« Anime Expo's coming up! | My sedate summer... »

July 05, 2004

ANIME EXPO 2004

I attended Anime Expo in Anaheim yesterday and Saturday, and I had a really good time. I’m a little exhausted from all the running around and the sheer number of people, but my first anime-con experience was a very positive one, and I’m looking forward to my next excuse to go and have that sort of fun.

My first inkling that I was thankful for my industry pass was when I went into the registration room, a enormous hall the size of which I’d be hard-pressed to give even a ballpark estimate. The industry registration line didn’t seem to be moving at first, but once it got going, the wait wasn’t too bad. From what I’ve heard, folks in the regular registration line had a much worse time of it, with waits of two or three hours being not at all uncommon.

I hadn’t been wandering around the dealers’ hall for too long when I got a call on my cell-phone from Taliesin, who had just arrived with his roommate, Caddy (whom I’d seen perform with the Poxy Boggards at Big Bear Ren Faire in 2003, but didn’t recognize as such on Saturday until Taliesin and he started singing a Boggards tune), and Nomi, a friend of theirs. They were in the dealers’ hall as well, and we used the row numbers to meet up. I forget the specific order in which people ran into us, but soon we had a nice little posse, drifting and shopping as we saw fit.

I’d meant to make it to the Japanese dancing demonstration and the mecha construction panel, but the folks I’d just met were a really entertaining bunch. I don’t know if the panels and screenings I’d originally intended on attending could have held a candle to the unscripted fun I was having.

As 2:30 p.m. approached, we headed to the location of our VO actor panel. I encountered a small cluster of Notre Dame students on the way and tried, in passing, to guilt them into attending. To their credit, they made an appearance.

The panel was quite an experience. Considering that it included the likes of Crispin Freeman, Wendee Lee, and Hiromi Hirata (who was sitting to my immediate left), I kept half expecting somebody to quietly and gently take me by the elbow and escort me off the stage. I piped in to answer the occasional question, but for the most part, I had the good sense to keep my mouth shut and enjoy the ride. The questions from the audience were mostly along the lines of “who’s been your favorite character to portray?” or “how’d you get into the VO business?” I had worried about being blindsided with some totally obscure anime question, but my fears were groundless, as usual.

After the panel, I had the good fortune to meet Troy Williams, the guy in charge of AX VIP relations. When I shyly asked if I could score a pass for Sunday in reply to his wanting to know if I needed anything, he explained that my industry pass was good for the entire weekend, and that as an industry guest, I’d have no trouble getting into the ticketed events (like AX Idol that evening, and Sunday night’s Cosplay Masquerade).

By that point, a group of us had decided it was time to get food. We took a taxi over to Downtown Disney to hunt up some grub. I’d never been in Downtown Disney. There’s something insidious about it, something desperate and no-nonsense. Whereas Disneyland proper eases the cash out of my wallet through a comparatively soft-sell (and those damned irresistible churros), Downtown Disney grabs your lapels like an acid-addled Hunter S. Thompson and blurts out, “Forget the Magic Kingdom crap—just give me your money! Now!” We met up with another group, and the dozen of us ate at an Italian restaurant, the name of which escapes me—but the memory of whose $7 tiramisu will leave me grumbling about overpriced desserts until the last trump sounds. The consensus seemed to be that the food, while good, didn’t merit the price. Next time, I’ll dip a Disneyland churro in marinara sauce and just pretend it’s lasagna.

We worked our way back to the Convention Center for AX Idol, which was quite an experience. The idea was that twelve pre-selected, pre-auditioned finalists would come up one-by-one and either sing a song or deliver a monologue, and then get comments from the appropriate VO or J-pop industry professionals among the five or six judges. Thanks to Crispin (who was the Master of Ceremonies) and Taliesin, we ended up with front row seats.

It started out promisingly enough, with a really good singer and a really good actress (both of whom were the ultimate winners, Caddy later told me). Zarah and I sneaked out halfway through to make the “Ikki Tousen” dub screening over at the Marriott, so I can’t comment on all of the performances. I found it interesting that all of the singers were female and all of the actors but the first one were male—at least for the portion I saw.

When one girl came out on stage to sing, I leaned over to Caddy and whispered, “I think we’ve got a crier and runner.” She was nervous, obviously, carrying a lot of tension in her arms and shoulders, but when the music started up and she began singing, she had a very nice voice. She was nearing the end of her song, when she suddenly forgot her lyrics and ran off stage, crying.

“I didn’t want to be right,” I sighed to Caddy.

Crispin brought her back out, and the crowd cheered and applauded. It wasn’t that sort of “wow, that was horrible, but the truth hurts and she’s suffered enough, so throw her a bone” type of applause, either. She was a good singer. She just forgot the words to her song. She was embarrassed, as anybody would be, but I hope she didn’t beat herself up too much for it after the fact. It’s all I can do to remember the words to songs written in English sometimes, so I have nothing but respect for the fact that she was doing so well with a Japanese song.

Overall, the singers were the stronger group. I think that singing is a much more objective pursuit. Either you can do it, or you can’t. There are levels of skill and areas of expertise, certainly, but the question of whether or not you have the basic skills is very binary. Yes or no. The acting is more subjective, and more self-directed. Unless you’re trying to emulate somebody else’s performance (which is a bad idea), you’re really sort of on your own. This can lead to the sort of measured cadences and self-important posturing to which a few of the acting contestants succumbed.

Also, a few of them tried to refute Crispin’s suggestions/observations, which got old really quick—like the guy who did a Gollum impersonation that wavered between Andy Serkis and Macho Man Randy Savage. When Crispin warned that a Gollum imitation had to sound exactly like Gollum to be effective, the guy responded that he’d wanted to give the crowd something different.

“Why did you pick Gollum, then?” Crispin asked.

This was a gratifying moment for the hundreds of people in the crowd who’d been wondering the same thing.

Meanwhile, Zarah and I had quite a time at the “Ikki Tousen” screening. We both had an idea of how racy the show was from what we’d ascertained during our respective times in the booth, but still…wow. It makes “Amazing Nurse Nanako” look like a genteel parlor-room comedy-of-manners. Chock full of sex and violence, I’m sure it’ll sell like hotcakes. I’m lucky, though. We didn’t get to “our” episodes, nor have we finished laying down the VO tracks for all of them, but I’m pretty sure Taishiji won’t be flouncing around with his chones on display. Zarah’s character might not have dodged that particular bullet.

After the screening, it was time to rendezvous with the folks who had stayed at AX Idol. There was a unanimous vote for alcohol, so we descended upon the bar inside the Hilton’s lobby. I had a rum-and-Coke that was lacking enough of the latter to appease my inner sorority girl’s delicate palate. One of my strongest memories of our time in the bar was reaching over and laying my hand on the metal giraffe statue next to our booth. It was so nice and cool, and I’d been enveloped in (and contributing to) the 20,000 otaku-strong mugginess all day long. I wanted to bury my face in metallic giraffe, but thought it might appear gauche—or that I might appear drunk.

“No, no” I could imagine myself mumbling as they took away my remaining rum-and-Coke, “the giraffe…he’s cool…”

“Yes, he’s cool, Patrick,” they’d say, trying to placate me. “He’s a cool giraffe. Now sit down like a good boy.”

I got on the road for Riverside around a quarter to three in the morning, the bar having long since closed, and the group having disbanded and headed off to their respective hotels or cars.

I returned for some of the AX excitement yesterday (Sunday), but I never quite woke all the way up. I hooked up with Taliesin, Nomi and Caddy again, but we lost Taliesin pretty early on to his commitment to judge the Cosplay Masquerade. As near as I could tell looking at the schedule events, he was busy with that from 3 p.m. right through when the Masquerade itself ended around midnight. Godspeed, Mr. Jaffe.

Caddy, Nomi and I caught the first half of a two-episode dub screening for “R.O.D. TV,” and that was a hoot. Not only is it a really good show with a lot of really good performances in it, but on a purely narcissistic level, it was a kick to hear my voice coming out of Lee’s face—and on a screen that puts my old computer monitor and secondhand TV to the shame they arguable deserve. We slipped out after the first episode to rush over to Crispin’s mythology panel.

It started with a video he’d cobbled together out of Joseph Campbell’s interviews with Bill Moyer and sundry anime clips that illustrated the points Campbell was making. I love me the Joseph Campbell, so I felt better about missing the second episode of “R.O.D. TV”. I was especially tickled by a specific few seconds of the Campbell interview. I forget the exact context for it, but it probably had something to do the hero’s moment of evolution and decision, and Cambell said, “Is the system going to eat you up?”—only, he said it in such a way that a closer transcription would be, “Is the system gonna eatcha up?” For some reason, I just burst out laughing. I wish I could find it as a WAV file and just mix the hell out of it.

The subsequent Q&A/discussion session suffered from mic-bogarting one-upmanship on the part of some of the audience members, but Crispin’s explanations and comments kept me in my seat. Right up until the guy with the appearance, voice and persona of the Comic Book Guy from “The Simpsons” delivered what sounded like pre-rehearsed hash on Finemann and how science has done more for humanity than all this touchy-feely mythological/Jungian crap, that is. Then I bolted.

We headed out for food after Crispin extricated himself from well-wishers—to Outback, this time, for much tasty meat. I never did hook up with the group again after that; Jonathan gave me a ride back to the Convention Center, and I’m not sure where the folks who took the taxi ended up. They probably slipped into the Cosplay Masquerade for the last few hours, but I was running out of fuel by that point. I headed back to Riverside around 10 or 10:30 p.m. I would have preferred to say bye to Nomi and Caddy in person, but I e-mailed them this morning to explain my sudden disappearance.

* * * * *

Apropos of nothing:

Anime Expo 2004 was my first in-the-flesh exposure to cosplayers. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but I think I was afraid that they’d all be a bunch of latent schizophrenics, looking for an excuse to shuck their real-life personas. Instead, I saw a lot of people—firmly grounded in reality—who put a lot of time and effort into their outfits, usually to great success. These were real labors of love. As somebody who can’t make things, and has no firsthand flair for tangible artisanship, I was quite impressed.

Should I have taken photos of male cosplayers, too? Undoubtedly. But I was surrounded by cute cosplay girls, and I only had half a disposable camera’s worth of exposures for the entirety of my AX experience. I got my comeuppance when I had my film developed at Rite-Aid this afternoon. A significant number of the prints came out so dark and grainy as to be of no practical use. It probably didn’t help that it was an old disposable camera, the first half of which I’d used months ago. It probably just went through too many variations in heat…knocked around a little too much…

I was surprised at how many people I ran into whom I knew: close to ten former students of mine and friends of theirs from Notre Dame; a girl who teched my last undergrad show at UCR back in October of 1999 and into whom I recently ran at somebody’s graduation party; a guy from Los Osos High School in Rancho Cucamonga who took an SAT test-prep course with me a few months back; and a girl from the UCR Chamber Singers, with whom I shared one of those “what the hell are you doing here?” looks as we encountered one another at the entrance to the Cosplay Masquerade.

This weekend was an expensive one, between parking, food, and merchandise—but at least I didn’t have to pay to get in, and I figure that saved me about $45. And really, I didn’t go on a spending spree: I bought the box set for “Niea_7” and the first DVD for “R.O.D. TV,” but I worked on those, so I feel justified. Heck, I took my sweet time to finally fold and buy “Niea_7”; it’s been out for a few years now. I picked up the first two issues of the “Hellsing” manga, the purchase of which I can try to justify through similar (though weaker) reasoning: I worked on the anime, thus I deserve the manga. And the plush hamster from “Spirited Away” was for my ex-girlfriend, so that doesn’t count. Really, the only guilty pleasures were the two Nintendo-themed t-shirts I picked up and the “Zatoichi” DVD. To watch some of the con-goers shop, I was the comparative model of restraint. I also ended up with a variety of free swag from the exhibitors, mostly of the pens-and-keychains ilk, but the most notable of which was a “Millennium Actress” poster. I’m going to hang it up in the empty spot I never filled between my posters for “Pirates of the Caribbean” and “The Gift”.

Posted by patrick at July 5, 2004 07:48 PM

Comments

Posted by: Steph at July 6, 2004 03:44 PM

Posted by: Jennifer Stetson at July 9, 2004 02:19 PM

Posted by: bfc3745 at March 5, 2005 06:08 PM

Posted by: bfc3745 at March 5, 2005 06:10 PM

Post a comment

Name:

Email Address:

URL:
Remember Me? YesNo

Comments: