It’s been two days since quite possibly the most hectic weekend of my life, and I think I’ve finally shaken off all the sleep deprivation and worn off that tasty mix of adrenaline and insanity, that anime conventions tend to impart upon an otherwise normal person.

As such it’s time to immortalize my first Fanime (do note that the phrase “my first time” has been beaten to death at the convention already) in literary form by going over some of the more entertaining events that made my weekend and my $55 worth it.

Additionally, in the next few days I plan to make a broader coverage of the convention as a whole with more general info and more griping, but until then I’ll stick with the starry-eyed wonder that makes all the seasoned, hardened anibloggers jealous.

It might be perhaps a bit self-indulging in a sense to brag about all the cool stuff that happened, but on the other hand, I hope I can inspire and encourage future entertaining events like this in the future.

OK, yeah, it’s just wankery. But it’s entertaining and hilarious wankery. Trust me. It’s apparently not just a coincidence I was wearing a Cirno shirt around. I make a lot of idiotically awesome stories.

A lot of the entertainment at anime conventions is provided not by the events and things to do, but rather by the people themselves. As negative a stereotype as the reclusive, escapist anime fan (or wildly, disturbing outgoing popular shonen show-tard) can appear at times, there’s still an undoubtable sense of belonging at these gatherings.

I’ve always believed that it’s kind of silly to try to distance yourself from society with the excuse “you’re not like us”, but I’ve got nothing against embracing those that share your particular brand of insanity, and so I had quite a bit of fun at Fanime just seeing the crowds of fans, from the shonen fans to the gamer half-breeds to the truly obscure.

Granted, I admitted myself that I was going to run around being all “cool and elitist” mentally sneering at all the orange jumpsuits and giant swords, but really I was overall impressed with the attitude of the fans there (although I can’t help but question some of their fashion). Perhaps that’s because I’m rather passive, or because while there were annoying people, they were far apart, but most people were really civilized, or, at least, wild in ways that entertained me.

I’m still amused by the little things, like random 30-people breakouts of Caramelldansen, or people sitting around holding signs that read “informative sign is informative”, and most of all I get a little kick of when I see something vaguely obscure that I recognize. Or, of course, the converse where people recognize my obscure shirts. (Thank you, the one person who figured out I was sporting a silhouette of Chihiro from ef for Monday.)

Specific cosplays I’ll discuss next time, while I’ll focus on two meetings here. First of course would be the one that I planned - albeit very poorly - and that would be the animeblogger meetup. It was supposed to be three or four people - me, lolikitsune of not dotq, Author from Ani-Nouto, and perhaps Mei of Jiii~.

Predictably though I did what I do best, and got horribly lost, meeting up with lk but entirely missing Author. (I think if there is one thing that’s bad about moe characters, it’s that I’m slowly absorbing their traits, becoming clumsy, dense, and spacey. Or maybe that’s why I like moe.)

Still, it was interesting and perhaps a bit scary meeting the face behind the flames. What strikes me is that lk is very lax - the fact that he doesn’t have green skin kind of disappointed me. Really it goes to show how people can have very different faces, and it was entertaining talking with him for a little bit, especially when I got a few glasses-orientated jokes fired back at me.

Apparently I met up with Mei twice as well and didn’t even know it, thanks to the fact that she was the one Clannad cosplayer I caught and a Kyonko (presumably the only one) that was hanging out with some Touhou characters.

Segueing into that there was a Touhou meetup on Saturday, which I attended with my real-life friend and his two Touhou internet friends. It was a fairly strong turnout, with two Kaguya / Eirin pairs, most of the popular characters, and even a Prismriver sister and PC-98 character. I was personally impressed with both the diversity and the quality of the cosplay, since about half of them were guys, a fact that took me a while to discern (a good thing). Remember, this is Touhou - there’s about as many guys as there are Tsukihime animes.

(One. The Tsukihime anime is (not) a lie. How many references is that?)

The photoshoot lasted for about half an hour and included all sorts of entertaining poses, including a parody of pretty much every IOSYS flash with dancing, some psuedo-yuri stuff, and more.

I guess the reason I brought this up was for the same reason as the lk meetup, that it surprised me how sane anime fans can be and how insane they can be. I met up with my friend’s two friends again on Monday and spent a good five minutes double-taking how they look in plainclothes. You would never guess.

That’s what I like about anime conventions, is that all of a sudden I’m tempted to pull a cheesy analogy to violent videogames and say “they give you a chance to release your crazy side”. Not that it’s good to be all conformist and ashamed of your nerdy side (if you remember the Otaku Girl rant), but we’ll just say that there are certain times and places for carrying around dakimakura.

Moving on to the second event that stuck in my head, the Shira Oka panel was just as enjoyable as I had hoped for a fan of this English-made visual novel in the works. So let me put on my advertising cap and get to work here …

Shira Oka, as mentioned, intrigues me because it’s a professionally made English visual-novel by Okashi Studios, a start-up that’s local to where I live. It’s a cross-breed between a Tokimeki Memorial stats-driven game and a Tsukihime plot-driven game, kind of a mix of lighthearted and dramatic elements.

It sounds to be pretty powerful stuff, mainly because the developers started talking about endings and how some of them are bittersweet, right in the middle of the panel. When they started counting off exactly how many we started plugging our ears and shouting ’spoilers!’.

That’s what made the Shira Oka panel so great was the casual aspect about it, how everyone was very lighthearted, joking around and having a good time yet really being able to have a meaningful conversation as well. At some points we’d be joking about all sorts of alternate endings (harem or boat), and then the next having a candid discussion about the game’s content, the focus and the layout.

It really was a great atmosphere that was both informative and really enjoyable and I really came out of the panel in a energetic mood and impressed with the game. They actually demonstrated the beginning portions of the game live for us (complete with ’shout out which choice’ interaction where we made the lead guy into a total jerk), which seemed pretty solid and professional.

Shira Oka is the story of some generic male (we actually did mention how he had “eroge face”, that is, lack therof) who is a complete loser, and one day, is sent back in time, or something, to redo his four years of high school, except better. The intro struck a bit of a sour note with me personally for being so “I’m a loser, life sucks, I have no life, etc.” that feels like it’s trying to reach out to certain members of the anime fanbase, but the writing itself once the characters are introduced (such as the angel who acts as both your guardian and embedded tutorial character) was more palatable and occasionally quite amusing.

Points that make Shira Oka stand out are the fact that the characters are relatively animated, changing postures in numerous frames (i.e. not just fading from ’standing up’ to ‘bending over’) and with full lip-synching. Maybe this is something common to newer visual novels, but it contributed a lot to the experience for me. Additionally, as mentioned, there is a focus on stats a la Tokimeki Memorial, albeit with promise of serious plot, backed up by the fact that apparently the game has cutscenes that are animated (fully, if I recall right). The developers actually offered to show us - how friendly is that? - but we decided to keep our minds unspoiled.

It was really one of my favorite panels of the convention (although I only went to a few others), because of that real sense of community interaction, as well as a real casual atmosphere as well. To end this on a note that deserves some royalties, check out the Shira Oka website and forums if you’re interested more about this visual novel which should hopefully be coming down the pipe soon.

The third, final, and best event I’ll be discussing today is an event ripped straight from Kaiji, the Restricted Rock-Paper-Scissors competition on Sunday. I was told about this the day before by my friend, and being a huge Kaiji fan (at one point, I considered holding a competition like this at Fanime as well) I was there faster than you could scream “ISHIDAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”

ISHI - uh, anyway, there was a group of about five people running the RRPS event, which had a capacity of 50 people but only pulled in about 40, of which probably a quarter actually recgonized the origins of the event.

For the greenhorns to Kaiji in the crowd, RRPS is basically a game of survival, for people in debt. You’re handed three stars and twelve cards; the former represent your life, and the latter your hand in rock-paper-scissors, with four cards of each sign. You face off with others, playing these cards from your hand and betting stars, with the ultimate goal being to have three stars or more at the end after having played all your cards. It’s a simple game that can have some very intense psychological action as the fate of a person lies on the turn of a single card.

Luckily the runners of RRPS created a rather faithful representation of the event, with a realistically pretentious and lengthy speech from the Tonegawa-alike, and threats of people sent to the ‘loser corner’ and promises of prizes to the ‘winners’. Additionally, tissue boxes from the final gamble of Kaiji made a guest appearance as the card collecting boxes. They did make sure to keep count of the cards, like the real show.

They started by forcing us all to play one match against a random opponent, something that confused me, until I found out later that this was to prevent people from using the strategy of ‘just tie 12 times to win’. It’s a smart move, although I wonder how many people would think of that.

After all it seemed like many people were either not very bright or not very serious, depending wholly on luck to win the game (or at least, it seemed that way to me). My friend and I tried more to pull off some conniving tricks, which led to a lot of the fun we had.

I devised a strategy myself which I am hoping was in the bounds (or else the internet might come to my house and take away my winner’s prize) of the rules … unfortunately, it was a strategy so dumb that even Kaiji would break out laughing (so hard that he would cry manly tears, naturally). I don’t think he ever laughed once in the anime.

The strategy was, I hide most of my cards on my person somewhere, leaving just one card out visible in my hand. I then tilt that card at a low angle so that it could be easily seen by prying eyes, who would then challenge me to a duel. I would accept the battle, play that card, and beat them. Easy stars.

It took me two battles - one of which, somehow, I still won - to realize that I was missing a key part of the strategy, and that was to actually play a card that would win, instead of just tossing down the card that my opponent saw.

My friend and I were doubled over laughing for a minute after my discovery of how my strategy truly worked … or didn’t. I think it was a plan that required a double-switch, which I obviously forgot. That’s living up to my Cirno shirt right there.

It turned out that we didn’t really get to use any strategies, because most of them required a level of cockiness that nobody really had at RRPS. Either they were too casual to notice our double-crossing strategy, or familiar enough with Kaiji to not fall for our conniving plans.

So we sat around for a few minutes, waiting for the cards to unbalance themselves. Five minutes later, we were the only ones holding cards on the floor.

Obviously the game progressed a bit quicker than I expected, taking less than half an hour to get to its final stage. I was in peril after a messy bunch of random battles and failed strategies, having five cards and two stars, while my friend had one card and seven stars.

The gears began turning in my head again, which told me that I had all the power here. I knew what his card was, and I had him in the palm of my hand, since if I didn’t play him, he would lose. As such, I could give him two of my cards so that I could play all my cards and win, theoretically. And holding most of the cards, I could rig his hand to be as poor as possible.

Unfortunately, neither of us were friendly enough to arrange any sort of deal where he would lose two matches and win one, so that both of us would win. He wanted eight stars, oh yes.

So there it was, the epic final showdown, me with two rocks and one paper versus his evenly split hand (one card of each). I had to figure out how to win two matches and lose one, and to do this, I decided to figure out when he would play his rock, and beat it with my paper. I would then lose rock versus his paper and tie rock versus rock, for a net gain of one.

But the question is, when?

I’m not sure if he was thinking quite as hard but I chose the first match to play the paper, to lower the tension. This way, the fate would be set on one match.

Set.

Check.

Open!

I turn over the paper, and he turns over…

ROCK. Mentally I am screaming YATTAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA as I take his star. The other two matches go just as planned, so after all the planning and all the stupidity, this roller coaster was going to settle on three stars, just enough to pass by. I look down at my star holder and see…

TWO STARS. This is where it cuts to any one of the numerous scenes where Kaiji screams ANDOUUUUUUUUUUUUUU while a close-up of his eyes goes through a funny wavy Photoshop effect.

Impossible. How? Why? What was going to happen now that I was relegated to the loser’s corner?

As I was beginning to accept my fate and playfully punch out vending machines after making sure there was no buy-out, my friend comes up to me. “Hey, is that your star on the floor over there?”

…

… hey, there is a star where I was standing. “If I find a star on the floor and think it’s mine, can I have three stars then?”

“Yeah, sure.”

YATTAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

At this point I was getting into it far too much (although I did not scream as you might infer), but I didn’t care, because it was exhilarating amounts of fun and I was a winner.

The punishment came before the prizes, and was a suitably mad endcap to the event: the losers, headed by the event organizers, would have to do the Motteke! Seerafuku (Lucky Star OP) dance.

What’s great about an anime convention is that nobody has any shame anyway, so while the very talented dancers in front led, all the ‘losers’ in back still danced with enthusiasm and pride, unlike a school event where everybody would sit in the back and mime moves. (Although, I’ve never seen anyone dance to this song at school.) I have a lot of respect to them for being so into it and letting loose, and so I danced along a bit as well in the winner’s corner.

After that, the winners were invited to pick their prizes from a box of stuff the organizers brought, from wallscrolls to figurines to magazines and more. The ones with the most stars got first crack (I think the big winner had 12 stars), all the way down to little me at the end with 3 stars (barely). As a result I picked up a random pencilboard from some show I don’t know on the basis that it looked like something I would watch. It’s apparently from a visual novel, not an anime, so I guess I was right.

Graciously, the organizers allowed the losers to pick a prize as well, which I thought was a good move. Really, although the gameplay might not have been the best for everyone, the event was run very well by the group of Kaiji cosplayers (replete with pointy noses) who made it possible, and I wouldn’t hesitate to attend this event again or help hold it next year. If there was one event of Fanime deserving of internet-phrase praise, then the Restricted Rock-Paper-Scissors event was truly epic win, full of win and awesome, and had a awesome level of over nine thousand.

More from Fanime when the next post comes down the pipe.

-CCY

(P.S. If you’re reading my blog and saw a guy in a “quiet unsociable person”, nine-ball (a.k.a Cirno), or Chihiro (ef) silhouette shirt at Fanime, congratulations! You ran into me without knowing! Let’s talk sometime.)

This post is tagged Conventions, Fanstuff, Kaiji, Shira Oka