Amecon: Saturday
Aug. 24th, 2004 11:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chrisvenusSaturday was the first full day at Amecon. It was an early start, a late finish, contained some truly strange anime and a lot of other things.
Amecon: Saturday
So saturday my alarm went off and I ignored it for a bit. I lay in bed going "tired... want to sleep...." Several snoozes later I dragged myself out of bed and to breakfast after a nice shower. Breakfast was very little choice but given one of the choices was bacon and sausage with baps to put it in I was happy enough. Bacon and Sausage in a bap (I discovered the next day that he bacon on its own in a bap didn't go too well, it needs the sausage too).
After breakfast and chatting to some people that I didn't know. I was yet to eat meals with friends by this stage but I'd found random people to sit with anyway who were nice enough. I'm not sure that I'd be able to recognise them if I saw them again, let alone name them. They were nice people, though so an anonymous thankyou out to them.
So after breakfast I turned up late to watch the first two episodes of samurai 7. I kept being late to the 9 o'clock showings but luckily only by about 5 minutes each time... :) Samurai 7 was very cool. Anime remake of the seven samurai apparently (though I'm not familiar enough with it to really know how close it is to the film). It is very cool though, set in a futuristic setting with robot samurai and is generally cool. Another one that I want to see the whole lot of and thanks to Bittorrent I will... :)
After that I did some gophery minion duties. I had intended to go see the guest at the con, Monica Rial (a voice actress for anime dubs), doing her big talky thing. While waiting for it to start though I discovered that there was a gopher meeting. This is where I realised how badly the planning was falling down. For a start I didn't know there was a meeting til it was supposed to start and when I turned up the meeting was basically "we've got all these gophers signed up and they're not really doing anything". I discovered that at some point sign-up lists had been created for duties. I'm not sure when but its possible they were announced at the gopher meeting the night before and I was just not told about them.
Basically there was work not being done because gopher's didn't know there was the work to be done and the organisers weren't getting the message to them. So I wander down to ops and sign up on a few things and while there the treasurer is saying "I need somebody to take this down to the bring and buy..." All the other closer gophers said nothing so I said "Yeah, no problem" since it was kind of my job as a gopher.
He gave me a money box for the bring and buy which seemed relatively light so I assumed it was empty and that they had the money down there. I get down there and they open it up and see there's about 1.50 in change at the top. They are looking slightly annoyed and having seen something below I say "I think there's more under here" and lift up the cash tray on the top revealing what we later discover is about three thousand pounds. The people at the bring and buy just said "no. We are not taking this, take it back to ops." and I did, this time with an escort since I was slightly nervous with that much money in a very obvious cash box.
On getting back to ops I tell John (the treasurer) that there is too much money in there and they won't accept it and he says "no there's not". I openit and show him and he says "oops, I sent down the ops cashbox..." This is the one that had all of the room key deposits and so on in it...
I get a new cashbox with more spare change and less thousands of pounds and off we go back to the bring and buy. They are much happier and we count up the money and I take a tally of how much their initial float was back up to ops along with a quick search for the supplies that the bring and buy had requested to get them through the day (there was a gopher room with a *huge* amount of food and drink in it available to the gophers). I find a guy who had just finished loading up a shopping trolley of stuff to take down so I helped him down with that.
It was amazing that the queues of people waiting for the dealer's room to open that had got in my way before magically parted like the red sea when a heavily loaded shopping trolley came through. :) It was quite fun really. I was also quite happy that at the end of this having helped out the bring and buy for the last hour or so I was actually thanked for my help. I had the implicit thanks of the food and drink (life bringing coke) that the organisers provided but it was nice to have an explicit thanks too.
After I got back to ops this time I found out they needed more people to be on duty in Coppice (one of the buildings with video rooms) so having nothing else planned for a while I went to watch some anime that I probably wouldn't have done otherwise.
I ended up watching episodes three and four of "Fafner" which was basically a mecha thing that seemed kind of cool. Futuristic kind of thing with this group of people trying to move the island they lived on with machinery, strange weird stuff going on in the basement reactor type thing (some kind of being waking up scenario) and weird stuff happening outside (big glowy bad guy that they had to send out the mecha dude to beat up). I'd be interested in seeing the first couploe of episodes to see what the setup was a bit better. It has the potential to be quite fun.
After that came girls bravo. Very odd thing that I'd describe as a blend of school anime, sexual references, very vicious violence and magical parallel worlds (or at least in the first episode there was and after that was the girl from the other world that came into this one). Kind of odd and vaguely amusing. Not one I am overly bothered about though.
More cosprayers after that which was very cool and ended the series. As discussed earlier a nice twist and end to the series.
I then wandered back to the dealer's room again to chat to people and actually buy the thing I had spotted earlier and reserved (the utena DVD that I needed to replace for John) - it was nice being a gopher to get some privileges like not having to cue for dealer room and bring and buy.
I ran a few messages again and then want to hook up with people briefly for the rerun of girls bravo (caught the second episode) and then went off to the main area for the cosplay masquerade. Got roped into helping set stuff up. Its not quite the chore that it sounds though. The guy (head gopher) said "don't go far, we may need you" so I went to find people I was with, failed to find them and went back to help gopher. I ended up doing no work since there was actually nothing I was needed for (apart from to help a press guy find somewhere to stand) but got to get a decent position for the masquerade.
The masquerade was basically a formal display of various costumes and so on. They would be introduced, parade around a bit and then come sit down right near I was so I got a nice view of all the costumes. Much better than a lot of people who were watching over a video feed from a different room. Another perk of gophering. :)
After the masquerade there were announcements as well as a brief powerpoint presentation on amecon 2006. This was kind of interesting but really not very necessary in my opinion. A brief 2 minute summary "bigger site, better facilities, in birmingham this time, variable accomodation" would have been really all that was needed rather than a slideshow showing us pictures and descriptions of the merchandise they were hoping to sell related to the next event (in two years, note).
I wandered off after that to find Dogtato which I had seen a fair bit of before and is basically a series of short (5 minutes-ish) that are kind of odd and very kids aimed. Hard to describe really but I will just say that dogtato is so called because he is a cross beteween a dog and a potato. Hedgetato is a hedgehog/potato. Lettuphant - lettuce elephant. There are many more as well. Its odd but quite funny. A good substitute for class a drugs. :)
After dogtato ended we slowely meandered to dinner (pizza and chips again - quite nice) and then headed back for some Bobobo~bo Bo~bobo. This is a series that truly defies description. Utterly silly and on a surreality level that would probably demonstrate what would happen if monty python had been created in Japan. A man with a giant afro who has mastered nose hair kung-fu and occasionally has his afro open up to reveal strange scenes such as two squirrels on a romantic dinner or the pop band that is in break up. If I say too much more about it though you will think me mad. The rough plot is that Bo~bobo is trying to defeat the evil hair snatcher gang that is trying to shave everybody's hair off. No real reason that I've found so far.
Oh, and it is has shown me that what happens if a duck and a pair of underpants breed. Yeah, I did say it was very surreal. It was cool though. :)
After that my tiredness kicked in and with it some of my worse mindsets. Other people were heading off for stuff I wasn't interested in and I had a mood crash. I wandered back to my room to try to have a nap to try to lift the mood and failed and wandered around a bit in a mope. Luckily there was so much stuff happening that I quickly ended up back at the AMV (Anime Musiv Video) competition trying to find people.
Due to some computer issues the AMV competition got moved back so I ended up watching episodes three and four of Monster (I'd watched ep 1 but not 2). It was still quite slow though was decidedly hinting that good plot might be upcoming. Might have been interesting to see eps 5 and 6 but this was the last I saw and I didn't come away with a very good impression of it.
Then back for another attempt at the AMV comp. I wasn't going to but then decided that I had nothing better to do. There were some very pretty AMVs and the winner I think probably only won because his was funny rather than necessarily the best. For those that don't really get AMVs you basically get a song and use your videoediting software to make a music video out of your favourite anime clips. Occasionally people use other soundtracks, for example I saw a *very* cool one which has the Lord of the rings (fellowship) trailer but with anime visuals.
The winner of the AMV competition did a matrix trailer with anime in. It was funny but not wonderfully produced. Some of the others were a lot better. It was a fun competition and I keep being vaguely tempted to do some kind of AMV myself... I keep thinking how suitable "I wish I was a girl" by Violent delight would be for an AMV... :)
After this I ended up chatting to one of the other gopher's who was on duty outside one of the buildings and finding out about some of the stuff that had gone wrong during the con. Or more particularly the specific events that I had heard about but avoided earlier when there was a potential "too many cooks" scenario brewing. I won't go into details here since I don't really know the full story but soe of the volunteers were, apparently, behaving very inappropriately.
After that the next two episodes of Samurai 7 which I was "on duty" for. This involved pretty much watching them which was nice. I was a little unclear on the duties since I had never had it explained to me what was required. I originally thought it was just so that if something happens or the video explodes or something there is a gopher on hand to deal. Later on though I found people doing full badge checks and so on which I had no idea whether it was necessary or not. See my earlier comments on the slightly poor organisation with respect to gophering and so on...
Anyway, samurai 7 was great again but by the end of it I was knackered. I had considered going to the hentai room but earlier it had been packed and I couldn't be bothered to stand to watch and I wasn't even that bothered except just to say that I had watched some hentai. So yeah, off to bed at this point to end my saturday at Amecon. A very long day that left my totally shattered by the end of it...
Amecon: Saturday
So saturday my alarm went off and I ignored it for a bit. I lay in bed going "tired... want to sleep...." Several snoozes later I dragged myself out of bed and to breakfast after a nice shower. Breakfast was very little choice but given one of the choices was bacon and sausage with baps to put it in I was happy enough. Bacon and Sausage in a bap (I discovered the next day that he bacon on its own in a bap didn't go too well, it needs the sausage too).
After breakfast and chatting to some people that I didn't know. I was yet to eat meals with friends by this stage but I'd found random people to sit with anyway who were nice enough. I'm not sure that I'd be able to recognise them if I saw them again, let alone name them. They were nice people, though so an anonymous thankyou out to them.
So after breakfast I turned up late to watch the first two episodes of samurai 7. I kept being late to the 9 o'clock showings but luckily only by about 5 minutes each time... :) Samurai 7 was very cool. Anime remake of the seven samurai apparently (though I'm not familiar enough with it to really know how close it is to the film). It is very cool though, set in a futuristic setting with robot samurai and is generally cool. Another one that I want to see the whole lot of and thanks to Bittorrent I will... :)
After that I did some gophery minion duties. I had intended to go see the guest at the con, Monica Rial (a voice actress for anime dubs), doing her big talky thing. While waiting for it to start though I discovered that there was a gopher meeting. This is where I realised how badly the planning was falling down. For a start I didn't know there was a meeting til it was supposed to start and when I turned up the meeting was basically "we've got all these gophers signed up and they're not really doing anything". I discovered that at some point sign-up lists had been created for duties. I'm not sure when but its possible they were announced at the gopher meeting the night before and I was just not told about them.
Basically there was work not being done because gopher's didn't know there was the work to be done and the organisers weren't getting the message to them. So I wander down to ops and sign up on a few things and while there the treasurer is saying "I need somebody to take this down to the bring and buy..." All the other closer gophers said nothing so I said "Yeah, no problem" since it was kind of my job as a gopher.
He gave me a money box for the bring and buy which seemed relatively light so I assumed it was empty and that they had the money down there. I get down there and they open it up and see there's about 1.50 in change at the top. They are looking slightly annoyed and having seen something below I say "I think there's more under here" and lift up the cash tray on the top revealing what we later discover is about three thousand pounds. The people at the bring and buy just said "no. We are not taking this, take it back to ops." and I did, this time with an escort since I was slightly nervous with that much money in a very obvious cash box.
On getting back to ops I tell John (the treasurer) that there is too much money in there and they won't accept it and he says "no there's not". I openit and show him and he says "oops, I sent down the ops cashbox..." This is the one that had all of the room key deposits and so on in it...
I get a new cashbox with more spare change and less thousands of pounds and off we go back to the bring and buy. They are much happier and we count up the money and I take a tally of how much their initial float was back up to ops along with a quick search for the supplies that the bring and buy had requested to get them through the day (there was a gopher room with a *huge* amount of food and drink in it available to the gophers). I find a guy who had just finished loading up a shopping trolley of stuff to take down so I helped him down with that.
It was amazing that the queues of people waiting for the dealer's room to open that had got in my way before magically parted like the red sea when a heavily loaded shopping trolley came through. :) It was quite fun really. I was also quite happy that at the end of this having helped out the bring and buy for the last hour or so I was actually thanked for my help. I had the implicit thanks of the food and drink (life bringing coke) that the organisers provided but it was nice to have an explicit thanks too.
After I got back to ops this time I found out they needed more people to be on duty in Coppice (one of the buildings with video rooms) so having nothing else planned for a while I went to watch some anime that I probably wouldn't have done otherwise.
I ended up watching episodes three and four of "Fafner" which was basically a mecha thing that seemed kind of cool. Futuristic kind of thing with this group of people trying to move the island they lived on with machinery, strange weird stuff going on in the basement reactor type thing (some kind of being waking up scenario) and weird stuff happening outside (big glowy bad guy that they had to send out the mecha dude to beat up). I'd be interested in seeing the first couploe of episodes to see what the setup was a bit better. It has the potential to be quite fun.
After that came girls bravo. Very odd thing that I'd describe as a blend of school anime, sexual references, very vicious violence and magical parallel worlds (or at least in the first episode there was and after that was the girl from the other world that came into this one). Kind of odd and vaguely amusing. Not one I am overly bothered about though.
More cosprayers after that which was very cool and ended the series. As discussed earlier a nice twist and end to the series.
I then wandered back to the dealer's room again to chat to people and actually buy the thing I had spotted earlier and reserved (the utena DVD that I needed to replace for John) - it was nice being a gopher to get some privileges like not having to cue for dealer room and bring and buy.
I ran a few messages again and then want to hook up with people briefly for the rerun of girls bravo (caught the second episode) and then went off to the main area for the cosplay masquerade. Got roped into helping set stuff up. Its not quite the chore that it sounds though. The guy (head gopher) said "don't go far, we may need you" so I went to find people I was with, failed to find them and went back to help gopher. I ended up doing no work since there was actually nothing I was needed for (apart from to help a press guy find somewhere to stand) but got to get a decent position for the masquerade.
The masquerade was basically a formal display of various costumes and so on. They would be introduced, parade around a bit and then come sit down right near I was so I got a nice view of all the costumes. Much better than a lot of people who were watching over a video feed from a different room. Another perk of gophering. :)
After the masquerade there were announcements as well as a brief powerpoint presentation on amecon 2006. This was kind of interesting but really not very necessary in my opinion. A brief 2 minute summary "bigger site, better facilities, in birmingham this time, variable accomodation" would have been really all that was needed rather than a slideshow showing us pictures and descriptions of the merchandise they were hoping to sell related to the next event (in two years, note).
I wandered off after that to find Dogtato which I had seen a fair bit of before and is basically a series of short (5 minutes-ish) that are kind of odd and very kids aimed. Hard to describe really but I will just say that dogtato is so called because he is a cross beteween a dog and a potato. Hedgetato is a hedgehog/potato. Lettuphant - lettuce elephant. There are many more as well. Its odd but quite funny. A good substitute for class a drugs. :)
After dogtato ended we slowely meandered to dinner (pizza and chips again - quite nice) and then headed back for some Bobobo~bo Bo~bobo. This is a series that truly defies description. Utterly silly and on a surreality level that would probably demonstrate what would happen if monty python had been created in Japan. A man with a giant afro who has mastered nose hair kung-fu and occasionally has his afro open up to reveal strange scenes such as two squirrels on a romantic dinner or the pop band that is in break up. If I say too much more about it though you will think me mad. The rough plot is that Bo~bobo is trying to defeat the evil hair snatcher gang that is trying to shave everybody's hair off. No real reason that I've found so far.
Oh, and it is has shown me that what happens if a duck and a pair of underpants breed. Yeah, I did say it was very surreal. It was cool though. :)
After that my tiredness kicked in and with it some of my worse mindsets. Other people were heading off for stuff I wasn't interested in and I had a mood crash. I wandered back to my room to try to have a nap to try to lift the mood and failed and wandered around a bit in a mope. Luckily there was so much stuff happening that I quickly ended up back at the AMV (Anime Musiv Video) competition trying to find people.
Due to some computer issues the AMV competition got moved back so I ended up watching episodes three and four of Monster (I'd watched ep 1 but not 2). It was still quite slow though was decidedly hinting that good plot might be upcoming. Might have been interesting to see eps 5 and 6 but this was the last I saw and I didn't come away with a very good impression of it.
Then back for another attempt at the AMV comp. I wasn't going to but then decided that I had nothing better to do. There were some very pretty AMVs and the winner I think probably only won because his was funny rather than necessarily the best. For those that don't really get AMVs you basically get a song and use your videoediting software to make a music video out of your favourite anime clips. Occasionally people use other soundtracks, for example I saw a *very* cool one which has the Lord of the rings (fellowship) trailer but with anime visuals.
The winner of the AMV competition did a matrix trailer with anime in. It was funny but not wonderfully produced. Some of the others were a lot better. It was a fun competition and I keep being vaguely tempted to do some kind of AMV myself... I keep thinking how suitable "I wish I was a girl" by Violent delight would be for an AMV... :)
After this I ended up chatting to one of the other gopher's who was on duty outside one of the buildings and finding out about some of the stuff that had gone wrong during the con. Or more particularly the specific events that I had heard about but avoided earlier when there was a potential "too many cooks" scenario brewing. I won't go into details here since I don't really know the full story but soe of the volunteers were, apparently, behaving very inappropriately.
After that the next two episodes of Samurai 7 which I was "on duty" for. This involved pretty much watching them which was nice. I was a little unclear on the duties since I had never had it explained to me what was required. I originally thought it was just so that if something happens or the video explodes or something there is a gopher on hand to deal. Later on though I found people doing full badge checks and so on which I had no idea whether it was necessary or not. See my earlier comments on the slightly poor organisation with respect to gophering and so on...
Anyway, samurai 7 was great again but by the end of it I was knackered. I had considered going to the hentai room but earlier it had been packed and I couldn't be bothered to stand to watch and I wasn't even that bothered except just to say that I had watched some hentai. So yeah, off to bed at this point to end my saturday at Amecon. A very long day that left my totally shattered by the end of it...
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-24 05:55 am (UTC)You raise a valid point on the throwing knife thing. You have to feel a certain sympathy for any creature whose only appendages are sex organs.
As for the rest I'll simply say that this is true for many series, and with that I'll give the discussion a rest before we turn Chris' lj into Hentai Review
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-24 06:04 am (UTC)On the one hand yes, on the other hand, no - all down to personal preference.
before we turn Chris' lj into Hentai Review
Pah, I'm sure he's all for it. I take his silence as tacit approval. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-24 06:14 am (UTC)You should. I am more than happy to have lots of LJ comments around to read to relieve the work day from its potential monotony... :)