I’ve got my JPOP on, baby.

Once upon a time in Amerika….

Good morning, it is 6:37 am Sunday and I’m writing to you from the hotel lobby restaurant of Holiday Inn – DIA. MIA would be a better name for it, it is a sprawling(tee hee) complex of labyrinthine corridors and rabid fans. You are equiped with a plastic sword, a cardboard shield and tin foil armor. You have 7 hp. Will you survive?

I’ve got the crud so I could not sleep any longer. Crap. I hate catching the con crud. It’s such a miserable little ailment. One destined for weaker otakulings, not for one so learned as oneself. But oh well, its more like a sore throat. Perhaps I’ve smoked too much this weekend. That is probably the case. Any time we’ve encountered a lull, its been climb the stairs to the room, light up, quaff some Jack, and find something to do. Even if something is just sitting around watching the girls in costume pose and preen. Ah, life is good. *nodnod*

We got in around noon on Friday. The hotel lobby was filled with young, I mean young kids milling about semi-socially. It was kinda surreal. Like the scene outside of Columbine or some shit. All these people, mixing together. It didn’t matter who you were, if you were young and conning, you instantly fit in. Being a slightly older otaku, I stood back and watched, rueing the years I have on these kids. Cursing time for not having such events when I was their age. Life would have been….

I had preregistered last year at the con. $20 instead of the $45 or whatever they charge at the door. And surprisingly, it only took about 10 minutes to filter through the queue. Aaron had it a bit harder, but still beat Doug through the on-site line by at least an hour. Yes. Pre-reg was faster this year. I KNOW! It cannot be true.

But it was. Aaron and I went to watch Infinite Ryvius (rye-vee-us I think). I’d wanted to see this show, I had heard a lot of fan-hype of it a couple years ago when it was new on the fansub scene. I wasn’t terribly disappointed. It was shown dubbed and I feel the voice actors did a satisfactory job on it, with one exception. There’s this girl with ponytails who is attached to the main character’s partner. She has the whole “nasal screech” going on. It really detracted from the enjoyment of the rest of the cast. She had way too many lines to have such a miserable voice.

As we walked back to join Doug, or at least find out how far he’d gotten, we passed E Bay. Yes. The Dealer room at NDK take place in a room which is permanently labelled Ebay. I find this incredibly humorous. Never mind that nine-tenths of the goods they were selling ARE available on ebay. 🙂 I got some ramune from Buy Me Anime (a semi-local anime store in the Denver area). Mind you, I can’t even find Sakura Square here in Denver so… The best part of ramune, at least in Amerika, is that when you pop it open, it tends to escape quickly from the top, dripping onto whatever is beneath it. This happened to be the table of the annoying con-staff who had checked my backpack as we went in. I laughed and we fled.

We gathered to watch Sakura Wars the movie, this time it was subtitled. Chisa Yokohama is always fun to listen to. I enjoyed Lachette. Even though I have no idea what the hell Star Division was. Oh well. It was fun. And they sang. Yay for singing. The 3d animation was crappy. I admit. Like Vandread crappy. The animation which didn’t seem to be digital was very sharp and lovely.

We then went over to our first panel of the weekend. Bob Bergen, who plays Porky Pig for Loony Tunes was sharing his experiences in voice actoring. It was a lot of fun. Especially Porky Pig doing the “Vagina Monologues”.

They showed a single episode of this She, really late at night. Like 10:30pm. It has a neat premise, a boy and girl learning what a relationship truly is. And then the defense force attacks their ‘country’ town and Chisa reveals her weapons systems. The animation reminded me of “His and Her Circumstances” in that it seemed kinda rough, like it was hand drawn and then digitized by Gonzo.

We then watched the first couple of episodes of Argento Soma. This show is a hard sale for my friends, with a 75% ratio of naysayers to people who like it. I love it.

We slept. Zzzzzzz. But not too long. Bzzzzzz. Bzzzzzz.

We woke up in time to watch S-Cry-ed. The only problem I’ve had with this show is that the voice for the blue haired girl is way too squeaky. Annoyingly so. So bad she should be taken out and… Ok, maybe we shouldn’t go that far. But darnit. She ruined the show.

I then inflicted the boys to Risky Safety. Muahahahaha. I think this show is amazingly fun! Its short, sweet and simple and doesn’t try too hard to be otherwise. Unfortunately, I can now sing the ending perfectly. Six times. Grrrrr.

The wonder of Maison Ikkoku was next on our schedule. This was a surprise to Doug, I’d not even mentioned this show before to him. Now he demands I loan it to him. Unfortunately, its still being produced. But damn, its amazing shit.

It was about this time that Darren showed up in his kimono-thingie with Yushi. Yushi is one of the Japanese guys that work over at Lockheed-Martin with the rocket scientists. He’s the otaku fringe. We like him. He’s not the most confident with his english but he’s quite fun.

We chose not to join the line and to sit in the simulcast room. This was a good idea since we, the audience at large, decided to heckle the costume contest. It was fantastic. Girl’s yelling about the costumed girls having “nice tits” and that all Inu Yasha cosplayers should die. Die. Die! Die! Yelling out “Chair!” at the top of my lungs. East coast represent, yo. It was hilarious. Much more fun than main events where they kept a tight lock on the crowd. We heckled. We laughed. We shouted back at the MC that “No, we’re not going to shut up.” Nice ass indeed.

This morning I woke up with an intense pain in my throat. Scratchy, sore, phlegmy. Ew. I still hurt. Only smoked 2 cigarettes today. I’m bad. But I feel better. Took some expectorant and maybe that will help.

I sat in the hotel restaurant writing this this morning, its been saved as a draft a bunch of times and I am now typing from my home. We had “Breakfast with Kyaa” which involved me flagging down everyone for 3 hours (everyone being Darren, Aaron and Doug, then some of Darren’s newfound friends) and eating a wonderful breakfast. We ran over to the main viewing room to watch Sugar 1-2, hahahah. I’m evil. But they deserved it.

I found that the show I was looking most forward to today was rescheduled in such a way that I completely missed it. No HanaDan for Kyaa.

Aaron and I watched Furaba 4 dubbed after this and enjoyed it, although the voices weren’t anything special. Mediocre = good to some apparently.

We then watched Haibane Renmai, in which my only comment is that the dub actors seem too ‘loud’ compared to the score and for the setting of the show.

Lunch was eaten by all. Darren showed off his Dodge VCR-3, DODGE CRUSH!!!! And headed back to his apartment. The wuss. Ok, he was up all night.

Doug and I watched Full Moon wo Sagashite 1-2. Bunny girls are appreciated. Especially ones with zippers. We questioned the need for a moon phase chart in Japan. The moon is always full there. Unless you’re SailorMoon, then its always a crescent. Don’tcha know the rules?

I then introduced him to C