Otakon 09: Sunday

Sunday was the last day of Otakon, and we celebrated by packing our stuff and loading the car. I took a few pictures, but my main goal was getting to the Dealer's Room for the first time all weekend and actually buying something. There, I met up with my friend Nate who had cosplayed as someone from Bleach, which he had put a lot of time into; in fact, he didn't even get to the con until Saturday afternoon on account of finishing his costume. I did buy some cool stuff, and at the end of the day returned with real mini-kunais, a wooden kunai, a cool bamboo wall scroll of a tiger and dragon, a DBZ sound keychain, Golgo 13: The Professional DVD, a rice hat, some stickers, and some shirts I could care less about from a grab bag.


Lunch was once again a combination of two vouchers, which brought us 2 hot dogs, a pretzel, 2 bananas, 2 cookies, and a brownie. It felt like a lot more than Saturday, and tasted better too. We returned to Artist Alley for one last run through, but unfortunately the area that I wanted to see had been closed off and taken down. Boo.

Well there wasn't much else we wanted to do after those first two action-packed days, and Jasmin and I decided to wait around by the panel ops room until the final staff meeting. We were there for only about a half an hour when the convention center staff (different group of staff) started kicking out all of the con-goers who weren't there for business purposes. I was asked multiple times if I was staff, and even had one question whether I was telling the truth. I'd never seen them so ferocious on Sunday at Otakon before, and it was a little disturbing. But we waited it out and finally wrapped up with the other staff. In total there couldn't have been more than 15 of us in panels, and the head guy even thanked me specifically for all my work (I wrote down my hours and had a grand total of 10 or 11 out of the recommended 9 for the weekend, wooo). :D

Finally we headed home, but not before paying a ridiculous $78 parking fee ($26 a day at the bottom of Hilton), which we considered the cost of our entire hotel expenses. Overall, despite some bad experiences dealing with Hilton and having drama in panels and elsewhere, I'd say that it ranked as one of my favorite con experiences. The only regrets I had were not going into the gaming area or the presentation area of Artist Alley, and not having more money for the Dealer's Room. If I'm in town next year, I will definitely want to help out in staff again. If I'm not in town, well... I'll be in Japan having a blast anyway. ^_^ And now, back to stories from the last time I was in Japan...

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Otakon 09: Saturday

Saturday was another early start that began with meeting at panel ops. The Funimation panel started at 10 and I was staffing that too, the first of many to come for the day. Due to their monopoly of anime licenses at the moment, they were announcing things right and left throughout the hour, naturally including all sorts of Dragon Ball as well as the Evangelion Rebuild movie. Too many versions of the same thing, I say. By the way, they're also making a social networking site called sho-dojo for the anime fandom.

I met up with Jasmin after the panel and got a lunch voucher, then used our total of $16 in vouchers to buy a self pizza, 2 hot dogs, and pocky. Doesn't seem like much for the price, but it was free so who's complaining? We ate while waiting in line for the Anime's Craziest Deaths panel, run by Daryl Surat of Anime World Order (AWO) podcast and Otaku USA magazine. Aaron was at the door doing line control and I offered to help, so before I knew it I was in staff-mode again, for a panel I was going to watch anyway.

By the time we had gotten most people in and settled down, I looked around and noticed quite a few staff - at least 6, probably more - and only the one host of this packed panel. And so the clips began. Blood spraying, brains exploding, skulls cracking, you name it... those looking for crazy deaths came to the right place. Considering it was the middle of the day, I started wondering how far the clips could go. I mean, if things got too graphic, the panel needed to be 18+ and everyone would have to wear bracelets to get in. I asked Aaron and he said that the main panel ops staff was on his way to check it out, and when he got there he said he was willing to let it go since people came knowing what to expect. Until... a clip came up of a huge lady with no top and spikes covering her crotch, and immediately the staff member went up and had to pull the plug. The panelist, Daryl, was initially willing to skip the clip, but when he found out the whole panel was canceled he started saying that the content had been made for kids, and then asked the crowd to confirm what he said at the beginning about a brief shot of "something." Obviously the staff didn't like this at all and his mic was disconnected. It was a huge mess, but luckily did not result in Daryl's remaining panels being canned.


With the extra time, Jasmin and I waited with some friends for their upcoming panel. My friend Liz had come up with this idea for a panel called How to Heckle Bad Anime Good, which involved heckling not only anime but all parts of anime fandom (cosplay, crosplay dubs, etc.). She was putting the finishing touches on her presentation when we arrived, and at go time she went to sit at the front with my friends Winston, Erin, Craven, and even Jasmin. Something you should know about Liz is that at my school, everyone knows the tall and loud girl named Liz. She's the one who brings the party with her when we hang out places, and she has had plans for doing stand-up comedy for a while now. The panel starts and naturally people are going to heckle in the audience. What does Liz do? She calls them out on it, has them stand up and repeat what they said, and absolutely destroys them on every level. It's really hilarious, and everyone should watch the short video that I took during the panel. Oh, and Aaron and I were staffing it, so we had complete control of that packed room.

I stayed to staff the next panel, which was done by a guest named Fred Schodt, who has translated a number of manga and written books about manga in general. I happened to run into a friend from school there, the assistant Japanese professor Murakami-san, who told me that she had written her senior thesis on his work. After this panel, I met up with my friend Merkle but had to go next door to staff one more panel - Cover Your Bases - which discussed anime that everyone needs to see to consider themselves an anime fan. It was mainly stuff that I had heard all about before, and the guys who ran it weren't great either.

Finally my long streak of panels had come to an end, and I could meet back up with Jasmin. I was still with Merkle, and we contacted Leeann as well, so the four of us headed to the Staff Suite. I went up to the room alone and brought back various sandwiches and food for everyone, and we hung out for a little bit. Jasmin and I said our goodbyes to the other two, and I went to see an old friend of mine, Steven, whom I hadn't seen since probably middle school. Jasmin waited elsewhere until I was finished, and then waited with me as I sat in the How to Review Anime panel with Daryl and Clarissa from AWO until it got to be too much for her, and we returned to the hotel room.

Dinner involved ordering pizza with the girls, but first we needed to make a stop in the convention center to see K.K. Slider from Animal Crossing play his guitar. It was Saturday at 8pm, and damned if we're going to miss K.K.! I have a video of that too. We got some drinks and headed to Erin and Cat's hotel room for the girls' night pizza party. Woo for being a girl if it brings me pizza, am I right? We left an hour or two later to take more pictures and then pass out for the night.

And yet, there's still ONE MORE DAY!!

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Otakon 09: Friday

Otakon is the largest anime convention on the east coast, and the only con I go to / have been to. One convention of this magnitude over the course of a 3-day weekend is enough to satisfy me for about a year. Sure, I could go to a different con instead one year, but EVERYONE goes to Otakon - I go to school in Baltimore, so it's practically our back yard. So why change up the routine? And so it's been for 6 out of the past 7 years since I first started 2003. It usually hits between late July and late August, but this year was a little earlier - July 17-19th - and it marks my first year helping to staff. Check out my posts from last August for Otakon 08.

For Jasmin and a lot of my friends, Otakon starts long before Friday. Wednesday night, I watched as she stayed up late working on her cosplay, finally finishing her costume of Katara from Avatar sometime Thursday afternoon. Like last year, my friend Chris was able to score a free hotel room in the Hilton, where it would be him, his girlfriend Sarah, our friend Jack, Jasmin, and myself. So we drove into Baltimore Thursday evening and checked into the hotel, dropped off our bags and watched from the windows as the line outside to pick up pre-registered badges got longer and eventually circled around the entire Baltimore Convention Center. As staff, however, I enjoyed the first of few perks to come - waiting in a separate staff line that included a grand total of 1 person in front of me. Yeehaw. They took my picture, threw a few shirts at me, and sent me on my way. Good thing I packed all of these clothes beforehand.


The staff position that I had was a step up from your average gofer, which can be thought of as the equivalent of interns in a company - they're there to run and get you coffee and make themselves into pyramids when the other staff are bored. No, my position was in Panel Ops. We're in charge of going to panels, run by industries or guests or fans, and watching over them to make sure things go smoothly. We're not even supposed to mess with the tech stuff, technically (no pun intended), unless it's running around with a microphone to the audience, which you can be sure I did. You don't get paid, but they're supposed to give you a free badge and even a free hotel room. Well, my hotel was already free (and they said it was too late to compensate anyway), and I had paid for my badge (which I plan to email them about in the near future), so I was doing this to try it out and have something to do. Other perks I did take advantage of include free food, secret passage-ways, first dibs on free merchandise, no lines, and the general ability to get away anything.

The catch is, they make you do some work, too. I was up bright and early Friday morning to be in Panel Ops by 9:30, to meet with the head honchos and my friend Aaron who was able to get me the job a week before the convention. lol They told me I was going to help out with some double-coverage of panels they thought would be busy, namely industry panels like Bandai and Funimation that usually have a packed room. So I decided on a few panels and went from there. I met with Jasmin for a few minutes while she was waiting in line for the Dealer's Room, but I had to apologize for running off to do more work. After a quick demonstration of what I need to do in a panel (introduce yourself to panelists, ask them if they're ok with pictures, etc.), I found my way to the Staff Suite in a nearby hotel for a quick bite to eat.

The first panel I worked was Madhouse. The announcements that interested me weren't anything I hadn't heard before, like Trigun the Movie which has been in the works forever. lol The guy who came was Japanese and was essentially the person in charge of Madhouse, and I got a kick out of asking him in Japanese whether taking pictures would be alright. My favorite part of the panel was taking the mic around for Q&A, and giving it to a couple of people who I realized as soon as they started talking were part of an anime podcast I listen to - Anime World Order. I introduced myself afterwards as a fan of their podcast and asked if they were doing any panels this year. More on the Anime's Craziest Deaths and How to Review Anime panels later.

I finally had some free time and went to meet Jasmin in the Dealer's Room, but we left right afterwards and got some sandwiches from the staff food room (not to be confused with the aforementioned Staff Suite). We went back to the hotel room to take a break and drop off stuff Jasmin had bought, then returned to the con to meet up with some friends. My friend Aaron was doing his annual Evangelion panel as the Eva Monkey, so Jasmin and I decided to check it out. He did a good job, and they had some funny videos too - two in particular that come to mind are an Eva version of the Rejected cartoon (Shinji: "MY ANUS IS BLEEDING!!"), and a myspace call to some girl using a Shinji soundboard (Shinji: *emo* "Please don't leave me..."). XD


We went to California Tortilla for dinner, which marks the only time I paid for food the whole weekend, but picked up a staff food voucher as well to use another time. Jasmin really wanted to go to Artist Alley, but her interests in the area are completely different from mine so we were forced to leave after not too long. I had organized a meeting with a friend of mine, Leeanne (aka Mistress Roxie) from New Jersey, and went to meet her in the flag area. She was dressed as Mello from Death Note, and pulled it off really well too. Our visit was short and soon I had to go to my next panel - Bandai.

According to panel ops, Bandai has traditionally been the industry panel in need of the most support since they give out lots of free stuff, so we were ready. Unfortunately, they neglected to tell me that the room is cursed, and it seemed like a bunch of things went wrong from my standpoint. It started out okay when I had to make announcements about the exits and for people to scoot in toward the isles. However, when it came time to walk around with microphones, as soon as I passed by the speakers there was huge interference and it apparently blew out the line for portable mics. The rest of the time, the panelists had to deal with people running up to the front of the room to use the wired mics, and they probably weren't happy about that. But here's the kicker -- my mic was off the whole time, and I showed it to the tech guy to make sure, so it shouldn't have had interference in the first place. As time went on, people in the audience were taking pictures and videos and one of the staff asked if we should be patrolling it. Well, it came out that no one had asked them in the beginning whether pictures and videos were okay, so they were looking at me and saying I was responsible. But really, if Bandai truly didn't want it they would have said something, right? Bleh.

It was getting late now and my feet were killing me, so I went with Jasmin back to the room to lay down for a bit. When we came back to Otakon, the first thing we did was hit up the rave, but the smell of Otaku was so overwhelming that we had to leave shortly thereafter. So we got some 18+ bracelets and went to see Bible Black instead, the notorious hentai itself. After one episode, Jasmin (and me too, to be honest) had enough; unfortunately, no, not all hentai is going to be about a sweet love story.

That was enough excitement for one day. Or possibly a whole weekend? Stay tuned.

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Otakon 2008: Sunday

I actually had this post written up a while ago, but I've been too busy to put it up, so here ya go.


I woke up on the final day and, though still tired, forced myself to pack so we could get checked out with plenty of time to spare on enjoying the last day at Otakon '08. Once again, I went down to the gym for some extensive stretches, and when I returned everyone was ready to leave as well. So we brought our bags to the car and then I headed my separate way to the Baltimore inner harbor to find lunch. There were rumors of a Chipotle in the area, and my information didn't disappoint, plus the walk itself was nice and I enjoyed the scenery.

On my way inside the convention center, I met up with my friend Steve and we had both decided to go to the Dealer's Room. Unlike on Friday, I wanted to comb through the entire room nice and carefully. So I would start on one end and look at the booths on each side as I strolled through every isle for anything that caught my eye. I should say at this point that I didn't bother investigating tables of manga or anime, ironically, mainly because I could do that on my own time in bookstores and online and didn't want to start a long collection on a whim, unless there was a cheap, concise box set. Unfortunately, there was still no sign of Hunter X Hunter or cool Rock Lee merchandise, which I have been scouring for every year since I started watching those shows. Ah well, Hunter x Hunter has been licensed now so it's only a matter of time before the mainstream transforms the fandom.


When I was about 2/3 of the way through, my friend calls and tells me that he's ready to go, and seeing as he drove me to the convention that's a sign that I need to be ready soon too. I told him I'd be a few more minutes, then quickened my pace a bit until I got to the end of the room. We met at the front of the con and had ourselves a little arm wrestling re-match since he thought he could beat me this time (poor Chris!), and then spent a few minutes trying to get in touch with another friend of ours (Aaron Q.) so I could beat him at my full strength, but he must have chickened out because he never answered his phone. At this point, it was the early afternoon and we were ready to skedaddle.


It wasn't a long drive back to my friend's house, but I was exhausted and ended up sleeping most of the ride. When we got there, his mom had spaghetti and French bread waiting, which was really nice and quite delicious. I said my goodbyes and headed out, but that wasn't the end of my weekend yet. No, I didn't think I'd had enough of an adventure, so I called up another friend who was staying in an apartment on my college campus and asked if I could chill with him and another friend who lived there too.

I hadn't seen Gary and Mike since school ended, so it was cool to catch up with them and see what sort of trouble they were getting into now. In an attempt to think of something to do, we started driving to a bowling alley but didn't realize until we were in the building that it was lame duck pins. Someone who worked there tried to give us directions to a real bowling alley, but none of us remembered what they were and almost got lost before turning around and going to the mall to see a movie. We kind of wanted to see The Dark Knight again, but Pineapple Express had just come out so we chose to see that for the first time instead. It was kind of funny, but a lot of over-the-top action for a stoner flick. lol After the movie, we went back to campus and soon forced ourselves to go to bed since they had work early in the morning, and I slept on the couch.

I think I woke up around 7 or so Monday morning, ate the rest of my Chipotle burrito from the day before, and left when my friend Gary went to work. Instead of going home, I went to the metro again and took that to Washington DC, where I found myself at the Embassy of Japan a second time in less than a week. I intended to pick up my travel Visa, but what I didn't realize was that morning was drop-off only, so I had to wait about 15 minutes for them to get it ready. By this time, the meter my car was at was running out, so instead of grabbing lunch I went right to the metro and when I got back the meter had already expired. But no ticket, so I was safe.

That's about it, I guess. Add that to the list of exciting Otakon weekends, and hopefully there will be plenty more where that came from. If anyone has plans for Otakon next year, for going or for a group cosplay, let me know and we can take care of those early.

Otakon 2008: Saturday

I woke up around 10:30 on the second day, having gone to bed late the night before. Miraculously, my legs felt great, and I decided to continue my stretching routine by going down to the health club for a half hour. When I got back and changed, I headed straight to brunch at the inner harbor for some pasta and salad, which was a little more expensive than yesterday's sub but added some needed variety.

In order to ensure that I didn't try to do everything on the first day, I intentionally avoided the Artist Alley on Friday, so that was the first place that I headed on Saturday. In middle school, Dragonball Z fan art really helped push me in my artistic ability, so I have tremendous respect for the artists who were stationed around the room or had pieces displayed. There were a lot of amazing 2D pieces in the gallery, but of course I wasn't allowed to take any pictures (I actually got yelled at for taking out my cell phone to look at the time, lol). I walked around to booths of actual artists selling their stuff, and nearly all of them were in the process of drawing something new. I guess that's to be expected, and to promote their abilities, but it reminded me vividly of a friend who is constantly drawing to become a comic book artist.


My next destination was the Q & A session for Kappei Yamaguchi, which I knew would be a popular panel so I jumped into line early. For those of you unfamiliar with Japanese seiyuu (I am too, but someone luckily pointed this guy out to me), he is one of the most well-known voice actors in Japan, having done Ranma (Ranma 1/2), InuYasha (InuYasha), Usopp (One Piece), Kyle (South Park dub), and my personal favorite.. L (Death Note), among many others. My friend was working at the panel, and he said he'd be giving out 25 autograph tickets for people who wanted to ask questions. Well, I didn't have any questions so I didn't bother raising my hand to get chosen, and luckily the people who did go up asked pretty good questions or made good requests of voices and songs. About 10 minutes before it ended, I left to hop in line for his autograph downstairs, and initially walked past a huge crowd before I realized.. that was the line. x_X It turned out that the autograph tickets were to bypass that line, rather than letting them get their autographs right after the Q & A. So I went to the back and eventually it became a line, which I was in for almost two hours (45 mins. after it was supposed to start) before I finally gave up and went to the Fansubber and Industry Discussion panel.

That morning I had read online that people who weren't going to Otakon had been looking forward to hearing what this panel would be about, so I guess it must have been a big deal. ~_^ Basically, there were people from American companies (Media Blasters, Funimation) and from fansubber groups (Live-eviL, Dattebayo, Shinsen, Anime-Empire) to discuss the state of the anime industry today and how it's positively or negatively affected by fansubs. So everyone sat along in a line and discussed topics from an overhead, and we got to see each side respond to the other based on all their experience and data. It was assumed from the beginning that fansubbing wouldn't just go away so it's pointless to ask or expect it, though each of the fansub groups confidently stated that they would stop if they were asked by a company to do so. However, once they stopped another group would probably take their project up, and this would happen continuously each time a cease and desist was ordered. To sum up, Media Blasters was of the opinion that the industry would just have to deal with fansubbing and could get along fine, Funimation thought fansubbers should respect the rights of the creators to earn their deserved royalties, and the fansub groups believed that the only way the industry can keep up is to bring anime into a medium that consumers want, namely quick, subtitled releases online that are true to the original. Funimation did kind of sound like a bitch, though. :/


Phew, so after all this I was pretty hungry for dinner, and I headed to the inner harbor food court for a pizza and bagel. I went back to the room to cool down for a while, then left to go back to Artist Alley with my friend, where I browsed the booths more carefully and found even more amazing artwork than I had seen earlier in the day.

The final panel of the day for me was How to Machinima, which was run by some friends of mine who work on Spriggs: A Halo 3 Machinima. Machinima essentially involves using a video game engine to create your own cartoon, but the developers of the game or engine have certain restrictions, such as Microsoft whereas you can't use any in-game sounds. So the panel was intended for those who might be interested in creating such cartoons, and they went into things like good equipment to use, setting up a good story, utilizing good camera and film techniques, and getting it out to the community. My friends worked hard on the panel, and though I wasn't interested in the mechanics of it so much, I thought that the group worked well together and made the experience amusing for someone who just walked in to pass the time. I hung out with my friends a bit afterward, and then left for the rave down the hall.

The rave is always a cool feature of Otakon, which you'd think might be kind of lame, packing in a bunch of young and awkward otaku onto a dance floor and blasting techno music at them. But honestly, you get into it. When you go to that area of the convention center, there's a stage up front with screens and huge speakers, a large dance floor that's always packed, a back area where people generally perform acrobatic moves, and a small crowded room on the left with different music and colored spotlights going everywhere. Tons of people have glowsticks, and everyone who isn't watching others dance are moving to the beat. The best thing about the raves is watching people dance, though. People are flipping around and performing all types of acrobatics, or having dance-offs that you could swear are choreographed. I would take videos of it, but my camera broke by then, plus it's often too dark to come out anyway. The worst thing about the raves.. is the smell. Some ungodly combination of B.O. and puke. I danced/moved around for a little bit, and at one point I was just chilling on one of the walls and a guy comes up to me and asks where he can score some E. lol So much fun.

Well that's it for Day #2. I got one more day, plus the adventures that follow. BTW, there are pictures and videos up on my Facebook for whoever wants to see them.

Otakon 2008: Friday

It's that time of year again! Otakon is the biggest anime convention on the east coast, and second only (maybe in the world) to Anime Expo in California. It goes from Friday to Sunday and falls anywhere from late July to late August, and luckily for me the city of Baltimore is only about an hour away from my house. I started going to Otakon in 2003 when I decided at the last minute to check it out for a day, and I look back at that as probably one of the longest and most exciting days of my pathetic life. :p The next year I returned for convention goodness (I think for just a day), and in 2005 I went the entire weekend with a friend of mine who lives nearby. Well that was enough Otakon to last me until 2007, when I went for another looong day and even picked up the Harry Potter book at midnight.

This year, a friend of mine at my school's Anime Society scored a free hotel room from points that his dad has accumulated from business trips, so I was there the whole weekend. Each day was pretty long too, so I'll be splitting up the posts.

Just leading up to Otakon is worthy of a post in itself, but I'll keep it simple so we can get to the point. Thursday night, of course, people were allowed to pick up their pre-registered badges so they could get an early start the next day, and that was my eventual goal. However, I first had to wake up early to take the metro into Washington DC in order to drop off my traveling visa application at the Embassy of Japan. I was able to make it just before they closed for lunch, and then got something to eat myself before taking the metro back to my car. From there, I drove to my friend Chris' house so I could go with him and his girlfriend to get the badges. Unfortunately, we couldn't check into the hotel room until Friday morning, so I stayed at his place that night which was about 40 minutes away and watched him and his friends play D & D until passing out.

On Friday morning I woke up relatively early to do stretches, which takes about 20 minutes and ensures that the long day ahead won't bring cramps from constant walking, then had some cereal before running last-minute errands for anything else we needed. The hotel was available for moving in by the time we got to the city, and so we did. The Hyatt is nice, too, with great furniture, a fancy bathroom, a gym with all new equipment, and opportunities around every corner to get charged just for moving things around (hint: don't touch the contents of the mini-fridge). But enough of the foreplay, LET'S GET TO OTAKON ALREADY.


Finally, around noon we entered the convention center and waited outside a panel for some friends. One of the coolest things about cons, especially anime ones, is simply walking around and checking out the great cosplaying. Sure, there are invariably costumes that just downright suck, but the overall atmosphere is exciting enough to overlook (some of) it. So my group of seven or so walked around taking pictures for a good hour until lunch time, at which point a few friends and I left the horribly overpriced convention center for the inner harbor food court. Get this.. $5 footlongs at Subway, half for lunch, half for dinner, and I carried around a water bottle so I never paid for a drink. XD!!


After eating lunch back at the hotel room, I headed for the Funimation Q&A panel, but got there too late and they were already full. I used my short time until the next panel by doing a quick run-through of the almighty dealer's room, and it was indeed as big as ever. My first panel of the weekend turned out to be Tokyo Travel on a Budget, which was fitting seeing as I'm going to be learning how to do that over the course of the next four months. It was kind of interesting, but mainly common sense - go on free tours, eat at 7-11, sleep at capsule hotels, use public transportation, etc. Scary, though, that gas in Japan is around $11 a gallon and DVDs cost around $50, and even some latest and greatest electronics that can be found relatively cheap are domestic only and can't be taken out of Japan. Grr!!

I sort of wandered around after the panel until ending up at the Lovely Complex Live Action series, and left a little while later to check out the Game Room but didn't play anything. Eventually I came upon the Anime Philosophy panel (go figure), where I met back up with some friends and listened to the panelists discuss various themes and lessons in life as introduced in shows like Evangelion, Full Metal Alchemist, Trigun, and even The Irresponsible Captain Tyler. lol It was dull at times, and one of the women tried too hard to make herself sound smart, but I learned how some common philosophical theories are evident in those shows and how they can be interpreted. At this point, I went back to the room and ate dinner while watching the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. OMG those Chinese know how to use $300 million to throw an awesome ceremony. The fact that people were moving those blocks up and down so precisely blew my mind.

After getting pumped up watching the Olympics, I went to the gym to do a quick workout on the energy of cereal and a 1 foot sub for the day. I took some pictures of the gym and everything, but when I went to take pictures on the way back, the camera stopped working, and I've since been forced to declare it dead. RIP 3.2 megapixel camera.. 12/25/03 - 08/08/08, may I replace you well before going to Japan. So now that I had become nice and sweaty, it was time for the RAVE! I went to the rave the next night too, so I'll cover the details there (this post is already pretty long). After the rave, I went to an 18+ panel about adult cosplayers, which unfortunately turned out to just be a discussion, regarding explaining the hobby to family and coworkers and dealing with the younger generation. There was some pointless bickering at times, but it was occasionally funny, and the best part was various rage rants given by the panelists and the audience.

By then, I was done. So back to my room I went, to take a shower and play Brawl until I fell asleep. Huzzah. See my Facebook for more pictures in the days to come.