Part One | Part Two | Part Three
Saturday, I met up with reader, friend, and Pulp Fanfiction co-star Artful. John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson we ain't.1 But in case you're interested in seeing us take their jobs for a day, check out Star Otaku's story here. Artful also took the picture of me and Chiyo's father. And speaking of which...
Look who decided to stop by Saturday night! We all found him hanging out at the end of our hallway and tried to figure out what the heck to do with him. The answer was quite simple...
Pose for pictures! On the left is Scott in raspberry heaven, while Nina decides on a different pose. Incidentally, she tore those pants that night at the dance club. I wonder why...
Scott and I got up pretty early Sunday, after Nick's presentation of Bubblegum Crisis 2040 knocked us out earlier than the previous night's Chobits screening.2 We walked around the early morning convention hours. The true sign of an anime convention- this hallway was packed at 2:00 a.m.
With so little activity going on, Scott and I were bored out of our minds and not all that awake yet. So we took pictures of each other in our dazed states. I could have sworn that I took a picture of Scott... but perhaps it was too scary that the developer refused to let it see the light of day. Clearly it was time to go. Clear to everybody... except for Nick.
Approaching noon- check out time. We all arranged to meet at the room at eleven to check out. Nick, who as we all remember is the guy the room's reserved to, is nowhere in sight. 11:30 rolls around. We don't want to get in trouble so we start moving everything out. This is the hallway after we were done with it. Merchandise, clothes... even Mike's overpriced DDR pad. Once again, we're stuck guarding our stuff. Andy, Nina and I eventually hatch a... incredibly cunning plan to escape and move our stuff down to the lobby so I can pull around with my car.
The last pic I took of the con- Nina getting ready to execute the incredibly cunning plan. She's actually holding up pretty well considering she just spent two nights in a hotel room with Nick, Mike, and I. The brilliantly cunning plan was in motion, and while the guard-dwarf and I were waiting we ran into Nick at around 12:30. He was, of course, chatting with other people with no sense of time whatsoever. It didn't matter to us. We handed him our keys and left him to do the dirty work. We got our stuff down, I pulled the car around, and except for a nosey Weda cosplayer who asked what I was doing when I pulled up to the hotel, the incredibly cunning plan worked. We popped in Nina's new Gravitation CD and sped back to the Badger State.
And so ended the convention. This was my official haul. The three Nadesico DVDs I needed to complete the set, and the second half of Tiffany Grant's favorite series GoldenBoy. I also picked up a new keychain (Kitsune from Love Hina!) to replace my rapidly deteriorating Washu-chan.3 The Gatekeepers 21 DVD was grabbed after Andy gave it a glowing review. It's the follow-up OAV, and a much darker look at what happens after the series ends. I won the Adobe t-shirt at the Iron Chef AMV editing contest when I grabbed one the hosts tossed out. Andy didn't have a prayer...
Hope you enjoyed my story of Anime Central 2003. I'm currently talking with friends about possibly going to Otakon in Baltimore and AnimeIowa in... well... Iowa.4 I'll let you know what happens. Until then, I leave you with a badge of honor- my program book, kept safely away from the pen of Tiffany Grant.
Footnotes:
Friend and fellow author Star Otaku often writes movie parodies using the author avatars in our writing circle, many involving abilities dubbed "author powers" for being ostentatious and frequently omnipotent. Being one of the few authors whose avatar does not have special powers, I was the Samuel L. Jackson character who survived just by looking cool. Artful was Travolta's character... a kickass ninja!
Yes, I know BGC2040's written by Konaka. But even he couldn't help that snoozer. A little background music would have been nice!
I'm typically not a sap for crappy merchandise, but a keychain is my one exception. Washu lasted for a good year- Kitsune lasted about eight months before being disembodied. The saga continues in Otakon '04 and No Brand Con '05.
I did go to Otakon that year, but didn't put together a full recap. I have still never been to AnimeIowa... in fact, I've never even been to Iowa at all. From what I've heard, I'm not missing anything.