Message-ID: <395F73FC.D5DD75BA@gte.net> Date: Sun, 02 Jul 2000 09:55:24 -0700 From: Kathleen Faulconer To: tenchi@ML.usagi.org Subject: Re: AX Thoughts (Loooong) References: <395EA463.A70FC33B@ix.netcom.com> <395EC709.EA3CE8D2@gte.net> <395EF03F.23457D7B@ix.netcom.com> Reply-To: tenchi@ML.usagi.org X-ML-archive: http://www.win.ne.jp/~doi/ML/ Precedence: bulk Alan Zabaro wrote: > And for today. Exhibit hall was supposed to open at 10 today, but was > delayed until noon because of some large line for something else this > morning. And video rooms suffer from these delays also (it's worse in > their cases, because the delays add up throughout the day; shows can > be an hour behind by 8 or 9). > I wrote: > > There was a LOT of H stuff when we were there, Alan! ;-) > > Yesterday I remember seeing some. Couldn't find any today (Himeya > Games, who basically translate H-games for the PC, basically had > nothing to display today). Wow, that must really hurt. I know there was at least one table of nothing but H mags, my husband wanted to buy one actually, but he was stunned at the cost! I could have told him.... Those guys and the game guys you are talking about might as well go home. That has to be a huge loss for them. They are going to be very unhappy. :-( There is no way they could have guessed that Disneyland would be policing this stuff. I am really surprised that they even could identify it. > Incidentally, the exhibit halls tend to drop in traffic shortly before > they close (even 1.5 hours before). I think that the middle of the day, > say 12-3, is the worst (because everybody's up by then, and everybody > wants to get to the exhibit hall early to beat the rush...or some > similarly perverse logic). > That is true. We were there at the begining, and end. In the evening you could see pretty much everything. I think they should leave it open until nine, at least. And even though they were advertising it as a larger venue, it seemed much smaller. I think they added more dealers because of the larger site, and it translated to smaller isles and less space. I am very surprised that Disney didn't clear that room. I have been to doll shows there, and the fire Marshal has booted the whole room every time. I guess that was one thing they could be glad about not happening. > > They had a bouncer (really a nice girl) standing outside sending > > everyone away. VERY DISAPPOINTING! Lots of disappointed people. > > I saw people lined up for Masquerade seating at least as early as 1 today; > that's really the only way to guarantee getting into the very popular > events. I know. I kept telling my family that we had to get in before the discussion to guarentee that we saw the movie. But, we never found each other in the Exhibit room fast enough to make that plan take affect. By then, everyone was dropping from hunger! The Film room was waaaayyy too small anyway. I expected that it would be larger than the video rooms. Now that I think about it, I couldn't have read the subtitles unless I was in front, so I am trying to think that I didn't miss much...darn, I sure wanted to see it though. Have you? > I haven't been to the cel forum before, but it seemed like a pretty quiet > event. Let's see...they had two 15 minute presentations, the first about > different types of pencil sketches, the second about ways to spot fakes. I haven't been to one either. I know that I would have known most of the people there, and it would have been nice to meet them. But, I did know about the presentations so I knew the mingling part would be later and I figured that it would just get too late. I knew I wouldn't have been able to buy anything! The cels that people brought were to show off or trade...and I wasn't going to bring cels there to trade! Did you see the prices on the cels up on the walls at the cel dealers booths? My husband asked me if the 1K and 2K, etc. could possibly mean "a thousand dollars?", I just laughed and said "Yup". One dealer had no Tenchi cels under a hundred dollars. A plain old Pretty Sammy cel. > > Pretty short...then people basically started showing off some of their > cels. A guy down the row from me had one of those large cel books full > of Kiki cels - except for the last slot, which had some paper with > a hand-drawn Totoro, one of those white things from Mononoke, and > somebody's signature(?). I suppose it was Miyazaki's signature. Could be worth more than Abraham Lincoln's autograph to the right folks! ;-) > Lots of other fairly nice cels, but when it > got to be around 11, standing in a group and looking at somebody's > cels just wasn't going to keep me awake, so I left. Yeah, I thought about that too. I love to see other peoples cels, but it is easier to appreciate them on the computer, I think! > I saw someone > named Julie Dillon (the one who does the excellent Kagato art, IIRC) > there; she was in costume. > Speaking of costumes...hopefully we will get our film developed today. My husband met his goal of having his picture taken with a hot babe, so that he could show the guys at work why he had taken the day off for this! (^_^) After checking out the possibilities, he found the perfect babe, Cutie Honey! Did you see her? Good God! I think she took a picture of Cutie Honey to her plastic surgeon so she fit in her costume just right....yeah, I will scan it for you all! Hope it turns out! The people in costume were amazing. Most of them seemed to be having the best time of all. They could leap into the poses in a flash, and did it so great. Boy, you have to have something a little more than self confidence to do that! > > Think how bad spread-out rooms are if you have a room in the registration > hotel (Disneyland Pacific). We end up walking back and forth between the > two hotels (we often meet back at the room to decide where to eat, or > just to take an occasional break). I can't believe you had time to do anything else in that case! We wasted so much time just trying to meet up and decide what to do in the lobby. We tried to have a game plan, both years, but it isn't possible! How are your legs holding up? > And we haven't had as much trouble > with off-schedule events; since video rooms all seem to be behind > schedule all the time, we usually assume that if we sit through the > next 5-10 minutes of Rayearth, Dual will come on. It's worked so far. Yeah, it didn't bother us, either. We assumed by the time we started to watch videos that we were never going to actually try to go to any particular event except karioke. And I saw stuff that I wouldn't have normally seen, so it was ok. > Also, the three floors of the convention center aren't that much > trouble to go between now that we have a sense of where things are in > relation to each other. > Yeah, we felt like professionals at navagating the Disneyland hotel by midday! But, now I would never stay there if I was going to Disneyland! > Some things are definitely better experienced with a crowd. Comedic > anime often works this way (Photon, for example), and sometimes the > crowd effect is actually a bigger part of the experience than the > show itself (Endless Waltz again...it may be the best GW I've seen, > but that doesn't mean much since I don't like GW...but the crowd's > reaction tonight definitely made it worth going). Funny you should mention that! We went to the video room to see Shamanic Princess, and since I have never seen Gundam Wing or Shamanic Princess, I figured that we were watching the latter for quite a while. :-) I think it took till a character said "the Gundam" for us to realize it and whip out our schedule. But, even though I have never had any interest in seeing Gundam Wing on TV, and never even caught one episode, being there made me want to see it...due to the audience reactions. I guess we saw an early episode that went something like this...there was a girl in school and the main guy (Hiro?) was apparently new at school. He came up to her and she tried to be polite. He just said "I am going to kill you" and walked away. The audience went nuts! It was really fun. > Did you see the Lain lunch box? Nope! > How about the Tenchi shirts on display? Wha???? NO!!!! I looked everwhere for a Tenchi shirt! That was my main goal. And that is why I ended up spending an hour in the line for the advertising shirts (animaxis.com which is a blank website so far, I guess) because they had all the Tenchi characters on the back and lots of Ryoko shots in their name on the front. Where were these shirts? Damn! Were they for sale? Someone buy me one!!!! > Did you notice the Tenchi Muyo RPG for sale at Guardians' booth? Nice, > full color book; picture of Ryoko with demon mask on the front cover. Yes! I felt sorry for them. In front of their booth was the only breathing room in the place. The books were beautiful! I almost had to buy one for the pictures. I hope some of *us* get one. But, I don't think that most people were there to get RPG books, so there was not much interest it didn't look like. > BTW, what pictures did you get on the clear files? When we came in, we all got similar ones, I think. The whole gang in swimsuits with Ryoko and Ayeka hugging Tenchi. When I got the Tee Shirt, I also got one with Mayuka in the middle and all the gang on pool floats. I don't know what to use them for but I like them!!! > I thought all good con organizers were like that. ^_^ *snort* Well, maybe all anime Con organizers are like that! But, doll convention people are close to blowing up buildings if things go wrong. High stress, hideous personalities! Ask where something is and get ready to duck! When we came in to the registration room, the guy who had set it up took a liking to me. He was telling me all about how he had affected changes, really nice guy. He wanted to know how I thought it was working compared to last year, even talked to me as I was typing in our info and after I paid. My husband asked me if I knew him, and why he was so interested in me. I said..."motherly approval?" LOL! Seriously, they were all really nice. I felt sorry for the kerioke guy. Everything went so wrong for him and he was really young. I think he handled himself great, considering what a mess it was. > Seriously, I think in hindsight the conclusion will be that locating > AX at a hotel that wants to serve a large amount of the "normal" > public and keep control of the sort of image the con projects > was a mistake. They must not have realized how far Disney would want to control it. I could have told them about the crowd thing, but I didn't think they would try to control the content of the seller booths or movies. That really, really bites. Maybe Staples is a better choice next year! They need a massive amount of room, and it needs to be in one place! > Oh, well. It's been fun so far, and getting together to gripe about > the parts you don't like is part of the experience. > Yeah, it was really fun. I wish I was still there...today, I have to clean! Kath