This alone caused all kinds of trouble. It's a very bad
sign when you're aggravated at the convention before you even get in the car
to go there. We had submitted for two media badges for the convention, one for
myself and one for Riki so she could handle all the picture taking of
cosplayers and with the guests. We had sent this in back in March when the
forms were finally available, but never heard back. Repeated inquiries turned
up no responses, though some on the staff who know me tried looking into it.
Come to find out, they couldn't access the emails for their media account.
On the Wednesday that I left, I got included in the mass
emailing from their media rep that we were approved and would be all set.
Nothing like last minute and completely up in the air.
Being the kind of person who hates being late, and
considers on-time as being late, I made plans to head up to Toronto starting
on the Wednesday before the con. Overall, the trip is about nine hours in
length from central Massachusetts, so it's not terribly bad. But having never
been to Toronto before, or having been to Canada in something like fifteen
years, I opted to swing up to Rochester to drive up the remaining three hours
with fell chat channel op DarkSong. We left Rochester Thursday morning, after
I managed to get a good nights rest at the hotel (Crowne Royal for only 60$ a
night with AAA, you can't go wrong). The three hour trip to Toronto went
smoothly, we made excellent time and had no trouble at the border.
Recommendation: Keep a baby seat in the back of your car.
You can't be a terrorist if you have children apparently.
Our plans for Thursday, as we arrived at the hotel at noon,
fell through completely as the people we were supposed to meet up with ended
up meeting some other folks first and ended up disappearing for most of that
day. DarkSong and I instead took in a full viewing of Excel Saga on my laptop
in dubbed form with vidnotes, then decided to go check out the hotel and get a
feel for the layout. The convention had no Thursday night registration set up
and no presence at all beyond one banner in he main lobby, so we basically
just went all over the place looking around before deciding to grab some
dinner and basically call it a night. In the end, I simply like being there
the day before the convention starts since checking in is far easier and it
gives me a chance to catch my breath before the non-stop fun begins.
Friday went better all told in terms of things to do, but
only in some ways.
Early morning was spent hanging out with the Winnipeg folks
that I knew, and I got to meet Cathleen and Tong. Tong, aka Bigfire the hentai
master on the forums and chat, was pretty much the main person I was really
looking forward to meeting after all these years. Would two hentai masters in
one room cause an end to the universe? Thankfully, no. But we did get to watch
his eerie transformation into a schoolgirl outfit. Someday I'll post the
pictures that show how I mastered the master.
Registration didn't open until noon, so people were just
congregating in the Banyan Foyer where they'd be doing it. Early cosplayers
got their pictures taken, people who hadn't seen each other in awhile got
introduced to new people and so forth. I managed to meet a lot of the Canadian
readers I've talked with for several years, so it was quite good in that
respect. While the regular registration stuff started going along, we met up
with Jerry Chu from Bandai Entertainment, and the four of us headed off to the
Con Ops room to get our respective media/industry badges.
At this point, I'd already heard from several people about
how flustered some of the staffers were, and some being rather rude to both
attendees (complaining about costumes that can't be worn in hallways to being
told they were obstructing foot traffic though they were sitting out of the
way; frankly, there weren't enough places for people to just hang out if you
weren't in a room, and with this con being a people-gathering con, that's
essential). We finally got our media badges, but they weren't hole-punched and
no chains or ropes were available. Thankfully I had my chain from last years
Otakon in my travel bag and we co-opted a hole puncher so we could at least
keep our badges visible. I'd hate to think what would be said if they weren't
visible.
Back in registration, things were getting messy. Everyone
was in one line that went out into the main lobby, even though there should
have been at least two lines for prereg and new reg. Con Ops didn't have the
handy bag with all the paperwork and materials for us, so we had to be pushy
and get one from regular registration. So finally we all sat down to go
through the bags, get the schedule, and see what our plans were going to be.
No schedules in the bags.
Apparently they weren't back from the printers yet. "Maybe
in an hour" was the response we got. They did show up earlier than that, but
they may as well not have. Among our larger group, as many had congregated
with us, nobody could find anything on Friday they wanted to do other than
checking out the dealers room when it opened at five. And that conflicted with
another event that wasn't convention related. I think at this point we just
basically walked around and took pictures of cosplayers for a bit, and then
headed up the infamous Room 1428.
This room was set up among a certain group of Canadians who
had the idea that a hotel room should have the full DTS 6.1 experience, and
brought the necessary ingredients (along with... The Batch, for those who
partake in that drink). Having a number of people in that room, we again
screened the Excel Saga show dubbed, and it earned quite a positive response
and surprised looks with how well it sounded. The vid notes also scored highly
during this event.
Jay Locke, a long time reader of the site and master of the
anime music video, had coordinated a gathering for AOD folks at the Ginko
Japanese restaurant down the street. Ensuring that last years trek to the
restaurant at Otakon was not repeated, a couple of us hailed a cab and headed
off to the restaurant just before five. There were probably close to 30-40
people who showed up to this, and it looks like a good time was had by all.
The food was good (yes, I ate more than I did at Otakon, for those keeping
track) and the sake was definitely flowing. One person in particular looked
like he was keeping his head up by using his chopsticks as a brace.
A few hours later we all headed back in various stages and
checked out the dealers room. Sage and I made the rounds after standing in
line (I won't abuse the media pass for that, I'd rather browse with friends)
and checked out all the tables. Picked up the Berserk #1 with box for $50
Canadian, which was the only real DVD deal I found. Most people indicated
prices were either retail or higher in some cases. The only real deal I scored
was for the die-cast Macross Valkyrie from Yamato for $100 Canadian, getting
the Max one while Sage picked up the Ichijo one. Very little else interested
me in the dealers room. The tables in general had no signage about what
company they were, which made me hesitant to buy things since I didn't want to
purchase from someone whose store may carry bootlegs. The bootlegs at this con
were pretty much non-existent outside of one table, which we couldn't fully
identify due to the near-complet lack of identification on most retailers.
Apparently a number of retailers were griping about this, but hey, screw 'em
if they can't sell their illegal crap.
The remainder of the night was spent hanging out in a
couple of the crowded rooms with the Winnipeg folks and just
talking/eating/gaming and so forth.
Saturday started early, but there was precious little to
do. The video rooms (which looked horrifyingly small) held little interest
since most of it was stuff I'd seen or shows that are coming up that I didn't
want to "ruin the experience" of in such conditions. Yeah, I'm an elitist
snobby bastard, I care about how the shows are presented. There were only two
panels I could find worth checking out on Saturday. "What does Adult really
mean" at three pm and the Fan sub/copyright panel at five pm, which Jerry
found out he was running. The entire morning and early afternoon was devoid of
anything to do, which meant you just had a number of us walking around
aimlessly and just chatting.
The Adult panel proved to be fairly interested, though it
was pretty much dominated by one speaker, whose name eludes me. He was pretty
knowledgeable and entertaining, so it wasn't necessarily a bad thing. The
panel was the kind that actually talked about social/political/cultural
issues, so it held my attention pretty well. A few of us opted afterwards to
go to the "Deeper meaning of Sailor Moon" panel after that, since that room
would be followed by the copyright one. Unfortunately, the trivia contest
panel was still running in there, and ran for another hour once we got there.
Trivia games in large crowds like this are an interesting
thing. Do you "play it safe" and just do things about titles that are
licensed? After all, a great many people do not partake in fansubs or
digisubs, and find themselves easily locked out of participating. Or end up
being involved and just score badly. And when you have questions based off of
fansub translations, how do you deal with the differences for those who've
only seen the official? Case in point, one question asked what the lead
character in Berserk was called in the first episode. The winning answer was
the Black Knight, yet the newly released disc, which far more people will see
than the fansubs, have it as the Black Swordsman - and that wasn't even on the
list.
Five finally rolled around and Jerry was ready to start the
panel about everything but the kitchen sink. Barely a minute into it, the
hotel stuff told us to leave so they could redo the room from the round tables
and chairs to just rows of chairs. After standing outside for another fifteen
minutes, we finally got back in and things kicked off again. It was
interesting overall, as it covered things from Bandai specific news and
upcoming releases and then into the whole world of fansubs, digisubs and
legalities. For those on the chat and forum, all the same arguments came up
again with nothing new offered. Some people seemed surprised about some basic
legal things, but in the end it was a fun time.
The only event left that night was the Masquerade at seven
thirty. With it being just before six, we thought of checking out the dealers
room (closed early) and then opted to just hang out and take pictures of
cosplayers for a bit. A small group of us using our media and industry badges
headed into the masquerade room at six thirty to set up cameras and get a good
place, only to hear lots of "get out, go away" from various staffers after the
Psydoll concert ended. We even heard one staffer on his walkie talkie asking
if the masquerade was actually canceled or not. Apparently it came that close
at one point.
The masquerade finally started at eight thirty or so, a
full hour late, which is tradition at most cons according to folks. This was
my first masquerade (or cosplay contest, though they don't want to call it
that). It was announced early that there were 99 entries into this, and it
just went a long long time. We were there primarily to see a group of friends
who were doing a skit, and knowing they were number 66 was just scary. Some
skits were good, some were bad, some were affected by audio issues and such.
The "where are they now" skit was probably one of the best. The villains visit
the psychiatrist skit was also good, as I especially liked the Jimmy Stewart
like performance of one of the characters. Once our friends were up and done,
we ended up getting out of there. After three hours in that one seat, my ass
was asleep.
After a day of so much nothing, I ended up just calling it
a night. Finally found DarkSong the following morning and we opted to check
out the dealers room before leaving, since the hotel monitor said it was open
at ten. It unfortunately didn't open till eleven, already had a line, so we
just said to hell with it and left. His trip was only three hours to get back
and I had another six on top of that, so I was rather eager to get going.
A lot of the problems I had with the con are things that I
can't actually talk about, as they were told in confidence, or things that
would only bother someone with a media/industry badge in trying to get things
done. Add in the absolute lack of things to do at the con and it just made it
worse. AN is billed more and more as a party/get together kind of convention,
but that in my mind doesn't mean it's good to run an uninteresting convention.
Most of the people who had fun, had fun because of the people they met up
with. I had fun with the people I was with, but we all wished there was more
to do than just that. I end up meeting a ton of people regardless of what
convention I go to, that I'm always going to have a good time from that alone.
But AN didn't offer anything more to me. Our local gatherings have much more
to do than I did at AN in the end.
Having such limited time, I've only done one convention a
year in the past and bumped it up to two this year. It'll be two again next
year, but Anime North won't be in the cards. I'll hope to see my friends from
Canada make it down to either Anime Boston or Otakon instead, or I'll just
make a trip up to Canada to hang out with them and save myself some money.
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