Ohayocon 2007
Ohayocon was this past weekend, so here is a summary of the fun time we had this year! Big positives: I wasn't horribly sick this year, woohoo, and the trip there was only 20 minutes compared to over 6 hours last year, hehe. One negative: I couldn't find the camera, so I don't have any cool pictures. T_T
First of all, thank god for pre-registration! It's a life-saver! There were a lot of people this year, definitely more than last year, and the event organizers were caught off-guard, so registration wasn't going very smoothly. But, those of us who had pre-registered were able to go up to the front of the line, and sign-in only took about 10 minutes, compared to the wait of over an our that the non-pre-reg people had. Ouch. The registration lines were like that both Friday night and Saturday morning, it was insane. (The convention is 3 days.)
We learned about a lot of new things this year from workshops and panels and exhibitions. The first new thing wasn't really anime/manga related directly, but there definitely was a lot of it over the weekend, but I'd never heard of it before, and it was RBG, which I learned means Random Battle Group. We missed the introduction, so we didn't get to find out much about it, but it's basically people in costume role-playing a fight with a bunch of other people. As far as I know, there's no real objective to it other than entertainment, and it was entertaining, at least for the amount of time we saw it. Other new things we learned about were Eurobeat and Para Para dancing; I had heard some Eurobeat music on anime music stations before, I just didn't know that's what it was. The Para Para dancing was interesting to watch, but I didn't actually do any of it (because I'm horribly uncoordinated, and there's no way I'd be able to remember the moves.) There was a Para Para exhibition by the group Para2Mahou, who, apparently, are pretty well known, and the leader Mi~ke does a lot of his own routines. We also saw a Kendo exhibition, which was very informative. I know all martial arts are challenging, but kendo seems really hard. I'd certainly never be able to do it.
Johan is really into the behind-the-scene aspect of things, so we went to a few panels about behind-the-scenes of the anime industry. One was "Production: Japan to America" and featured Matt Greenfield one of the founders of ADV and a few people from Funimation (sorry I don't remember their names >.<) Matt had a wealth of knowledge about the production aspects, and we really learned a lot about how things like that work and how complicated it can all be. Then there was a voice-dubbing workshop with Chris Sabat (dub voices for Ayame in FB; Father Tres in Trinity Blood; Major Alex Louis Armstrong in FMA; among many others). That workshop was a lot of fun; Chris is really cool and funny, and amazingly almost all of the people who volunteered to do the dubbing were actually pretty good actors. (Chris was surprised too, he actually said he was a little scared because of it, hehe.)
Other things we did over the weekend included a cosplay pajama party, I went as Orihime and Johan went as Urahara. And we watched this very weird adult-themed Japanese live-action movie which was dubbed. We got there too late and so didn't catch the title, but it was about this girl who did "Bare-A** Kung-Fu." It wasn't pr0n, just a lot of that girl's butt. It was clear that it had a very small budget, but it wasn't a serious movie anyway, so the bad production values actually made it funnier. We also went to a comedy improv show hosted by a lot of the voice actors. That was funny, and we had a good time. Strangely, we didn't actually watch that much anime while we were at the convention. It seemed to work out that during the times we weren't at the panels, we had already seen the anime they were showing or we seriously weren't interested in it.
There were a lot of cosplayers, of course (again, sorry I don't have any pictures! DX ) We never got our costumes that I ordered back in August so we couldn't cosplay like we wanted to. I found Orihime's hairpins at Hot Topic, so I tried to cosplay as her, but I don't think anyone noticed, and it was really hard to keep the hairpins from falling out. Johan wore his Urahara hat and geta most of the time, he just didn't have the rest of the costume. There were a lot of other Bleach cosplayers too; quite a few Urahara's, a few Ichigo's, and a lot of captains. There were also a ton of Naruto cosplayers, and a bunch of FMA ones too. There were some non-anime related coplayers too. There were Stormtroopers again, and some Ghostbusters, who had really awesome Proton Packs, but by far the most awesome costumes IMHO were the Katamari cosplayers as the King of All Cosmos, the Prince, and Ichigo. I'm a big Katamari fan, and I was excited to see them, and besides, they were totally amazing looking costumes.
Oh, here's a funny thing that happened in the elevator. Johan was wearing his Urahara hat and I had on my Bleach sweatshirt, and this guy and his son got in with us, then the elevator stopped and a girl got on, in regular clothes, and the guy said "Oh good, someone in normal clothes!" I just thought Hey, man, we're standing right here. We're just anime fans, we're not deaf. (Because I'd never be brave enough to say that out loud.) Geez. Oh no! The Cosplay Cooties are spreading! You'll be putting on a wig and carrying a sword in no time. LOL!
Johan didn't think the dealer room was as big as it was last year, and I guess he was right. There still were a lot of vendors, and some interesting stuff, but...I didn't buy anything!!! It was amazing! We did buy convention t-shirts, but those weren't from the vendor room, so yeah, they didn't really count. I did look for stuff to buy, but couldn't find anything that I didn't already have. *sigh* Oh well, hehe.
So, to sum up, we had a really fun weekend. It was nice to just hang out with a bunch of other anime fans. It was also a nice release from all of the stress we've had these past two months. I feel very refreshed now! ^_^
The hotel we stayed in was very nice. We didn't stay in the official hotel this year like we did last year, which was a very good decision. Our hotel was just on the other side of the food court from the convention center, and it was less than a 5 minute walk. Also, we got free hot breakfast, free adult drinks for happy hour, and free soda anytime. There really aren't many hotels that offer that much, and it was still cheaper than the special convention rate at the official hotel. Also, the elevators remained in working order and it just wasn't as crowded or noisy in general.
First of all, thank god for pre-registration! It's a life-saver! There were a lot of people this year, definitely more than last year, and the event organizers were caught off-guard, so registration wasn't going very smoothly. But, those of us who had pre-registered were able to go up to the front of the line, and sign-in only took about 10 minutes, compared to the wait of over an our that the non-pre-reg people had. Ouch. The registration lines were like that both Friday night and Saturday morning, it was insane. (The convention is 3 days.)
We learned about a lot of new things this year from workshops and panels and exhibitions. The first new thing wasn't really anime/manga related directly, but there definitely was a lot of it over the weekend, but I'd never heard of it before, and it was RBG, which I learned means Random Battle Group. We missed the introduction, so we didn't get to find out much about it, but it's basically people in costume role-playing a fight with a bunch of other people. As far as I know, there's no real objective to it other than entertainment, and it was entertaining, at least for the amount of time we saw it. Other new things we learned about were Eurobeat and Para Para dancing; I had heard some Eurobeat music on anime music stations before, I just didn't know that's what it was. The Para Para dancing was interesting to watch, but I didn't actually do any of it (because I'm horribly uncoordinated, and there's no way I'd be able to remember the moves.) There was a Para Para exhibition by the group Para2Mahou, who, apparently, are pretty well known, and the leader Mi~ke does a lot of his own routines. We also saw a Kendo exhibition, which was very informative. I know all martial arts are challenging, but kendo seems really hard. I'd certainly never be able to do it.
Johan is really into the behind-the-scene aspect of things, so we went to a few panels about behind-the-scenes of the anime industry. One was "Production: Japan to America" and featured Matt Greenfield one of the founders of ADV and a few people from Funimation (sorry I don't remember their names >.<) Matt had a wealth of knowledge about the production aspects, and we really learned a lot about how things like that work and how complicated it can all be. Then there was a voice-dubbing workshop with Chris Sabat (dub voices for Ayame in FB; Father Tres in Trinity Blood; Major Alex Louis Armstrong in FMA; among many others). That workshop was a lot of fun; Chris is really cool and funny, and amazingly almost all of the people who volunteered to do the dubbing were actually pretty good actors. (Chris was surprised too, he actually said he was a little scared because of it, hehe.)
Other things we did over the weekend included a cosplay pajama party, I went as Orihime and Johan went as Urahara. And we watched this very weird adult-themed Japanese live-action movie which was dubbed. We got there too late and so didn't catch the title, but it was about this girl who did "Bare-A** Kung-Fu." It wasn't pr0n, just a lot of that girl's butt. It was clear that it had a very small budget, but it wasn't a serious movie anyway, so the bad production values actually made it funnier. We also went to a comedy improv show hosted by a lot of the voice actors. That was funny, and we had a good time. Strangely, we didn't actually watch that much anime while we were at the convention. It seemed to work out that during the times we weren't at the panels, we had already seen the anime they were showing or we seriously weren't interested in it.
There were a lot of cosplayers, of course (again, sorry I don't have any pictures! DX ) We never got our costumes that I ordered back in August so we couldn't cosplay like we wanted to. I found Orihime's hairpins at Hot Topic, so I tried to cosplay as her, but I don't think anyone noticed, and it was really hard to keep the hairpins from falling out. Johan wore his Urahara hat and geta most of the time, he just didn't have the rest of the costume. There were a lot of other Bleach cosplayers too; quite a few Urahara's, a few Ichigo's, and a lot of captains. There were also a ton of Naruto cosplayers, and a bunch of FMA ones too. There were some non-anime related coplayers too. There were Stormtroopers again, and some Ghostbusters, who had really awesome Proton Packs, but by far the most awesome costumes IMHO were the Katamari cosplayers as the King of All Cosmos, the Prince, and Ichigo. I'm a big Katamari fan, and I was excited to see them, and besides, they were totally amazing looking costumes.
Oh, here's a funny thing that happened in the elevator. Johan was wearing his Urahara hat and I had on my Bleach sweatshirt, and this guy and his son got in with us, then the elevator stopped and a girl got on, in regular clothes, and the guy said "Oh good, someone in normal clothes!" I just thought Hey, man, we're standing right here. We're just anime fans, we're not deaf. (Because I'd never be brave enough to say that out loud.) Geez. Oh no! The Cosplay Cooties are spreading! You'll be putting on a wig and carrying a sword in no time. LOL!
Johan didn't think the dealer room was as big as it was last year, and I guess he was right. There still were a lot of vendors, and some interesting stuff, but...I didn't buy anything!!! It was amazing! We did buy convention t-shirts, but those weren't from the vendor room, so yeah, they didn't really count. I did look for stuff to buy, but couldn't find anything that I didn't already have. *sigh* Oh well, hehe.
So, to sum up, we had a really fun weekend. It was nice to just hang out with a bunch of other anime fans. It was also a nice release from all of the stress we've had these past two months. I feel very refreshed now! ^_^
The hotel we stayed in was very nice. We didn't stay in the official hotel this year like we did last year, which was a very good decision. Our hotel was just on the other side of the food court from the convention center, and it was less than a 5 minute walk. Also, we got free hot breakfast, free adult drinks for happy hour, and free soda anytime. There really aren't many hotels that offer that much, and it was still cheaper than the special convention rate at the official hotel. Also, the elevators remained in working order and it just wasn't as crowded or noisy in general.