AnimeBoston2005

I just noticed that I had saved this post as a draft instead of publishing it, so for anyone who’s still interested, click below to hear how AnimeBoston went all those months ago.

Better late than never I guess.

Last weekend I attended AnimeBoston2005 with Thanh, Brendan and Darren on Saturday and the Duke on Sunday.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, this was the most organized and well executed convention I have ever been to. One did not need to worry about what to do once the convetion was over for the day because panels ran until 3am. Saturday night there was even a rave.

It was quite easy to spend half the day in the dealer room alone. There was quite a nice selection of different booths from webcomic artists signing books and selling art to an actual Japanese bookstore selling a large variety of imported readings. Most booths were selling English language manga, dvds, posters, keychains, pins and other anime associated trinkets.

After we spent an embarassing amount of time in the dealer room, we headed to karaoke. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I was floored when the they started another song and it was entirely in japanese. And more to the point, that the singer knew every word and sung it really well. We stayed there for about an hour waiting for the IRON K karaoke competition. That didn’t turn out to be quite what we were expecting. The person running it didn’t seem to be a very energetic speaker and it just kind of went from there. We left shortly after it started. Thanh, Brendan, and Darren all went bowling because they didn’t want to hang around while there wasn’t much going on. I stayed and would meet them again when they came back after bowling as agreed. I headed into the Anime Trivial Pursuit panel.

This panel was third best panel I went to. Not even so much because of the subject matter itself, but because it was so well run. The MC was pretty funny and had a quick wit, which was completely opposite of the IRON K guy. There was also a techie guy, who was really funny. He had a hilarious conversation on instant messenger about some Gundam Yaoi game. There was a lot of audience interaction which is always good. Lots of fun.

After the panel, I sat on a bench to relax and read some Rurouni Kenshin manga I had bought earlier in the dealer room, with the sweetest and most awesome Naruto poster ever that I bought the only one of, propped up next to me so everyone could see it as they walked by. Yeah I’m that guy. It was pretty awesome though because so many people came up to me and started a conversation with me about it. Darren, Brendan and Thanh came back and we all headed to the food court to grab something to eat. After sitting there and being utterly useless for at least an hour, we headed back to same panel room as the trivial pursuit to get in line for the greatest panel ever.

The next panel was entitled, ‘Dick and Buster’s Live Hentai Dubbing Extravaganza.’ The line to get in alone was as long as the convention center itself. When the line finally got moving, everyone was carded to make sure we were 21 or over. There was an amusing intro along with a couple same videos that will never let me look at cream cheese quite the same way. *shudder* Ahem. The name of the hentai for the live dubbing was Nurse Me. They played the actual dubbing, then picked two people out of the audience and gave them the scripts, which they could follow or ad-lib as much as they wanted. The first male was a black kid, which has no real relevance except in what he was saying because that kid was a riot.

At one point the female had to say ‘I can’t believe I’m losing my viriginity like this…’ to which the guy responded by saying, ‘Thats right, and you won’t be able to forget it was taken by a black man!’ Another line he said was something like, “50 cent has no magic stick like this!” At another point while they were both supposed to be moaning and whatnot he was yelling ‘Go! Go! Go, Go, Power Rangers!’ to which everyone broke out in uproarious laughter. At the very end of that scene, the girl finished screaming ‘Take me Black Ranger!’ I can’t even repeat some of the other stuff because I don’t know who might be reading this, but I can definitely say that there were tears streaming down my face because I was laughing so hard. The guy got a standing ovation. The other scenes were hilarious but nowhere near as good as that first kid.

That pretty much finished Saturday. Sunday I went back with the Duke.

Sunday was a short day. The con pretty much ended at 5 or 6ish. We made several tours of the dealer room. We made sure to go buy the Ctrl-Alt-Del booth. I picked up a book and Duke picked up a shirt I think. I got a few pins to put on the strap of my Samurai Champloo bag that I had bought Saturday after I missed the Naruto bag I was actually looking for. (No thanks to Darren!) After we finished up in the dealer room, we headed to the only panel I deemed worth going to on Sunday, Live Human Cosplay Chess.

Since this was one of the larger main event type panels, it took place in a huge auditorium. On the large stage was a big black and white chess board mat where the cosplayers would stand. After a short wait they had everyone’s favorite voice actor, Scott McNeil came out and helped host the event while everyone was getting ready. When everyone was finally ready, they had some announce the cosplayers one at a time, introducing them solely as their character. The costumes were excellent. They said they had searched for cosplayers for this event prior to the convention to assure costume quality which I must say was excellent. I can’t name all the characters but here’s what I remember: Naruto (Naruto), Asuka Langhly Sohryu (NGE), Rei Ayanami (NGE), Vash The Stampede (Trigun), Envy (FMA), Seshomarou (Inuyasha), CardCaptor Sakura (<-same), Edward Elric (FMA), Kakashi (Naruto), and as I think of more I'll add them. The whole panel itself was pretty awesome and the fights were cool when a piece was taken. The only unfortunate parts of the panel was the lack of cameras, and the speed of the game. Because there were only a couple of video cameras, they were often slow to get to the fight on the chess board to get it on the two jumbo video screens, which caused us to miss a few of the fights because of the angle of our seats. In addition, the timing of the game was an irritant because the person they picked from the audience at one point took ten minutes to move. Some sort of overhead view of the board would have been nice to actually watch the progress of the game itself rather then just waiting for the next fight to happen. Anyway they had put together some great cheap special effects for the fights so the characters could sort of use their powers on each other. After that we headed home. Every convention usually has one or two spotlight series where the majority of people are most interested in, whether it be Evangelion (NGE), or Cowboy Bebop to just name a couple. It usually is whatever happens to be airing most recently on Cartoon Network. In this convention's case the first series fit that stereotype in FullMetal Alchemist. I had already downloaded this series and started watching it a few days before the convention started at the suggestion of a friend. 4 days and 51 episodes later I finished and was delighted to have seen it. I'm told the manga takes a different turn somewhere along the way and changes the whole story, so I'll have to check that out. The second main series of interest at the convention was surprisingly Naruto. Which has had no official english release with the exception of the first 5 or 6 books of the manga which have been butchered in translation. It seems, however, that the fan translations online and fan dubbed episodes have sparked an immense interest alone. Pretty cool considering thats my current top series. Anyway Pictures coming soon with hyperlinks to be added in here through out the text.