"Someone call the fire department, cause you just got BURRRNED!" ~Michael XD
AX report!! heck yeaaaahhhh!! Including a detailed writeup of the CLAMP panel ^^ And lots of pictures interspersed throughout, which are both Ash's and mine.
Okay. It was, in a word, awesome. Ten thousand times better than Akon in terms of organization (there actually is some, for one), cosplay (oh my god), events, guests (CLAAAAAMP!)... though not in terms of signs, because they have not been banned from the West Coast apparently. Get on that, AX. I thought we had all learned our lesson. But yeah, just a great, well-done con all around. :) Lots of fun.
Friday
Technically not a real con day, just for people who've pre-registered to pick up their badges. It was also the day Ash and Michael's flight was getting in so in the morning I drove over to LAX and picked them up. Wow, that makes it sound so easy, and totally omits the part where I freaked out because that airport is kinda crazy and I wasn't sure if I would find them for a bit there. But I did, and it was cool, and we made our way to Anaheim safely. We couldn't check into the hotel (the Hilton) yet so I just parked the car and we got out and began wandering around.
I love that skirt!!! Bekah discovered it in the girls' section at Target and bought us the XL size, and it fits perfectly XD Now I can cosplay Sakura again XDDD
Hahaha then the sprinklers came on
Empty convention center
I really like this picture of me XD
You can see Disneyland from here! (There's the Tower of Terror tower in the distance)
We eventually ended up in the registration line, which wasn't too bad at all, and we picked up our badges. Then we were hungry so we walked down the street and found a Denny's and had lunch there... yumm. As we were walking to Denny's, Michael tried to make up a word, but we totally caught him on it.
Michael: Wow, the weather here is really tempid.
Ash and Sarah: Yeah.... .......wait, what!?
Turns out he had combined 'tepid' and 'temperate' to make a brand new word XD Which he then tried to convince us was real!! Ohhh Michael.
Then by the time we got back we could check into the hotel, so Ash checked us in and we promptly went up to the room...... and fell asleep.
Registration hall
Ash at Denny's with her lemonade
Walking up to the convention center and its huge AX banner
in the room
>_> for like 4 hours. WE WERE TIRED! Ash and Michael had been up since 4 a.m., and I'm always sleep deprived, so we saw our opportunity and took it. When we woke up, we went down to the car and brought our stuff up, then ordered pizza and ate it and were pretty lazy just watching TV in the room XD. Around 9:30 or 10 I decided I wanted to walk around downstairs, so I put on my Namine costume and Ash joined me in walking around the convention center area, where there weren't a whole lot of people yet because it was only Friday, but there were a few hanging about.
Hmmm. My sleeve looks ugly.
Lookin fat, but you get the general idea
That was when the creepiness happened. >_> No sooner had we entered the convention center and walked a little bit when this guy jumped out of NOWHERE and asked, "Hey, how old are you guys?" I was just like "...20.. o_o" and he looked surprised and said "Oh. Well, you're looking good for 20!" When we just looked sort of shocked at him, he said "I mean it!" and bounded away up the stairs. WTF!? What sort of answer were you looking for?? Were we supposed to say 14 and that would have turned you on? Noooo scaryyyy...
But then the even creepier thing happened. We kept walking down towards the room where registration was, and on our left there was a glass wall and beyond it the outside area. A group of guys was walking in that outside area and one of them noticed us and our short skirts and began pounding on the glass wall at us. He was still walking with his group, just... banging on the wall at intervals and staring at us open-mouthed. We were hoping he wouldn't take the final step... but he did. He opened a door and spoke to us. This is what he said: "Hey, ladies." He then made that clicking noise typically used to indicate someone is attractive to you, that "kch-kch" sound, and followed it up with "Lookin' good." Let me take the time here to point out that this was your average fanboy, slightly overweight and not something either of us wanted to tap, though certainly not with the usual paralyzing shyness around girls that characterizes many of that genre, oh no, he felt free to let us know what he thought of us. And let me also say here, that I do not understand the allure of the clicking sound. Yes, it is highly amusing (in fact, it became our little catch phrase for the rest of the con XD), but I do not understand what is going through a guy's mind when he openly makes it at a girl. "No matter what you thought of me before, baby, now that I've clicked my tongue at you and given you the nod, it's ON!!" Uhhhh.... no. Doesn't work that way. In our case, we just sort of ducked behind a pillar as soon as we could, and hoped he wouldn't pursue us.
After that bit of hilarity, we returned to the room, watched some Phil of the Future (hells yes), and went to sleep.
Saturday
We didn't get up as early as I would have liked, but we all struggled out of bed eventually (Michael and I got Starbucks to entice Ash awake XD) and I dragged everyone to go wait in line for the Clamp panel. (After some getting ready in the room, during which we watched SPIDER RIDERS! XD) We got there around 11:30 or noon and we were let in around 2 pm, so we had a fairly good position in line... towards the middle-front, I think. There was lots of time to take cosplay pictures because we had so long in there and there were so many good pictures... including one of a hot guy who cosplayed Fye during the scene where he and Kurogane have to fight in the acid rain or whatever... oh, hawtness >_> I think Ash and Michael's Clamp enthusiasm was somewhat less than mine, and I want to thank them for putting up with the wait and not ditching me in line. XD Especially cause Ash was missing the Mana panel since it was at the same time (what bad programming!!).
Pictures from the line waiting time:
Really good Sakura+rollerblades and Chii :)
Cute Tsubasa Sakura, with non-ugly dress (we saw another made out of like, vinyl and tape or something. EW!)
Hot Fye Just a totally unremarkable Fye... from the scene where he and Kurogane have to fight in the acid rain in the Korea country. Oh man, oh man. Hawwwtttt (Edit: Okay, he is actually Syaoran. ...Still hot >.>)
Really good Hikaru from Angelic Layer
Hikaru & Wizard
The liiiiine in front of us
Line behind us
Line to the side
Picture Ash took of a glaring Michael
I liked these guys' pimp coats, so I took a nice stalker picture of them.
Totoro apron!!!
Finally the line began to move for the Clamp panel. We were on the bottom floor and had to go up two floors to the third level where the panel room was (which was actually a ballroom, a very big room that apparently held 6,000 people, because that is how many attended!) so it took them quite a while to rope off a safe path for us to use, clearing the escalators and such. It actually started an hour late because of that... and didn't make up for it by going later, because of the press panel immediately afterwards (not cool, we were cheated out of an hour of Clamp). We found three seats in the front section, maybe 10 rows or so from the front, on the right side, and had at least a good view of one of the huge screens, and could see Clamp fairly well too. I was quite happy with the seats. As people filed in, they were playing music from Tsubasa ("Amrita" by Yui Makino, Sakura's VA, and some other songs of hers. I am not a fan of her as Sakura and I think her music is wimpy, so I just tolerated it).
The panel began with the moderator, Colleen Clinkenbeard (English VA and director), coming out and saying a few words about the sponsors and whatnot (Tokyopop missing, of course. Bitches). I really liked her as a moderator, she was so cute and clearly just as excited about Clamp being here as we all were :) She then announced the brand-new information that she was to be the director of the English-language Tsubasa Chronicle anime, licensed by FUNimation. She revealed that they were currently casting the English voices and that they would be chosen by the following Friday (July 7). She then asked for members from the audience to volunteer their stories of how they got into Clamp. Three people shared their stories and the work that introduced them to Clamp, usually to cheers depending on what series it was. Then she told us that in preparation for their first visit to the U.S., Clamp had prepared a special 20-minute video just for us, which we were then shown.
The video pretty much resumed all of the things they had worked on up until now, arranged in a very nice format and with music from each series playing during the background. My favorite part was when the announcer (a guy speaking English with no discernible accent at all who was still able to pronounce all the Japanese words perfectly) introduced each member of Clamp as "the CUTE... Mokona! The INTELLIGENT... Ohkawa!" and then a little SD figure one of them had drawn of each of them would pop up on the screen. Heehee, so cute. Overall, though, the video wasn't THAT special, just sort of cool.
After the video was over, Colleen came back and introduced Clamp to us as they filed onstage and took their seats: Satsuki Igarashi, Ageha Ohkawa, Tsubaki Nekoi, and Mokona (this is the order they were sitting in at their table as well). First they showed a slideshow of pictures of their personal workspaces, which was very cool to see. Ohkawa's VAIO laptop and Mokona and Nekoi's collections of Copic markers were highlighted, as well as the fact that Nekoi has the cleanest office, while Mokona's is the messiest ("Color work is messy, so my office is messy too" uh huh, sure Mokona XD). We also saw some upcoming pages for xxxHOLiC that they were currently working on. For the entire panel, Ohkawa dominated in terms of answering the questions XD She was just like their unofficial spokeswoman and they let her field most of the questions. Each member stepped in to clarify or answer things at least a couple times, of course, but most of the time it was Ohkawa who handled everything. :)
Then the question & answer part began. Over 1000 questions had been submitted online, and they had pre-screened the questions and narrowed them down to only 10. (Some have criticized this as being too over-sanitized... part of the fun of a panel is the spontaneity of questions. However, if they had done the form-a-line-and-ask-your-question thing [a la the Maaya Sakamoto panel], most of the people would have just gotten up to the mike, blurted out "I just want to say I love your works!" and then scurried back off to their seats, wasting everyone's time. Or we would have had to deal with the tedious handshake/hug/photo requests, which are always firmly denied in most cases. So even though I do think it was a bit too sanitized, I see why they had to do it this way, especially with a time crunch). Of course I can't remember all the questions that were asked, a lot of them were generic things that yielded the kind of information you can find on any biography of theirs, but some of the most interesting facts that were revealed were: Legal Drug and Kohaku will be picked up and serialized again soon, all of the endings to their series have predetermined endings they come up with ahead of time, and that Tsubasa and xxxHOLiC will have happy endings (but what kind of a happy ending? Clamp's definition of what a happy ending is kind of scares me XD). Also that all of the current members except Ohkawa were high school classmates, which I personally find very cool, even though I think I knew it ahead of time. And when they were asked what inspires them in their works, Mokona replied succinctly with "A deadline is the best inspiration." XD
My personal favorite moment, though, was when Clamp was forced to answer a question about the relationship between Fye and Kurogane in Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle. It went a little something like this...
Question: Kurogane and Fai seem to represent a sort of yin/yang ideal, black and white, light and dark... did you intend for there to be a kind of... (WILD CHEERING FROM YAOI FANGIRLS) ...opposites attract sort of thing going on?
Fangirls: *CHEER SOME MORE*
Translator: *begins to translate*
Ohkawa: (translated) So, you mean to say, that there is fan desire for this pairing?
All of Clamp: *looks sort of abashed yet amused... yes that's right, Clamp, we know you like yaoi and yaoi pairings, and we have you cornered and you have to answer our question about it!*
Fangirls: *CHEER WILDLY IN RESPONSE*
Ohkawa: (translated) Well, our hero Syaoran is a young boy, so we wanted to have some adult figures to accompany him on the journey. And though Kurogane is 'black', he is also a more straightforward person, while though Fai is 'white,' he is harder to read. As for them being together... well, I can tell you that in the current volume we are working on in Japan, there is a spot... *FANGIRL CHEERING DROWNS OUT THE REST*
At this point I was very convinced that they were saying there was an upcoming spot between Fye and Kurogane of a decided yaoi nature. HOWEVER... I may have simply misheard them, and they were only saying "Fye is in a tough spot in the upcoming chapter in Japan," which refers to the fact that currently in the series, Fye is in very serious mortal peril (apparently, I don't read the scanlations). So, hmmm. Either way, it was BEAUTIFUL to see Clamp have to finally own up to their yaoi hints they just love to sprinkle throughout the books. They were all like, "What, US? Make it appear as if two male characters could possibly have a relationship of a romantic persuasion? Nooooo! We don't do that!! We're not... Clamp or anything.. *cough*" ...OH COME ON, CLAMP. XD So yes... regardless of whether I heard it wrong... it was simply beautiful, just beautiful. :)
After the Q&A session ended, Clamp took their leave of the audience, but the panel was not over yet. We were treated to a preview of the Tsubasa and xxxHOLiC movies and some little clips from the Tsubasa anime. Yep, just as Charles said to me, those two series are what they came to promote the most, and their other titles just aren't important at the moment. I'm not much of a fan of the Tsubasa anime (and I haven't had time to watch the xxxHOLiC anime episodes I've d/led yet), but I have to say that the manga for both is quite superb, so I GUESS I don't mind, even though as a person working for Tokyopop I must feel a bit ruffled at being so slighted =_=
And with that, it was over, and we all filed out! On my way out I heard a girl loudly telling her friends "...oh yeah, and Clamp's never coming back again!!" but I don't know why she would have said that. I didn't think the panel was a disaster at all. First of all, fans are the same the world over, and I'm sure Clamp has seen it all before. There was lots of cheering, but nothing ridiculous like "Marry me!" or stupid outbursts of that like... I just don't understand why she would have made such a remark. Oh well.
Directly afterwards was the press panel, in which recording equipment and pictures were allowed, so there's a transcript of it available here and a report with pictures here.
(not my picture)
Igarashi, Ohkawa, Nekoi, Mokona. I think Nekoi is BEAUTIFUL. She looked so cute in her glasses!! awww.
After the panel we went back to the room to change out of clothes and stuff, and then looked at the clock and realized we only had 20 minutes until the dealer's room closed! So we rushed back over to the convention center and Ash made a beeline for the wig booth, where she bought a curly blonde Lolita wig to wear to the Lolita meeting that night. I swung by the Tokyopop booth to see if anyone I knew was there, but there was no one. I had no idea who the people running the booth were (and talking to other people, they didn't either XD Marketing interns, I guess?). Then the dealer's room closed and we had to leave. Oh yeah, that dealer's room was HUGE. Absolutely amazing, with huge booths set up by all the big companies. It was pretty much a con in itself, with a food court in the middle and bathrooms on either end. A very very excellent dealer's room, by any standard. :D I looked forward to being able to spend more time exploring it later.
Mickey ears-Sora and Riku from KH
Ash running to the dealer's room!!
Really good KH group in the dealer's room
Then they asked me to get in it too ^^; I don't look very good here. Or in any of the pics of me in my costume.... >.> cause it sucks?
That previously empty area is now chock full of people!!
Dynasty Warriors chick. I took this picture for Bekah XD
Korean-country Sakura, I think!
YATTA!!! These guys were so badass. They rocked the con!
Tsubasa Sakura. Great job on the dress, perhaps work on a less retarded looking expression >_>
GIANT MOKONA!!
Ooooh, I love this dress, and she did a pretty good job on the costume!
We passed by the big Clamp cosplay meetup group @_@ (Hot Fye is there XD)
Afterwards we went by to see if our numbers had been chosen for the Clamp autograph signing (they had limited spots and gave out tickets while we were in line). Of course, they hadn't... but the people RIGHT in front of us and RIGHT behind us had! While our three tickets were completely skipped!! UNFAIRRRR. Oh well D:
Then I guess we wandered around/chilled in the room until 11, when we went down to the Lolita (EGL/EGA) meetup thingy. Ash had even dressed me up in one of her dresses, which was kind of fun, hahah. And of course she was wearing her pink outfit (with the socks I bought her in Japan!! XD) and Michael was wearing his dandy outfit. We found the meetup on the first floor of the Hilton and chilled there for a bit, taking some pictures, until the big group picture, which I was a part of even though I'm not in that community at all XD (Nor do I plan to, even after dressing up in the clothes!) After the picture-taking, most of everyone there set out in a huge clump to the Denny's across the street from Disneyland. It was kind of a crazy quasi-fiasco because there were so many people in our party and they insisted on putting us all on one tab or something, and some people's food (ours included) took foreverrrrr and it made some people pretty mad. Michael included XD He's such a grumpy old man. But it was okay in the end. And he made up another word, "multifarious" ("many different aspects") and tried to convince us it was a real word. It is, Michael. It's just called multifaceted >.> ahahaha.
hmm~
Whoo, Loli-Sarah. It'll never happen again XD
Ash noticed that we matched. XD I wish I wasn't glaring!
THROWIN UP SOME GANG SIGNS~ (I'm making the 'o fo' fo' sho' thing for our senior year graduation XD)
MYSPACE ANGLES
Ash did some Myspace angles too
Then these... THINGS kind of just.. jammed on in @_@
I don't even know what they are!! But they had a boombox and were playing some song. They were crazy
YEAH, we posed with them XD
Denny's~
They got so bored they made paper cranes out of the ad menus XD
We ended up being the very last ones to leave, and when we walked back to the hotel we sang silly songs. Ash and I attempted to belt out Shiina Ringo's "Tsumi to Batsu" (HOOUUOUUUU O SASUUUU, ASA NO YAMATE DOOORRRRIIIII) and that was fun XD Then Michael impressed us all with his special intimate knowledge of every Disney song ever, but mostly the "I'll Make a Man Out of You" song from Mulan (he knows ALL THE VERSES) and "Be Our Guest" (his favorite part is Mrs. Potts' lines XD). Oh, hilarityyyy. I learned so many funny things about Michael this weekend (including the fact that he uses a loofah in the shower like a GIRL, and that he is hardcore about ironing, with starch spray and everything. Michael, you are such a girl!!! XD) bwahaha. But I finally got to hear Michael sing something, which was cool (I was jealous of all the people who heard him sing karaoke at Steph's and came away AMAZED at his singing skills) so finally >:D
continued >>
Okay. It was, in a word, awesome. Ten thousand times better than Akon in terms of organization (there actually is some, for one), cosplay (oh my god), events, guests (CLAAAAAMP!)... though not in terms of signs, because they have not been banned from the West Coast apparently. Get on that, AX. I thought we had all learned our lesson. But yeah, just a great, well-done con all around. :) Lots of fun.
Friday
Technically not a real con day, just for people who've pre-registered to pick up their badges. It was also the day Ash and Michael's flight was getting in so in the morning I drove over to LAX and picked them up. Wow, that makes it sound so easy, and totally omits the part where I freaked out because that airport is kinda crazy and I wasn't sure if I would find them for a bit there. But I did, and it was cool, and we made our way to Anaheim safely. We couldn't check into the hotel (the Hilton) yet so I just parked the car and we got out and began wandering around.
I love that skirt!!! Bekah discovered it in the girls' section at Target and bought us the XL size, and it fits perfectly XD Now I can cosplay Sakura again XDDD
Hahaha then the sprinklers came on
Empty convention center
I really like this picture of me XD
You can see Disneyland from here! (There's the Tower of Terror tower in the distance)
We eventually ended up in the registration line, which wasn't too bad at all, and we picked up our badges. Then we were hungry so we walked down the street and found a Denny's and had lunch there... yumm. As we were walking to Denny's, Michael tried to make up a word, but we totally caught him on it.
Michael: Wow, the weather here is really tempid.
Ash and Sarah: Yeah.... .......wait, what!?
Turns out he had combined 'tepid' and 'temperate' to make a brand new word XD Which he then tried to convince us was real!! Ohhh Michael.
Then by the time we got back we could check into the hotel, so Ash checked us in and we promptly went up to the room...... and fell asleep.
Registration hall
Ash at Denny's with her lemonade
Walking up to the convention center and its huge AX banner
in the room
>_> for like 4 hours. WE WERE TIRED! Ash and Michael had been up since 4 a.m., and I'm always sleep deprived, so we saw our opportunity and took it. When we woke up, we went down to the car and brought our stuff up, then ordered pizza and ate it and were pretty lazy just watching TV in the room XD. Around 9:30 or 10 I decided I wanted to walk around downstairs, so I put on my Namine costume and Ash joined me in walking around the convention center area, where there weren't a whole lot of people yet because it was only Friday, but there were a few hanging about.
Hmmm. My sleeve looks ugly.
Lookin fat, but you get the general idea
That was when the creepiness happened. >_> No sooner had we entered the convention center and walked a little bit when this guy jumped out of NOWHERE and asked, "Hey, how old are you guys?" I was just like "...20.. o_o" and he looked surprised and said "Oh. Well, you're looking good for 20!" When we just looked sort of shocked at him, he said "I mean it!" and bounded away up the stairs. WTF!? What sort of answer were you looking for?? Were we supposed to say 14 and that would have turned you on? Noooo scaryyyy...
But then the even creepier thing happened. We kept walking down towards the room where registration was, and on our left there was a glass wall and beyond it the outside area. A group of guys was walking in that outside area and one of them noticed us and our short skirts and began pounding on the glass wall at us. He was still walking with his group, just... banging on the wall at intervals and staring at us open-mouthed. We were hoping he wouldn't take the final step... but he did. He opened a door and spoke to us. This is what he said: "Hey, ladies." He then made that clicking noise typically used to indicate someone is attractive to you, that "kch-kch" sound, and followed it up with "Lookin' good." Let me take the time here to point out that this was your average fanboy, slightly overweight and not something either of us wanted to tap, though certainly not with the usual paralyzing shyness around girls that characterizes many of that genre, oh no, he felt free to let us know what he thought of us. And let me also say here, that I do not understand the allure of the clicking sound. Yes, it is highly amusing (in fact, it became our little catch phrase for the rest of the con XD), but I do not understand what is going through a guy's mind when he openly makes it at a girl. "No matter what you thought of me before, baby, now that I've clicked my tongue at you and given you the nod, it's ON!!" Uhhhh.... no. Doesn't work that way. In our case, we just sort of ducked behind a pillar as soon as we could, and hoped he wouldn't pursue us.
After that bit of hilarity, we returned to the room, watched some Phil of the Future (hells yes), and went to sleep.
Saturday
We didn't get up as early as I would have liked, but we all struggled out of bed eventually (Michael and I got Starbucks to entice Ash awake XD) and I dragged everyone to go wait in line for the Clamp panel. (After some getting ready in the room, during which we watched SPIDER RIDERS! XD) We got there around 11:30 or noon and we were let in around 2 pm, so we had a fairly good position in line... towards the middle-front, I think. There was lots of time to take cosplay pictures because we had so long in there and there were so many good pictures... including one of a hot guy who cosplayed Fye during the scene where he and Kurogane have to fight in the acid rain or whatever... oh, hawtness >_> I think Ash and Michael's Clamp enthusiasm was somewhat less than mine, and I want to thank them for putting up with the wait and not ditching me in line. XD Especially cause Ash was missing the Mana panel since it was at the same time (what bad programming!!).
Pictures from the line waiting time:
Really good Sakura+rollerblades and Chii :)
Cute Tsubasa Sakura, with non-ugly dress (we saw another made out of like, vinyl and tape or something. EW!)
Hot Fye Just a totally unremarkable Fye... from the scene where he and Kurogane have to fight in the acid rain in the Korea country. Oh man, oh man. Hawwwtttt (Edit: Okay, he is actually Syaoran. ...Still hot >.>)
Really good Hikaru from Angelic Layer
Hikaru & Wizard
The liiiiine in front of us
Line behind us
Line to the side
Picture Ash took of a glaring Michael
I liked these guys' pimp coats, so I took a nice stalker picture of them.
Totoro apron!!!
Finally the line began to move for the Clamp panel. We were on the bottom floor and had to go up two floors to the third level where the panel room was (which was actually a ballroom, a very big room that apparently held 6,000 people, because that is how many attended!) so it took them quite a while to rope off a safe path for us to use, clearing the escalators and such. It actually started an hour late because of that... and didn't make up for it by going later, because of the press panel immediately afterwards (not cool, we were cheated out of an hour of Clamp). We found three seats in the front section, maybe 10 rows or so from the front, on the right side, and had at least a good view of one of the huge screens, and could see Clamp fairly well too. I was quite happy with the seats. As people filed in, they were playing music from Tsubasa ("Amrita" by Yui Makino, Sakura's VA, and some other songs of hers. I am not a fan of her as Sakura and I think her music is wimpy, so I just tolerated it).
The panel began with the moderator, Colleen Clinkenbeard (English VA and director), coming out and saying a few words about the sponsors and whatnot (Tokyopop missing, of course. Bitches). I really liked her as a moderator, she was so cute and clearly just as excited about Clamp being here as we all were :) She then announced the brand-new information that she was to be the director of the English-language Tsubasa Chronicle anime, licensed by FUNimation. She revealed that they were currently casting the English voices and that they would be chosen by the following Friday (July 7). She then asked for members from the audience to volunteer their stories of how they got into Clamp. Three people shared their stories and the work that introduced them to Clamp, usually to cheers depending on what series it was. Then she told us that in preparation for their first visit to the U.S., Clamp had prepared a special 20-minute video just for us, which we were then shown.
The video pretty much resumed all of the things they had worked on up until now, arranged in a very nice format and with music from each series playing during the background. My favorite part was when the announcer (a guy speaking English with no discernible accent at all who was still able to pronounce all the Japanese words perfectly) introduced each member of Clamp as "the CUTE... Mokona! The INTELLIGENT... Ohkawa!" and then a little SD figure one of them had drawn of each of them would pop up on the screen. Heehee, so cute. Overall, though, the video wasn't THAT special, just sort of cool.
After the video was over, Colleen came back and introduced Clamp to us as they filed onstage and took their seats: Satsuki Igarashi, Ageha Ohkawa, Tsubaki Nekoi, and Mokona (this is the order they were sitting in at their table as well). First they showed a slideshow of pictures of their personal workspaces, which was very cool to see. Ohkawa's VAIO laptop and Mokona and Nekoi's collections of Copic markers were highlighted, as well as the fact that Nekoi has the cleanest office, while Mokona's is the messiest ("Color work is messy, so my office is messy too" uh huh, sure Mokona XD). We also saw some upcoming pages for xxxHOLiC that they were currently working on. For the entire panel, Ohkawa dominated in terms of answering the questions XD She was just like their unofficial spokeswoman and they let her field most of the questions. Each member stepped in to clarify or answer things at least a couple times, of course, but most of the time it was Ohkawa who handled everything. :)
Then the question & answer part began. Over 1000 questions had been submitted online, and they had pre-screened the questions and narrowed them down to only 10. (Some have criticized this as being too over-sanitized... part of the fun of a panel is the spontaneity of questions. However, if they had done the form-a-line-and-ask-your-question thing [a la the Maaya Sakamoto panel], most of the people would have just gotten up to the mike, blurted out "I just want to say I love your works!" and then scurried back off to their seats, wasting everyone's time. Or we would have had to deal with the tedious handshake/hug/photo requests, which are always firmly denied in most cases. So even though I do think it was a bit too sanitized, I see why they had to do it this way, especially with a time crunch). Of course I can't remember all the questions that were asked, a lot of them were generic things that yielded the kind of information you can find on any biography of theirs, but some of the most interesting facts that were revealed were: Legal Drug and Kohaku will be picked up and serialized again soon, all of the endings to their series have predetermined endings they come up with ahead of time, and that Tsubasa and xxxHOLiC will have happy endings (but what kind of a happy ending? Clamp's definition of what a happy ending is kind of scares me XD). Also that all of the current members except Ohkawa were high school classmates, which I personally find very cool, even though I think I knew it ahead of time. And when they were asked what inspires them in their works, Mokona replied succinctly with "A deadline is the best inspiration." XD
My personal favorite moment, though, was when Clamp was forced to answer a question about the relationship between Fye and Kurogane in Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle. It went a little something like this...
Question: Kurogane and Fai seem to represent a sort of yin/yang ideal, black and white, light and dark... did you intend for there to be a kind of... (WILD CHEERING FROM YAOI FANGIRLS) ...opposites attract sort of thing going on?
Fangirls: *CHEER SOME MORE*
Translator: *begins to translate*
Ohkawa: (translated) So, you mean to say, that there is fan desire for this pairing?
All of Clamp: *looks sort of abashed yet amused... yes that's right, Clamp, we know you like yaoi and yaoi pairings, and we have you cornered and you have to answer our question about it!*
Fangirls: *CHEER WILDLY IN RESPONSE*
Ohkawa: (translated) Well, our hero Syaoran is a young boy, so we wanted to have some adult figures to accompany him on the journey. And though Kurogane is 'black', he is also a more straightforward person, while though Fai is 'white,' he is harder to read. As for them being together... well, I can tell you that in the current volume we are working on in Japan, there is a spot... *FANGIRL CHEERING DROWNS OUT THE REST*
At this point I was very convinced that they were saying there was an upcoming spot between Fye and Kurogane of a decided yaoi nature. HOWEVER... I may have simply misheard them, and they were only saying "Fye is in a tough spot in the upcoming chapter in Japan," which refers to the fact that currently in the series, Fye is in very serious mortal peril (apparently, I don't read the scanlations). So, hmmm. Either way, it was BEAUTIFUL to see Clamp have to finally own up to their yaoi hints they just love to sprinkle throughout the books. They were all like, "What, US? Make it appear as if two male characters could possibly have a relationship of a romantic persuasion? Nooooo! We don't do that!! We're not... Clamp or anything.. *cough*" ...OH COME ON, CLAMP. XD So yes... regardless of whether I heard it wrong... it was simply beautiful, just beautiful. :)
After the Q&A session ended, Clamp took their leave of the audience, but the panel was not over yet. We were treated to a preview of the Tsubasa and xxxHOLiC movies and some little clips from the Tsubasa anime. Yep, just as Charles said to me, those two series are what they came to promote the most, and their other titles just aren't important at the moment. I'm not much of a fan of the Tsubasa anime (and I haven't had time to watch the xxxHOLiC anime episodes I've d/led yet), but I have to say that the manga for both is quite superb, so I GUESS I don't mind, even though as a person working for Tokyopop I must feel a bit ruffled at being so slighted =_=
And with that, it was over, and we all filed out! On my way out I heard a girl loudly telling her friends "...oh yeah, and Clamp's never coming back again!!" but I don't know why she would have said that. I didn't think the panel was a disaster at all. First of all, fans are the same the world over, and I'm sure Clamp has seen it all before. There was lots of cheering, but nothing ridiculous like "Marry me!" or stupid outbursts of that like... I just don't understand why she would have made such a remark. Oh well.
Directly afterwards was the press panel, in which recording equipment and pictures were allowed, so there's a transcript of it available here and a report with pictures here.
(not my picture)
Igarashi, Ohkawa, Nekoi, Mokona. I think Nekoi is BEAUTIFUL. She looked so cute in her glasses!! awww.
After the panel we went back to the room to change out of clothes and stuff, and then looked at the clock and realized we only had 20 minutes until the dealer's room closed! So we rushed back over to the convention center and Ash made a beeline for the wig booth, where she bought a curly blonde Lolita wig to wear to the Lolita meeting that night. I swung by the Tokyopop booth to see if anyone I knew was there, but there was no one. I had no idea who the people running the booth were (and talking to other people, they didn't either XD Marketing interns, I guess?). Then the dealer's room closed and we had to leave. Oh yeah, that dealer's room was HUGE. Absolutely amazing, with huge booths set up by all the big companies. It was pretty much a con in itself, with a food court in the middle and bathrooms on either end. A very very excellent dealer's room, by any standard. :D I looked forward to being able to spend more time exploring it later.
Mickey ears-Sora and Riku from KH
Ash running to the dealer's room!!
Really good KH group in the dealer's room
Then they asked me to get in it too ^^; I don't look very good here. Or in any of the pics of me in my costume.... >.> cause it sucks?
That previously empty area is now chock full of people!!
Dynasty Warriors chick. I took this picture for Bekah XD
Korean-country Sakura, I think!
YATTA!!! These guys were so badass. They rocked the con!
Tsubasa Sakura. Great job on the dress, perhaps work on a less retarded looking expression >_>
GIANT MOKONA!!
Ooooh, I love this dress, and she did a pretty good job on the costume!
We passed by the big Clamp cosplay meetup group @_@ (Hot Fye is there XD)
Afterwards we went by to see if our numbers had been chosen for the Clamp autograph signing (they had limited spots and gave out tickets while we were in line). Of course, they hadn't... but the people RIGHT in front of us and RIGHT behind us had! While our three tickets were completely skipped!! UNFAIRRRR. Oh well D:
Then I guess we wandered around/chilled in the room until 11, when we went down to the Lolita (EGL/EGA) meetup thingy. Ash had even dressed me up in one of her dresses, which was kind of fun, hahah. And of course she was wearing her pink outfit (with the socks I bought her in Japan!! XD) and Michael was wearing his dandy outfit. We found the meetup on the first floor of the Hilton and chilled there for a bit, taking some pictures, until the big group picture, which I was a part of even though I'm not in that community at all XD (Nor do I plan to, even after dressing up in the clothes!) After the picture-taking, most of everyone there set out in a huge clump to the Denny's across the street from Disneyland. It was kind of a crazy quasi-fiasco because there were so many people in our party and they insisted on putting us all on one tab or something, and some people's food (ours included) took foreverrrrr and it made some people pretty mad. Michael included XD He's such a grumpy old man. But it was okay in the end. And he made up another word, "multifarious" ("many different aspects") and tried to convince us it was a real word. It is, Michael. It's just called multifaceted >.> ahahaha.
hmm~
Whoo, Loli-Sarah. It'll never happen again XD
Ash noticed that we matched. XD I wish I wasn't glaring!
THROWIN UP SOME GANG SIGNS~ (I'm making the 'o fo' fo' sho' thing for our senior year graduation XD)
MYSPACE ANGLES
Ash did some Myspace angles too
Then these... THINGS kind of just.. jammed on in @_@
I don't even know what they are!! But they had a boombox and were playing some song. They were crazy
YEAH, we posed with them XD
Denny's~
They got so bored they made paper cranes out of the ad menus XD
We ended up being the very last ones to leave, and when we walked back to the hotel we sang silly songs. Ash and I attempted to belt out Shiina Ringo's "Tsumi to Batsu" (HOOUUOUUUU O SASUUUU, ASA NO YAMATE DOOORRRRIIIII) and that was fun XD Then Michael impressed us all with his special intimate knowledge of every Disney song ever, but mostly the "I'll Make a Man Out of You" song from Mulan (he knows ALL THE VERSES) and "Be Our Guest" (his favorite part is Mrs. Potts' lines XD). Oh, hilarityyyy. I learned so many funny things about Michael this weekend (including the fact that he uses a loofah in the shower like a GIRL, and that he is hardcore about ironing, with starch spray and everything. Michael, you are such a girl!!! XD) bwahaha. But I finally got to hear Michael sing something, which was cool (I was jealous of all the people who heard him sing karaoke at Steph's and came away AMAZED at his singing skills) so finally >:D
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