By The Eva Monkey on Wednesday, May 18th, 2005
This past weekend, I had the distinct pleasure to go on a roadtrip to Anime Central with the likes of our very own Commentary mistress, Reichu, as well as the wild and crazy Otaprince of Gainax Pages. The three of us went on a fairly long road trip together through the boring scenery of Ohio and Indiana. This was rather convenient, as none of us would have been able to have made the trip on our own. I had a really good time, and enjoyed some good company, and I can only hope that Otakon is as enjoyable as Anime Central.
Thursday was largely uneventful. I took off from Baltimore for Pittsburgh, got within spitting distance of Otaprince’s place, and somehow ended up in the ghetto. Eventually, I got to his place alright. It’s really interesting meeting someone in person that you’ve only had dealings with via email, messenger, or forums. So meeting someone like Otaprince was really cool, because sometimes you don’t get a sense of someone’s personality online. He was a cool guy, and we had some good discussion about Eva, Gainax, and fan enthusiasm. We went out and got some sake, and later on Reichu arrived. It was good seeing her again, as the last time I got to hang out with her was at Otakon last summer. So needless to say it had been awhile. The three of us went out and grabbed a pizza, listened to some groovin music, and me and Otaprince drank some sake. Reichu did not, for she is a poo poo head.
Friday was a whole lot of driving, being bored by the entire state of Ohio and Indiana, and being confused by Chicago’s highways. At some point I noticed that my phone was an hour behind the clock in my car, and it took us a few moments to figure out that we were in central time as opposed to eastern. It dawns on Otaprince, and he says “Dude, we’re in another time zone.”, which was fairly convenient for us because I was worried about making it to the con in time for the Eva panel at 5pm. I had not counted on Anime Central being completely unlike Otakon, Nekocon, Anime Mid-Atlantic, and Katsucon, all of which have generously provided me multiple panelist badges. Anime Central merely offers one free badge per panel slot. This is very backwards in my opinion, as panelists are providing a service to the convention, and a few free badges is the least they can do to pamper panelists. We were given the run around by a gender confused panelist coordinator until we gave up. Without badges, we wandered around, went to the game room, and then snuck into the dealers room (hee hee).
Just shy of 5pm, we wandered over to the panel room and ran into the esteemed (and very well dressed, I might add) master of ceremonies, Carl Horn. This was cool, having last seen him hosting the Eva panel at Otakon 2002, which was very much part of what was the impetus for this site and what I do as an Evangelion enthusiast. Similarly, meeting Brendan Jamieson of Eva Otaku, and being on the panel with him was a treat as well, especially as this was the first we had met in person. The panel went really well, thankfully it was two full hours, so we had plenty of time to talk. Unfortunately my voice was fairly much gone by this point, due to being ill, with the aid of a microphone, I managed. Much of the discussion was quite good, aside from a few questions revolving around the fuzzy subject of soul theory, some good topics were discussed, and the variety of interpretations among the panelists strengthened the panel, rather than being a subject of argument. I talked too much, as usual.
After the panel, Reichu, Otaprince, and myself were forced to go through 2-3 hours of on-site registration. This dragged on forever, and in my poor health, I was miserable. Tetris alleviated it somewhat, making it almost bearable. When we thought we had reached the front of the line, we found an equally long line within registration. A string of obscenities followed. We eventually got our badges, and Otaprince cried out in victory. As we stepped out of registration, some guy in a booth was giving out Pillows tickets early. Hot damn, I says, we don’t have to get up early to get tickets the next morning. We got drinks at the sports bar, caught some of Anime Hell, and headed to our hotel. It took us two hours, multiple tolls, stops, and illegal u-turns to find our way to the hotel only ten minutes from the convention. It sucked, we swore, I coughed up a lung, and we went to bed. And somehow admist all of that, we managed to avoid a drunken hoodlem.
Saturday morning I awoke to find that I was incapable of speech. After coughing up a sickening amount of mucus from the vague recesses of my sinuses and respiratory system, I managed to rediscover the most precious form of communication that is speech. The Pillows concert was great, it really makes me want to break out my FLCL DVDs and watch it again. Something tells me they weren’t expecting their music to be as popular over here, as they aren’t particularly popular in Japan to begin with. Afterwards, we wound up wandering the dealers room for awhile, until I decided to catch a few panels, including the Megatokyo panel, which is generally ok, minus the really obnoxious questions from people that sound like the Android’s Dungeon comic book guy from The Simpsons. Then I went to the Bemani and Fighting Game Fan Panels, which were both really really REALLY bad. I tried locating the “Your favorite anime sucks” Panel, which was oddly enough hidden behind a ginourmous line. Otaprince however managed to get in, and enjoyed it. Reichu and I went and grabbed sandwiches, discussed some geeky stuff, and then went to the fanparody panel until I wandered off and found my way to Carl’s room party.
It was definitely one of the coolest parts of my weekend. It was as if the artistic, intellectual, and sophicsticated populace of the convention had congregated for some good music, company, and polish beer. I enjoyed myself a lot, Reichu did as well, surprisingly, which made me glad, and Otaprince… well, lets just say he enjoyed the polish beer. Carl Horn had some cool guests, Tavisha and Rikki Simmons, Doug Smith, Jan Scott Frazier, David Fleming, and even the most rockin eukelele strumming translator ever, Taka. I chatted for a while with Carl as well as Brendan, who is apparently seeming more and more like me the more I get to know him. This time around, I came to find out that he’s only a day younger than me. Eventually, we bid our farewells, took a group photo, and our troupe went back to the hotel without, amazingly enough, getting lost like the previous night.
Sunday morning was a bit like Saturday morning…. I was again congested to the point where I was mute. We paid for the room, and began our trip back to Pittsburgh. Reichu still had quite a bit of driving to do, and I wasn’t feeling up to driving home, so we watched Otaprince’s bootleg of the live action Casshern movie, which was absolutely amazing. We had some smores poptarts, and watched some Otaku No Video before calling it quits.
Monday I got up fairly early, packed up, and after some photos and goodbyes, I made the trip back to Baltimore in time to show up to my Video class a half hour late.
All in all, the Anime Central was a great time, there were some highs (Eva Panel, Pillows, room party, good company) and some lows (being sick, registration, getting lost). There was plenty of Eva-ness, booze, public urination, more Eva-ness, and various glimpses of Reichu in her underwear. I can’t say for certain if I would go back out there, but it’s tempting. Hopefully some cool characters will make the trip out to Otakon this summer. Hint hint.
