Once again, we awoke to Kodocha. At this time, I’d like to stress how much we all love this particular anime. For those of you who have never seen Kodomo no Omocha, I will try to give you an idea of what it’s like. Take a hyperactive, enthusiastic, overly tenacious child actress. Add an eccentric mother who’s an award-winning writer with a squirrel living in her hair, a manager/chauffeur/“boyfriend and pimp” (her words, not mine, honestly), her best friend/mortal enemy (again, paraphrasing her words), a cast of wacky classmates and even wackier co-workers, and a mascot—a rabbit with bat wings called, of all things, “Babbit”. Now throw in classroom hijinks, romantic polygons galore, family troubles, spontaneous fits of rapping, and a few scandalous pictures, and you’ve got some idea of the series. Come to think of it, there’s no easy way to describe it. Just find a way to see it, if you haven’t yet. You’ll thank me.
 

Where was I? Oh yeah, AX. At any rate, Daran, Mabis and I decided to traipse down to the dealers room one last time to see if we could get any last-day bargains. Also, Golbez went off to check on his bids for several art pieces that had caught his eye. In the meantime we discovered something in the dealer room. Well actually, it’s not so much what we did discover as what we didn’t. Finding stuff in the dealer room on the last day is harder than finding Jesse Helms porno pictures. (Not that I would know anything about finding porn, much less porn involving Jesse Helms. Yeah.) Everything people wanted was already sold out, and everything people didn’t want was still there. (I am Master of the Painfully Obvious. Ph34r m3.) So the lesson for that day was if you really want something, then buy it in the first couple of days. (Why all the parentheses? I don’t know. Leave me alone.)

That's it???

Note: Actually, it wasn’t that empty. Daran and Mabis were looking for soundtracks and weren’t having much luck, so I exaggerated a little. Plus I was looking for Magic Knight Rayearth manga which I had found a couple days earlier but was no longer there. My loss, I guess.

  With nothing much going on, our now nearly halved group made one last attempt to see the Escaflowne movie. Locke, Daran, Golbez, and I, specifically. With our expectations low, we headed over to the convention center, and, lo and behold, there was no line. Only two people were ahead of us. Well, needless to say we really felt like hot shit. After a while we just felt hot, since the line was stationed outside the convention center, in the scorching southern California sun. So Locke amused us with his mad hackeysack skillz, and later an FF8 cosplay group came and put on a photo shoot practically in front of our very eyes. Meanwhile, 3 o’clock, the time the movie was supposed to have started, came and went. Locke decided he had to get going if he didn’t want to miss the bus back to Iowa, so we bid him farewell, and he departed. (We replaced him with another of Golbez's friends.) Finally, after sufficient sun burning, we were allowed into the air conditioned building and into the theater to see Escaflowne: A Girl in Gaia!

  Now for my review. Having seen only one episode of the series, I am told it basically compresses the series into a two-hour feature film. Same characters, different look. There is gore and plenty of violence. I admit I didn’t understand some of it, because I nodded off a few times midway through. (Interpret that as boredom or simple fatigue, I don’t know which) At any rate, here’s a summary. Van, a sword swinging hero in the land of Gaia, wants revenge on a rival clan for killing his people. Hitomi, a depressed teenager on planet Earth, wants to escape her existence. Put these two together via magic interdimensional portal thingy, and inevitably they’ll fall in love. In the meantime, the war between the good guys and the bad guys rages on. Oh, yeah, the title: Escaflowne is a sort of human blood-powered mecha/armor that both Van and main bad guy Folken want for different reasons. Folken wants it so he can destroy the world; Van wants it so he can destroy Folken. I won’t go into any further detail, because I honestly don’t remember much of the story very clearly. (The subtitles were hard for me to read from way back where we were sitting) What I do remember is the high quality animation and the excellent musical score. At any rate, I wish I had payed more attention (and been sitting closer) because, well—let’s just say I have a soft spot for protagonists with low self-esteem who are redeemed by true love. ^_^ After seeing this, I wanted to find out more about the series. So for those who haven’t seen the series, my prediction is that it would be a perfect eye- and ear-catching introduction to this series. For those who have...if nothing else, go see it for the animation and the wonderful music. Well, if you can, that is. I don't know if it'll be released in the US in any form, so....

  Anyway, by the time the movie was over, it was around dinnertime; and since it was the last night, the four of us who remained (Golbez, Daran, Mabis, and I) decided to go all out. We headed over to Hook’s Point, a five-star Disney restaurant near our hotel. While I can’t say that I liked all of the interior design, I can say that the service was decent and the food excellent. As with the sushi restaurant on Friday, it was one of the only times I felt like I was getting what I paid for at a Disney establishment. Specifically, I paid for a pasta dish with red bell peppers and sausage. It was perhaps the best dinner I had at AX in terms of the quality of the food. The sushi restaurant was more fun because it was all nine of us, but it was still a great meal and a good time for us nonetheless.

  Well, soon dinner was over, so we paid our exorbitant bill and headed over to the convention center to gripe. At the AX Con Gripe, that is. Every year after closing ceremonies representatives of AX get to hear all the grievances, protests, and complaints that attendees have the guts to air. So we waited through the last part of closing ceremonies, went to the game room next door and fooled around with DDR a bit, then returned to the ballroom for the Gripe. The good news was that AX was not coming back to Disneyland in 2001. They were even considering leaving Anaheim altogether; although they had not yet chosen a new site, they did mention the city of Long Beach. With that issue out of the way, we didn't hear any complaints about Disney; consequently, I don’t remember most of them. ;) There were questions about the selection in the video rooms and complaints about rude and surly AX staffers, but I don’t recall much beyond that.
 

Our valiant struggle to stay awake all night long...

After leaving the gripe, our night was open. We probably would have tried to get some sleep, but I had a unique dilemma. Since my flight was the next morning at 9, I was planning to arrive at LAX before 8. And since the ride from the airport to the hotel had taken well over an hour, I was assuming I’d have to leave the hotel well before 7. And since the only bus to the airport arriving before 7 was at 6:30, I had to check out before then. And since the room was on my credit card, we all had to leave when I checked out. And since none of us felt we could go to sleep and get ourselves up again that early, the only alternative was to pull an all-nighter.   The things we did to stay awake? Well, for a while Daran and Golbez teamed up on the DDR machine in the game room. After that we went outside and talked about various things, including other anime cons we might consider attending. After returning to the room, we decided to tidy up a bit and pack away some things. Along the way we discovered Locke’s math homework, Sky’s tortillas, a pair of socks that no one claimed, and various other goodies. We also watched plenty of anime—Elf Princess Rane, You're Under Arrest, and of course a lot of Kodocha.

Oh yeah, one other thing. Just before we headed back to the room we met up with a bunch of AXers who were carrying torches and baka mallets. They said that they were joining up with a much larger group that was invading Disneyland to wreak whatever vengeance they could. Deciding that that could eat up a good amount of time, we grabbed our mallets and joined up. Of course, the Disney people wouldn’t just back down without a fight, and they put up stiff resistance for a while. However, the mob of hentai-starved otaku had a secret weapon: Sana on pixie sticks. After unleashing this fearsome engine of destruction, we made short work of Disneyland. I cannot find the words to adequately describe this orgy of rape, pillage, and clobbering; needless to say, the carnage was truly glorious. At last we were avenged for all the injuries that Disney had inflicted upon us. Note: Oh come on. Even if we’d actually had the capability to decimate Disneyland, do you really think we would...wait, strike that. Okay, let me ask you this. If we’d actually done such a thing, don’t you think you would have heard about it on the news? I mean, sure, there’s the AIDS epidemic in Africa and the peace summit between Israel and the Palestinians, but, come on, we're talking Disneyland here. I'd think the network news people could get their priorities straight. ;P

Vengeance is ours, evil disciples of the Mouse!

  After that little adventure, we returned to our room and spent the rest of the night there in order to avoid any—unpleasantness with the Anaheim police. And not quite before we knew it, it was 6am: check out time. A frantic search turned up all four room keys, so then we made sure everything was packed up, and off we went. Golbez was going to be picked up at the hotel, so the rest of us said goodbye to him and headed to the front desk. Soon the bus arrived—and just ahead of some Anaheim PD squad cars, too. So we quickly boarded, and before the cops spotted us we were on our way. At this time lack of sleep caught up with us, and we began to nod off. Fortunately, Daran and Mabis were awake by the time the bus arrived at their destination, Terminal 1 of Los Angeles International Airport. They disembarked, and once again I was alone. But before I had a chance to get lonely I was getting off at Terminal 3 and lining up to check my bags and pick up my boarding pass. I had arrived much earlier than I had expected to; luckily the wait for the baggage check and then for a coffee at a Starbucks in the terminal ate up much of the time. (pity Daran and Mabis, whose flights were boarding well after mine; still, they did run into Pyxie and Pokey, who had just come back from Vegas :) At last the boarding call went out for my flight. And so, for me, the FFML’s trip to AX 2000 came to an end.

Back to:

• THE INTRO!
• DAY 0!
• DAY 1!
• DAY 2!
• DAY 3!

• MISCELLANEOUS!

Disclaimer: This account contains a lot that could offend people. Sex. Porn. Drug use. Profanity. Violence. Anime. Crudely drawn pictures. Sentence fragments. A lot of non-white people. People celebrating a culture other than America’s. Disney-bashing aplenty. At any rate, if something offends you, stop reading. If your kids read something that offends you, tell them to go to another web site. If you’re really ticked off by it, then e-mail “cosmic_chicken” at “excite” dot “com” and I’ll listen. Certain characters, events, etc. referred to and depicted in this account come from Japanese animated films and television series and are copyrighted by their respective companies. Whatever the SPJA and Anime Expo have copyrighted belongs to them.

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