I just got back from A-kon 8.  Here is a diary of my time spent there.

Please note:  This is not meant to be a review of A-kon; I didn't attend
nearly enough events to be able to give any kind of objective review. 
This will merely be a description of the things that happened to me, and
my reactions to them.

IMPORTANT NOTE:  Buried in this diary is a review of Shin KOR - the
second KOR movie.  It contains spoilers.  I will put spoiler space
before and after the review, and indent all of the text.  You should be
able to page past it fairly easily if you don't want to have anything
spoiled for you.

The following events are all true.  None of the names have been changed
to ensure that that everyone gets embarrassed as much as possible.

A friend gave me a ride to the airport.  I ran to the gate after having
first somehow gotten my bokken (wooden practice sword, a la Kuno)
through security.  I did my best to ignore the curious looks I got.

The airplane ride was very nice.  I sat next to a very friendly and
attractive woman who chatted brightly with me and everyone around her. 
She was returning from a physical assistants' convention in Minneapolis
and told me all about her experiences.  She made the flight very
pleasant; we talked about exercising, dogs, antiques, and diversity.

Her boyfriend had dumped her three weeks previously.  While she had been
attending the convention in Minneapolis, he had called her up.  She was
preparing for the big reunion scene.  After we landed, I dawdled to
watch it.  He brought flowers, and they exchanged a long, soft, tender
kiss.  It was quite touching.

Took a taxi to the Harvey Hotel without much of a problem.  I was to
meet Zen (aka James Bateman) at the convention; we were sharing a room
with five other people.  I stood in line for thirty minutes to find out
that yes, James Bateman had checked in; no, they couldn't give me a key
to the room; no, they couldn't tell me what room he was in.  I tried to
call, but got no answer.

So I picked up my pre-registration package, put on my badge, and
wandered around for an hour, carrying my baggage with me.  I took a
stroll through the dealer's room, since I knew that Zen was going to
have a table there.  The dealer's room was large and had lots of table
space.  I was pleased by the absence of bootlegged items - I have high
standards in that regard.  There was a *lot* of Sailor Moon stuff;
evidently, the dealers were hoping to cash in on the wave of fans who
came to anime because of Sailor Moon.  Over the weekend, the Sailor Moon
stuff didn't seem to sell too well.

I still couldn't find Zen.  I was getting more and more frustrated. 
Then a guy came up to me, saw my badge, and asked me, "Are you Richard
Lawson the fanfic writer?"  I said I was.  He wanted to take my
picture.  No one's ever wanted to do that before.  That helped soothe my
nerves; nothing like a well-timed ego boost.  :)

I finally got a hold of someone in Zen's room.  I went there and shook
hands with Zen.  Turns out he had brought a lot of equipment to make
badges.  He showed me examples:  Federation ID, 3WA ID, and other Sci-Fi
and Anime-related ID badges.  He had planned to do some good business at
A-kon.  One problem; he had forgotten the camera.  He had subleased the
table after he had realized his boo-boo, which is why I couldn't find
him in the dealer's room.

Free of my baggage, I went back to the dealer's room to buy stuff.  I
bought the Ranma 1/2 Memorial book, the Sailor Stars CD, a Nuku Nuku CD
(does anyone know where I could find a translation of Sound Phase 0II?),
and Doco First.  I wanted to buy another Ranma CD - Fight Song Karuta. 
Unfortunately, I had no idea what it looked like, and the people who had
a lot of Ranma 1/2 CD's couldn't read Japanese, either.

I had bought a belt pouch to put my wallet and keys and things in.  I
thought it necessary for two reasons:  I had brought a lot of cash with
me, and I didn't want anyone picking my pocket, and I was planning on
wearing a hakama (big baggy pants, like Kuno wears) on Saturday, and it
doesn't have pockets.  At one point, after having made a purchase and
wanting to make another, I reached into my belt pouch only to find it
empty.  Sheer panic gripped me; someone had somehow unzipped my pouch
and taken my wallet without my noticing it and depriving me of hundreds
of dollars and my credit cards.  Just before I fell to the ground in a
quivering heap, I checked my back pocket.  To my relief, I found it; out
of habit, I had returned it there after making a purchase.

I went back to the room to examine my purchases and to chat with Zen and
a couple of his friends.  Travis Butler arrived.  The only thing I
really regret about moving away from Kansas City was to lose the
companionship of Travis, John Biles, and Greg Sandborne.  I was glad to
see Travis.

We had arranged to meet Nicholas Leifker for dinner at 6:30pm.  I met
him and Joyce Meadows and Ken Arromdee and some more of Nick's friends. 
They *all* offered me cookies; I ran away screaming.  (If you don't
understand why, don't worry; it's an in-joke based on a revengefic I
wrote last October.  I'll give you details if you'd like.)

John Biles was also there, another one of my former Kansas co-horts.  I
talked with him for a bit, too.

It turned out we had reservations at a sushi bar for 9pm.  It was too
early to leave for the restaurant, so we broke up to meet again at
8:30pm.  I went back to the room and found that one of my roommates had
invited a couple of teenaged girls back to our room to meet Zen. 
(Before you ask, it wasn't anything like that.  He wanted to give them a
good contact for some fansubs, and Zen is heavily into that kind of
stuff.)  One of my roommates had a collection of model subs that could
actually submerge underwater.  He showed them off proudly.  The girls
admired them.  Zen commented that they were seeing a grown man
collecting toys, and one of the girls said, "Oh, like my dad."

Speaking of toys, I went back to the dealer's room (actually one of the
tables set outside of the dealer's room) to buy a transformable
Valkyrie.  Way cool.  I like that stuff.  Even if it cost me a pretty
penny (actually, several hundred pretty pennies.)  I had my eye on the
Japanese SDF-1 (Macross), too.  I decided against it, since I already
had the American SDF-1 at home, and the Japanese one was priced at $400.

I went to watch parts of the Macross Plus movie.  The viewing room was a
lecture hall in the hotel.  The screen was very large and of reasonable
quality.  There were also several TV monitors which showed the movie in
a higher resolution, if you wanted to admire the special effects in
greater detail.

8:30 finally rolled around.  I was quite hungry, but fortunately I had
been able to snack on a large supply of cookies I had recently
acquired.  There were more people going to eat sushi than could fit in
one car, so we split up.  I went with Nick, Stormwalker, and a couple of
Nick's friends.

The less said about the drive to the sushi bar, the better.  Let me
leave you with some actual quotes from the trip:

"You know when the brake lights are on in the car in front of you?  That
means it's not moving."

"I smell something burning."   "Oh, that's just the car."

"The theme from the Star Wars trench run keeps running through my head."

"Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name..."

"This is *not* a one-way street."  (Said a couple of times in unison.)

"I didn't know that one of the planes of hell was in Dallas."

At the sushi bar, I talked extensively with Bob, one of Nick's friends. 
We had a very interesting discussion about real life vs. the internet.

Because of the difficulty getting to the sushi bar, and the problems
associated with collecting money from a large number of people in order
to pay the bill, we didn't get back to A-kon until much later than I had
hoped.  I rushed to go see the "Macross: Do You Remember Love?" fansub.

A note about me and fansubs:  I feel that they are an ethically gray
area.  I will, with reluctance, allow myself to own a fansub if there is
no commercial version of the anime available in the United States. 
Macross and Robotech are among my favorite bits of anime, and I very,
very much want to own the Macross:DYRL fansub.  Alas, because there are
commecial dubs available, I cannot allow myself to ask for one.  That is
unfortunate, because the dubs are *horrible*; among the worst ever
created, and with a lot of stuff cut.

So because of my stupid ethics, this was likely my only chance to see
the sub of Macross:DYRL.  I rushed to the room it was showing in. 
Unfortunately, I had missed 75% of it.  However, the last 25% was more
than enough for me.  I really, really love this movie.  Macross is the
anime I get most passionate about, and it is able to move me deeply. 
The sight of Minmay singing a love song as the Macross fights an
apocalyptic battle - <*sigh*>.  What can I say?  I savored that moment
as much as I could.

Finally, I went to the room and went to bed.

Next morning, we got up early and had a mild fansub debate after I
related my experiences of watching Macross:DYRL.  We then went and had
breakfast at McDonald's.  I was wearing my hakama and wielding my
bokken.  And no, I didn't feel out of place at all as the rest of
McDonald's stared at me.

Went to the art show.  There wasn't a lot of stuff, and it was mostly
amateur.  The professional stuff was not of anime characters.  Still, I
put a couple of bids on pieces I liked - a small picture of Kodachi, and
a medium-to-large sized picture of Nabiki, entitled "Nabiki Reclining". 
It was not a hentai (perverted) picture; I'm not into that kind of
stuff.  Still, it was alluring without being tasteless.  I had to have
it.  :)

I went over to the internet room.  I checked Kahm-Hime's Ranma Sound
Shrine to see what the Ranma 1/2 Fighting Karuta CD looked like.  With
that information, I went and bought it.  I also found a few Ranma
tankoban; I'm trying to fill out my collection.

I also watched a fan video parody of bad dubs.  The humor was hit and
miss, but what hit was very, very funny.

Finally, the Fanfic Panel rolled around.  Nick was running the panel. 
He had with him Zen, Joyce, John, Stoner, and me.

The panel went pretty well. We had an audience of about 20 people - half
the room's capacity.  Discussion was varied and interesting.  At least,
I thought so.

Halfway through the two-hour panel, the fire alarm went off.  This was
the second time this had happened.  I have a theory about people who
pull off stupid stunts like pulling a fire alarm.  They should be forced
to feel the irritation and frustration of everyone inconvenienced by
their stupidity.  The collective ill-will should be enough to fry their
brains.  :)

On the way out of the hotel, someone asked me about "Transitions" and
told me how much he really, really liked it.  Did I talk about
well-timed ego boosts?  :)

Things were cleared up pretty quickly, and ten minutes later we were
filing back into the hotel.  I was somewhat gratified that almost all of
the audience returned for the second half of the Fanfic Panel.  That let
me know that they were enjoying the discussion as much as I was.

Afterwards, we went to dinner.  I owed Zen and Nick a dinner, (in an
effort to shame Zen into finishing "Bitter End", I had bet him that he
wouldn't have it finished by A-kon.  Both he and Nick took me up on it. 
To my pleasure, I lost.  ^_^)  We consulted a map of local restaurants
provided by the A-kon staff, and decided on Fuddrucker's.  Again, there
were more of us going that could fit in one car, so we split up.  I went
in John's car.

Alas, when we got to the complex where Fuddrucker's was supposed to be,
we found out that it had closed last September.  We never did meet up
with the rest of our contingent, so we went to Chile's instead.

After dinner, I did some more shopping.  When I lived in Kansas, I was
able to borrow Travis's Nuku Nuku tapes at will.  Indeed, I have him to
thank for getting me into that anime.  Alas, after I had moved to
Minneapolis, I could no longer watch his tapes.  So I bought a set for
myself, finding previously-viewed tapes reasonably priced.

Then I went to see the Shin KOR movie.

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD.  SKIP AHEAD IF YOU DON'T WANT TO READ THEM.

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     The Shin KOR movie was show in the main viewing room - 
     the lecture hall I described earlier.  The premise of 
     the movie is that 19-year-old Kyosuke gets hit by a car
     and has his spirit knocked three years into the feature.
     He tries to get in touch with the now-22-year-old Madoka,
     but for one reason or the other isn't able to speak with 
     her.

     However, in the kind of coincidence often found in the KOR
     manga, he runs into a 20-year-old woman who calls him by 
     name.  It takes him a minute to realize it's Hikaru.  He 
     stares at her breasts and comments that she's matured 
     considerably.  Indeed, this Hikaru is difficult to recognize
     as the Hikaru from the anime or manga.  She *has* changed -
     her hair is longer, and she is quite... voluptuous.  However,
     her personality is still the same.  She thinks she's meeting
     the 22-year-old Kyosuke, and he does nothing to correct that
     impression.

     Lots of interesting stuff happens after that.

     This was a very good story - very true to the manga.  While
     I loved the first KOR movie, at the same time it was a very
     depressing, emotionally wrenching movie.  This movie 
     recaptured the spirit of the manga - emotion balanced by 
     humor.  There were several very funny moments.

     The audience was both good and bad.  It's always nice to have
     lots of people laughing with you at the funny bits.  At the
     same time, I thought they were laughing at some inappropriate
     moments.  The didn't seem to be able to recognize when the 
     humor stopped and the more serious emotional moments had
     begun.

     Oh, and I wasn't the only one who thought this movie had 
     echoes of "Macross" in it.

     Overall, an excellent movie, one I very much enjoyed.  As I
     overheard someone comment, it went a long way towards removing
     the sting of the first movie.  I would highly recommend it.

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The art auction was supposed to begin at 9pm.  The costume contest began
at 8pm in the same room.  Now, this was my first major convention, so I
don't have a lot of experience to draw on, but even *I* knew that the
costume contest would take more than an hour.  The word went out that
the art auction would begin at 10pm.

I went back to my room and talked with everyone for a while.  Zen and I
have different views about Ranma's hair color.  I maintain that manga
continuity calls for Ranma to always have black hair.  Zen insists that
in the manga Ranma's hair is red when Ranma is female.  I say this is an
anime-only phenomenon.  We decided to go through the color illustrations
in the Memorial Book and count the number of times Ranma's hair color as
a woman was red and when it was black.  We dismissed the illustrations
where her color was yellow or green or blue.  Red hair won, 29-18.  I
decided to invalidate the results since Rumiko Takahashi didn't choose
the colors on most of her illustrations.  So the debate rages on.  :)

I went to the art auction.  It took a while to get around to "Nabiki
Reclining".  The bidding started at $115.  I had previously decided that
$200 would be my limit.  I entered bids of $120, $130, and $150.  Most
people dropped out early, and it was just me and one other guy.  After I
bid $150, he hemmed and hawed and (with some prompting from the
auctioneers, who did an excellent job) he finally bid $153.  I
immediately came back with $175.  He gave up.  Nabiki was mine.  ^_^

I planned to spend a maximum of $50 to get the Kodachi picture.  It
turns out that $50 was exactly what she cost me.  I'm certain the art
work isn't worth that much, but it had value to me above and beyond the
mere painting itself.  :)

I met Stephen Tsai there.  I had previously bought the fan-produced
manga of his fanfic Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Ranma.  We talked about
fanfics while we stood in line to purchase our various pieces after the
auction.  I also talked with a guy whose handle was Keiichi.  He told me
about a cool idea he had for writing a fanfic about the children of
Belldandy and Keiichi.  I hope he writes it.

By this time it was 1am.  I went back to the room hoping to find people
watching videos and eating and talking and generally having fun.  I
opened the door and was hit by a wall of solid snores.  I wandered the
halls a little bit, hoping to find something interesting.  I ended up
talking with Stormwalker for a while about fanfics.  That was better
than anything else I could find.  :)  Finally I went back to the room. 
As I lay upon the floor, it seemed to me that the snoring of the other
people in the room seemed to be playing the notes of Moonlight
Densetsu.  My last thought as I fell asleep was one last note was needed
to complete the melody.

Sunday - a sad, quiet atmosphere had descended over the con.  Time to
pack and prepare to return to real life.  We had breakfast at the hotel
restaurant; I was able to at last make good on my promise to buy dinner
for Nick and Zen, even if it was only breakfast.  We had more fanfic
discussion.  Zen made the observation that Nabiki looks like Genma, and
that Ranma looks like Soun.  He postulated that because of some funny
business between the various Nadoka and Genma and Soun and Mrs. Tendo,
Nabiki is actually a Saotome, and Ranma is a Tendo.  And therefore,
Genma's promise to marry his oldest child to Ukyo is not binding on
Ranma.  Therefore, Nabiki must marry Ukyo.  Expect a fanfic from Zen on
this subject sometime... oh, next millenium.  :)

I wandered around the con one last time.  I didn't buy anything more -
the art auction had drained enough of my money.  I did keep running into
Joyce everywhere, and she tried to steal my pen cap.  She is one of the
most unabashedly friendly people I've ever met.

At last I had to say goodbye to everyone.  This was the real sadness; I
was so looking forward to putting faces to names.  Now the faces were
merely going to be names inside email sigs again.  I made the rounds,
each goodbye piercing me in a different way.

Nick took me to the airport and saw me off.  Once again, security gave
me no problems over my bokken.  Nick and I shared a drink (Diet Cokes)
and had a nice talk.  Finally, my plane was boarding, so we parted
company.

(note:  the following passage contains a sentence that might be
interpreted in a perverted fashion.  Please be assured, that is *not* my
intent; I am *not* into that kind of thing.  I mean it in an
affectionate way completely unrelated to anything hentai.  I think John
Biles said it best:  I prefer my sex to be three-dimensional, thank you
very much.)

I got on the plane.  My bokken and baggage (now much heavier) went into
the overhead storage.  I put the two cel paintings I'd bought under the
seat in front of me.  The woman sitting next to me promptly started
kicking them with her feet.  I picked them up and held them instead. 
Fortunately, the flight attendants didn't hassle me over it during
takeoff.

I sat back in my airplane seat.  I was very tired, having gotten very
little sleep over the past couple of days.  I was also sad that it was
over.  Yet I also felt deeply satisfied and enriched.  The past couple
of days had been a wonderful experience.  I had been able to share my
love of anime with other people, and we had all rejoiced in the
experience.  I was able to leave the mundane level of reality behind and
play for a while in the worlds of myth and fantasy.  And even though I
was now returning to the mundane plane of existence, I would still be
able to keep with me a link to the world I was leaving behind at A-kon
8.  I closed my eyes and smiled while I held Nabiki and Kodachi in my
lap.

-Richard Lawson
 sterman@sprynet.com