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Thanks to our "A" designation, we got fairly good seats in the sixth row or so. There was one guy right in front of us who kept raising his hands and standing up, which interfered with several pictures, but we saw most of the action. And boy was there a lot of action.
The loud music blaring through the loudspeakers didn't improve my headache though.
The Show
And Whatever Came After That
Might have been my headache talking, but I didn't understand why they needed to pump up the crowd ahead of time.
You have stuff like this to pump it up for them. Haku, the other white dragon half!
If you can make out what this is from, you're more intuitive than I am. But yes, those are actual legs kicking in the air.
And here's Kellin and Tae getting a good reception. I whooped it up extra loud for them, per their request.
Kids, always a crowd pleaser- Sugar, Saga and Pepper.
My photo of this Samus cosplayer was a casualty of the guy in front of me standing up, but thankfully I caught him/her outside later.
We've all seen live attempts at the Hare Hare Yukai dance before, but never with such accuracy and never on stage in front of three thousand people.
Along with the great cosplay were some great skits. Never thought I'd cheer for a Naruto/Sasuke yaoi skit, but when you do a parody of a song from Wicked (especially one which I've considered doing a yuri-scented AMV for), it's win. On a similar note was a Vash/Wolfwood parody of Guy Love from Scrubs. Non-yaoi entries included the above mentioned Gurenn Lagann/Portal crossover, with a cameo by Akio from Utena (it worked... don't remember how, but it worked!), a Cloverfield parody where that filthy 2 Girls 1 Cup video saves Tokyo from a rampaging Narutard, a morality play where a very hot angel and a very hot devil (both with operating wings) argue over whether a guy should eat forbidden cake, and the winner- a well-executed Saw parody with Light and L from Death Note. For all the griping on the No Brand Forums about L cosplayers occupying coveted slots in their cosplay contest, kinda funny that these guys were deserving prize winners for best skit.
Misty May even got in on a skit where old-school characters harass a young Naruto cosplayers. The young have numbers... the old have canes. Score one for the get off my lawn crowd.
As you could imagine, at the conclusion of the cosplay, between its loud music, loud cheering, three Caramelldansen dances and about forty-nine RickRolls, I was pretty dead. Weaving through the throng, I managed to find a place to sit down downstairs that was only kinda crowded. Wouldn't you know it- blackout. Lights go out downstairs, everybody panics... and surprisingly calms down when enough people pull out cell phones to light the way. I even poured water in it. Once they came back on, however, I figured that was enough fun downstairs. Lord knows how long it would take to hitch an elevator up to Anime Jeopardy.
Our quizmaster Gendo had originally conceived Anime Trivial Pursuit, but couldn't find a board, so the difficulty levels weren't quite consistent. Some questions were incredibly easy, some incredibly hard. One whole category, which played a pop song and asked which character best associated with it, was damn crazy (especially when there were four teams and only one list of eligible characters). Somehow I still nailed songs for Kagome from InuYasha and Mima from Perfect Blue. My team eeked out a win against KORfan's team in Final Jeopardy (some FMP question not involving rugby) and claimed the prize of $20. My teammates were friends of Gendo's and didn't want to trouble him. So he asked me if I wanted it. Like I'm gonna say no.
Unfortunately, this was all I could stand for the day. My headache and cold had gotten progressively worse and for one scary moment I thought I was going to throw up in the hotel lobby. It being Saturday night and packed with increasingly-inebriated otaku, that wouldn't have looked too out of place, but still... though it was only midnight, it was time to get some sleep. At least I knew I'd be the first one back at the hotel and could claim a bed. The roommates trickled it a few hours later.
Everyone but Nick trickled out a few hours later as well. Nick apparently had a good night Saturday, resulting in him literally crashing onto the bed at four or so. I woke up at around nine, but with no con activities to speak of and a sore throat (though thankfully no headache), didn't feel compelled to go anywhere. I watched some TV for an hour and sat back while waiting for Nick to wake up and face his hangover. Around eleven or so, I got up, he woke up, we agreed on my room payment and I cleaned up my corner and skedaddled.
After dropping off most of my bags in the car, I made another run through the dealer's room. My shopping remained pretty light this weekend, since I still have twelve complete series that I still need to watch and I'm finally declaring a moratorium until I clear it out a bit... or Gurenn Lagann comes out. I did pick up Roujin Z for ten bucks, but that's a movie, that's a classic, and that doesn't count.
At noon came the AMV contest winners, so I swung by the line that had gathered outside. Just in time to catch the IRT claim that they were relatively on time (fifteen minutes late) and the doors would be opening around 12:10. I set my watch and left.
Oh, one lonely Spoony Bard was all that remained, singing a delightful cover of Simon & Garfunkel's The Boxer and a strangely soothing acoustic version of Outkast's Hey Ya.
TongoJeff joins a Renton and Eureka for a subdued Eureka 7 meetup. After talking with him and KORfan, I'm almost dying for AnimeIowa to start already.
The AMV winners were really good, but no Skittles in the bunch. Nothing I can really recall, other than the oddity of Hajime No Ippo winning the day. To think I was afraid of submitting Villainous Imagination due to the possible Haruhi-saturation (for the record: I didn't because of the tech problems I mentioned earlier).
Nick F. found me in the AMV room and we ran through the Dealer's Room once more so I could show him the one booth that sold the volumes of The Third that he was looking for. From there it was back to panel ops to see if they needed help with anything before he left. They needed a little assistance striking a few panel rooms, about fifteen minutes worth of work, so I went up to the bar to watch the Cubs game while he did that.
An hour passed...
An hour in which I saw a sweet Eyeshield cosplayer, but still an hour. I was in baseball mode anyway...
I called Nick and he said they got carried away and moved on to more rooms. He snuck away from them and met me back at panel ops. Now we were done. I just had to go to the bathroom...
When I came back, Nick was gone. Ten minutes passed...
He came back with free bottles of Mountain Dew for both of us. All was forgiven. We returned to the car just as the Cubs touched off a 4-3 win to take the series against Pittsburgh.
As soon as we got on the interstate, Nick pulled out his laptop and started watching The Third, commenting on the video quality as if I could afford to look in spite of the busy Chicago traffic. Once we got out of town and into more stable driving conditions, where I might have snuck a peak or two, he put it away. We capped off the afternoon with dinner at the Arby's in Janesville, and at least one person will know why I mentioned that.
Despite the illness (which is still lingering a week later), it was standard ACen fare- long lines, inconvenience abound... awesome cosplay. The fact that I made it to the masquerade probably salvaged what could have been a lost weekend. At the same time, that row of panelist badges in Panel Ops looked awfully tempting after the registration hassles. For that reason, and that reason only, I may have to ask Lynn if she wants Name That Opening in the big city. One thing's for sure, it'll be at AnimeIowa and after all that madness, that con sounds really good right now.