After Action: ACEN '09
Shortish Summery of the ACEN trip.
We left around 4am Thursday and I ended up in an SUV with Nate & Dave for most of the trip up I watched Wagaya No Oinari-sama. We had a couple of stops some truck stop in Indiana for breakfast and a stop at a fireworks store to get a copious amount of explosives for later use. =P
When we got into Chicago we had lunch at an all you can eat sushi place - things are a bit hazy after that but we toured Oz Park and then drove around a lot through a lot of ethnic neighborhoods and finally made it to the hotel. Most of the first night was spent partying.
Friday morning I hit the video rooms and saw Ghost Hunt and quite frankly I was bored out of my mind for the episodes I watched. The show features western style paranormal investigators who are also helped out by a Shinto Miko, A Shingon Monk, and/or a Catholic Priest for various cases. The first five episodes were mostly exposition and I have to hand it to the series creators who did a lot of research but they feel the need to share every bit of it. If you know anything about Ghost Hunters and their tools listening to long discussions about the types and use of various cameras, sensors, and other eqipment is going to leave you mind numbingly bored. This would have been a bit more bearable if the first 3-part case wouldn't have been so obvious (and with the billboard sized 'hints' I'm sure even people who haven't read anything about Paranormal Research would have figured out the source of the disturbances by the end of the first episode). Mercifully, from what I've heard by about half-way through the series they stop going on and on with discussion about the equipment and ghost hunting practices and finally focus more on the actual stories.
Then I ran into a Stink Burger entitled Ah my Buddha! The Aroused One a harem anime set at a Buddhist temple. It is literally something that has to be seen to believe - the show is horrible and kitschy. The show centers on Hatanaka Ikko a rather horny trainee monk in a temple filled with young beautiful nuns - there is a copius amount of panty shots and more. Each episode has them saving/converting a demon by the saving grace of (Amitabha) Buddha, at least one of the nuns getting nude, and some sort of "Buddhist" moral to the story. It's just really bad in multiple ways.
Stumbling into the light of the mythical 'outside', I headed over to the convention center and made a quick trip through the dealers room finding nothing I was looking for but picked up a manga-style comic called Pantheon High (I'll have a review up on the first volume later but in short: it's bad).
Then I skipped out on the con and took the blue line off to downtown Chicago and spent most of the day with neilworms wandering about.
After a bit of sight seeing we met up with two of neilworms' friends and rushed off to catch the new Star Trek film.
Now for the film I wasn't expecting much - in fact I was expecting to see another lukewarm movie that would end up pissing on the franchise. Instead I was blow away. The film is quite frankly amazing - J. J. Abrams managed to bottle lighting by keeping the spirit of the old TOS while twisting and reinventing it into something new. This film literally has made me care about Star Trek one again - it's that good.
While not giving away spoilers here - the plot involves a time traveling villain who causes major changes to the Star Trek universe which results in a new time line. Quite frankly this is what Star Trek has needed for a bit as the franchise had become rather stale and Berman and Braga had driven Trek off a cliff. The mythos needed a reset and Abrams delivered it with surgical procession so that the essence of Trek could rise like a phoenix from the ashes. Zachary Quinto does a wonderful job of playing Spock but Simon Pegg steals the show with his near perfect take on Scotty. The movie includes tons of references to the old Star Trek and seemed to have the fans in mind so people who haven't seen any Star Trek before may be at a loss to understand some parts. But anyways watch the film it's awesome - also I want a super-retractable Katana.
Following the movie we went off to eat at Epic Burger which was epic.
After that we headed off back to the con just in time to rejoin a bustling room party.
Then I headed down to the Hentai MST3k video room just in time for Sex Craft which seemed to involve the the Ryōkai Mandala of Shingon Buddhism, a fox spirit, and a vajra used as double sided dildo. Yeah. After seeing that I went up to the room to drink some Sake.
Saturday, which felt like a Sunday to me, was spent screwing around in the room and then heading out for dinner with the group at Giordano's which was awesome as usual. I love Chicago style pizza and while Giordano's isn't the best, they're still rather damn good. This year they piped in bits from the Hellsing and Noir soundtracks which added to the mood.
Then back to the room for a bit as read Manga and watch parts of Kill Bill Vol. I & II with people. Then I went to the "Ghost of ACEN" panel. The Panel was somewhat amusing - the first part was looking a rather crappy selection of "Ghost photos" then it was story time and that is when the panel got good. Most of the stories were rather normal but one guy kept on getting on my nerves because he had watched Ghost Hunt and kept chiming in with his "expert" analysis of things and referencing the series as if it were a Bible of paranormal information. There were two bullshit artists who shared rather horrible stories - one started off talking about how here College was one of the most haunted campuses in the US and how she regularly saw and talked to ghosts. Then she talked about the ghost of a little girl who died falling down a set of steps and changed her story midway through after they had seen what appeared to be a child falling down a set of steps: "We called the ambulance and they came - wait, no we didn't call the paramedics, we went back to the stairs and...."
*Facepalm*
The topper was the guy from Canton, Ohio who talked about some Samurai swords he purchased which flew out of their sheaths and three ghost Samurai appeared. He also talked about digging around and FINDING ANCIENT SAMURAI ARMOR - IN CANTON, OHIO MIND YOU. I'm guessing that the armor would date from the historical era of Gun Frontier and that Canton is situated over the long last site of Samurai Creek. This Otaku has made a wonderful discovery for weeaboo kind.
*Facepalm*
Then I went back to the room for a bit until we decided to act like idiots and "sneek" through the con as a commando squad. There's probably pictures of us floating around by now - there were a lot of camera flashes when we were crouching and riding the escalator down. We headed down towards a restricted area when an IRT girl tried to stop us and then let us through when she saw the Comp/Guest badges. I buggered off midway through when we stopped back at the room to hang out since a group of 4chan staffers had joined the party.
The rest of the group continued on with the mock commando raid of ACEN and ran into some IRT guys escorting M.O.V.E. and they opened "fire" which was returned and M.O.V.E. fell to the ground after they were "hit" in the "crossfire".
After hanging around the party for a bit I stumbled back to the Hentai MST3k room just in time for another religious themed hentai Can Can Bunny Extra: Lucky 7 which, I kid you not, features Benzaiten and the Seven Lucky Gods - I'll review this... thing in a later post. I seemed to have a nack for walking into weird religious themed crap this con.
After that I went back to the room drank a good amount of Sake and Tsing Tao and then went to sleep.
Sunday was mostly spent in the dealers room where I found this:
A Tenko Kugen Figurine - finally something - anything - from an Anime I actually liked! I bought it within a few moments of seeing it (which was odd as it was one of the things I looked for on Friday and couldn't find - I even looked around and checked that dealer). I'm just really shocked to find memorabilia from one for the series which I really liked since I watch mostly obscure and niche shows.
Other than that I bought the boxed set of the anime adaptation of Osamu Tezuka's Phoenix, and the two volumes of Can Can Bunny Extra (since it was rather hilarious and kitschy).
Following that we went on another commando raid of the con looking for a lost comrade before heading off to Mitsuwa Marketplace to eat and do some shopping. I ended up picking up a fried tofu burger from Gabutto Burger which was alright and picking up some Sake, spices, and a bunch of stuff from the Korean section.
After getting our group back together we began the long trek back to Columbus with a stop at a Hooters in Indianapolis for an Oyster dinner (I mostly ate fried pickles). When we got back we all drank some hot sake and collapsed.
~fin.
Also a random link:
Israel 21c: Evidence of woman "king" in ancient Canaan discovered