up jungle boots; thank you to Aaron for helping speed that process) and headed downstairs to the MGS photoshoot (links to all photos from the shoot are here; thanks to Mecha's diligence, there are multiple versions of many shots, not all of which are linked in the writeup itself). We congregated near two Snakes who were already talking, and drew a crowd based on our Snake quotient alone. Mike showed up to camera-wench for me and Aaron (thank you Mecha!), and the girl we'd spoken with in the Quinton Flynn line came to see the group as well. We got a number of photo requests... okay, mostly the Snakes did, although at one point one of them said, "Wait, let's get the chick who shot Meryl in the picture too!" <3
The guards were late arriving, but when they did, it was joy - a girl walked past, made the connection between the guards she'd recently seen and the group of Snakes she was now passing, and announced "The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!" GLEE. A mock shootout began between the Snakes and the guards. Then a guard lobbed a toy grenade! It was fantastic.
Total turnout for the shoot was eleven cosplayers (five Snakes, four MGS2 guards, Otacon, and me), and as many, if not more, camera-people. Yay.
We decided to move out to the parking garage for a more industrial background for our geekery - a few Snakes wanted to go outside with it, but I was wary - we were only a small group, but we were a group with lots of weapon replicas, and I'd already seen two Public Safety vehicles show up to check on the FF group. And it wasn't just us cosplayers who'd be moving - just as many people were following us around to get pictures of the group.
Walking through the corridor to the parking garage was, if I may be so bold, totally badass. Large group of people with tactical gear and toy guns on a march to save and/or destroy the world = love. ^_^
On arrival in the garage, one Snake began leveling his grip gauge by doing pullups on the cement overhangs. We found an empty-ish area - an unused handicap parking spot - and set to work. First a few full group shots (one Snake borrowed Otacon's ketchup), then split into bad guys and good guys. After the bad guy shoot was over and Otacon and the Snakes grouped together for the good guy pictures, the guards and I hid out of frame and trained our weapons on the good guys.
One of the MGS2 guards had a speaker strapped to his shoulder, and on Saturday, at least, he had MGS music coming through it. During the full group shots, the awesome version from MGS2 kicked in. Off to my right, MGS2 Snake piped up with "haha, my game has a better version of the theme than the rest of you," and was answered with a chorus of "nyehh"s and grudging agreement. ^_^
Then we did some scene reenactments. We started with the bit in MGS1 - specifically, some Twin Snakes choreography - where Snake reaches the end of the sniper corridor and performs some serious snake fu on three guards, holding two at gunpoint and the other held off with his foot, and Wolf walks up and more or less says "Down, boy" with the laser sight of her rifle. ^_^ The MGS1 Snake in the group didn't have the agility to pull it off, but an MGS2 Snake had similar costume coloring and the ability to hold the pose, so I trained my rifle on his head while he and three of the guards held their positions. I spent the whole pose trying not to laugh - between that and Snake balancing on one foot, there was a whole lot of self-control there. :P
The Snakes lined up and struck Codec pose, then we did the part where Wolf scratches Snake and tells him he's her special prey. "You can go ahead and scratch me," he says, "anything for the sake of cosplay." After the shoot, looking through the pictures, Aaron said, "Snake's expression looks funny." Me: "Of course it does, he's a red-blooded American boy being simultaneously seduced and marked for death by a hot Kurd." ^_^
Then Otacon and MGS2 Snake posed for their special post-spoiler handshake, and MGS3 Snake held one guard in a chokehold. There was much awesome.
Then someone made an offhand remark about going to a bathroom and holding up a guard at a urinal. At least two problems with this:
1) Enormous group unlikely to fit in a bathroom and likely to attract unwanted attention.
2) Significant portion of the group - one cosplayer and several photographers - were female and would be unable to join the fun. (Well, we could, but I'm not sure it would be strictly legal. If we have a Meryl next year, though, I am definitely voting for clearing out a bathroom for about five minutes while people do urinal holdups and "That's the second time I've snuck up on the legendary Solid Snake.")
I don't think he was serious anyway, but I suggested that a guard could face the wall and assume the appropriate pose while Snake held him up. (Okay, so what I actually said was "Why don't we just get one to stand by the wall and pretend to take a piss?") That worked. Then Snake stood a few feet down the wall and posed similarly, for comedic purposes and it was very funny, but I do not have a picture of this (my glasses were off the whole time and Mecha did all the photo-taking - and some MGS3 CQC poses were going on in a different spot).
Then three guards flopped on the floor in a pile and Snake stood victorious over them. This was also awesome.
(Note: Monday night, I told Mom the story about the "holdup at a urinal" picture, and went down the list of reasons why we couldn't have done it in a real bathroom. Mom: "Oh, you could've all gone in, just made sure no one was in there using the bathroom." She sounded serious. I laughed. Maybe next year. ^_~ )
Someone asked whether Wolf had any diazepam. Sadly no - I had left the container back in the hotel room, not wanting to deal with it falling out of my pocket again. I felt bad - that would've been great for a giggle.
It did not occur to me until Tuesday night, but between me, Snake, Otacon, and the baby wolf plushie, we also had the full cast from the "Bring me my gun" sequence. Just as well - that would've been all kinds of weird, and I didn't have the snowfield uniform anyway.
At this point we headed back to the hotel to go our separate ways. Earlier I had been looking at the sketches of Wolf's boots in the artbook and comparing them to my boots. When I looked down at the boots of the Snake walking next to me (MGS2 Spandex Snake), I noticed the piece of material at the heel was the same shape as mine, so we briefly discussed our army surplus boots. A couple of Snakes snuck through the atrium, and chased the guards to appreciative applause from bystanders. <3
The gathering was really a major highlight on the con for me; anyone who drops by who was there, thanks so much for coming to the shoot, I know I had a great time.
Then Aaron and Mecha and I went to the Improsuite so Aaron and I could give Cham the chicken poop lip balm (and show off costumes again, and show off Falc's Katamari Damacy prizes). Guys - you really can call me Andrea, it's okay. ^_~
Back to the room, where we got pictures of each other in costume, then changed and went to a panel on Video Game Voice Acting, mostly to see Quinton (who walked right past us before it started, on his way to the water pitchers we were sitting near). It was okay. Falc was unwilling (and I was too shy) to ask him whether he was slated to reprise the role of Raiden in MGS4. heh. Afterwards, we made the decision to just eat in the room instead of walking to Denny's, which was kinda sad, but we had plenty of food.
We hit up the game room, but I don't think we did anything - unless this was the night we played "Iron Man" on Guitar Hero. On our way, we were stopped by Snake. I think it was the MGS2 Snake - it was one of the ones in gray, and it wasn't the one with the cigarette (the one I'd pretended to scratch for the "special prey" picture). Poor guy was still wearing the jungle boots and still wearing his certainly-looked-like-spandex sneaking suit. Even I'm not that dedicated. Anyway, he was the one who'd asked about an MGS ACen gathering in the MGS thread on cosplay.com, and I told him I'd get my gallery up ASAP and mention it in the thread once I'd done so. Which I'd've done anyway, but at least there's going to be SOME networking of pictures. I wish I'd thought to collect e-mail addresses of everyone at the shoot so we could get pictures passed around.
That said, I'd like to consider both Meryl and Snake (or, as a compromise, Sneaking Suit Meryl) for my next cosplay. We could really have used a Meryl at ours, for Wolf to shoot at, and for the Snakes to hit on - and Meryl training her Desert Eagle at Snake's head would've been another reason to fake a trip to a bathroom - but also I was really envious of the Snakes and guards for being able to sneak around (and also to use handguns. :P
Couple of E3-inspired edits:
- Having seen the new trailer for MGS4, let me just clarify that I mean MGS1 Meryl and either MGS1 or MGS2 Snake.
- And now having seen the trailer for Super Smash Brothers Brawl, let me just clarify that I don't mean that Snake either.
In the late evening, we went back to the Improsuite, where I gave Arwen her annual penguin and Aaron paid Kate for a copy of Vanguard Bandits (a Working Designs game, and the last title we needed to complete our PS1 TRPG collection). Also, I arranged to sell part of my AnimEigo release of Macross to Cham once I get a chance to see Max and Milia in the arcade one more time. He pulled out his wallet to pay me at the time, then shook his head: "I don't have enough on me right now, but when we get back I'll e-mail you a check." Yeah, Cham, and I'll e-mail you the DVDs. :P
Also: Eternal Sailor Goomba!
On a run to get ice, or throw out garbage, or something, Aaron saw another group of Lunar 1 cosplayers - this time, Luna, Jessica, and Xenobia - but didn't have his camera equipped. Poor Falc. :(
At some point Saturday, I don't remember when, I heard someone say something about removing a plush tonberry's tunic, followed by the phrase "hot tonberry-on-tonberry lemon action!" Which I thought was funny. ^_^
We had big plans for Saturday night - doing a postmortem copyedit of the programming book, reading the manual for Vanguard Bandits (and maybe starting it up to take a look), poking at Twin Snakes boss rush - but we both randomly fell asleep watching ESPN around 10 p.m., despite loud drunken people outside our room, though I did wake long enough to shush them without moving by yelling "Shut up, people are sleeping in here." I hate the part where we behave like adults. :P
Falc was hopped up on sinus medication, and when we both woke around 1 a.m. - an opportunity we took to turn off the TV and lights so we could sleep for reals - he was at first amusingly and incoherently surreal, as is usual when he is overtired, saying things that started off making sense and then went weird, nonsensical, usually geeky places. I remarked to him that he was reminding me of late-game MGS2 Campbell, at which point he became completely lucid and rattled off perfectly the entire bit that ends with "I need scissors! 61!" <3
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Sunday
We genuinely intended to see at least part of the full run of AMVs, but it didn't fit into our Friday schedule (happened before we got there) or our Saturday schedule (interfered with our photoshoots), so we planned on Sunday, when it was scheduled from 8-11 a.m. We figured on dropping in around 9:30 or 10. hahaha no. In the end we said "screw it, we'll check amv.org," and went ahead and packed and checked out and went to the dealer room for one last go, getting a few pictures on the way, which can all be found here.
On our way, we stopped at the gift shop one last time - Falc to buy some juice, me to buy a souvenir Chicago cow for Mom (she has another just like it that says Michigan). Then, off.
At the dealer room, Falc took a good long look through a stack of older mint-in-box import games, notably Star Ocean - and we saw Japanese versions of other Kojima games (Snatcher and Policenauts). I looked through some pencil boards, and I considered buying either an FF7:AC Tifa pin or an FF11 riding chocobo pin; in the end I didn't add anything to my own stash, but we did pick up a present for Courtney. I'll let Aaron decide when we'll tell her what it is. ^_^
We dropped by the Red Octane booth again and tried Medium difficulty on Guitar Hero for the first time, on "Take Me Out." Didn't do too terribly, either - in the 70-80% range. Talked about maybe picking up the two-player bundle even though their special at-con price for it hadn't dropped due to Sunday. Swung by our "favorite" music dealer, who doesn't even deal in anime music anymore (but does have a nice game music stash), and Falc considered the re-release of the Estpolis Biography set (now with 100% more Lufia 3).
We stopped to sit for a bit, so he could decide what he wanted to get as his major purchase of con. What finally pulled us from our chairs, still indecisive, was a Ritz cosplayer (FFTA), whose picture we felt we needed. Then we decided we'd at least ask Red Octane whether that special bundle price applied on their website, or what, since it might influence our decision. On the way, I stopped at another dealer of figures and plushies to take one more look for MGS1 toys and Azumanga Daioh UFO dolls (they'd had some the day before). No such luck, but then I felt Falc behind me - he spotted a stack of Ys figurines, $5 each. So suddenly he had his centerpiece purchase for the con, the "omg woot" thing to remember it by. We intended to stop at Wizzywig's across the aisle for Sunday markdowns, but didn't.
Now with great cheer, we continued, and I stopped at another booth. No figurines I wanted, but Falc handily spotted a box of Appleseed figurines, which we checked out on Courtney's behalf, even though we'd already bought her something. ^_^ But the only two characters I know for sure that she really likes are Briareos and Deunan, and it turned out they were out of both of them. But well-spotted, love.
And just kitty-corner across the aisle from there was Red Octane. We asked, they said stuff was at normal price plus tax and shipping if you get it from the website...
So Falc caved and handed over $100, half of which I'll reimburse him for eventually, and we're now the proud owners of Guitar Hero and two controllers. Like the PS3, this is an investment in our future. ^_~ Back to the truck to stash those, making a cheerful matched set as we marched through the hamster tunnel and then the hotel, him carrying the box with the basic Guitar Hero bundle and me carrying the box with our second controller.
I chugged my last can of Slim-Fast and we went back to the hotel. Loitered outside Main Programming listening to the Spoony Bards, which was most pleasant, then went in to watch the AMV awards. Which, uh, meh. To wit:
Romance Winner: Much to Falc's delight, a Kimagure Orange Road video called "And So It Begins." As far as I know, this was pretty much the highlight for him.
Drama Winner: A Saikano video called "Weapons with Silver Wings." Falc and I need to cosplay Shuji and Chise sometime. :P This was pretty much the highlight for me, if only because it was the only winning video that fulfilled BOTH conditions a) not sucking and b) being familiar with the anime.
Staff Winner: Really whacked FF7:AC thing that was more of a fan parody dub (using what I assume were lines from a movie) than an AMV.
Theme Winner: "The Azumanga Daioh Animated Fanfic." Again - not an AMV. (Theme this year was "Stealing the Scene.")
Dance/Upbeat Winner: The anime was Dual. Video here.
Action: A video that used the Berserk MANGA, which was cool in and of itself. Didn't care for the music and knew nothing about the story, but the production values were impressive. Video here.
Comedy: A rather poor multiple-song Azumanga Daioh thing. If that was the best comedy, I'm almost glad we missed the full run.
Best in Show: "The Wedding Rings," by the same guy who made last year's Best in Show winner, "Still Preoccupied with 1985" (a primarily Azumanga video full of multi-genre awesome, which we are in love with). A secondary highlight of the contest for us - probably diminished because we expected SO much out of it due to our love for his previous work. Anyway, it used Katamari Damacy as a plot device. And there were at least two MGS references. Last year's video was still better, though.
After this, we went to the game room again. It was too crowded to get to Guitar Hero, so we wandered the rest of the room, stopping to watch Mario play Para Para Paradise, and finally ending up at a machine for what was apparently Dance Maniax 2nd Mix.
We watched a few people take their turns (and practiced from behind), then it was us, with like one spectator. I put four quarters in the machine and we gave it a try. The "easiest" set was rated four stars (out of eight), but I was familiar with everything on a five-star set ("Tubthumping," "Butterfly," "Boom Boom Dollar," and "Boys"), and he was familiar with at least a couple, so we went with that - figured that even if we failed, it would at least be more fun using songs we knew. We got fully through the first two songs - I carried us through "Tubthumping" with a 30-something combo; Aaron carried us through "Butterfly" with the same - and then neither of us could find the right beat in "Boom Boom Dollar" (it was a remix, which threw us off), so we failed. It's a shame; I used to be able to get an A on a four-foot routine of "Boys" in DDR, and as it wasn't labeled as a remix, I probably could've carried us through it. But we had fun.
We sat around for a while, then headed out to the truck to get my stuff unloaded so I could get ready for the airport. When it was time, we went to the front of the hotel, where the shuttle was waiting. Worried that it was about to leave, we hurried... turned out it had been there a while and I was the only person who needed it just then. Last hug and a quick goodbye, then off to the airport.
Self-service check-in continues to be of the win. On the way to my gate, I stopped at "Burrito Beach" for a "roasted vegetable quesadilla," which I ate once I got to the gate. Nothing special, but not too bad either. I was in the last group to board (which is actually an advantage - means you're closer to the front of the plane, ergo you can deplane sooner), but there was quite a line of planes ahead of us, something I couldn't really see till it was down to the last three or four - and once it was our turn to take off, I could see the line of six or seven planes behind us. We arrived back in Detroit only a couple minutes late, and on my way to baggage claim I called Mom and Aaron to let them know I was back on the ground. Got my duffel and prepared to look for Dad.
Unlike O'Hare, however, where even Burrito Beach is open till 10 p.m., Detroit Metro is practically dead by early evening. At least, Smith Terminal is. Dad was one of the only non-passengers and non-employees in the place.
Interesting baggage claim story - American shares a claim area with Northwest, and they have little offices down there to take care of luggage that's unclaimed, lost, or incompatible with the conveyor. In the Northwest office - and I nearly took a picture - perched on a chair, was a plush standing bear, 30-36" high, wearing a cloth dress and a pink feather boa. o_O
And then home. Gave the overview, distributed cows to Mom, hopped online, unloaded pictures from the camera, and got a few pictures of my loot, my diazepam bottle, and my wolf plushie.
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And that was ACen. It was genuinely awesome. This whole week is like concentrated nerdiness, since we're barely back from ACen and E3's coming right at us with information we care about, forcing us to consider things like how long we're willing to wait for a PS3 price drop and what it might cost to just rent one for a couple weeks so we can play MGS4 at release. *_*
Pictures follow, or you can browse the selection at your leisure here - 79 images across four directories.
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Friday
- Ness
- Lulu and Moogle
- Gunner Moogle
- Spike Spiegel | 2
- King of All Cosmos
- Katamari
- Seras Victoria
- Quinton Flynn | 2 | 3 | 4
- Alex and Luna
- Chapter 1 Ramza
- Young Female Gamer
- Aaron in the KD final round
Saturday
- MGS2 Guards | 2
- Ramen
- 8-bit Link
- Pocky and son
- Kana and her sister Rakka
- Azumanga Daioh girl
- FFT Time Mage
- Rydia and Rosa | Another pair | another Rydia
Saturday - Final Fantasy photoshoot
- FF4 - Cid
- FF6 - Setzer and moogles
- FF7 - classic group, FF7:AC group, Marlene
- FF8 - full group, female Zell, SeeD Quistis, Quistis again
- FF9 - Garnet and moogles
- FFT group
Saturday - Metal Gear Solid photoshoot
- The Russians are coming!
- Grip Gauge level 2
- Full group | 2
- Bad guys | 2 | 3
- Good guys | 2
- MGS1 snake-fu holdup
- Codec moment | 2
- "You are my special prey" | 2
- MGS2 Snake/Otacon handclasp | 2 | 3
- MGS3 CQC | 2
- "Freeze!" "Aah!"
- Pile o' guards | 2
From our hotel room, after the shoot:
- "A friend of mine. He's a real gearhead."
- "She likes dogs. She must be a good person."
- "I always kill what I aim at." | 2
- Wolf kneeling | 2
- Wolf with the MGS1 artbook
- Sniper Wolf's diazepam, cleverly disguised as tic-tacs! >_>
- Otacon's ID badge
- Baby wolves say <3
- Also they pee on boxes
Sunday
- Ichigo
- Odeko
- Ritz Malheur
- Para Para Mario
- Female Zell again, with her buddy Squall
- The t-shirt I bought
- The MGS1 artbook