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I was bored at the anime convention. (And it's actually my fault.)
So today I went to my first anime convention.
I was bored. Though, I was not surprised about being bored.
Now a few things were pretty interesting. I found interesting discussions to explore and participate in, got to meet Lisle Wilkinson (that's "LEE sol", not "Lyle", as I first thought), played pachinko for the first time, and briefly played DDR (discovering that the mat--or the screen--gave me an annoying signal delay), and realized a few things.
See, here's the problem: I'm not an anime fan in the mainstream of the anime fandom itself. For instance, here are some of the series represented in the "Anime Jeopardy" game (which unfortunately had a few technical difficulties, but that's besides the point):
* Ranma 1/2
* Trigun
* Bleach
* Digimon
* Naruto
* Madoka
* Sailor Moon
* Pokémon
* Evangelion
Apart from those last three, I pretty much have no familiarity with any of the series. Well, I correctly guessed that this one character was a Madoka character. That's about it. I didn't hear any mention of even, say, Nanoha, Idolmaster, Eureka Seven, or .hack//, much less some of my more obscure pet series. Well, there was some .hack// manga that a vendor was selling. But there was a pretty assorted lot of manga there. They even had the door-stopping first volume of Magic Knight Rayearth. I thought about asking how much they wanted it for, but I figured the price was higher than I was willing to pay for it anyway...and that's before I've even asked myself how much I'd be willing to pay for it. (Unfortunately, I'm not a cute little girl who can guilt-trip a capitalistic but idealistic shopkeeper into underselling to me.)
Well, anyways, first thing was Anime Jeopardy, and I already told you about that. It was kinda boring in that I didn't know most of the questions, but I put on a meta hat and realized that basically all the questions were series-specific trivia, and almost never about metadata either. There were questions asking to identify characters, asking how many siblings this one character from some mecha series (I think) had (he had 29 siblings), or how many Shinji had (none), or who Vash the Stampede's brother's name is, and stuff. The few metacontext questions included one highlighting Samuel L. Jackson's prolific work as a voice actor, one about Kyubey's beta character design (he used to have wings), and one true/false question about whether an abbreviated nickname for three Naruto characters was also the name of an actual movie.
Then I kinda wandered for a while. The videogame room had too many people, and the music room (by music I mean they set up Rock Band and DDR in a room) was having technical difficulties with DDR (I wasn't interested in Rock Band), so I played pachinko for a little bit. For the first time.
Seems like pachinko is basically a combination of a pinball machine and a slot machine. Well, not quite a pinball machine; there are no flippers. Instead, it's like many-worlds pinball--you have this mechanism that automatically shoots many small pinball-like steel balls, one by one, into this obstacle course, and then you hope that some of them land in a slot that, well, lets you play a slot-machine sub-game, on a screen. And then occasionally you have occasion to press this big red button, for no apparent reason.
Well, it seems that that big red button, every so often, is used to reveal some sort of character-specific interaction. All five of the pachinko machines were themed on some series (including one on The Matrix, amusingly), and despite my complete lack of knowledge of Japanese, I think this is why people have reported that there's a Castlevania pachislot game that somehow reveals backstory about Sypha Belnades.
Fun fact: I didn't know what to expect so I just sat down at the first available pachinko machine. It was themed on Akagi (that mahjong series). Just as I sat down I heard another machine start blaring A Step Forward Into Terror (a music track from Neon Genesis Evangelion), and I was like, why didn't I pick that one. Oh well. And at the one next to me (that was already occupied), the guy manning the machines said to the (male) player there, if you get a jackpot (from lining up the slots) the girls on the screen go into bikini mode. Well, I guess fanservice goes hand in hand with gambling.
Then I was just killing my time at panels. I decided that the least boring thing would actually be something I'd previously dismissed: "Memoirs of a 6-foot Blonde Geisha", with someone named Lisle Wilkinson. Allegedly she does voice acting work, notably as Nina from Tekken V. Never played Tekken and never heard of her. Well, that was actually an interesting discussion about Japanese culture, and I got to ask about what the Japanese media industries think of digital distribution/digital piracy/fansubbing/etc. (the answer was "they still haven't made sense of it all yet, on a whole, though there are individual players that are more on board than others"). Also got to ask her about the smoking problem, which she confirmed is annoyingly pervasive; she blames it on the high-stress lifestyle in urban centers in Japan (and elsewhere in east Asia as well). Same with alcohol.
I pondered a few times whether at the Maid Cafe Tea area. Seriously, it used to be called "Maid Cafe" in the schedule, but when I picked up the schedule this morning, it was replaced with "Tea". It was pretty clearly a label covering up something else even from the photocopy. Well, I decided against it. First, if I wanted food, it would be from the cafeteria kitchen nearby (or maybe a novelty snack from the table selling those. maybe). Second, I have no interest in French maid uniforms. Third, it was just a bit awkward sitting down at one of these socializing food events, without one or more friends to converse with. I've done it before; I patronized Deli Haus at least once. It was awkward sitting alone, especially what with being served by waitresses dressed in semi-fetish wear, when you're really just there for the atmosphere and the food. And this time, there wasn't much unique atmosphere either.
Eventually, I got sufficiently bored. I took my leave at 1:30 PM to make it look like I legitmately had an appointment rather than just being bored of the discussion I was attending. I could have stayed another hour, actually, then left at 2:30 to get to work at 3:30 (to rehearse with the cantor and then play mass at 4 PM), but I was like, the heck with this. I drove back home and had lunch there instead.
Lesson learned: Next time I go to an anime convention, I'm bringing a friend, or I'd better have something I really want to do there. And maybe those $60 conventions are better, but I won't bet $60 (or even $30) on that chance.
Maybe if I put up a lot of my own piano transcriptions and people like them I'll be invited to perform at a panel at a small con. Maybe...*sniff*...maybe. And if I'm lucky they'll actually provide a piano. or a keyboard.
Hopefully tomorrow will be better. There'll be a "Vocaloid interactive concert" (apparently participants get to sing karaoke to music composed for Vocaloids...except I don't know any of the words...sigh...) and a "Name that Tune" event, which I have higher hopes for but which will probably go something like Anime Jeopardy did this morning. Well, at least I'll also get to walk into the screening room to show my support for Eureka Seven.
(FYI: Deli Haus is an annual event held at Senior House, an undergrad dormitory at MIT. It's a nostalgic throwback to when there used to be this restaurant of that name in Boston. The restaurant no longer exists, but some students had a great fondness for it, and thus created an annual attempt to re-create its atmosphere, down to the "sultry waitresses", in the basement of their dorm. It remains the one place where I've had a drink that consisted of milk and orange juice mixed together.)
Comments
Pretty much. You might want to bring multiple friends, or at least a friend who you're really close with, though. Or at least, that's how I felt at Anime Boston this year.
Apparently, IJBMers are really bad at going to anime conventions.
Well, I wouldn't expect anything less from us, honestly.
Uhh . . . IJBMer meetup? Let's take the world of dressing up as cartoon characters by storm!
But no, really, if we could find a convention that would be convenient for a lot of us to go to, I'd be so up for that.
i'll get the plane tickets
It wouldn't be fair to Aussie IJBMers - why would they go such a long way?
Get your asses over to Belgrade instead, it's right in the middle.
The most convenient answer is for everyone to come to Australia instead.
No, it's dangerous. I don't want to go to a place where giant spiders can kill you while you're on the shitter.
Oh, don't worry. The spiders won't kill you.
The drop bears will kill you first.
Guys, guys, shut up, I have a much better idea.
Why don't we just go to Japan? What could possibly go wrong? And it's fair to all of us, since none of us live there, as far as I know.
And then, three hours later, we all find ourselves on different islands.
>implying it only takes three hours to get to Japan
I said after.
I don't want to get killed by a Japanese Hornet.
Let's all go to New York and be a reality TV nerd sitcom.
Hm, now I've got curious and googled if there should be any anime conventions over here soon. There's one in July. I'm not really interested in going - I think that I would even dislike it, not to mention the sense of embarassment that would keep haunting me; but it definitely does seem like something to experience.
Having someone to go to a convention with is absolutely key. That's why I was kind of bored at my first ConnectiCon two years ago (but at least I had friends staying at my house, and occasionally reunited with them, like for dinner), and very bored last summer, my second. I effectively was with no one. The one person I saw the most was a guy I knew from high school who I didn't even want to hang out with.
So I basically resigned myself to the fact that I'll only be able to properly go to a con with Frances. And she can't come this summer, so I'm not going to the con. Assuming she winds up settling down in Boston this fall, though, we can go to Anime Boston next spring together, and it'll be her first, and my first time at a con that big, and it will be amazing. (And she might cosplay Giant Naked Rei, which I have never seen anyone do...)
do it
I kinda want to actually coordinate something, now that I know multiple people here who have either gone to Anime Boston before, or who might go in the future.
But in any case . . . actually, I was going to say it might be good to have more than one friend, but that applied to me more because my one friend insulted me most of the time.
@New York: Well, I suppose that's not too much further. Well, actually, I dunno how much further it is.
Despite one part of the core of my being being in Boston, I'm actually going away from there. I'll be in the DC area in a few months.
Most people don't live sitcom lives, most people are happy about this because living a sitcom life precludes that someone is laughing at you when you fail, which was inevitable because without your failure, there would be no audience.
But failing is easier than succeeding, and if failing gets an audience:
Failure = audience = ratings = money = success.
Ergo, by failing we succeed. And the more we fail, the more successful we are!
More like Failure = audience = ratings = money = power = women.
Failing is only attractive in sitcoms because it exists in a universe that we understand will never change even in spite of what happens.
what attracts us most to the sitcom is a world that we'll always know and never feel fear for.
Yes, but nerd sitcom.
Do you really want to bring another Big Bang Theory on to this Earth?
Beaten to it.
> implying we wouldn't be better than the Big Bang Theory
A world with an ever-present level of conflict with no relief in sight... why, some could call it this world, but not like the sitcom world, where after an hour or so has passed, every incident has passed and nothing dangerous is bound till the next episode.
>Implying things wouldn't degenerate into Juan wearing a luchador mask and designing elaborate death traps, Alex and me snapping and hunting the rest of the people down with swords and archery, only for Malk to rally an ineffective metal band to try to stop the special hell our mutual company has plunged us all into.
And Insanity Addict would post about it on 4chan. Only to be told to gtfo on /adv/ as the basses fall into his torso.
Hey wait a minute, this forum is already a sitcom you spotlight-stealing jerks.