Fanime, or How I Left With More Than 9/10 Of My Money Intact

FIRST… CON… EVAR.
Early in the school year, Mikosi invited me to Fanime. And I accepted. A few weeks ago, she asked me again, and of course I forgot, but wah, why would I want to miss out on that?
So yesterday I drove over to her house where she had dressed as Lulu, her boyfriend had dressed as Vincent, and her sister had dressed as Vivi. Mikosi’s a costume maker extraordinaire and her costumes are seriously roxing. On Friday I believe she went to Fanime as a moomba.
So, we got in Mikosi’s van and had one wild (and fast) ride to Fanime. I had to wait in line for about half an hour to register for the day, but it didn’t really matter. I said hi to Tiya and Nichole, two Marin high school anime artists – this was Tiya’s first con as well and she seemed rather gleeful (or at least a sketch of her that Nichole made demonstrated it). I also met Randee, who said he was hanging out in the internet lounge… and I was surprised to hear that there was such a thing… but I didn’t end up going there. Ah well.
After I got my day pass, I walked around the dealer’s room with phat wads o’ cash… but I couldn’t find anything to buy. I saw a PJ Berri piggy bank that looked sorta cool… but I do have much better things to do with my money. Like…
DDR! ‘Course, there was a RedOctane stand in the dealer’s room, and I impressed everyone with my mad Oni skeelz, and then I went to the actual DDR machines, where a tournament was about to start. This tourney was SPEAICL tourney, though, since the volume on the machine would be turned all the way down, making it Silent PA. I entered along with about 20 other people, but about 10 didn’t show up (including Tigger Eugenie, whew).
The qualifying song was Silent Hill (get it? HAHROHAHR) and I made the top 8 qualifiers with 4th place – 224 perfects and a full combo in the song with no sound. Wooee.
My first round was Conga Feeling and I played against Mr. Wendell *James gasps and faints*. I beat him by about 20-30 perfects. But the second round was against Chubs, and the song was Lupin the 3rd ’78… and he beat me by about 10-20 perfects… ah well. Didn’t care to see who won… I had better things to do.
Like more DDR at the RedOctane stand! As I passed another oni, I turned around and saw Grace from RTA… she needed $30 to buy a teddy bear so she wrote “I NEED MONEY” on a piece of paper and pinned it to her ass. Since I had nowhere to go, I followed her to the Para Para tournament. She entered, as well as who I’m almost completely sure is DDRBot, the 10-year-old Asian wonderkid. Para Para is really strange, I’m-a tell you that. You just watch the VCDs a few times and memorize the gestures for each song. Grace chose one she didn’t completely know, so she uh, decided to stop a few measures into the song. Oh well.
I checked on Mikosi and friends, who couldn’t really get anywhere fast because they were stopped every 5 feet for a photo session. Hooboy I’m glad I didn’t cosplay. They began to get ready for the masquerade contest later that evening, where they’d show their costumes on stage and perform a little skit.
I went on my way to the Webcomics Panel, where Dom of Megatokyo, Greg Dean and Liz of Real Life, Young Wang, E, and Natsuki of Nekobox, Vaz of Underpower, and a whole bunch of people from /me glomps j00 were answering questions. Before the interrogation began, I found a cardboard cut-out of “Chibi Greg” propped up on a table outside the room, drawn by Z of Anti-Bishie. I gave it to Greg to put at his table as he spoke. I got a few questions in, which mostly tied into my comic – should I have a store, should I want profit, should I have a forum, should I be on TWC, etc. As the crowd of fans dissipated after the questioning was over, Greg gave the Chibi Greg back to me and I introduced myself. He said that he’s actually read Midgard and CAR before, and last time he checked, we were waiting for Let’s Dancing to start up. I shook his hand, said it was nice to meet him, and went and played some more DDR. 😛
After a few games, Greg and Liz showed up again, and as Greg was about to get in a game of DDR, he found it was time to get a good seat for the masquerade. I played a round of Guitar Freaks and Drum Mania and eventually sat down to watch the masquerade. I found a good spot next to Greg and Liz and their friends again, heha. So as we waited for the masquerade to start, I got to show Greg a few of my LD comics, and we talked about usage of Flash and Illustrator – basically he talked me into giving Illustrator a try… which I’ll do when I get my new computer since this one barely handles Flash.
To kill time, the cameramen started filming the audience and displaying them on the giant screens on either side of the stage, so people started holding up random objects and signs. Liz and I tried holding up Chibi Greg (as Greg held his head in his hands and wept) and I eventually made a “Real Greg” sign with an arrow pointing down, but we never did get on camera.
So we were presented with a dumb announcer, awful stage acting, but mostly really good costumes, and for intermission we were treated with the winning entries in the anime music video contest. Pretty damn hilarious. We’ve got hardcore death metal with happy, jolly subtitles, for Card Captor Sakura, and then we have “Little Things That Kill” gone “Chibi Things That Kill” where the cast of Ruroni Kenshin (?) fights Jigglypuff, etc.
We had Sephiroth singing “I Can Change” (Saddam’s song to Satan from South Park the movie) and slaying 4 Aerith cosplayers as the conclusion – they won an amateur award.
There were also 4 girls that were definitely under ten, dressed up as Sailor Senshi or something, and one doubled as Hikaru from Hikaru no Go… and they won most artistic amateur and best of show amateur.
The final cosplayer completely stormed the competition, though. It was a guy wearing a Gundam outfit, with retractable wings, glowing LED decorations, and a very humorous skit to show off all of the suit’s features. He won all three veteran cosplayer awards – most artistic, best technical, and best of show. That’s a winnings of $450.
All this judgement took more than half an hour to decide, so they presented a lot more AMVs. I got bored. But after all the awards were done and stuff, we got the hell out of the con. ‘Twas late. I discovered on the way home that I hadn’t eaten in about 12 hours (which was soon to be 24 as I woke up today), but my exhaustion and hunger still got me home safely. And that, as they say, is that.
Notice anything about the day? I didn’t buy anything at all. I guess I’m just not an anime fan anymore. 😛