AnimeExpo
98 - Day 2
Wow, those 4 hours of sleep sure did help :) :) At exactly
7 am or so, Lucinda came-a-knocking at the hotel room door for the Watase
panel. I hurried up and dressed, zooming down to the area.
Just our luck! A friend of ours WAS dedicated enough to be first
in line! We got to get in line where they were :) :) Woo hoo.
Thank you Peter!
Our
goal set, we got our bouncie balls, cds, and partied down for several hours
:) I didn't feel that tired. It was as if I actually
got a good 10 hours of sleep. It must be that con weekend feel to
it, because this would never happen if I were in a real life situation
^_^; This was my day to be a fangirl, and this probably was my biggest
day as an anime fan ever. And that's really sad, considering how
many cons I've been to. We wait a while, then finally they break
open the doors to let us in. We zoom into the main area, lining up
along the walls and such. There were tons of great people
in costume already! I took pics of a lot, including the Fushigi Yuugi
people. It was all pretty spectacular if you ask me :)
All the neat people in costume to show their appreciation for Yuu Watase
and her work. There were people in different costumes too, I got
a few of them ^_^x Though, the FY'rs definantly took the cake.
Click on them to see
the cosplay pictures for the entire day of saturday!
The Watase panel was really great. Her answers were funnier then
the confused questions. I think one of the best responses was,
"That was a blow to my sleep deprived head.". I really wish I remember
what it was in reference to x.x There were some really funky questions
out there. Things like if she had a choice in writing a dojinshi,
it would probably be Tamahome and Tasuki together o_O Another
one was when she did a parody panel of Koji with all sorts of
Tasuki products,
pictures, etc. She said that was, "Fan service". We also
discovered that she didn't have much input on the Fushigi Yuugi Anime,
and they went behind her back on a lot of the decisions, especially with
certain plots and how they were handled, etc. It was generally
really great. We got to be in the 2nd row, the first row was for
the press. Even so, all the pictures turned out looking like Yuu
Watase's head was on the table, and that's it o_o; Another
thing that people seemed strangely surprised about is that Watase is a
very attractive woman. Not only that, she's TALL. Somewhere
around 5'7"-5'9"ish, and that really surprised me. Her hair
was shorter than in the art book I saw with her, and it was a lighter shade
than her natural black hair color. I could probably remember more
details from the panel, but I'd have to actually think of some of
the questions. And now, the raffle! They gave out these blue
little tickets at the beginning to raffle off who got signatures and who
didn't. Basically the artist gives off a number and they raffle that
many signatures/sketches so the fans really don't have to wait in line,
and if the GoH doesn't want to do anymore, the fans won't get disappointed.
It's a good concept, but sometimes you'll get a diehard fan who is really
upset they didn't get a signature, the reason for going to that convention
was that, etc... there are always some flaws. They raffled in an
odd way, first they'd say "Okay, these people get sketches" and listed
off the numbers. Then they did the signatures, in the fashion of
numbers between here and here get signatures. so it could be like
from 458201 - 458212 or something. If you were within that
range, congratulations ^_^; Luckily, our small group of 6 or so was
within one of the ranges :) So we won the signature, and we were
pumped for the cosplay meeting at 2pm ^_^; The signature we won was
part of the Sunday session. They told us to be there at 11am to get
the signature *_*
Vaguely remembering what happened after the Watase panel... I think we
split up for a bit, to go to our separate rooms to drop off items and to
get ready. I headed over to the dealers room to work a bit, since
I hadn't that day at all. 2 or so hours go by, and
then I had
to get to the RK Cosplayers room and get my scar applied, also be ready
for the main masquerade meeting. I remember settling down in the
bed, closing my eyes because everyone was so busy and I was already ready...
and then I heard flashes going off. Apparently people thought it
was cute that Kenshin fell asleep o_ox Lucinda begins to head
out the door, and I look up. She asked, "Wanna come with? I
just want to walk around." and I nodded, getting my stuff quickly and hopping
out the door with her. Again, one of those faded moments in time
where I think we talked a little, hung out, but mainly nothing exciting
happened. ^_^; At some point though, I believe we officially headed
over to the Masquerade meeting to get things set up and along. Daaaaaaaaaaaaamn
there were a lot of people. Some people combined skits or dropped
out. It was a long meeting. I remember eating a little bit of one
of those nice lunches Steve got the folks working at his table, but it
was only half really... and I was too nervous to eat. Wandering
around and such before we had to officially be back was crazy. So
many hours spent coming and going. At some point we were wandering
around the hotel, and a Con Security guy stopped Lucinda with her huge
weapon looking thing, and told her that she had to have it peace bonded.
It's like, WHAT? This thing needs to be peace bonded? It's made of
Styrofoam o_o They hauled us to con security ops, and the first
guy wandered off. The other people in the room looked at her, looked
at the prop, and kind of rolled their eyes. They're like, "There's
no way to peace bond that... what was that guy thinking? Just make
sure not to poke peoples eyes out with it or something." and took pictures
of her.
The masquerade was psychotic. 50 some odd entries, and we'd been
there since like 6pm. Maybe earlier. We were stuck there till
10pm, waiting for judges decisions and all. 4 hours of waiting...and
waiting...and waiting... I got to see lots of neat costumes, and
did a little bit of resting before we lined up. During the judging,
they showed these computer movies from the cg contest. Unfortunately,
some of them were either really boring, or I was really tired. They
had the doors open, and as I've realized, California nights aren't exactly
very warm. I nodded off several times. At some point, I ask
Lucinda what we're going to do after this. I said I wanted to get
something to eat, and she was like, "Yeah, and after that let's get a drink."
I was like, yeah, I can handle that, that sounds cool actually. It's
good to see that to show my appreciation for my American independence is
displayed by dressing up as characters from Japanese Animation. It's
irony, I think. Anyways, after waiting and waiting... our skit actually
won a Judges Award :) All our work did pay off x.x The
award was kept by Alice, who was dressed as our Tomoe. ^_^; And we ALL
got AX magazines! Woo hoo ^_^
After we got offstage, suddenly our entire group disappeared. It
was rather spooky. Matt handed me my camera ( that he had been taking
pictures of the cosplay and such that didn't really come out that well
), then Lucinda nudges me. She said, "Oh my god, that's Yuu Watase
RIGHT THERE". I'm like, "No way, really?" She said, "Go catch
her! We can get her picture!" I was a bit hesitant.
Rushing over to that area, following what was Yuu Watase, I tell Lucinda
that SHE has to ask for the photo though. We paused, Watase has her
translator ask the girls dressed as Tomo and Soi if she could take a picture
with them. It's like... SHE'S asking THEM?! Shouldn't it be
the other way around!? We wait it out, then Lucinda goes for the
kill. She quickly asked Watase for the photo. Unfortunately, we realized
the woman doesn't speak an ounce of english. Her translator quickly
says something to her, and she nods a bit confusedly. We pose, Matt
took the pictures with both mine and Lucinda's camera ( Only hers came
out x.x Luckily we traded doubles *_* ).
That poor woman looked so scared. I think it was the fact that Lucinda
had that huge weapon looking thing over her head. Ah well, it was
our brush with greatness. We soon went to the lobby and posed for
pictures with the masses. Our RK group already gone for food and
music videos... oops. It was fun :)
As we traveled back to the hotel, I made a quick observation, "Wow, look,
Yuu Watase's in front of us again.". Lucinda comments, "Wow, we really
ARE stalking her." Our pathway just happened to be the same
from the convention center to the hotel. We push the button to go
to the room, but it doesn't seem to come down fast enough, so they're like,
okay, let's go up the escalator. Sure enough, Yuu Watase is there
again, in front of us on the way to the escalator. We keep walking,
until we get to right before it. There we see Akira Kamiya, visiting
voice actor from Japan. I said, "Hey, let's get a picture with Kamiya."
Lucinda said, "No! She's getting away!" "...."
Checked out Karaoke... still setting up. Okay, so we had already
decided to get dinner, get drinks, and party all night. Or something
like that ^_^; This was an awkward situation. Basically
Bryan wanted to do all this with us, and to be quite honest, I wasn't happy
with him, and I definantly did not want to drink around him. We ended
up going to the store as me, Lucinda and Matt. We of course end up
at Ralphs ^_^
Our Ralphs card came in handy this fine day. The people in front
of us in line asked to use it, and they saved 4 dollars on beer!
They were so happy. So happy, in fact, they took our picture in front
of the lottery machine ^_^; How nice of them.
Okay, so here was the game plan. Matt gives Bryan the drink that
he had requested, but said that he had a fight with me over something.
Lucinda and I go back to her room and drop off the alcohol, remeeting Matt
over at the Karaoke room. Over there we got to witness Akira Kamiya
singing it up ^_^;
After remeeting up, we get the alcohal and go to that lovely open deck
that we heard about not but 24 hours before! We set up and chill.
A few friends head over, and join us. Everything was just cool and
fun. It was great, to just sit back and hang out for a bit.
Relaxing I guess ^_^; I don't drink. Not at all really.
I think this is the most I'd had in one sitting, and it consisted of
about 2 wine coolers. Oooooooo. I'm breaking laws now o_o
I think Lucinda's cheeks flushed after the first beer. She wasn't
drunk, she just flushes easily. How strange. At about 4AM,
a lone security guard came along to break up our fun. He told us
the foyer was closed. I mentioned how another guard told us
to go there to do this, and he said "Well, it's CLOSED now." ... gosh darn
party poopers.
Once we got back inside, we girls decided it would be a good idea to use
the bathroom. This is where things got interesting. Lucinda,
Marla and I are in the bathroom, while Peter and Matt are outside waiting.
Apparently at some point, Bryan happens to wander by! Doh!
Luckily we started to BS in the bathroom for a little. Suddenly,
we heard this knock at the door. Matt looked in and blinked. "You
guys get COUCHES?!"
He came in
and explained how Bryan was right outside our door a minute before, and
how we all were this close to getting caught ^_^;;; Peter then comes
in, and so we decide to take pictures :) Figure if we're gonna go
all out, might as well go for it. We then decided that it's time
to head out of this bathroom, and to explore others! A voice
echoed down the hall! Oh no! It must be Bryan! We 5 bolted
down the corridor to the stairs entrance, opened the doorway and
hid. We traveled
down the steps to the first floor, where Matt and Peter showed us the pathetic
mens bathroom. We then showed them the other bathroom. Even
though security harassed us for doing absolutely nothing, when we were
actually causing 'trouble', no one was there to stop it ;p
I think the only person who actually noticed was this poor soul on the
phone who gave us strange looks. The evening ended there, with Marla
who played on the downstairs internet terminal and Lucinda passing out
in her chair. We helped her to her room and went up to go to sleep.
A nice and full day. ^_^;
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