A comparatively peaceful and relaxing weekend…

Just some random notes on Fanime 2008. Inside, a look over on some of the cosplays (although, no pictures yet), the dealer’s room, my elitist side at Fanime, some random games, and the video rooms.

I wonder if writing a blunt, short, dull preview while mentally dead will help drive more people to read the actual article. It’s an experiment. Or something.

Man, I miss KimiKiss at times like this … although my rewatch of it has stalled out.


Danbooru is down, so I have to go off old images. Also, this represents cosplay.
Cosplay Watch
Fanime is educational, too. It taught me not to major in photography, as clearly one year taking it as an elective is still no match for a shaky hand.

And as I embody the blushing, stammering “H-hey, y-you’re from…” fanboy photographer quite well, I tend to only take one or two pictures and get out. It wasn’t until my second or so day that I realized that I could barely make out a lot of the cosplays clearly in my shots.

Still, I got a kick out of seeing many of the characters there that I did, both those that I took pictures of and those that I didn’t. Many more obscure (or less mainstream) anime were definitely represented. Among others, I saw …

… two or three Yotsubots - I don’t know what they’re called, but the cardboard box robot from Yotsuba&. It’s an easy costume and one that’s very popular, especially due to the cute acting of the cosplayers.

… a good KyoAni pair of a very well done (or at least cute) Tsukasa Hiiragi, and a good Misuzu Kamio as well. I think I might have seen some more AIR cosplay around but not as quality (in the real, not the internet sense) as this one.

… quite a few people wearing around the Lucky Star sailor-uniform print T-shirt from the Bandai LE release of the first R1 DVD. I was surprised as I thought most people believed it looked ridiculous…but hey, anime fans look ridiculous sometimes. One of these guys even did a little curtsy in their serafuku T-shirt. Very valiant, and it made a great picture.

… the wolf from Okami. It’s a complicated costume to get right, with both quite a few props, a full body suit, and a lot of paint involved, but the end result was good. A daring outfit that worked well.

… three Kaijis (one Kitami) and one Itoshiki-sensei. They were the two cosplays I considered doing but decidedly to push back, so I was happy to see someone else thinking the same way.

… Amu Hinamori, for real this time! After being so frustrated by seeing a million people with pink hair and a million people with gothic-lolita skirts that resemble Amu’s, I finally found the right combination on Sunday night. Made my night, considering that Shugo Chara is quickly rising in my book of awesomeness.

… and undoubtedly many more I didn’t notice.

No energy to shop Kotomi + briefcase from episode 14 into a Deal or no Deal guise …
Dealers or No Dealers
With far too much cash to burn as a teenager, I was looking forward to the Dealer’s Room for an excuse to burn money on frivolous but still adorable merchandise.

Unfortunately, I was disappointed, but I’m sure many people were happy.

There was a decent if not outstanding range of merchandise, but none of them were quite the kind of stuff I was interested in. The DVDs I could get cheaper online, I’m not a figurine person (although, I must say, figurine collectors would be in heaven at this Fanime), and the artbooks were overpriced.

Saw a couple keychains I was interested in, but the Miyuki (yes, someone likes Miyuki) Takara one was only sold as part of a set, and the Nagato one was three dollars more than any other Haruhi keychain. I laughed a little yandere laugh at that amusing manipulation of supply and demand.

Overall, the selection wasn’t really horrible, but there just wasn’t anything that stirred my impulsive side that much. That’s probably a good thing, though; most stores were local or had equivalent online retailers, besides.

What I did like, though, was the amount of old or unique material that I got to browse through; doujins from the Cardcaptor Sakura era, old movie posters, and the like. There was even one booth with a large overstock of Geneon DVDs for $10 each, but unfortunately no Shana or Higurashi.

I did pick up the second DVD of Kare Kano for $5, just to test if I’ll like the show. One of the better deals I found.

Nayuki plays a sad song for the lack of Kanon
Endangered Anime List
Of course, my elitist side was still a little sad at the lack of floor presence for many of my favorite shows out there, and as the weekend wore on I began to form a little list of five ‘impulse purchase’ anime, that I would buy any reasonably-priced merchandise of on sight if I saw some.

Kanon unfortunately had a poor showing even compared to any Key show; I saw a few AIR and Clannad cosplayers, but absolutely no Kanon ones, and no Japanese Key merchandise either aside from the Kanon 2002 artbook.

ef ~a tale of memories~ doesn’t exist outside of my Chihiro T-shirt … clearly it’s been more than 13 hours since the show finished airing.

Ditto with KimiKiss. I want to start breaking out some factions for this show, or something. I’m a preemptive Yummy Yummy Yuumi member.

Touhou (is not an anime lol) was understandably invisible in the dealer’s room and 99% of the cosplays (barring a poor Reimu … or perhaps just a generic shrine maiden) were found in the Saturday meetup, but at least I found a nice $4 full-page color print featuring Marisa and some random characters, along with some bookmarks, in Artist’s Alley. Now to find something to do with them.

Shuffle!, for a eroge, was surprisingly not as merchandise-spammed as most games of that type are, at least not at Fanime. It’s not particularly popular in the states or anything, but I was hoping for at least some cosplay or trinkets or something. Nope.

Tsukihime was surprisingly underrepresented for having such an easily cosplayable character (Shiki Tohno). I’m not sure if there’s a lot of Tsukihime merchandise around, though, since it was one of Type-Moon’s first works, but I saw a Sacchin plushie online once and I think I’ll hunt it to the ends of the earth. On the plus side, Dr. Master (I think) had the manga on display (although they wouldn’t let me have their promotional poster, thanks for trying), and I picked up a Ciel keychain at Artist’s Alley.

Why Ciel? I like Akiha, Hisui, and Kohaku more but their poses were poor and the appeal of ‘normal Ciel’ with glasses is simply irresistable. Also, the artists drew every character but Sacchin. The irony is so blatant it hurts. Sad Sacchin is sad.

There was a lot of Marisa Stole the Precious jokes. A lot.
Niconico Panel
How about something relevant and interesting, eh? One of the attendees of Fanime (who I later saw at the Shira Oka panel), a diehard fan replete with Gao Gao Stegosaurus shirt, hosted a panel about Niconico Douga, essentially the Japanese equivalent of Youtube on crack.

It was a bit stiff at some points compared to other panels I attended, but he showed off some interesting videos, including an incredibly sexy AIR MAD called Polyphonie and two Niconico Medleys (the famous one, plus the most recent one, Meteor Swarm). Incidentally, the latest Niconico medley includes much more Touhou and a mash-up of God Knows (Haruhi) and JOINT (Shana II) … it’s certainly something to listen to.

Apparently I missed lk by the skin of my teeth here too, but this panel was still strong with an enthusiastic audience, an informative tutorial on how to use Niconico, and lots of random references that make you feel smart. I caught Silver Forest’s Kero 9 Destiny being used as the example video. Kerekerokerokerokero…

A different kind of bullet hell, except with 100% more nekomimi.
Radiant Silvergun
The devolving into a STG mindslave continues, beyond the universal appeal of armpits and pedophilia and into the more professional, traditional ’spaceship’ shooters.

Never heard of Radiant Silvergun before Fanime but now I can’t get enough of its amusing Engrish, strong gameplay, level structure … and $200 price tag.

Incidentally, my 2007 laptop can’t run a game from 1998.

I very much like the presentation of this game for some reason, it just exudes that futuristic, ‘cool’ feeling to me, but maybe I like scrolling text and dramatic Engrish sentences.

(WARNING -data install- NO REFUGE … Encountered an assailant - Be attitude for gains: be praying / be praying / be praying …)

Definitely want to play more of this when I get the chance.

Watching Nodame with 3 other people felt like this
Anime Screening Rooms
I didn’t really spend much time in the video rooms this convention… I was expecting to, because even though I could watch these shows any time, the entertainment from watching it and commenting it up with fans sounded like a lot of fun.

Unfortunately anything I wanted to watch either overlapped with something else or was at an ungodly time of the day, so that plan was scrapped.

Apparently the School Days marathon was great fun according to lk, but it was literally minutes after my senior prom, so that’s a no, even for someone as crazy as me. I still insist that something as manically dramatic and ridiculous as School Days would still make a great after party, but I was sadly overruled … by sleep.

Additionally the entirety of H2O ~footprints in the sand~, one of the more intriguing and unique visual novel conversions, was apparently screened over three separate days. I would have liked to drop in at least for the acid-tripping episode eight, but all of the screenings took place from 6 AM to 8 AM. Considering I had a 20 minute commute to and from Fanime … it was another no.

Nodame Cantabile was the third one up on the list, and considering it would be at about the halfway point when I got to Fanime on Monday, I decided to hit it up and maybe complete a bit more of this great show.

Well, I got there, and at the end of episode 13 there were four people there. Including me. Four. That’s just doing Nodame a disservice. Luckily later on the theater became more crowded, but by then it was too far in the show for me to watch.

Clannad the Movie was the last shot on a Monday afternoon, just to make sense of the ZOMG Key plot in the last third, and to go warn people to not watch it if they wanted to keep After Story unspoiled … but the Naruto movie ran long, and that was that.

So video rooms were a fail as well, but it’s not a huge loss.

Those are some more of the points I wanted to make from Fanime … perhaps more later, perhaps not. Not enough mental capability to continue right now, so I’ll go watch something really mind-blowing and get broken.

-CCY

Someone who doesn’t suck at Beatmania … and at melting fanboys into “moe”-chanting piles
(Oh, and I suck at Beatmania … but at least it went to show the wide variety of games the gaming room had. Very pleased with that.)

This post is tagged Conventions, Fanstuff, Games