Well, Mouse beat me to the punch, but I'll put in my commentary as
well...
Hajime!
Day 1. 4:30AM. Myself, and two other officers of Minna No Anime gather
at my house for the trip up to San Jose(we go to school at CalPoly, San
Luis Obispo, which is about 220 mi south of San Jose). This is _way_ to
friggin' early to be up on the tail end of finals week, IMHO, but we do
it. Since I'm the most conscious person in the car(and the one who is
from the San Jose/San Francisco area) I get to be the driver. Dave
happily hands over the keys and passes out in the back. G'night Dave,
see you in 3 hours. We attempted to link up with some other MNA and
AJAS people but that went SNAFU in short order. Ah well. It was a nice
drive. Of course, the liter+ of coffee helped.
We arrived around 9:30 and grabbed our badges. As usual, Fanime has
nice full color badges for those who pre-reg. Mine was Vampire Princess
Miyu. Dave had Ayukawa Madoka(KOR) and Mitch had Giant Robo. There
were a few other designs running about, but they're not running about in
my memory right now. ^_^ Upon examining the con schedule, we realize
that 1:the showing rooms don't start untill 11am. 2:There was nothing
interesting being shown untill 1:00. 3:Panels don't start untill
Saturday. And 4:The dealers room doesn't open untill 5. Therefore, we
decided to head up to my parents house(where we were staying) and crash
for an hour or two. Naturally, I got to the front door of the house
before I realized my house keys were sitting in my desk drawer down in
SLO. D'oh. So, drive back down The Hill to my moms office and beg for
her key(she got a good laugh out of it).
At 1:00 we got back to the Wyndham to watch Flame of Recca. This is a
CoolShow(tm). We also came to the conclusion that the screen setup
SUCKED in the main showing room. To many heads in the way to see the
subtitles easily. Aarg. After Recca we wondered off to see the first
episode of Tico&Nanami(which failed to impress me) in a different
showing room, which had a much better set up since the screen was set
higher. Then back to the main room for Haunted Junction and Lost
Universe. Inbetween HJ2 and LU1 I discovered that Damon "Mouse" Castle
is DEAF!!! I shouted at him from almost right behind him a few times,
and he didn't respond.
After LU1 I decided I'd had enough of that, and went to see something
else. This turned out to be a good thing, since the other good thing
being shown was Card Captor Sakura. I have a new favorite show. ^_^
CCS was my favorite of the Con and now I'm on a quest to get all the
fansubs I can get. <g> We stuck around that showing room for a long
time and basically set up our long term anime-watching trend for the
con. Sakura, Maze TV, Virus Buster Serge and Hyper police. All of
which are quite cool. However, I should note that placing Virus back to
back with Maho Tsukai Tai is WRONG!
After watching the first episode of Hyper Police(which is really good)
the three of us started suffering brain failure. This probably had
something to do with it being 9:00 and not having eaten since 6 that
morning. So we went back to my house, had some food and crashed out.
End day 1
Day 2
Once again, up godawfully early. Some numbnut put the next episodes of
Flame of Recca and Card Captor at 5:30-7:30 in the morning. Being the
instant addicts we were, we couldn't miss an episode. That would just
suck. So we went to the con that early. I had more coffee. After CCS,
I kicked around for a while at the info booth(with more coffee) and had
a long B5 discussion with one of the guys working the info desk. A
large number of people asked where the Fanfic panel was going to be
held. The info guy was confused. I wasn't. ^_^ At about 8:45 I
wondered over to the panel room(which was a walk of all of 10 feet from
the info desk^_^).
Misa, Joe Palmer and a few others were all ready there. Joe gave out
DoCo buttons to everyone who was there early. Misa got bored and
started the panel early, and got all the audience members to introduce
themselves and what they had written(there wasn't a non-writer in the
audience). People in the audience of FFML renown included Pat and Chris
Olsen and Monica Shin.
The panel itself was set up abit differently from the panel at AX. This
one had an actual _PRINTED_ schedule of topics. Palmer was far too well
prepared. ^_^ The panelists were Peter Ward(who was chair and LATE!
:p), Jim Lazar, Marisa Price, Joseph Palmer, and one other person whos
name I would know IF I COULD FIND THE BLOODY SHEET!! Gomen... anyway,
the panel was intesting to say the least. Very different from the AX
panel. All sorts of advice and such from different authors. It was
interesting to note that authors in the audience said as much as the
panelists did. ^_^ I'll let someone else(like one of the panelists)
expound on the panel more. It was a good panel though. After this one
and the AX panel, I've come to the conclusion that the panels need to be
two hours. One hour went by far too quickly.
After the panel it was back to the showing rooms for more Hyper Police,
Yawara, Maho, and Virus. During the opening of Maho there was the
traditional byplay of "Volume!" "There is no sound!" "What?" "There's
no sound in space!" ^_^
Then I had my first encounter with the cons biggest problem. The line
for the dealers room. Eek. It took about 45 minutes to get in to a
dealers room that in all honesty, wasn't really that big. I dropped
about $200 on CDs in no time flat(Gundam 0083, Card Captor, Virus, and
Recca) and saw Ipongi Bang wondering around the Iron Cat booth. At the
time though, I didn't realize it was her. I hadn't realized that she
was every bit as much an Otaku as most of the con goers. She was
dressed up as Lum(UY). On that note, some of the costumes were...
interesting... Naga wasn't there though(damn!). After that, a few more
panels, Rose of Versailles, and then home and dinner, as nothing else of
interest was happening, and none of us were Masquerade types. I'm told
a very good Chun Li won. Thus ended day 2
Day 3
Day three started at a much more reasonable hour of 7:00. We got there
about 8:30 to watch Sorcerer Hunters and a few other things. Compared
to Saturday however, the con was far less inhabited. This was a
GoodThing in my book. Not much else happened though. It was a fairly
slow day. Saw a few more shows, raided the dealers room again(two
artbooks this time), and headed back down south. Whee... Thus ended the
con, and there was much rejoycing.
All in all, the con had good parts and bad parts. It provides a rather
dramatic comparison to AX. I can't say one con is all around _better_
than the other, but I can say they have differing high points.
-Josh