Ohayocon 2008

So yeah... no programs and no schedules. This is bad. This is epically bad. Perhaps the worst crisis since ACen advocated bulk mail for sending important, confidential materials. Hell, this is "North I-95" bad. There's only one thing any of us could do at a time like this:

Check into our rooms and take a nap. As far as we knew, there wasn't anything going on anyway.

From 1139 to 11:40
Friday: Voted "Most Improved"

We did drive nine hours, after all. Even if the con did have a schedule, it's not like we didn't need a break after it. I mean, it's hard driving nine hours, even when we split up the driving duties fairly and according to our schedule. Our drivers sacrificed additional rest stops in order to stick to our schedule and arrive at the beginning of the con so we don't miss any of the events on the sacred convention schedule.

Jeez, even ACen has a schedule! They never stick to it, but at least they have one!

Okay, let's calm down. Safe in room 1139, Team #3 changed clothes, cleaned up and Matt and Eric dozed off. Richard and I headed down to attempt to make sense of all this.

In the horizon, we stumbled upon a line. This could be considered a good thing, as it meant something was about to happen.

We joined the line and prayed it wasn't to get Tiffany Grant's autograph. I was willing to take the risk; she can't sign my program book when I don't have one!

Turns out the Vendor's Room was opening! Let's roll!

It's was a nice, cozy little vendor's room. And one with a balcony too. It wasn't quite as prodigious as Anime Iowa's, but they had a little of everything. And I do mean little; they didn't have the latest Eyeshield and School Rumble- two designated purchases with my X-Mas money. They did have the final volume of Haruhi and I nabbed the box set of Genshiken. Yes, Genshiken: I recently borrowed the manga from my library and after seven volumes I still haven't come to a conclusion over whether or not it's any good.

Then it was time for aimless wandering. I started by asking about the freebie table so I could sneak in my MST booklets. Guess what else they don't have? I had spent an hour New Year's weekend at Staples making fifty of those... looks like they'll have to be saved for No Brand.

My other stop was at the video game room to inquire about the DDR tournament. Mercifully, rather than the usual Light, Standard and Heavy divisions, they separated participants into Standard, Heavy, and "Christ, do you live in an arcade?" The Heavy Tournament was 5:00 on Saturday. Lovely... the first hint of a schedule of the con and we've already got a conflict.

You see, besides Richard and I, one more owner in ACen's fantasy football league was here and we had made plans to meet up for an NFL playoff game... which started at 5:00 on Saturday. So I held off on signing up, especially after discovering that we would be playing on a hard pad in front of a giant projection screen. That adds some difficulty to those pedestrian nine-foots. Can you believe I only barely passed Hypnotic Crisis? Ya, I know!

This ate up about an hour, so I wandered around to see what everybody else was doing to kill time until the town crier announced when Opening Ceremonies would be.

Seems that the most popular activity was to scope out the tentative schedule posted on the wall. I took a gander myself and wrote down the key events. Hey, they had Anime Name That Tune! And it was at 5:00 Saturday!! Lucky me!

The only upcoming event was Whose Line Is It Anime, but if it was anything like the one at Anime Iowa, the trained, experienced and funny organizers would yield the floor to untrained, inexperienced and unfunny audience members. I elected to skip it, making the only noteworthy event on Friday afternoon um... uh... let's see...

...anyone up for Twister?

I wasn't. I was going to follow Matt and Eric's lead and take a nap. Remember, between Richard's driving and my need to get some MST finished, I had gotten almost no sleep on the way. The peace and quiet lasted roughly forty-five minutes when Richard called with some wonderful news- they were passing out program books! I went down to meet up outside registration and sure enough- program books!

They didn't have schedules inside. Those were still under construction.

At the same time, Richard introduced me to Felf, the other ACen leaguer at Ohayocon. We chatted about the season for as long as we could tolerate (one of the things about fantasy football is that it's like talking about Pokémon games: as much as you like chatting about your team, you absolutely can't stand listening to others talk about theirs). Felf did pass on information- that the Your Favorite Anime Sucks panel, which I could never make it to at ACen, was here at Ohayocon and he had inside access if we couldn't get in. Secondly, the enigmatic "Manly Men" panel Friday night would be hilarious.

Just then, the schedules arrived! I stole one and stole up to room 1139 to analyze the schedule. That's when I noticed that my key card had been stolen. Or lost, more accurately. Thankfully, the girls on Team #2 were nearby and let me in so we could scrutinize the schedule together. One highlight- a genuine Digimon panel Sunday afternoon, including a screening of the Digimon movie Sunday morning. As almost all of the girls were fellow closet Digimon fans like me, this pretty much established that we weren't leaving until they were over.

We interrupt this Digimon love fest with an important question: Who's That Pokémon??

It's Mudkip! And Cassie thought she had gotten insane amounts of attention with her Tonberry. Mudkip doesn't wield a knife, and is defenseless against creepy people who seem to be aware of a certain Mudkip-related internet meme spreading around. I don't know what it is exactly, but I'm just going to jump to conclusions and assume that 4chan is responsible.

An improved model of Dani's costume from No Brand '06 returns.

Many of us then headed for Manly Men, a celebration of, you guessed it- the manliest men of anime as compared to the benchmark for anime manliness: Captain Harlock. It was fun watching the audience suggest a Man for the panel's approval. Some were good, some were not (Spike Spiegel, surprisingly, ranks quite low on the Man Meter). Roy Mustang is inconclusive, Phil from Snow Fairy Sugar somehow never got mentioned and apparently nobody named Shinji has ever sniffed masculinity. Yes, I brought up Shinji Mimura from the Battle Royale manga, but they countered with Shogo Kawada. I lose.

Speaking of losing, it was time to lose any shred of dignity with a unique Ohayocon trademark event called You Don't Know Dance. This was DDR as run by the SOS Brigade- stunt mode. Contestants would play DDR while being forced to do a silly stunt, to be graded not by the game but by Mikuru, Itsuki and Nagato. First round, as a demonstration, was the silly glasses round. Naturally, Haruhi summoned the first guy with glasses she saw.

Further orders were to jump on every step and occasionally wave to the crowd. And it was on those hard pads in front of a projection.

Thankfully, the judges went easy on me. A 6 from Mikuru, 9 from Itsuki and a 7.09864182 from Nagato.

Richard wasn't so lucky. His task was to play hot potato with the other player while the song was going, with a point deducted for every drop.

By the time both contestants knocked the controllers out of their ports. Haruhi had seen enough. Richard got decent grades from Mikuru and Itsuki, but a big stinkin' π from Nagato. Or at least π to the first hundred or so places. There was only so much room on that card.

Another event was to DDR while performing the Hare Hare Yukai dance...

Surprisingly, there were no volunteers for that one. Mikuru and Itsuki filled in admirably.

Two others did Lucky Star as well. Sadly, I probably could have done that one.

Matt came up too... when Haruhi pulled out the handcuffs.

You knew right away that this was going to be good. Basically, Matt (and Bowser) would have to follow the arrows despite Haruhi (and Nagato) flailing about wildly.

Or, for that matter, running out of frame entirely. For his efforts, Matt was the only one of us three that received a prize... the key to the handcuffs.

Once we had all done embarrassing ourselves, Richard and I went next door to reserve good seats for Your Favorite Anime Sucks. Good thing too, because as always it was standing room only by the time it began.

The jist of this is that someone in the audience would say the name of their favorite anime and the two panelists would explain why it sucks. One of the appealing things is getting to hear a short rant against all the popular series...

...or, in the case of Death Note, their cosplayers. The other was trying to stump them with something they haven't seen, which in two hours only happened once. Among the local favorites that I could remember:

On Eyeshield 21: "Yeah, you come to an anime conventions to watch a show about football. Although I did like the episode where Eyeshield's team beat LSU."
On GoldenBoy: "All I can think about is that I wish I was that motorcycle."
On Kino's Journey: "Girl traveling by motorcycle. Hope someone warns her about GoldenBoy."

He did credit us for picking good stuff like Miyazaki films and such ("The reason Paprika sucks is that none of you went to see it!!"). His theory of Ohayocon being a classy convention was shot when someone pointed out that the convention's logo was in the Naruto typeface. "Those f**kers!" he said.

At the end, he also ran through a bunch of the TV classics, including Digimon. Amid the ranting included the sentence, "This must have been in season three when it was written by the guy who did Lain and s**t got real."

I'm set for today, thank you! On to Saturday!