too tired to post last night, so here goes from memory…
I heard from several people that if we wanted to get in to see cosplay at the expo, we’d have to get there early. So Mimi, Wilson, Yin, and I all deprived ourselves of sleep and got there around 8:30. When we arrived, the parking lot was next to empty, almost nobody was walking around outside, and even the back entrance of the convention center was locked. Maybe we’re a bit too early, eh? Nope. We make our way inside and find that some people were there since 6:45am. Freaks.
Most of the day itself was spent browsing the exhibition hall (again) and staring at more anime when we got tired. Yin got himself a Trigun wall scroll, Wilson bought some kind of figure which bobbed its head back and forth, Mimi picked up a Totoro stuffed animal and I think something else, and I got some Lupin and Kenshin manga along with my own Totoro. Yay for the cutesy stuff, boo for my wallet. As for the anime itself, I know that I’m definitely going to avoid Kaze no Yojimbo and Gravitation. Kaze no Yojimbo just didn’t seem very inspiring to me at all. Gravitation…. well, the story was certainly interesting, and I’m sure I’d watch it, except that there’s some *shudder* guy on guy action.
Around 5ish we head over to wait in line to get seated for the cosplay event. Another hour, and we’re sitting in the performance hall, where we get to wait another 2. And then another 45 minutes or so because they weren’t ready to start the show. This was reportedly “good” — compared to years past where the show start was delayed 3 hours. This alone, while it sucks, wouldn’t have been that bad had it only been just sitting and waiting, since we all had some toys or books and stuff to do. What made it suck AND blow at the same time was that ADV Films, the sponsor of the cosplay event, decided to play commercials on the projector displays for their anime while we were waiting. I have no problem with that, except the commercials they played SUCK BIGTIME. And they looped them. So we got about 3 hours of sales pitches with high-pitched female voices annoying the hell out of us. I can understand that they want to sell their products, but after this, I doubt anyone who attended would touch anything from ADV Films with a 10-foot pole. Seriously, if they wanted to keep us “entertained”, they could just go play some anime series and we’d all just shut up and take it. Instead, they just pissed off the entire crowd.
At 9pm or so, the announcer shows his face. He started it off entirely on the wrong foot:
Announcer: I’m here to give the 5 minute notice that the show is about to start.
Crowd: BOOOOOO!!!!
A: (in an unapologetic tone) Well, we can all just stop the show and go home, how would you like that?
C: *cheers*
We were that pissed.
The cosplay itself wasn’t too bad, but there were parts that were far from great. As for the cosplayers themselves, the show-stealers were definitely the guys who did the Transformers bit and the Japanese dude in the Gundam suit at the end of the show. They were next to immobile, yeah, but still, DANCING ROBOTS!!! Acts like the Yu-Gi-Oh “dancer” weren’t nearly so hot. There was an FF8 Squall and Rinoa who duplicated the dancing scene early in the game, then did some random who-know-what for a few minutes — that didn’t go over too well. And one of the FLCL acts, that seemed more random than the actual anime itself.
One thing that bothered me was that we were definitely not a good crowd. The way I see things, it takes a hell of a lot of guts just to show your face on stage and do this kind of thing, so I give people props just for effort if nothing else. Some people were openly boo-ing or yelling at some of the (suckier acts). And for one act, a group which had a Chobits thing to “Mr. Roboto”, people were telling them “get off the stage!” when some idiot doing the AV stuff loaded the wrong music for them twice. (they later fixed it and performed, to loud cheers.) I’d seriously hate to perform here.
55 acts later, minus some acts which got a monty python treatment of being “sacked”, was intermission. There was a wushu group from San Diego which was okay, but not spectacular — they could do tricks, but they weren’t particularly fast or clean. It was already midnight, and the judging was now taking place. They presented a few awards to the AX Idol people, threw some t-shirts at us, then left us alone with announcer “until the judges finish”. At that point, we left. Mimi wanted to go back and sleep, I was sick of the announcer, and Wilson’s desire to get pictures with the Gundam wasn’t enough to keep us there for another 2 hours.
Good thing we left when we did too — Wilson’s friend told him that shortly after, everyone got kicked out because the convention center was closing.
And so went cosplay at AX2004. Whoever ran it needs to be sacked.
(pics to come tomorrow.. hopefully)
