Ota-con report
So yeah. I "slept in" the latest by getting up around 1030 and then I headed over to the convention center... walked arond a little bit, saw Proz, met LV Taiki, and then went to the staff rooms to meet up with Becca, TJ, and Chris to do opening ceremonies stuff. We grabbed our bag lunches and went upstairs, and from about 12:30 until 4pm I was in the main ballroom.
First we were there for sound checks. The band "Angela" was there doing tons of sound checks for their songs because they were singing a song during opening and also doing a concert in the same room later. They were pretty cool, and did a whole lot of songs, which was neat. In the meantime we put togther lists of the guests and decided where they'd march in from and whatnot. did more soundchecks, set up some stuff, then herded folks to the appropriate door to wait in line at... eventually the guests actually got there and that was the terrifying part. I had to go talk to all of them and explain what we were doing, and give some of them flags to wave around (the theme was Otakulympics) and get them all organized in the back to march in together, and ugh. Fortunately like 3 other staffers showed up out of nowhere and helped out. I talked to the Japanese guests in Japanese a little bit and explained everything to the otheres... it was weird because I'm so NOT an otaku that I just didn't know or care who half of them are. (I think I'd seen Little Gamers before and of course MacHall, amd I vaguely know who some of the voice actors are, I guess) So basically I just herded them all around :) It was kinda fnny in some ways. Anyway, eventually the ceremonies started, and I listened for our cue, and marched in the guests, and then went backstage... EXCEPT someone had taken my guest list with the order to put them on stage! So I wasn't sure what to do!
Basically I had half the order memorized already though... and just tried to listen to the speech for the rest. It all worked out actually, we got everyone on stage in the right order. Whew. The only snafu overall was actually when the sound people screwed up something when the Angela band went up to sing.
Other than that it went really well! We collected stuff up afterwards and I ended up carrying around the "Olympic" flags for the rest of the afternoon (except the Finland one which the Little Gamers guys stole), which was kinda fun and amusing. I met up with Teki and Larschan and Evan and Jorge in the JMV room for a while, and then ran into Kon, Isaac, and Dan at registration, and Jenny and Chris a bit later, and I saw Django down in the videogame room. Dude, videogame room! The Ran-sai guys are there with their pop'n controllers, and BOY are those sweet! So I met all the Ransai guys and I played a bit of Pop'n on their controllers. That was pretty neato.
Around 7pm I went to get picked up by my mom and stepfather and we went to dinner at the Inner Harbor at a random seafood place. It was pretty good I guess. I won't say anymore about it because my mom reads my LJ and I don't feel like making this a restricted entry. My mom got me a duck rug and a Boyd's Duck. Oi.
Came back to the con... stopped in the hotel room for a bit and then went back to the games room. Yay games room and more pop'n. I forget if/what I did anything after that... oh, I went to AMV's for a bit, until it ended at midnight. I ran into Nautilus and Petearr from PP for about 2 seconds outside AMVs. I think Naut forgot who I was. And after that I came back up here because Kuibbles needed me to be in OCL brawl. So I got Rebecca's laptop working and logged into Puzzle Pirates and did OCL brawl. We got three matches done and I disconnected in the fourth, never to get network going again. Ugh. I later did hear we won all four matches though, so that's good. Went to sleep around 2am after giving up on the network, grr.
Saturday I woke up and I put on my "Kiki Ten Years Later" costume and wandered around the con. I went to the dealer's room pretty early, got a silly t-shirt and a free L'arc poster and eventually went back for an Otakon t-shirt. Most of the dealer's room really depresses me... too many high prices, not enough cool stuff. I'm really jaded since going to Japan so much I guess.
I went to grab my bag lunch from Con Operations and also tried to get a sticker for the L'arc concert. This led to a ton of confusion over who was supposed to give me a sticker. Fortunately some of the guys remembered me from running opening ceremonies, so eventually I just talked to Terry Chu and he gave me one. Yay. Then I ate lunch alone. Bleh.
I ran into a guy in the hall who was carrying a stack of board games. He seemed nice so I followed him down to the CCG tables in Artist's Alley... he wanted to get some board games going. Two guys came up who wanted to play, of all things... Munchkin. SIGH. So I ended up explaining the game to them while the board game guy ran off to get more games. The problem is, I *hate* Munchkin. So I took off again. Said I'd be back (but I wasn't, oh well.)
The next hour or two is a blur. I wandered around the con, people took my picture a bit, I went to videogaming again and saw Taiki and played some Pop'n... went back to the dealer's room... called Krispy and eventually met up with him for a bit. He got shanghaied to go off and get stuff to get autographed, but then I got a phone call returned from Vallaugh and Hakim from PP, who had posted on the forums about Otakon, so yay! They came over and met up with me and we hung out in a hallway and talked for like 2 hours. They were really cool! They're both computer nerd types who went to Georgia Tech (No, they didn't know you, Jack, although Steve/Hakim was apparently in marching band there around the same time you were there...) Anyway we hung out talking about all kinds of rrandom crap. It's always fun to meet people who are of similar age and interests and whatnot to just hang out with.
At that point, like 3:30, I ran back to the hotel to change out of my dress and into t-shirt and jeans to go to the L'arc concert. I ran into Rebecca at the hotel and we walked over to find the staff meeting up place together. It took a bit but we found the staff people and got over to the concert. Dude, I am so glad I am staff... we didn't have to wait in the mile-long line outside :) Anyway, whee, L'arc concert. They played the whole first episode of Full Metal Alchemist before it... sigh. I hate anime.
So I would have taken down the entire setlist except... I haven't listened to Smile enough to remember all the song titles (well, they played Ready Steady Go and Spirit Dreams Inside, but I mean like the other ones...) They played some stuff from Ark/Ray though... they did play Heaven's Drive and Driver's High. And Stay Away. AAAAAAND they played Kasou!!!!! Despite that I spent half the concert just listening like "yay L'arc music but I don't know this song it's too new", it was all worth it to hear Kasou, I love that song. And well, the encore was ALSO perfect -- it was Honey, Blurry Eyes, and Pieces. Wooo. From the start of Pieces when he sings "nakanaide" I was almost ready to cry anyway. Har.
Hyde and Tetsu and Ken all came up to the mic at various times and said some pretty goofy Engrish stuff. Hyde was like "HELLO BALTIMORE!!! HELLO AMERICA!!! Did you eat crab? Did you eat crabs? .... I ate TWO!!!" Later on he was like "I am Evangelion. You know Evangelion? Going Berzerk? I am Evangelion going berzerk! Going berzerk!!!!" I have now forgotten who did what, I think it was Ken came out with a kazoo and was being goofy and was saying things into the mic like "Who am I? NOOO! I am *Otakon!*" and whatnot, and Tetsu later was like "Do you want to eat my bananas???" and threw a bunch of bananas into the audience. How weird :)
The stage was built specifically for the concert I think. It involved fire and fireworks and tons of crazy lighting.
And the crowd was really into it all Japanese-concert-style waving their arms at the stage and all.
Anyway, after the concert I found Jenny and Chris and their friend Jason (MrBeard from PP) and Evan and Dan and we all went to the waterfront and got food in the food court. That was pretty fun. After that, Jenny and Evan and I and Jorge tried to get into the Masquerade but the line was too long and the room too small... I think they all went to Artist's Alley after that, but I went to the game room and played more Pop'n. I saw Makoto (the tenkay chick) there. She's decent at PNM, I'd say a little better than me but not quite as much as I thought she'd be. I got to play some PNM 6 and boy is that messed up. Then I hung out at the Ransai booth a while. Talked to some guys... one was from Albany and was really nice, and the other was from Delaware and wasn't as nice. And I saw ransai-Scott again and he has a Love Shine shirt and I hate him.
I kinda gave up on the con after that and came back up here to the hotel... and Becca's network doesn't work on her laptop so I'm typing this report up on my laptop and I'll just upload it eventually when I get home, I guess.
thus ends what i wrote on saturday night
So Sunday I got up at like 8am since Rebecca wanted us to check out early and put our stuff in her car and then go to the con. So we did. First went to Ops to brainstorm some closing ceremonies stuff, and eat bagels. Then I went to the video game room yet again. Hung out with Scott (Random) and Rob (another Ransai guy but not the Rob that is RedSai) and some other guys around the Pop'n setup. Played some Street Fighter and SNES Kart with Rob too, that was cool. I talked to the other Pop'n guys -- this time one was from mid-state PA and one was from Georgia. It really does blow my mind how many people are awesome at Pop'n and live all over the damn country.
Anyway I was there till like 11:30, and took off since the game room closed at noon anyway. The Ransai guys told me to join their forum or else, so I might have to do that. I wonder if I was the only hardcore PNM chick there (aside from Makoto/
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agentkinesis who mostly frequented the OTHER pop'n setup anyway) or something. Anyway... I went to the dealer's room after that for like half an hour. I grabbed lots of free stuff from tables. That was kinda fun. Sunday is a good time to visit the dealer's room. Though Geneon was out of Angela CDs and Tofu was out of L'arc buttons... ahh, it doesn't matter. Met up with TJ and Becca and Chris in Ops after that. We ate our bagged lunches while they watched Dragon Half, and then pretty much went over to Panel 2 to set up for Closing Ceremonies.Actually, closing went EXTREMELY well for the amount of effort we put into it. We just had to soundcheck a little, and I ran over to get the Cosplay winner lists, and we got this guy to bring the AMV winners, so... TJ and Chris got on stage and made more jokes, and we showed a con video, and the AMVs, and read a lot of lists of cosplay and videogame tourney winner names, and,.. that was about it! The weird thing is how over-attended closing ceremonies was! The room filled up and then some, we were really surprised. I sat with Jayen for most of it, we lost Evan somewhere along the way I guess.
After closing, I headed back to Ops to return the lists, and then... headed out of Otakon. Chris got Becca's keys and I grabbed my bags from the car, and headed to the light rail. We got to North Lithicum or whatever around 3:35... and the bus to the airport didn't leave until 4:02, which sucked. Except I saw Taiki there again and we hung out in the back of the bus wanking about Bemani.
I got to the airport and got a hot dog at Nathan's and then went to my gate just in time to hear about my flight being delayed and that's another entry so yar.
I've probly forgotten things. Actually I have a lot of commentary on my new opinions of annoying 15-year-olds with "hug me" signs, but uh, we'll save that for another time.
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"Oh! They did a Rurouni Kenshin theme! They must be cool!" and whatnot.
Getting an anime theme song in Japan is great advertising, and a good profit booster exactly because of all the people who think like that.
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Yeah, I know that TV tie-ins are where it's at, and it's great for the band -- but in Japan, people know that L'arc and all those other bands are REAL BANDS and GOOD MUSIC and not just SOME DUDES WHO DO ANIME THEMES. Ugh. It's kinda like Naomi Tamura, who basically *has* no other good songs besides the themes she sung for Magic Knights Rayearth.
Hey, they also did themes for Kenshin, GTO, DNA^2 (I know you've blocked out that one), the Final Fantasy movie, umm...
i burn u. fear the wrath of me uploading Over Drive.