Anime Expo 2001. It's here, and I finally got the chance to attend. I got up at 09:00 in the morning to get ready for the day. Around 10:40, my friend Nardo came around to pick me up, and we were on our way. It was a 30 minute drive down to the Long Beach Convention Center, and for the most part the drive was uneventful. The thing that was weird though was that once we got to Long Beach, there were a couple things that struck us as strange... Now see, a single lane side street that's one way, maybe a two-lane one way street is ok, but there was a wide, four, maybe five lane street that was a ONE WAY STREET. It was weird, and I was pretty sure the street was gonna fuck us one way or another.
We finally make it to the convention center, and it's raining. Not hard, but not exactly sprinkling. We parked a pretty long ass way off from the registration ballroom. We started walking around, and we spent a good 30 minutes looking for the place. We finally broke down and asked some of the people walking around wearing AX2001 badges, and they pointed us to the right direction. Registration was a breeze since we pre-registered online. We came in, walked across the ballroom to the pre-registered attendee section, paid US$50, and picked up our badges and stuff. This is when the "trouble" starts.
There were rumors flying around that the AX organizers were making a mad scramble to get everything ready for opening day, and there were other rumors that they weren't even ready for opening day at all. It seems a mix of both were true. An actual line was forming outside the Arena where the exhibitors' booths were. Normally there shouldn't be a line at all, people just walk in and stuff. There was a huge line, so me and Nardo said, "Screw it." We went to get lunch, but amazingly enough, there aren't any fast food venues nearby, so we had to resort to the food carts. Ok, get this. US$2 for a bottle of soda, and US$7 for a club sandwich. OMG, WTF IS THAT?! I pay US$1 at school for a bottle of soda, and even then it's still too much! We were hungry, and it was the only place, so whatever, we paid the horribly inflated price.
Finally, around 11:30 or so, the exhibitors' area opened up to the masses. We decided to check the wares. Oh man there's so much stuff to buy! We're going to wait until the last day, Sunday, though. Dealers usually drop their prices on the last day to get rid of merchandise. The room was packed! So many people in one place, and it was pretty hot too. I don't know what happened, but the A/C for the arena wasn't working, so in the especially crouded parts of the arena you couldn't help but gag because all you could smell was B.O. from the multitudes of big, fat, sweaty guys walking around. It got better though because the A/C units got turned on.
This is the first year the con is being held at the LBCC. It was so much better at the Disneyland Convention Center because everything was in one complex, with huge, interconnected exhibit areas. Now, it's being spread apart to the LBCC and the other large hotels surrounding it. Wanna know why it's not at the Disneyland Convention Center anymore? Last year, some underage kid bought hentai (in layman terms, adult anime), his parents found it, complained about it, and Disney didn't like the thought of that going on, so the SPJA (Society for the Promotion of Japanese Animation) was forced to move it to the LBCC.
Speaking of the spacing apart of the facilities, this made it sorta hard to find things. Sure they gave us a map during registration (along with a bunch of other freebies), it didn't really help because it was sorta confusing. You'd think they'd put signs on sidewalks and within the areas and stuff! We spent a good part of the day walking around. We got tired, so we decided to crash in one of the theatres to watch anime. Oh man, the screens were so small compared to the large size of the theatre room! Oh well. We saw Escaflowne the Movie, which was good. We did some more browsing of the wares for sale, and then we got really tired so we decided to crash once again in one of the three theatre halls. We sat for a good while, waiting for Rurouni Kenshin - The Motion Picture. We saw Hand Maid May, episode 1. Unfortunately it was dubbed instead of subbed... It looks like a good series, nevertheless, maybe I'll check out the rest sometime. Afterwards we saw this weird series called NiaA Under 17, and it looks pretty weird, I might check that out also. Then there was this really cheesy anime called Assemble Insert, and it was so terrible.. Man we had to sit through 2 grueling epsides of that, oh man I can't express in words how terrible the anime was. Then came Arc the Lad, dubbed. I leaned over to Nardo and said, "It's dubbed, but at least it's better than sitting through another episode of Assemble Insert!" Arc the Lad was kinda bad, not a real storyline to it, unless it was supposed to be episode 1 of a series. It didn't say it though. The Rurouni Kenshin movie was really good. People came in just to watch it, and at the end, everyone applauded, which was pretty cool.
Afterwards we decided we were done for the day. The arena had closed almost an hour ago, and we were pretty hungry, so we decided to drive home. We figured that all we had to do was follow our Yahoo!Maps directions in the opposite way.. That is, until the one way street came up. We didn't notice the One Way sign by the traffic signal, and there were no "No Right Turn" signs, so we took a right turn. Ohhh man we were so fucking lucky there were no cars there heh, shit! Well to make a long story short, a 40 mile trip both ways, a 30 minute drive one direction, turned into a two-hour drive across two different cities. We ended up driving an extra 50 miles, and into areas that just plain didn't look right. We had two other close calls.. Man if only I had brought my HandyCam with me... Oh well, Nardo's getting the exact reverse directions, so the next three days should be fine.
Today was pretty much uneventful because it was opening day. Tomorrow should be different. Until then, stay tuned! I'll have day reports every night after I come home, or if I come home around midnight, then i'll make up for it the next evening. Ja ne!
So there's my US$0.02 :-)
Randy "MoonKnight" Tabula
(714)507-3807 ext. 7955
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randytabula@socal.rr.com]
randytabula@socal.rr.com[/url] ICQ# 1756860
http://MoonKnight.jump.to
"Akirameru da nan te! (I can't give up!)" - Love Hina
umm.. Hand Maid May is pretty cool! there are only 10 eps with an 11th omake, but i enjoyed the series.. never seen it dubbed before tho, hmmm.. (ill stick with my subs thanks) if i get a chance ill send some to u on ICQ or something.. 
and they only did 10 eps! i was so hooked! dammit.. now i have to wait for the DVD (knowing AUS, that will take a few yrs)