Richard and I arrived to put up our pre-reg badges early Friday morning. We were met with a rather long line which almost prevented us from seeing the opening ceremonies. Lucky for us those usually start late. :) A couple years ago we sat in on the opening and discovered that it's the best way to preview what's going on at the con, from there we decide what we want to do. Sure they publish the event schedule that gets placed in every attendees goodie bag, but it doesn't really tell you who the people are. Naturally, Richard and I don't stalk the website to read about who's there and what's going on. Plus we started having more fun when we stopped trying to plan our weekend months in advance. We did such things as waited in line for autographs, attended a couple discussion panels, went to the concerts, previewed an anime being released in the US, and went to the dance.
Sadly we missed the question/answer panel for Peter Fernandez(that's right, the voice of Speed Racer!) but we did catch the last 15 mins of it. I got his autograph and a picture with him earlier in the day. This was really cool since I grew up watching Speed Racer and at the time it was my favorite. It was nice his shirt had the checkered pattern on the edge of the sleeves. He gave me an Easter egg too. I was fairly speechless the whole time since I was so excited.
The next exciting moment was meeting the man who did the mecha art for the 80's Transformer series. Yes! Another one I grew up watching! I got a picture and autograph with him as well.
I also met the very polite Greg Dean(Real Life Comics) and his wife Liz. They were also selling shirts, so I bought the "body by Nintendo" one. I couldn't resist. I wish I would had something more profound to say or ask, but I'm shy and well it just didn't happen.
I think the final large highlight of this year was meeting Smile.dk. They are most popular for their many tracks on Dance Dance Revolution(yes the very reason I wanted a PlayStation 2). I didn't get their autograph but I did better and go a picture with them after they finished their question/answer panel.
Ooh I was so excited! Any they are just too cute! We missed the beginning of their panel but caught most of it. It was a lot of fun. With the help of a double shot latte at 10:30pm I was able to stay awake for their concert which was part of the dance. Richard and Kami didn't really dance. I'm not sure why Kami didn't but when I asked Richard about it later he said it was because he was holding everyone else's stuff. I had a good time though. I stood next too the cameras and from the tiny monitor could see the stage.When it is released on dvd I'd like to buy Romeo X Juliet. It's the one preview anime we went to over the weekend and quite good. The English voices did a good job and it's fun. Yes it's the story of Romeo and Juliet so there can't be that many episodes, but I like the twist they put on it. Plus I think it will be really interesting to watch it in English then watch it in Japanese with subtitles. We all know how the story goes and read through it in high school, after all it's one of the English language classics. I'm curious to see how some of the language translates into Japanese. I would be really interest to see the notes from those who did the writing for it's US release. Knowing the story and having it readily available, it must have been hard to keep with the raw translated script and make it normal English.
We also went to a kimono workshop where they helped me tie my yakata properly. Richard couldn't dress up since they didn't have any male ones with them, however we finally convinced Kami to put one on. We had a good time. I really enjoyed watching the family who came in shortly after we did. The two little kids were like dolls to the people dressing them up. You could see how much they were all enjoying themselves. The kids like being dressed up and posing for pictures while the adults liked dressing them in the cute clothes.
For pictures visit my website.
