Otakon - Live Reports!

[VegettoEX]

Yes, I'm actually at the con. The entire inner harbor is wireless. Combine that with Dave bringing his two laptops, and we've got the potential for... live updates from Baltimore!

So we got in around 3:30-ish yesterday. Dave was already checked in, so we just plopped our stuff, freshed up, and waited on line for pre-reg. Got that around 5:30. Headed back to the room until 7:30, when we went back out and attempted the big AMV-creator-get-together. Of course, it was only a few of us until about 8 pm, when everyone and their mom showed up. Went out to Uno. Was 21 of us total, I believe. Good times.

Then some more friends showed up who get in late (dwchang and Bogosort), so just a select few of us hung around with them and had drinks while they ate dinner. Around midnight we went back to our rooms.

Now it's morning, and we're gonna be heading out to get our packets stamped for guaranteed L'Arc~en~Ciel tickets! Two AMV contest showings today... main events one is 9 pm, I think... eeeeyaaaaaaahhhh!

Plus, we were brought aside and told some really insane news by a certain contest technical organizer, but that's all... errr... "secret" stuff that we won't talk about until after AWA >.>

Post to you all later... we'll see... if I'm coherent.... hah... Ja~

[SaiyaJedi]

Yes, I'm actually at the con. The entire inner harbor is wireless. Combine that with Dave bringing his two laptops, and we've got the potential for... live updates from Baltimore!

So we got in around 3:30-ish yesterday. Dave was already checked in, so we just plopped our stuff, freshed up, and waited on line for pre-reg. Got that around 5:30. Headed back to the room until 7:30, when we went back out and attempted the big AMV-creator-get-together. Of course, it was only a few of us until about 8 pm, when everyone and their mom showed up. Went out to Uno. Was 21 of us total, I believe. Good times.

Then some more friends showed up who get in late (dwchang and Bogosort), so just a select few of us hung around with them and had drinks while they ate dinner. Around midnight we went back to our rooms.

Now it's morning, and we're gonna be heading out to get our packets stamped for guaranteed L'Arc~en~Ciel tickets! Two AMV contest showings today... main events one is 9 pm, I think... eeeeyaaaaaaahhhh!

Plus, we were brought aside and told some really insane news by a certain contest technical organizer, but that's all... errr... "secret" stuff that we won't talk about until after AWA >.>

Post to you all later... we'll see... if I'm coherent.... hah... Ja~

Cool stuff. Probably going to update the site with some things tonight, but that'll be later on. Lots of updates to the action = good.

[Sun_Wukong]

I was at the con today. I'm really pissed I didnt get to see your video. I watched them testing the videos at 12:30, but the dealer's room was calling me. I left my group of friends there watching it. As soon as I got back the videos were over. Everyone of my friends said that the contest was amazing this year. I was at the con untill about 4:30. The rest of my "group" was staying untill close, but I just couldnt afford any more of it. Minimum wage is a very evil thing indeed.

[VegettoEX]

Whoo, what a full day! We got up around 8 am and had some breakfast and then got on line for the L~Arc~en~Ciel tickets, which was a breeze. We just kinda hung out over at the Burger King until 11:15-ish when we made our way over to the AMV area. Most of our AMV friends only watched about half of it (since the BIG showing was later that night); Meri, myself, and just a few others stuck it out until the end. Afterwards Meri, myself, Chris, Dan, and Tim all went out for lunch.

We came back and wandered around the dealer's room for a bit... Meri only bought one manga, and that was that. The next thing was the AMV showing around 9-ish, so we just wandered around in and out of a few things on the 300 level to see what all was going on. We were going to go watch that "Magical District" blah blah blah show, but came upon Quu who was just sitting down taking a break. We hung out with him for an hour or so and just talked general stuff, including some ever awesome AWA stuff ^_~

Afterwards we caught the end of a "Magical Shopping District" episode, and waited around for the rest of our AMV friends to get back from dinner (we had a late-ass lunch with the other friends, so noooo hungry).

We all got together and tried to get some VIP seating for the show; which we managed to pull off! Problem was... the VIP seats SUCKED. They were AAAAALLLL the way over on the left up FRONT. Yeah, 'cuz we can see TONS from there . So what did we do? Leave and get back in the regular line?

And as fate would have it, where did we get seated? IN THE SAME PLACE WE JUST LEFT 'CUZ IT SUCKED SO BAD. Hah. We moved . Got some decent middle-front/center seats.

The AMV contest as a whole? Definitely not as strong as last year. Meri's video got a few laughs at the first showing, but that was at a minimum during this showing (it IS a drama/romance video, after all). My video got a REALLY nice reaction at the second showing; my textual intro was enough to get some people on the floor . I'll do some AMV talk later... long story short, it wasn't as good as last year, but it didn't TOTALLY suck.

So after the show we scooped up Quu and headed over to Corbo's place for a pre-Corbo Bash-bash. A small group of us just headed to a "quiet" room and talked nonsense for an hour or so. Good times.

Around 1:30 am we headed back to the room.

Today? Breakfast, AMV panel at 10 am, L~Arc concert in the afternoon, possibly pop in the last AMV contest showing to see our video reactions one more time, the new fan parody is tonight, Corbo Bash is later tonight... full day, whee! Report more later~~~.

[VegettoEX]

Oh, man... I'm exhausted.

Yesterday we got up, had breakfast, and headed on over to the AMV panel at 10 am. The panelists were Vlad Pohnert, Tim Park (Doki Doki), Will Millbery (Aluminum) and Scott Melzer. Unfortunately, for the second year in a row, the moderator Jim Kapataz (spelling is certainly wrong). Too his credit, he's the creator of the "first" anime music video.

Unfortunately... there's not much more to say about him. Your job as a moderator is to move the discussion along and direction questions from the audience.

Not talk about your Gundam / "Mr. Roboto" video. Which is terrible. Five times.

He just couldn't grasp that no-one was asking him his opinion, it's not his job to put in his opinion, his opinions don't make any sense in today's AMV world, his ideas are absolutely terrible (he got the dreaded "crickets chirp" on many an occasion during the panel), and... UGH.

Whatever. Moving on.

After the panel we hung around and talked to Scott about general stuff (hadn't seen him the day before, and hadn't seen him at all since Monday when we last worked on the parody). Talked for a good long while about what was actually completed, what wasn't, what we wanted to do, blah blah blah.

Then we went over to Vlad's Miyazaki panel, which was really nice. He did some fantastic explanation's on Miyazaki's mythical inspiration for many of his characters and locations, etc etc etc. To finish it off, he played his special edition LaserDisc copy of On Your Mark, the original music video Miyazaki did (to "take a break" from movies, too ^^). It was fantastic. He packed the room, and got an amazing response.

Then we had lunch! Next up... L~ARC!

I called Daniel and we all met up in their room, which conveniently happened to overlook the arena, so we could see the line waiting to get it. We just waited until we saw it start to move, and headed on out . Actually, we realized we majorly cut in line... after we hopped on what seemed to be the end of the line, around the corner came this HUGE group / line of people; apparently the rest of the line had gotten stuck at a traffic light or something. Whoops . So we.. uhh... stayed where we were .

Soon after we got in, the premiere of the first episode of Fullmetal Alchemist was played. Fuck what anyone else will try and tell you, the dub was absolutely amazing. The only voice I could actually pick out by name was Chuck Huber, and he was only some minor side character. Everything was just soooooo good. I loved the brothers' voices; both were just amazing. (Forgive me, I forget names)... The older one did a fantastic job of both the wackiness and seriousness, while the younger one had such a heart-warming very young, innocent sounding voice with a lot of... uhhh... heart!... in it. It was just soooo sexy. There were both a "Hell" and a "Bastard" in there, too, for all your curse-a-holics . Just... gooooooooood duuuuubbiiiiinngggg....

*whistles "Sell Out" to himself*

Oh yeah. The show. Absolutely awesome. Great experience. I'm glad I picked up the Japanese version of the new album a while back; they essentially played the whole thing. Oh, and hearing "Stay Away" played live was literally worth the time and energy to come to Otakon, alone. They closed their main set with "READY STEADY GO" (of course), and played a video montage (mostly from the opening) back up on the two giant screens during the performance. After a looooong-ass wait and TONS of chanting, the band came back out for three more songs (one of which was "Blurry Eyes").

Hyde's quote of the evening: "I am EVANGELION!!!"

Anyway, after the show we all collectively dropped "things" off at Corbo's, and then needed to race back to the AMV Creation Workshop (which was at 8 pm). So we hauled ass back to get there at 8:07, to find that they simply read off the winner's names, and that was that. Buuuullshiiiiit. So we left . No reason for any of us to stay and... err... listen to....*trails off*

So, knowing who won, about 20 of us went off for dinner. After that, Meri and I headed off to the fan parodies. We got in about halfway through "Evangelion: Redeath: Redux." Nice to see / hear. Then was our new one. It had more blank spots than I thought it did ;_;. Was kinda sad. Overall, the commercials and such got a MUCH better response than the main "movie," but I think I can also attribute that to the commercials (mostly) actually having music and sound effects, already. "Yaoi Eye for the Shonen Guy" easily got the best response out of ANYTHING. OK, that's not true... the biggest thing that got a full-room chanting/reciting:

"Water plus heat... equals steam. THE WORLD CAN BE SAVED BY STEAM!"

After the parodies, Meri and I busted over to Corbo Bash, slightly fasionably late. A bit smaller this year, but it was a smaller room, so yeah. Lots of memorable new quotes and sights... more about that in other personal writing outlets...

Got back sometime slightly before 3 am, went to sleep. Got up at 9. Too a shower. Sitting here in my underwear. Gonna pack up, get some breakfast, and head over to the FUNimation panel. Sabat was signing stuff in the dealer's room yesterday, so I got in line to introduce myself. I got there just too late, though; they closed the line right in front of me. Blah. I'll try and say "Hello" before/after the panel this morning. I basically just wanna introduce myself, see if he remembers me, and apologize for being such a typical, annoying, ill-informed, jack-ass fan four/five/six years ago.

SO YEAH!!!!

[Izlude]

So FMA's dub is rock solid then? Heh... seems like ol Funi's been on a roll with the dubs, although I'll bet anything it'll split into the crowd of fans that ethier love it or hate it, just like with all anime! I wish we all could just get along.... I'm glad to hear FMA's dub is good from an vet like you though VegEX, I'll be looking towards it even more now

I gotta download this video you showed at Otakuon, my friend Zang-Diddy was there he was like totally loving it.I gotta see it for myself!

[Ben Plante]

I just want to say thanx to VegEX for taking time out of the busy Otakon schedule to actually keep in touch with all of us like this. Proves you really care about the visitors to the site.

Rock on, brutha.