Friday, July 6, 2007

Anime Expo 2007 - Day One: Part One
Another year, another Anime Expo. If that sounds ominous, then it's because that is how it is meant to sound! In many ways this was a pretty frustrating year at AX, because of the location and because things generally seemed out of whack in terms of how everything was organized. However, I'll try not to dwell on it too much (i.e. I'll mock it juuuuuuuust right), since I'm not interested in jumping on the AX 2007 hate bandwagon (even if many complaints are completely justified) and because I had a good time, anyway, despite the annoyances.

Anyway! Here we are, once again, standing at the edge of something spectacular, or perhaps it is spectacularly something. At any rate, we are gathered here today to witness, via reading, the story of one nerd's journey into the world of a cavalcade of nerds along with his nerd friends. And by "his," I mean "my."

The morning of July the 1st was warm, indeed, though by California standards it was what we like to call "Sunday." I had recently decided to engage in cosplay at AX; however, the heat was giving me second thoughts. My costume was simple, but it was also something that could get me drenched in sweat within five seconds, so there were definite pros and cons to be weighed. In the end I decided to stick with the costume, because I couldn't bear to face you guys and gals without having worn a costume of some sort.

My suspicions proved correct, as within about five seconds of me dressing up I started sweating like Humbert Humbert at a middle school talent show. Thank God for fans, windows, air conditioners, shade, and ice, though not necessarily in that order. Despite my body apparently attempting to drown itself, I was all ready to go. You might be wondering what my costume was that day (or not if you visit OB and/or your entertainment for the week doesn't hinge upon some dork's descriptions of his bodily fluids). If so, then you are in luck because here it is now woo!!



Yep, there I am in all my cosplay glory. I'm dressed as post-haircut Aizawa from Death Note. To make a conservative estimate, I believe about zero people recognized who I was. Or, if they recognized me, they just didn't care enough about Aizawa to take a photo and steal my soul. That's what I get for dressing up as a quasi-important tertiary character who doesn't have any distinct costume or features (at least the version of him I cosplayed doesn't). Then again, because my cosplay seems to be nigh-unrecognizable, there is at least plausible deniability should a future employer, who for some reason has a rather large bias against cosplayers (maybe he cosplayed as a child and was laughed at for his poor rendering of Astro Boy's hair), stumble upon this page and see me dressed in full costume.

"ZAVALA!! IS THAT A COSPLAY I SEE??"

"Um, no, sir, I was actually showing up those dirty cosplayers by dressing much nicer than they did. All that talk about cosplay was just a joke."

"THAT IS WHAT I LIKE TO HEAR, ZAVALA!! IT IS TOO BAD THAT I AM STILL CUTTING YOUR JOB!!"

With everyone ready to go, we headed out to pick up my sister's friend, Danny, who needed a ride to the convention. However, here is where we hit the first snag of the day - apparently some time between Saturday night and Sunday morning, 7:15 AM became 7:45 AM due to my brother's inability to tell time. Thus, when we came to get Danny, he was still eating his breakfast. He was quite upset about having to abandon his waffles, and he demanded compensation. Together, we decided that his waffles were worth exactly $100, and that my brother should bear the responsibility of finding suitable replacement waffles. (To this day, good enough waffles have yet to be found.)

After that, my dad drove us all to the Long Beach Convention Center. The drive was uneventful, save for random conversation about expensive Disney chocolate-holding tins and whether the tins would be more expensive with less chocolate in them. (The verdict: Yes, although there must be at least some chocolate for maximum expense to exist.) As we arrived at the convention center, I knew all the maps I had brought with me would be useless, because 1) The general layout of the LBCC is designed to be as irritating as possible to anyone who actually wishes to find his or her way around the damn place and 2) I have the map-reading ability of a lobotomized trout. I attempted to become a bold and fearless leader by dragging my wards around, but, true to my amazing skills, I ended up lost with five seconds.

So, I swallowed my pride and asked for directions to the registration area. And, of course, I proceeded to get lost again. After receiving help from more people, our group finally found our destination, where we were immediately split up. Because my siblings and I had pre-registered, we went into the much shorter line, whereas Danny got into the humongous at-con registration line. Our reaction was essentially, "sux 2 be danny lol." We are fantastic friends.



This is my sister, Cynthia, standing near the pre-registered line. It looks semi-lengthy, but it advanced pretty quickly. My siblings apparently overheard an amusing conversation involving a slice of chocolate cake with whipped cream and "A CHERRY," but I was off in another dimension when this happened.



This is my brother, Robert, contemplating nothing in particular. He did not know I had snapped his photo until I showed him this the next day, and he seemed quite annoyed that someone actually dared to take his photo.



After a relatively short wait, we gained entrance to the Seaside Lobby, where everyone was to pick up their badges. I didn't get a photo of it, but soon before my siblings and I were called to pick up our badges, one of the volunteers decided to sneak onto an apparently forbidden computer, whereupon he was yelled at by the staff. ("STOP! DON'T TOUCH THAT!") He seemed embarrassed that someone had caught him in the act; afterwards, he slinked away into another room with his shoulders slumped, were, I presume, he committed seppuku.

With badges and Official Anime Expo 2007 Program Guides in hand, we did the only thing we could at that point: Get lost again. Yes, somehow (read: by my doing) we managed to go around in a complete circle to the place we were handed the programs. However, one benefit of this was that we got to pass by Danny (who was still in line), and we proceeded to greet him by showing off our badges like assholes. Once again, Danny was annoyed.

Following this, we finally got our bearings straight and were on our way to the main area of the convention center. It was a long walk, but fortunately it was still somewhat cool at that point in time. The weather, however, was just about the only thing that was cool outside, as evidenced by this photo...



Out of nowhere, a pack of people riding Segways suddenly roared (well, whatever the Segway equivalent of a roar is, anyway) past us toward God knows where. I tried to get a photo of a bunch of them together but to no avail; still, I'd say there were about 25-30 of them flying by. Cynthia tells me one of them posed for a few moments on the bridge, but alas, I was unable to get a photo of him, too. I missed all the good photo opportunities. :(

We still had an hour to go until the exhibit hall opened, so our plan was to head to Borders, where my sister would use her Borders Gift Card to buy the Spring Awakening OBCR, Paul McCartney's Memory Almost Full, and a paperback copy of Spring Awakening. Unfortunately, Borders was still closed, because they don't like to profit too early in the morning, I guess. A short rest in the nice, air-conditioned halls of the convention center later, we decided to get into the line of congoers waiting for the exhibit hall to open.

This line was a fair bit longer than the pre-reg line. It stretched out alongside the outer portion of the convention center, snaked past the parking lots, and came to a stop around a corner about two streets down from where we started. The nice part was that the clouds had decided to part and make way for the sun to shine down on all our happy heads. Thanks a lot, you son of a bitch.

While all this was happening, I was keeping correspondence with Danny, who wanted to catch up with us after he received his badge. To give another idea of how long the line was, Danny called me to ask where our part of the line was, and I told him. Soon after I hung up the phone, Robert spotted Danny about twenty feet away from us. Yes, all the time we had gained on Danny was lost in the black hole of the line. To be fair, though, me getting us lost yet again must have sapped a good 10-15 minutes from our lead.

There was another visitor to our merry band, as well - my friend Vincent, who you may or may not remember from posts about past AX excursions that I may or may not have written! Hurrah!



This, however, is not Vincent. This is a cosplayer, and she is cosplaying A.B.A. from the Guilty Gear fighting games. Paracelsus, her key/weapon, is pretty impressive; I can't imagine it was much fun to lug it around the entire time, though lol. Putting that much work into cosplaying is simply beyond my capacity.

She didn't seem to be too concerned about the length of the line, but our group was. I'd say we stood completely still in line for about 15-20 minutes after the exhibit hall was supposed to have opened before the line started moving even a little bit. I hear a bunch of lines, especially for the various concerts, were much worse than that, though. Pretty lame. We did eventually make it into the exhibit hall, however, which is what really matters.



Random photo! Vincent stopped this person and snapped her photo right away, and I followed suit because I am nothing but a sheep. Anyway, uh, if she is cosplaying a specific character, then I am unaware of who it is. Dagger? Someone more knowledgable than me? Bueller??

Most of our first run through the exhibit hall was to be dedicated, as always, to checking out what people are selling and comparing prices, because it is a beautiful thing to be as cheap as possible. Also we went along taking photos of cosplayers, but, as mentioned in an earlier post, I took far fewer pictures of them than I normally do because I've seen about 90% of the characters numerous times in the past. This is my fourth year at AX... I know I'm going to see an assload of Naruto cosplayers, Bleach cosplayers, and so on and so forth. I'm pretty tired of them by this point, so I can only assume that you guys and gals are as well. So, I tried to stick with characters I hadn't seen before or had only seen very rarely.



So to prove that point, here are Shadow and Knuckles, two characters you have surely never seen before in your lives! Actually, I'd never seen anyone dress up as them before, especially not in full bodysuits. I can only imagine how awful it must have been to walk around in those all day. Yuck. All the uproarious laughter that surely must've been thrown in their general direction probably didn't help their moods either.



One thing I noticed was people at booths being more "salespersony" this year. For example, take this juggler. As we passed by, he juggled faster, drawing us closer to his booth his with hypnotic juggling skill. Some of the video game peddlers were also allowing people to sample their wares, mostly in the form of Nintendo DSes attached to the booths via obscenely strong cables. Most people, however, simply yelled about their products. I didn't take a photo of the yaoi booth, but you wouldn't need one to know they were the most yelltastic. The way they were yelling reminded me of Duck Soup where Chico Marx walks with his cart yelling, "PEANUTS!! PEANUTS!! GET YOUR TOOTSIE FRUITSIE!!" Only there's more tootsie fruitsie than peanuts, if you catch my drift.



The pachinko machines were pretty colorful, so I thought they would make for a nice picture. I must say, though, that I find pachinko to be a bit confusing. I mean, there are a bunch of pinball-esque balls that are used in the machines, but apparently they have no effect on the video slot machine in the middle. So, why are they there? My theory is as follows: Balls are fun. That's about it.



However, you don't need balls to have fun with this! An astounding amount of nerds must have been swindled into playing this thing; it took practically all of my strength to keep myself from playing it, and I barely even knew how to play! But, man, when R2-D2 asks you to waste all your money, you have to be some kind of person (read: broke) to not listen to the little guy.



Here is Vincent in all his glory, posing with a pair of $20 cat ears. No, he didn't buy them. But he was tempted. Awfully tempted.



Kind of jumping ahead to later on in the day with this photo, but I believe it is much more important to keep up with the theme of cats than to establish any semblance of a logical sequence of events. Plus, I am sick and cranky. Anyway, Vincent and my siblings saw this cat, and they knew right away that they absolutely, without a doubt, as though driven by a deep instinctual desire, had to pose in front of this cat. Cynthia and Vincent are miming cats; Robert, in his words, seems to be miming "a rat."

Hm. I hope you'll forgive me for cutting this post off a bit abruptly. I wanted to cut this one day into two parts, but various things (having fun with stuff, going to a 4th of July party, being sick as a dog and too zonked out to remember what I did fifteen minutes ago, much less five days ago (and this is without taking any medication, mind)) have delayed this first post far too long, and I just want it posted completely already. What was to be the next post will be split in two and hopefully that will allow me to get them out quicker. Who knows with my posting habits these days, though.

Here are the major things I bought to make up for the lack of photos:



Vols. 6-12 of Death Note. A bunch of people were short on Vol. 10, for some reason, and Vol. 7 was almost impossible to find.



The Vol. 1 Special Edition DVD set of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. I wouldn't normally drop the amount of money I did to get this, but, to be fair, I was blinded by the awesome of everything that came with it. And I still am, frankly. I love Haruhi, so I do not regret this purchase for a moment.



...nor did I regret buying the limited edition Vol. 2 set. Not quite as awesome as the Vol. 1 set but still super cool, although probably not super cool enough for me to avoid the mocking laughter of all my loverly online friends. :)

Anyway, here ends the post. Potential things you may or may not see in the next post: Moogle hats! An extra special Wii remote! Haruhi Suzumiya herself! Engrish galore! Lots of pointing! And much more!

Now if you'll excuse, I am off to play more of my recently acquired Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Justice for All. It's time for me to totally own Franziska von Karma.
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