AMECON 2004

SATURDAY: the first full day

Monica; “Killing people rocks!”
10:00pm! Whey! Straight to the guest panel to hear from Miss Monica Rial, a voice actress from Texas that has done several English dubs for characters of various anime including Kirika Yumura in Noir, Haruka Shitow in RahXephon, and Hyatt in Excel Saga. She had a great sense of humor and pleased us all with her naturally cute-squeaky voice, bubbly personality, impressions, and stories about her job. One of her best quotes related to the fact that most her characters lately are all killers and/or a bit crazy.
"Killing is fun!" Monica Rial said in fluffy happy voice, before moving closer to the mic and adding, “but don’t do it here.” More quotes from Monica can be found on the last page of this report.
Through the question and answer round there was of course someone that had to bring up ‘that word she’s not allowed to say’. The back-story was that in a DVD commentary, she innocently referred to herself as a ‘retard’, which for one reason or another freaked out the BBFC and it was cut out. This was further played on when, in a later commentary, another actor jokingly ribbed her on to say the words; “The BBFC are retards.”
Supposedly the first set of DVDs were being printed before this was picked up on and production was quickly halted until they badly cut those few minutes out. Monica didn’t really know what their problem was and we all agreed with her, Dan Jackson even holding up a sign saying; ‘BBFC Retards!’
I was worried that afterwards I wouldn’t get a chance for Monica to sign anything I brought with me but after a while I noticed a queue appear and there she was, sat down signing and chatting.
In the queue I ended up chatting with two yaoi fan girls that were cosplaying as two lads out of Gundam Wing and after taking a photo they agreed to take a photo of Monica and me.
Although only being able to chat for her during the duration of my stuff getting signed, Monica came off as one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet. I also got Edge’s con book signed for him as he legged it to the dealer rooms again. I wanted to chat with her more but I started getting star-struck and didn’t want to risk bugging her. Alala.
From stories and photos seen after the event it seems that Monica has signed everything from boxer shorts and panties to baseball caps and a shirtless ‘drunk so much he was barely conscious’ guy. The guy proclaimed that he didn’t like dubbed anime over subbed and so Monica signed her name on him with the phrase; ‘Dubs rule!”

Doujinshi destiny
The Artist's Alley was just next-door. Two Sides Wide had a single table up and I had a chat with creators Dave and later Kat. They probably thought it was odd but I asked them to sign the mini CD I bought off them that contained the first 140 strips. I did remember finding their comic long ago but lost the link after a PC format and was glad to find them again and meet them in real life. They seem determined and I hope everything goes well for them. Another reminder I gotta get my own web comic moving more. I should also point out it was the fault of these two why around 60 people were running around with kat-hats on. I want one in a3s colours now, hee.
After checking out the work of Kareni of BluSheep and having a quick chat about the screen-tones she was using, I then moved onto the Sweatdrop tables that spanned most the room. Sweatdrop are a group of currently 17 UK based artists and I had a long chat with the lovely Sonia as well as the dude Dock and some of the others. Predictably enough, for those who know me, seeing everyone else’s art made me feel so very very small and pathetic. I just cannot compete with these people. However there were a few things Sonia said on the topic of breaking into comics that has currently got me wanting to start on a ‘proper’ project. Things I learnt;
-It’s the way of telling a good story that matters more then the art.
-You need a lot of motivation and to prove yourself.
-Deadlines are teh 3vil.
So anyway, I’m planning on doing a 24-page comic and either submitting to one of the groups I met or maybe enter the TokyoPop Rising Stars of Manga gig. I’m gonna try to make time for it, I hope I can pull it off.
I was low on money but decided to buy up Sweatdrop’s new release, Sugardrops (a properly publish manga), and a few of the self-printed comics.
Next up, I moved to the Moon Wolf Projects table and had a quick chat with Ashe Raven and Bazabat (who I’ll mention again later), before walking off with one of their comics. I so needed more money.

Masquerade & charity auction of d00m
Apart from me being too far away to take any decent photos, the masquerade was great! There was some great cosplay, the beautifully accurate Chi costume from Chobits, the two Vash’s from Trigun performing amusing poses, Final Fantasy characters, Sadoka from Ring, and the four main characters from Hellsing, all stuck in my mind the most.
They were all great and I wished I were able to take more photos, that’s why most of my week has gone on looking at other people’s photo galleries from the event. One of the Vash’s won first prize.
Afterwards it was mentioned there was a comic competition being run by Moon Wolf Projects but I’ll get to that later.
Edge and I stayed for the charity auction afterwards in the hope of getting a DVD box set or something rare for a decent price. Well, actually I knew there was no chance of that, but wanted to check it out. Two five year old out of date Neon Genesis Evangelion cans of coffee went for round £40 each, complete with a story on why one was opened Seems one of the guys, trying to stay awake on a drive, mistook it for a Red Bull and proceeded to wake everyone on the back seat by throwing up out the window. The other guy next to me, Phil (badge name ‘Keiichi’), got himself hold of a cool Masamune Shirow collection as well as other odds and sods. The main event was the Japanese limited edition vinyl sized, four CD set of Final Fantasy 7 music, complete with large booklet containing screenshots and original artwork. After it jumped to £200 Edge and I realized we technically couldn’t keep bidding on it and then found ourselves gasping and cheering with everyone else in the room as the bidding bounced back and forth, finally ending at £310… I need money.
There was another trip to the dealers that day but I forget when. I do remember that there was a new addition to the room however, a very large (and still not fully stuffed) Totoro from My Neighbor Totoro. All took many photos of that. I still can’t afford the Ranma ½ DVD boxsets…

Quizzing, drawing, and laughing at Yaoi
I quickly enlisted the help of Keiichi from the auction as he past by to join Edge and myself for the anime quiz. Teams had already been made and we needed two more people. We grabbed a quite guy and a blue haired dude with a Kenshin tattoo on one arm and a Naruto/Sasuke/Sakura tattoo on the other. Together, we created our team; 'The League of Extra-Ordinary Otaku'!
We faired quite well out of the nearly 20 teams that were competing and basically came fourth due to a tie for first place. No prizes for fourth though, awwww. Heck, one team that drew first had twice as many people in as ours (and anyone else’s come to that), thought we did quiet well considering.
I personally got full credit for answering two questions that our team didn’t know. This was mostly due to the fact that I am in the anime club (YATA) that one of the questions was about – “Stuart Dawson is known for his mighty baggy trousers, but what northern anime group did he rule with an iron fist?” (I also got to see Stuart in the dealers queue Saturday for a quick catch up, the guy rules. Other YATA members there included Abbo and Ross.)
Other questions I just backed up if I knew the answer or thought it made sense, Keiichi was our main player as he got most the questions sorted. The most amusing round was the Doujinshi round. ‘Eight innocent looking fan comic covers and titles, but which contain naughty naughty hentai, and which, are pure?’ The round and the results (governed by chairman Will Blewitt’s reactions after flicking through said comics) got many laughs.
It was around 11pm by the end of the quiz. Moving on, I decided to go back to the Artist’s Alley, chat to Moon Wolf about the convention comic competition, and start drawing on the nearest table. Edge also starting roughing out a comic but after a little while he gave up and went to look around the video rooms. I think he went to the hentai showings along with 80% of the con members even though he denies, muhahaha.
I left some spare paper from my pad out on the table and was soon joined by George Edwards (who had two four panel shot comics in the con book) and his friend Dr Ian, later to be followed by amecon forum member MangaMad. We all had a good conversation as we drew and tried to come up with ideas, I felt a bit honored that George was so impressed with a suggestion concerning the last line uttered on his submission that he actually changed it. I nearly decided to destroy my entry because the only pen I had to ink the pencil lines was a CD pen and it wasn’t coming out as well as I hoped. The fact that I was basing the comic on my current down feelings increased this but I’m glad I didn’t give up.
“What I’m doing is rubbish and has no chance, but at least I entered,” is all that kept going through my mind.
Being slow as I am, it was past midnight and Moon Wolf and the other artists had left, but I finally finished it, put it in my bag and decided to see what videos were still showing.
There was only one video room open at that time and by the timetable it happened to be showing yaoi/shounen-ai (basically the opposite of yuri which is ya lesbian stuff, yaoi is guyXguy stuff). Although I’m ‘straight’ I’m also not narrow minded or anything like that, so I thought, nyah, what the hell, nowt else going on. As I headed towards the room I could hear roars of laughter, whatever was showing sounded good. I decided to peek my head in and saw that the room was jam-packed with males and females, so I slinked to the side against the back wall so I wasn’t blocking the doorway. This was the funniest thing I had seen all year. Wednesday had fan-subtitled an episode of a yaoi anime (forget the title) truly taking the piss out of it and several conventions from background music and characters to lack of reflections in windows and bad plot devices. Several guys started to peek into the room from outside to see what all the laughing was about and most called out something like “Hell no!” and ran away while others just decided to join in watching. You could tell one guy wanted to watch and enjoy but without being classed as 'gay' as he kept repeating most of the subtitled jokes as if to say he wasn’t really watching the characters doing the naughty… homophobic people are funny ^_^
Afterwards Wednesday was swamped by a large group of people wishing to have one of the three CD copies she had of the episodes she was showing then and before I turned up. I chatted with her finding out she subbed it and she gave me her website address saying a copy would probably appear there if others and I couldn’t find it on peer to peer networks. I also asked why there were several cobs of corn sprawled on practically every now empty chair. Her answer made me wish I didn’t ask and made me think that not seeing the episode before this last one was a good thing. ^_^;
Afterwards they started episodes of a sweet/cute show called Kokoro Library which I sadly didn’t have time to get into as my flu began to make itself known to me again. Return to base, tablets, bed.

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