Project
A-kon 7:
I don't have much to say here. I have the badge, SEE?!? See?? Anyways. This was a very random convention. A friend of mine was staying with me for the summer. He too was an anime fan, and also had a car. I said, about 2 days before the con or so "Hey, let's go to Akon. We can drive." He then agreed. We borrowed the appropriote amount of money, and drove 24 hours straight to Akon! We didn't even STOP to sleep. Crazy stuff. I remember we stayed with some Canadian muckers. I was dressed up as Ranma-chan again. Yet again, was pulled into a very random cosplay skit. This is interesting - Because we formulated it during the infamous "Black out" of A-Kon 7. Although our skit made absolutely no sense, and had too many people. Our Ranma ( A guy named Harold ) ended up winning the judges over for a "Best thing to do during a blackout" prize or something. Again - I was just in the whole "Convention" awe. Big dealers room, not enough money, lots of interesting people to meet. It was very cool.
had
owned a camera at the time. This was back in the day that I owned
a 286 and used Telnet as my main way of speaking to the rest of the internet.
Yes, you heard me! A 286! Isn't that sad? And I still
had it till the NEXT AX too. It had lasted me several years of fun,
before it started giving me parity errors and the fan was going out.
Anyway... at this convention I had met the wonderful DJ Anderson and Jeremy
Blackman. I spent practically the whole convention with one
or the both of them. It was a lot of fun :) The begining part
of the con was something like this "Hey, are you Val?" "Yes."
"Oh, DJ is looking for you." "I know." But yet NONE of them
could lead me to DJ. How's that for annoying. Eventually I
ran into him. The two pictures you see here are actually from DJ's
camera when he first met me and later. I ran into some guy with a
male school uniform. He says to me something like "Hey, you should
get a uniform like mine." and I am thinking, man, I should. Stop teasing
me! Eventually after about 4 encounters (And near the end of the
first day) he mentions that Kimono My House was SELLING Uniforms in the
dealers room. I suddenly am like "What?! I'm there!"
I get myself a nice pretty black school uniform :) I still wear it
TO THIS DAY. It's the coolest jacket I own. The pants eventually
ripped, but the jacket was the best part anyway. That's this convention
in a nutshell.
Okay... I'd never been to a small/homestyle convention before.
This would be my first for a long time. Anime America had been the
'sister' con to Anime Expo, being later in July / early August. In
years before they had gotten big names like Megumi Hashiyabara and such
to be their GoH's. Unfortunately, this would be the last year for
the dying con. I recall a lot of Viz voice actors being there.
I went to a voice acting panel and it was pretty spiffy. The only
other note I can say on this con is that I contracted what we later labelled
"The Connie Plague" that took down nearly half the staff of Anime America
because of a flu Connie had passed onto us. Aside from the con-activities,
there was a movie premier of "Tenchi Muyo in Love" at a theatre in
San Jose. Because of a friend (Mike Siu), I was able to help out
with being an usher. It was pretty neat, and I didn't have to pay
for the movie. On another note, I met who later would be a really
good friend - Matt. Although I don't really recall this interaction,
he seems to remember me in great detail and apparently I had a small conversation
with him. I was dressed as Ukyou, and Ukyou was his favorite character
so he talked to me. That's enough for these cons. I wish
there were more pictures, sorry!