Otakon Day 3 of 4
Woke up late on Satuday...alarm went all wonky. The Day Of Waiting In Lines began late...I think we got to the convention around 10:30 AM...details are starting to slip. No screwing around, we went right for the dealer room. Joy's Japanimation had a Mitsune figure from Love Hina for $6. Sold. Wandered around the dealer room for a bit. Found Yu-Gi-Oh! Stairway to the Destined Duel for the GBA Japanese version for $10, sans Egyptian God Cards of course. Sold. Got it to play in English in under a minute. Met an awesome Kenshin fan at the Kinokuniya booth, helped her find about 12 volumes of the manga. Got myself and my sister a manga each...I got King of Bandits Jing and I got her one called Tuxedo Gin...think Yuu Yuu Hakusho. With Penguins. We went back to the room to unload and eat at that point. We went back and got in line for TMR at that point. Started playing "Duel Monsters International" in line while she read her manga...got my ass handed to me repeatedly. Got progressively better as we went. I started King of Bandits Jing at some point in there...pretty much One Piece with supermoves and a really slow moving backstory...picks up as it goes though. We had 5th row for TM Revolution. Kristine Sa opened for him...sung only in English, worked the crowd a little too much, only did three songs. For a K-Pop singer, I expected her to sing in you know, Korean. TMR came out after that, he was wearing a yukata and frankly looked like a woman. His drummer and his guitarists looked pissed...just the way they should. Crowd went fucking berserk when the opening chords of "Heart of the Sword" played. He worked the mic some...his English could use some work, but was still nothing short of adorable..."let us enjoy more and more." He did his two Gundam Seed songs too. Now, up until I saw him I thought he was all vocals...until they brought out his guitar. Jesus is he good. He did an encore for "Heart of the Sword" where the crowd did most of the song and he did back vocals and got everyone up to speed vocally. It was incredible. After considerable ear suctioning we had to leave the room to get back in line for hte masquerade(ain't that a bitch?). Got some food, played some more Duel Monsters, and watched the Otaklause Challenge...didn't really see much of it, just remember one guy flailing another with one of those insane foam rods you get for pools and the like...that was awesome.
The Masquerade was pretty decent...not as good as last year. The youth skits were...well...better than some of the adult ones. First Forte/Bass costume I've ever seen, and I was damn proud of that kid. The real ones started with a bang, a Super Smash Brothers skit that featured almost every character, funny as HELL. Won all of the awards apparently. Or something. There was a Battle Royale one that had better fight choreography than many of the movies I've seen in recent memory...nothing too too good though...standard DDR cosplay, standard Utena "I'm Too Sexy" skit, standard "Sailor Moon Characters looking pretty" one, a pretty good Angel Sanctuary one featuring some people I knew from message boards, and FFVII Cid doing standup comedy..."you ever notice that how badass a character is is directly proportional to how much they bounce? There's Zell(bounce bounce bounce bounce), and then there's me, you know, not too much(bounce bounce), and then there's Auron(absolutely still.) " Classic.
AMV winners were pretty much everything I expected to win...Escaflowne to the theme from Karate Kid, Macross/Macross Plus to a montage from Top Gun, I bet there was another one in here too...Various anime to "69"(the Rock a Rhyme song) by Run DMC(excellent use of footage and Transformers the Movie bits ^_^), and Card Captor Sakura to a punk cover of "Springtime lollypods and rainbows everywhere...". They did about 12,956 awards for hall costumes. It was 11PM by then. We got up, we got out. We normally stay for the awards, but it was getting out of hand. And it was getting late. We went back to the room after getting a few pictures and some free pepsi...my sister stayed back, I went to the game room and messed with Puzzle Fighter some more, got to play more F-Zero for the Game Cube. I suck at it, but I like it.
Kinda walked around for a little while. Otakon would be over soon. I live for it each year. It was definately winding down when they closed the gameroom. The rave was even slowing down...and Otakon 2003 was beginning to grind to a close.
See you next time.
The Masquerade was pretty decent...not as good as last year. The youth skits were...well...better than some of the adult ones. First Forte/Bass costume I've ever seen, and I was damn proud of that kid. The real ones started with a bang, a Super Smash Brothers skit that featured almost every character, funny as HELL. Won all of the awards apparently. Or something. There was a Battle Royale one that had better fight choreography than many of the movies I've seen in recent memory...nothing too too good though...standard DDR cosplay, standard Utena "I'm Too Sexy" skit, standard "Sailor Moon Characters looking pretty" one, a pretty good Angel Sanctuary one featuring some people I knew from message boards, and FFVII Cid doing standup comedy..."you ever notice that how badass a character is is directly proportional to how much they bounce? There's Zell(bounce bounce bounce bounce), and then there's me, you know, not too much(bounce bounce), and then there's Auron(absolutely still.) " Classic.
AMV winners were pretty much everything I expected to win...Escaflowne to the theme from Karate Kid, Macross/Macross Plus to a montage from Top Gun, I bet there was another one in here too...Various anime to "69"(the Rock a Rhyme song) by Run DMC(excellent use of footage and Transformers the Movie bits ^_^), and Card Captor Sakura to a punk cover of "Springtime lollypods and rainbows everywhere...". They did about 12,956 awards for hall costumes. It was 11PM by then. We got up, we got out. We normally stay for the awards, but it was getting out of hand. And it was getting late. We went back to the room after getting a few pictures and some free pepsi...my sister stayed back, I went to the game room and messed with Puzzle Fighter some more, got to play more F-Zero for the Game Cube. I suck at it, but I like it.
Kinda walked around for a little while. Otakon would be over soon. I live for it each year. It was definately winding down when they closed the gameroom. The rave was even slowing down...and Otakon 2003 was beginning to grind to a close.
See you next time.