Amecon: Friday
Aug. 23rd, 2004 05:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chrisvenusWell, the weekend was amecon... I'm not 100% sure where to start so I'm going to try to start at the beginning and probably do some more of the detail in a followup post.
Well, for those of you unaware Amecon is an Anime convention. I suspect you all know that anime is japanese cartoons but if you didn't then you do now. The con was a three day affair in leicester and was the first anime con I'd been to. I had no idea what to expect going in really though I had a vague idea from having looked at their website and heard/read about previous anime cons. I was looking forward to it with a slightly nervous anticipation...
Amecon: Friday
Friday came and I had the day off since the con was starting early afternoon. Packing was done and other preparations. I packed like a girl since I wasn't really sure what clothes I'd want and so on and so forth. I was slightly embarrassed when, at about 11 o'clock, I met![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
taigne who seemed to have about half as much stuff as I did which included her costume...
Getting up there went fine. A bit slow in places but nothing critically bad. We got there at about 1PM in the end, a mere hour and a half before they had told us that sign in was due to start. Getting there early was a good thing in a way though, it meant that I got a nice convenient parking space to park in. Considering how few of them were available this was a remarkably good thing.
Briony and I were in different blocks so we wandered over to hers first and she signed in and dumped stuff in her room then we did similar things for my room. The rooms were standard university accomodation really: bed, desk, wardrobe, sink, shared toilet and shower (two between about six), etc. During sign-in we got a bag of goodies as well as what is apparently virtually compulsory for anime fans - pocky. The bag of goodies most importatnly had a program for what anime was being shown where (as well as the important map that showed where bits and pieces were). A few things were highlighted that I definitely wanted to see and we headed off again.
Ops was our next port of call. This is the operations center for those organisign the event and I had volunteered in advance for helping out as a gopher. I went in and signed up and got another badge (I got a badge when I signed in with my nickname on it) and became Gopher #22. When asked what they wanted to do I was told nothing specific but if they needed something and saw me around they might ask me to do stuff. This meant either they were much more organised than I thought or much less so. Sadly it proved to be the latter.
The day progressed with a short walk exploring the area and then onto the first of the animes of the con. Battle Programmer Shirase was a kind of cool thing about a top computer prgorammer/hacker (and its slightly perverted but in a funny way). I want to watch more than I did so am going to go download stuff (this can be said for many things so I will probabyl not mention it explicitly from now on). It had some amusing things in it like him hacking a stolen supercomputer using a borrowed mobile phone and then using his "deathblow double compile!" to overload the supercomputer and fry it... And the amusing monologues from visitors/employers when they entered his apartment to find him in an accidental compromising position with his niece (such as her taking her dress off to show off her swimming costume underneath).0
After that I watched Cosprayers which was silly magical girl stuff. An amusing concept which actually tied up very well at the end (I managed to watch the whole series I think). The rough premise started with a girl who was a Cosplayer (dressed up in costume) who found a bracelet on the ground which ultiamtely got her involved in this magical group, the cosmopolitan prayers (or somesuch). She got her magical powers and beat things up. Some amusing episodes (such as the one where she was made to think she was at an animecon cosplaying the character from the cartoon rather than actually being her) and a plot twist that I was quite impressed by coming from the general genre of cartoon. Unfortuantely a clightly twee ending kind of spoilt it but that could be glossed over really. :)
At six o'clock the opening ceremony happened where various announcements were made, changes to the program were announced and an amusing animation was shown that had been made specially for amecon. After that I was told there was a gopher meeting so I wandered off to that and got promptly grabbed to help with the chaos of registration. Registration seemed to be a mess. Screwed up paperwork meant they weren't sure which rooms had been allocated already or possibly not who they had been given to and other stuch things. I sorted out the paperwork as quick as I could while other people dealt with people tryign to sign in. I did very much wonder who the hell organised the registration since it appeared to have been an *extreme* rush job.
At the end of this chaos I found the head gopher and asked him if anything had been said in the gopher meeting and apparently all it was was that gopher's were allowed into the dealer room before anybody else. The dealer room being were all the anime toys such as models, DVDs, manga, t-shirts, etc. was being sold.
After this I grabbed some food and wandered off to the karaoke since I knew that was where others would be. We'd found more people by this time, Matthew and Alan at least anyway, also Hanbury and Rei too and I think Alan's sister clare (sp?) was there as well. I sat around in the karaoke for a bit before getting a bit bored (karaoke really isn't my scene, especially when there aren't even many anime tunes and its all j-pop, so I wandered of to see the fandub competition. I missed the pre-planned fandubs but caught the adlib fandubs and was *very* impressed by them and it was all very funny. Definitely glad I went to that and will make sure I pop into that again in any future cons.
I think I then popped back to the karaoke and killed a bit more time before we all went on mass to see what looked to be an interesting anime called "Marple and Poirot". And yes, it was indeed Agatha Christi's great detectives in anime form. It was actually quite good. A decent first episode, a slightly worse second and later on in the con came the third episode. Amusing to see the characters in anime and also suitably japanesed by having a young girl and her duck as sidekick style character (or main character depending on your PoV).
Marple and Poirot was followed by an episode of "monster" which was extremely slow to start and the first episode left me in the mood to wander off to catch Sgt Frog in VR2 (Video Room 2). Sgt Frog was silly and in some ways reminiscent of Invader zim. Aliens had sent an advanced recon squad to earth and then had to withdraw, abandoning them there. They were all scattered so only the sergeant is initially around and has, of course, been adopted by a small family. The Frog type thing in question is monumentally useless and slightly neurotic. Its also a very silly and surreal comedy.
After that I watched the next set of Cosprayers which took me through to 2am. Some of the cool episodes were in this set and after that I staggered off back to my room to sleep, alarm set for 8am since there was anime I wanted to watch at 9 and breakfast first...
Sorry about slightly random use of formatting (italic in particular). I was trying to italisice the names of the anime to make them stick out but I'm tired and am fairly sure I've missed them several times... Oh well. :)
Next updates will cover the next two days...
Well, for those of you unaware Amecon is an Anime convention. I suspect you all know that anime is japanese cartoons but if you didn't then you do now. The con was a three day affair in leicester and was the first anime con I'd been to. I had no idea what to expect going in really though I had a vague idea from having looked at their website and heard/read about previous anime cons. I was looking forward to it with a slightly nervous anticipation...
Amecon: Friday
Friday came and I had the day off since the con was starting early afternoon. Packing was done and other preparations. I packed like a girl since I wasn't really sure what clothes I'd want and so on and so forth. I was slightly embarrassed when, at about 11 o'clock, I met
taigne who seemed to have about half as much stuff as I did which included her costume...Getting up there went fine. A bit slow in places but nothing critically bad. We got there at about 1PM in the end, a mere hour and a half before they had told us that sign in was due to start. Getting there early was a good thing in a way though, it meant that I got a nice convenient parking space to park in. Considering how few of them were available this was a remarkably good thing.
Briony and I were in different blocks so we wandered over to hers first and she signed in and dumped stuff in her room then we did similar things for my room. The rooms were standard university accomodation really: bed, desk, wardrobe, sink, shared toilet and shower (two between about six), etc. During sign-in we got a bag of goodies as well as what is apparently virtually compulsory for anime fans - pocky. The bag of goodies most importatnly had a program for what anime was being shown where (as well as the important map that showed where bits and pieces were). A few things were highlighted that I definitely wanted to see and we headed off again.
Ops was our next port of call. This is the operations center for those organisign the event and I had volunteered in advance for helping out as a gopher. I went in and signed up and got another badge (I got a badge when I signed in with my nickname on it) and became Gopher #22. When asked what they wanted to do I was told nothing specific but if they needed something and saw me around they might ask me to do stuff. This meant either they were much more organised than I thought or much less so. Sadly it proved to be the latter.
The day progressed with a short walk exploring the area and then onto the first of the animes of the con. Battle Programmer Shirase was a kind of cool thing about a top computer prgorammer/hacker (and its slightly perverted but in a funny way). I want to watch more than I did so am going to go download stuff (this can be said for many things so I will probabyl not mention it explicitly from now on). It had some amusing things in it like him hacking a stolen supercomputer using a borrowed mobile phone and then using his "deathblow double compile!" to overload the supercomputer and fry it... And the amusing monologues from visitors/employers when they entered his apartment to find him in an accidental compromising position with his niece (such as her taking her dress off to show off her swimming costume underneath).0
After that I watched Cosprayers which was silly magical girl stuff. An amusing concept which actually tied up very well at the end (I managed to watch the whole series I think). The rough premise started with a girl who was a Cosplayer (dressed up in costume) who found a bracelet on the ground which ultiamtely got her involved in this magical group, the cosmopolitan prayers (or somesuch). She got her magical powers and beat things up. Some amusing episodes (such as the one where she was made to think she was at an animecon cosplaying the character from the cartoon rather than actually being her) and a plot twist that I was quite impressed by coming from the general genre of cartoon. Unfortuantely a clightly twee ending kind of spoilt it but that could be glossed over really. :)
At six o'clock the opening ceremony happened where various announcements were made, changes to the program were announced and an amusing animation was shown that had been made specially for amecon. After that I was told there was a gopher meeting so I wandered off to that and got promptly grabbed to help with the chaos of registration. Registration seemed to be a mess. Screwed up paperwork meant they weren't sure which rooms had been allocated already or possibly not who they had been given to and other stuch things. I sorted out the paperwork as quick as I could while other people dealt with people tryign to sign in. I did very much wonder who the hell organised the registration since it appeared to have been an *extreme* rush job.
At the end of this chaos I found the head gopher and asked him if anything had been said in the gopher meeting and apparently all it was was that gopher's were allowed into the dealer room before anybody else. The dealer room being were all the anime toys such as models, DVDs, manga, t-shirts, etc. was being sold.
After this I grabbed some food and wandered off to the karaoke since I knew that was where others would be. We'd found more people by this time, Matthew and Alan at least anyway, also Hanbury and Rei too and I think Alan's sister clare (sp?) was there as well. I sat around in the karaoke for a bit before getting a bit bored (karaoke really isn't my scene, especially when there aren't even many anime tunes and its all j-pop, so I wandered of to see the fandub competition. I missed the pre-planned fandubs but caught the adlib fandubs and was *very* impressed by them and it was all very funny. Definitely glad I went to that and will make sure I pop into that again in any future cons.
I think I then popped back to the karaoke and killed a bit more time before we all went on mass to see what looked to be an interesting anime called "Marple and Poirot". And yes, it was indeed Agatha Christi's great detectives in anime form. It was actually quite good. A decent first episode, a slightly worse second and later on in the con came the third episode. Amusing to see the characters in anime and also suitably japanesed by having a young girl and her duck as sidekick style character (or main character depending on your PoV).
Marple and Poirot was followed by an episode of "monster" which was extremely slow to start and the first episode left me in the mood to wander off to catch Sgt Frog in VR2 (Video Room 2). Sgt Frog was silly and in some ways reminiscent of Invader zim. Aliens had sent an advanced recon squad to earth and then had to withdraw, abandoning them there. They were all scattered so only the sergeant is initially around and has, of course, been adopted by a small family. The Frog type thing in question is monumentally useless and slightly neurotic. Its also a very silly and surreal comedy.
After that I watched the next set of Cosprayers which took me through to 2am. Some of the cool episodes were in this set and after that I staggered off back to my room to sleep, alarm set for 8am since there was anime I wanted to watch at 9 and breakfast first...
Sorry about slightly random use of formatting (italic in particular). I was trying to italisice the names of the anime to make them stick out but I'm tired and am fairly sure I've missed them several times... Oh well. :)
Next updates will cover the next two days...
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-23 02:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-23 05:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-02 01:57 pm (UTC)It's probably pointless me reading this since I was there, but hey, this is kinda fun!
*goes to read Saturday's entry*
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-09 04:15 pm (UTC)And I love reading writeups of thigns I've been to. Its great! :)
Oh, and does your sister have an e-mail address or anything? I'd say it was so I could try to chat her up but sadly its just to reply to a question she asked me that I now know the answer to... I guess I could always ask you to pass on the message though...
The really print anime we saw in the AMV thing that I said I recognised was Wonderful Days and is a Korean thing. It was actually shown at Amecon I think but I've lost my program so I can't confirm right now. It is great though and I might see if I can get hold of a copy.