Day 3
Sunday, July 1st, 2007

For once, something was actually scheduled correctly. The new AMV Contest re-viewing thing at 10:00AM actually went off without a hitch. We all left at 9:30AM and got there just as it started.

Had the original AMV Contest schedule actually gone smoothly, it would have been a fairly good all around. Not stupendously impressive, but good nonetheless.. There were a total of three Fate videos: Even More Fatal Blood (probably from the guy who made Fatal Blood the year before), Nascent Malediction (two more words I have to Google), and Knights of Fate, which I felt was the best made out of the three, and might have a good chance of actually winning. That is, if everyone doesn’t vote for Skittles, the Haruhi video.

I kinda’ wanted to head back to the exhibit hall, mainly to look for the Revoltech Saber, but I needed to send off a friend who was going home that day. I ended up instead heading to the line to get tickets for the Ishikawa Chiaki concert. Luckily, there wasn’t much of a line. And, luckily, even though they were delayed, and security were particularly anal, the concert wasn’t a disaster like the Haruhi one. Everything was fairly solid, even if the Arena wasn’t exactly crowded.

Strangely enough, the Masquerade was mostly on time. We got in fairly quickly, and it actually started on schedule. There weren’t any T-M costumes, though, so that was a bit of a shame, but for the most part, there were some very good cosplays. Unfortunately, it seems like the Long Beach Convention Center itself and their hired security retards were getting in the way of a lot of people. Or, at least, that’s what I could glean from the situation. Apparently, upper-management of both Long Beach and SPJA were… stupid, anal, and overly concerned about money. But that’s just my opinion.

As I chat away in #beastslair, my eyes become tired. I need sleep. But I can’t stop typing.

D:

Day  2

Saturday, June 30th, 2007

Ended up sleeping in until 11:15AM… I ended up staying up last night fairly late to watch a friend of mine play Melty Blood on his laptop. And… the Ishikawa Chiaki panel was to start at 11:30AM. For those who don’t know, Ishikawa-san is the singer half to See-Saw, with Kajiura Yuki making up the second half. Recently, she’s been going solo. Guaaahh… I’m gonna miss this… ;-;

But, this is me. And I’m not gonna let something like oversleeping keep me back!

So, I threw on my clothes and whatnot in five minutes, then ran off towards the convention center. Only to realize that I had to go the far end to get to the panel. So I continued to run. D:

I arrived at the panel at 11:40AM. Ouch… oh well. I enjoyed it anyway. Ishikawa-san was a very nice and friendly person. And had her own cute way of talking, I guess. I didn’t know and still don’t know much about her anyway, so the questions that were asked of her and her corresponding answers were very insightful and enjoyable for me. I’m also somewhat glad I can understand about maybe a third of what she’s saying, despite my limited grasp of Japanese. Whee~!

Honestly, I feel that the only enjoyment I’ve had from the AX events themselves are the panels.

After we were let out at 12:20PM, I headed into the exhibition hall for a bit. Spotted EvoSpace again at his booth, seemingly bored with his job at that moment as he passed out mini-fliers. He pointed me towards a booth somewhere the 600 Aisle that he said sold some Lycee cards. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find it. -_-; Worse, when I went to visit my favorite booth again, they lacked any more Touhou games in their doujin game section. Guhh… I was hoping to pick up at least Imperishable Night, then Perfect Cherry Blossom there. ::sigh::

I wandered around some more, but decided that I should probably search for the line for tickets for the Haruhi concert that would be coming up later on. So I headed over to the Arena building and secured six tickets for Haruhi, one for each of our group. YAY! Something is going right!

Or not.

I ended up waiting in line for hours on end. First outside for hours, then inside the building for hours, then inside the concert area for hours. Nothing has started, and they were already a few hours late. I missed watching the Death Note movies because of this. D:

I don’t know exactly what was going on. But I’m betting it’s a mix of technical difficulties, inability to locate the three seiyuu, and inability for management to tell workers what the hell is going on. But, I honestly waited many hours of my life doing nothing. And when people finally came on stage (first Mikuru, then Haruhi & Nagato afterwords), it was obvious that the hosts were stalling for time because of some major complication. We also find the English VAs being forced onto the stage to partake in various delaying tactics. It got to the point where there the people were even arguing and blaming people on-stage. Yeowch.

In the end, we got several songs spread throughout the event, anyway. Which were good in themselves, but as part of the whole… I was enjoying those moments mostly for the fact that something was going on.

Later on, I went to the dance at one of the hotels. Now THAT was actually fun. Something good at the end of the day. Dancing isn’t really my thing, since I can’t really dance at all, but it got my mind off of the worse parts of the day. There are a few stories about that, but I’ll save that for later, since I’m heading off to the AMVs now. Hopefully they got it right this time. D:

Day 1

Friday, June 29th, 2007

Woke up at 6:30AM, but didn’t start getting ready until 7:00. By 7:30, though, I was pretty much ready to head out for registration. But, just like I predicted, other people would be slow. So, as I waited and played music for the next hour or so, I breathed a sigh of regret. The line would only get longer and longer.

We finally left at 9AM, but the line was, at this point, ridiculously large. Sent to the back of the line, which snaked itself in and around the whole of a parking lot. We finally registered around 12PM, around when the exhibition hall opened up. I wasn’t able to get into it until 1:30, but I was able to quickly locate Hen Da Ne, which I regularly go to each Anime Expo for various doujin and… uhh… visual novel goods.f

Chatting with the storekeeper, he seemed to have figured that TYPE-MOON stuff in general tends to be good sellers. He had stocked up a lot of hollow ataraxia, as a result, but Realta Nua was going “for a high price,” as the shopkeeper from Resident Evil 4 would say. It would be bundled with the telephone card, all of the grail bust statues (sans the Kuro Saber), and, as well as the Torabura game. The sad fact of the matter is that I don’t own a PSP, and as much as I’m disappointed with Sony in various ways, I wouldn’t mind owning a PSP at all.

I ended up purchasing Fate/hollow ataraxia, the This Illusion and Hollow singles, and the Hishoku no Sora single by Kawada Mami. Uwaah… Oh wait. And Fate/Zero volume 1 & 2. Yay.

I wandered around some more, and spotted a rather nice Arche figurine. I was hoping for $30-40 USD, but it ended up being $69 USD. Ouch. ;-; I’m, sorry, Arche, but my money is tight. Maybe if I can find you at a more reasonable price.

Afterwords, I headed to the Broccoli booth to track down EvoSpace, or Koji. Supposedly, he was supposed to be near, but the people at Circus didn’t know where he was. Hell, I asked for “Koji,” and I got a larger, more broadly built man. I’m thinking, “ZOMG THAT’S NOT EVO… unless he changed a lot. o__o”

I hung around for a bit, hoping to spot him. Luckily, I ran into none other than Raven, who I somehow remembered. I exchanged some words with him, and he found out that Koji wouldn’t be coming until maybe a half hour.

Damn. You need to work, Evo!

So, we waited and hung around, idly chatting as we looked for Koji. We spotted him and flagged him down, intercepting him before he could even get close to the Circus booth. We greeted him and talked with him a bit as a few other people joined in. Koji was doing such a -wonderful- job of handing out brochures as we loitered around.

And so, around 2:30 or so, I took my leave and started look searching for the inevitable line that would lead to tickets for the AMV Contest. Apparently, the staff has no idea about anything. The people by the ticket office tell me to go downstairs. Downstairs tells me to go downstairs. Downstairs’s downstairs tells me to check near the exhibition hall. The exhibition hall tells me to check near the ticket office.

WHAT.

I swear, organization this year is absolutely stupid dumb. Instead, I head into the Galaxy Angel panel, which I thoroughly enjoy. I didn’t win any raffle prizes, though, but… eh. It was getting to see the producers and character designers talk and whatnot. I know it must be difficult to speak in English, so I applaud their efforts.

Afterwards, it’s sitting in line for the AMV tickets. After waiting for hours, it turns into sitting in line for the AMV itself. Which somehow turns into, “Someone stole my laptop which had all the contest AMVs on it so no AMV contest tonight.”

D:

Now THAT just sucks. Worse, they plan to reschedule for 9:30am tomorrow morning. NINE THIRTY. It was already hard to get people to leave at 9AM for something as important as registration.

Long Beach sucks.

All that was shown was a single category: AmTV. Which isn’t necessarily the best. There was a rather nice Fate/stay night video called “Knights of Fate,” but I guess our votes don’t matter!

In the end, I returned back to where we’re crashing to drop stuff off and pop a pair of aspirin pills for the annoying ass headache that the whole AMV fiasco caused.

I was hoping that I would enjoy more of the events and less of the exhibition hall this year. Unfortunately, due to inept care of the AX staff, that hope was scattered into the wind.

Today’s loot

- Fate/hollow ataraxia
- Fate/Zero Vol. 1
- Fate/Zero Vol. 2
- Fate/stay night - This Illusion / days Single
- Fate/hollow ataraxia Single
- Kawada Mami - Hishoku no Sora Single (Shakugan no Shana OP1)

I arrived at Long Beach at around 8PM… just about time when pre-registration closed

orz

I won’t go into details why, but let’s just say I was ready to go since this morning. Oh well. I guess that means I’ll have to wake up early tomorrow.

Long Beach looks better than I remembered. Out by the ocean, lots of restaurants and bars and whatnot to support a decent nightlife, a nice cool breeze. What isn’t so great, though, is the hotel situation. To be frank, Long Beach doesn’t seem to have the actual CAPABILITY to host something as large as an Anime Expo. Trying to reserve a room six months in advance was nothing less than hell. Not mailing out my badge until June 25th is bad. Even if they had printing problems because of the lack of a sponsor, that just shows that they didn’t handle an even more important thing — finding a sponsor for them — with enough proper care and attention as they should have. I mean, I don’t think someone like Geneon or ADV or Viz or Newtype would be that hard to sign up for a certain type of advertising. And people love the lanyards.

It’s already hard enough to get people to come together and meet. Thank you, SPJA, for making things more complicated. Because, you know, having a year in advance every year, you’d hope the process would get better each year.

So,  that’s how this ends up. Tomorrow… I plan to go for registration. I’ll probably miss the opening ceremonies. The first thing I want to do, though, is head into the exhibit hall and grab some of the rarer items that are around. Also chat up with some of the store owners that I always see each year. Then, while people attend the SKIN concert, I’ll be patiently waiting for tickets to the AMVs. After I secure them, the Galaxy Angel panel is next. Wheeeee. Followed by the Hirano, Chihara, & Goto Focus Panel (the three principal female seiyuu for Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu), and then rushing to a presentation about Afterworld.

Then, from 6:30PM onward, it’s AMVs and the waiting for the AMVs. Hopefully, the guy won’t put his laptop on a cart, then accidentally drop it, completely destroying it and the AMVs on it, further delaying the AMV Contest. Ugh. I’ll probably bring a muffin with me tomorrow.

It came to my attention that there are certain videos on YouTube that I just find absolutely awesome. A lot of which comes from Hayate, to be frank. And mostly from Super Robot Taisen / Super Robot Wars.

Atelier Iris Grand Fantasm Chap. 9 Boss

Kore de owari da!

Super Robot Taisen Alpha 3 - DaiRaiOh - Jinrai

Hot-blooded awesomess.

Banpreios vs Keisar Ephes ZO Sword Dynamic Kill

I need a sword like that.

Another Century’s Episode 2 (A.C.E.2) Opening Movie

::drools::

That’s it for now.

Slightly old news, but last Saturday, I finally completed and passed my A+ and Network+ certification exams. Whee!! Finally, all that studying paid off! Honestly, though, I’m glad I passed them. Too much of my life is trudging away, endlessly studying or doing things without any real end in sight. No sense of real accomplishment, no marker to justify my work, no encouragement or acknowledgement. Just a continual so-called “need” to work and work.

Lessee… continuing my Japanese study, but I might try to add another, more advanced class that’s more suited for my level tomorrow. More work involved, but I feel the need to actually learn stuff, not review.

Project Updates
Project Nekohime seems to be trudging through things, though some of the members have me worried. One in particular seems to be… hmm… having an authoritative identity crisis? It’d be nice if they communicated more, instead of emoing and acting immature. What I won’t stand for, though, is attempting to pass themselves off as skilled in a certain area that they know nothing about. There development is a lot more complicated than they realize, and I hope that I won’t have to come to head with that person. They’ve pushed before… and I don’t feel like needlessly relenting because of some stupid personal opinions.

Anyways, working on finishing Common Skills, publishing it, then drafting Servant classes. Once that is done, we can create a generalized Character class. And to finally be able to code things! In the meantime, the Art Center was created, and I’m really, really hoping I can finish the Java Applet for character creation. If things work out well, the Applet would be able to allow the user to easily create (and balance) a character’s stats, and possibly generate accurate information for programmers to start creating the static user objects.

The Tsukihime Translation Project is coming to a close, of which I have mixed feelings about. First, proofreading still needs to be done, whether certain people admit to it or not. Second, I honestly wish I could be doing more, but, as evident in the lack of posts I’ve had recently, my time has been spirited away by other things.

I recently discussed things concerning Project T in the #beastslair channel. I felt it was kinda’ nice to be able to exchange our thoughts about certain private things we were all working on, giving me some fresh perspective on aspects of it. One of them made a comment that was probably just a statement of fact, but I ended up taking it as a compliment. More development on that is happening… and I’m getting closer to actually creating excerpted material, as well as prepare for Project C.

I guess I should sorta’ partially declassify Project World Egg. I haven’t worked on it just recently, though I have been doing more work on it as a whole. Nasu is… complicated. But fun. The only thing that gets me is the design of the universe. I might leave it for later, though I hope the ramifications of doing so don’t come back to haunt me later.

Ehh… time flies when blogging… >_>