The AX Report 1999

by Xoth, Master of Black Magic

Part Two: What Is It NOW???

    And so the con began.  What would it have in store for us, you ask?  Oh, trust me, you don’t want to know.  Well actually you probably do, since you’re reading this; so I’m an idiot.  Anyway, here goes.

Day 1: A Day of Firsts
   (Yes, I’m already out of semi-clever subtitles.  Somebody shoot me.)

    On Friday morning a group of us managed to drag ourselves out of hibernation in time for that all-important event at any anime convention, the opening of the dealers’ room.  We went down to the convention center next to the hotel and found ourselves in yet another line.  Luckily though we got in relatively early and were near the front of this line, within sight of the entrance to the dealers’ room, even.  Not bad, eh?  Well what was bad was that it opened an hour or so after we got there, which made us even more irritated than ever.  Anyways, we managed to kill the time (and several annoying otaku) in some interesting but unspeakable ways.

Note: We just kinda sat around until it opened; no fans were killed or otherwise harmed by us.  Yeah, that’ll make for a fascinating read.  Why else do you think I make stuff up?
    Fortunately, by the time we had cleaned up the mess and paid off the Anaheim cops, the exhibit hall was open.  It was my first time in an anime convention dealers’ room, and what I saw was nothing short of awe-inspiring.  The dealers’ “room” was actually an indoor sports arena in which dozens of anime and manga retailers had set up shop.  The air was filled with the sounds of anime showing on video displays and excited fans squealing with glee over their purchases.  Of course, because I was still an outsider to the phenomena of fan conventions, I was simply amazed at everything—the many booths set up in that space, the wealth of merchandise on display, and the incredible costumes some fans had managed to make (and then squeeze into).

    I’m not even sure I bought anything on that initial trip, mainly because I don’t know what, if anything, I would’ve actually been looking for.  I pretty much just browsed, marveled at everything I saw, and bought only a few things.  Anyway, rather than try to remember in what order I made my purchases, I’ll just recount one of them now and do the next two in subsequent sections.  First there is Yoshitaka Amano’s artbook Imagine.  I guess I felt it was my duty as both an aspiring artist and a member of the Final Fantasy Mailing List to own something by the man responsible for so many of the series’ character designs.  Funny, then, that it contained almost no FF-related artwork. ^_^  It did have plenty of other stuff, though, including artwork for several anime series: Gatchaman, Genesis Climber Mospeada, and of course Vampire Hunter D.  Which is not to say that I knew anything about any of them at the time.  Heck, even now the only thing I’ve seen recently that even tangentially relates is Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, which didn’t come out until 2001.  But anyways...

    ...Not much else that I recall about Friday.  However, one other thing that we did was attend the karaoke competition, since Jaana was participating (which is why she desperately needed to burn that music), and damned if we were going to miss that.  But we almost did miss it, for we had some trouble getting back into our room after returning from the dealers’ room.  We only had two keys, and no one seemed to know who had them.  I remember standing dumbly in the hallway with a couple of the others, not knowing what to do next...and then the door opening; someone else had been in the room the whole time.  Well, problem solved.  So we were late in arriving at the karaoke competition and had to sit way in back.  Consequently I only got a few really crappy snapshots of Jaana’s performance (at least we didn’t miss it).  Sadly, she didn’t make it to the next round, so after the announcement of the semifinalists we introduced the judges to our baka mallets and promptly went back to the room.

Note: No karaoke judges were harmed during the making of this AX Report—which is to say, at the AX ’99 karaoke competition.  Just because we like violent video games and watch anime with sword fights and gratuitous sodomy and such, it doesn’t mean we’re violent people, heavens no.
    Of course, no anime convention is complete without actual anime, and at AX ’99 we watched plenty (more than at subsequent AXes, it seems).  Most of this occurred late at night in our hotel room, thanks to a VCR and our pooled collections of anime tapes.  The first anime I remember watching was Revolutionary Girl Utena, the TV series.  I’m sure all of you have seen it or heard of it or know of it in some way, shape or form, so I don’t need to summarize here.  Just as well, because we didn’t watch the whole series, and it was (to repeat) four years ago, so I cannot come up with a coherent synopsis of what we saw.  I just wanted to point out those truly wacky moments in the series that I remember best; for example, the random hordes of rampaging elephants in the curry episode, or the cowbell episode, in which Nanami slowly succumbs to madness due to her misperceptions about the dictates of fashion.  What can I say, insanity is my kind of thing. ^_^

    I should also mention that some of us also got into a few showings in the video rooms, though I don’t quite know when.  But I’m positive I did at some point, and since I couldn’t have known anything about them, I must’ve been following someone else like the witless sheep that I am.  One of these rooms was showing some of the Lupin III series; I know that for sure because I recognized the characters when I watched the Miyazaki-directed Castle of Cagliostro.  I could swear that they looked exactly the same, so I suspect that the showing at AX was some of the TV episodes that Miyazaki helped animate.  I think they had to do with Lupin’s gang fighting their way into a fortress, and a showdown on an airplane in which the heroine (not Fujiko) gets fatally wounded, but of course Lupin then takes out the villain and attends to her dying words.  However, I know better than to trust my fuzzy memory, so I can’t be more specific than that; I really wish I knew what it was.  Anyway, I went to another showing with Sky and Johnmog and saw the concluding episodes of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure.  All I can say is it seemed to be a typical ultraviolent martial-arts anime involving mystical powers that bring one’s opponent to an extremely gory end.  The episodes we saw covered the final showdown with the insanely powerful badguy, in which the hero gets battered beyond human endurance but finally finds the weak spot and promptly reduces said badguy to a bloody smear on the urban landscape.  So storywise nothing that excited me, though I seem to recall it had great animation.  Again, don’t take my memories as indisputable or even reliable.

Day 2: Experiencing Technical Difficulties
    Another day, another trip to the dealers’ room.  Aside from an important event in the evening, that’s the only thing I can imagine we did on Saturday.  So now I get to talk about another purchase, volume one of the Mixx Manga-/Tokyopop-translated Magic Knight Rayearth manga.  To explain why, I should mention an FFMLer who is otherwise not in this report but who should be familiar to readers of my other reports.  That would be Locke, who earlier that spring had offered to sell copies of the Sega Saturn Rayearth game on the list.  Since I had a Saturn (what? stop looking at me like that) and a lack of games, I took him up on the offer and greatly enjoyed playing through it.  The game is more or less faithful to the anime storyline and even has cutscenes directly from the show, so you could say it was my first exposure to anime beyond Cartoon Network.  The story in the manga turns out to have a slightly different pace, but none of the main plot points were significantly altered.  Besides that, it is drawn in the distinctive style of CLAMP, with stylish character designs, incredible detail, and cutesy SD moments; as I discovered, the first translated volume is particularly rife with the latter.  Anyway, if those sorts of things are up your alley, and if you somehow didn’t already know about CLAMP and Rayearth, give it a shot.

    So what was that important event in the evening I mentioned above?  If you’re a regular reader of my reports (God help you :D), you should have some inkling.  Anyone?  Anyone?  ...That’s right, the AX Masquerade!  And can you guess who was in the 1999 Masquerade?  Were you paying attention at the beginning of the report?  Yes, of course, of course it was Jaana!  And what costume was she wearing?  You got it, the Eagle costume I mentioned once at the outset of Part 1.  You’re so smart!  Give yourself a cookie. ^_^

    Eh?  What actually happened at the Masquerade?  Well, that wasn’t so easy to figure out.  First off, most of us weren’t actually in attendance.  Jaana was, of course; Kat was helping her with the costume, and Arty was in the audience taking pictures.  The rest of us were stuck watching a broadcast of the event on the hotel’s public access channel.  Now I have to say that although it was a very neat idea (one that hasn’t been repeated at subsequent AXes, at least that I’m aware of), there was something missing.  Maybe it was the atmosphere of live performance, or the camaraderie of the greater fellowship of otaku; then again, maybe it was the sound.  Yes, the first two hours of the Masquerade simulcast was totally silent due to technical difficulties with sound equipment.  Not that we missed much, because, probably due to those tech problems, the start of the show was delayed.  The AX staff covered the delays with a few diversions, such as showing the winning anime music videos, and at one point what seemed to be an impromptu voice-acting demo.  However, there was at least one false start, and even after they got things rolling the sound (for the broadcast anyway) cut out a couple times.

    Now I’m not one for conspiracy theories, but I tell you something sinister was at work there.  Perhaps it was some plot by a fiendish alien overlord or a megalomaniacal villain bent on destruction by causing the Masquerade viewers to riot in the main hall and in their hotel rooms.  Or maybe...the problems were initiated by agents of the Mouse.  Yes, of course, it all makes sense!  Saboteurs, sent from Disneyland HQ just up the road from the Anaheim Convention Center, infiltrate the gathering of otaku and fry the sound equipment prior to the Masquerade; then sympathetic Disney reps approach AX staff after the con to offer a deal they can’t refuse...a deal that resulted in the debacle known as Anime Expo 2000 at Disneyland!  Those bastards!  Insidious, treacherous, smelly, ruthless, avaricious, unsightly, smiling, damned VILLAINS!!!  AVAUNT!  NEVER AGAIN SHALL I TOUCH ANOTHER FILTHY, GREED-TAINTED DISNEY PRODUCT! (Er, well, I’ll exempt Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli releases.  BUT NOTHING ELSE!)

Note: Total ignorance of the facts; wild, baseless speculation; and blatant appeals to pathos—I ought to have my own editorial column.
    *ahem*  Sorry about the above rant; medication just kicked in.  Anyhoo, getting back to the Masquerade, not much I specifically recall.  Surely the costumes were amazing, but you can see amazing costumes just walking around on any given day at AX.  A few things did stand out, though: our first glimpse of the AX ’99 Master of Ceremonies, for instance.  I think we were all taken aback at the incongruity between his Pacific-Islander appearance and his British accent.  However, his most striking feature was the beard running the length of his jaw, which led other FFMLers to come up with a now-infamous nickname.  Apparently someone on the list knew where to look on the web or something, because a group in #ffml not in attendance but wanting to see Jaana perform dubbed him “Yaoi Beard Man.”  Yes, yes, we’re bizarre creatures.  Anyway, I also remember Jaana’s performance, especially since she was once again singing karaoke.  She didn’t really do much other than sing, but we were cheering her on anyway—from the hotel room, that is.  Last but not least, I remember the winning performance, which featured a giant dancing Pen-Pen from Evangelion.  Not especially memorable in and of itself, but it became memorable when Yaoi Beard Man left the podium and got down with his yaoi self along with the penguin.  Yes, I’ll bet that had nothing at all to do with Pen-Pen’s victory. XD
Note: Just in case he happens to find this page, I apologize for the “Yaoi Beard Man” appellation.  He turned out to be a friend of Pyxie’s and a nice guy; you can see him, sans yaoi beard, in the photos section of my AX ’01 report.  I really had nothing to do with that nickname; it’s an FFML gag that ended up getting a bit out of hand (as FFML gags often do).  As for the judging, I’m sure crowd reaction had something to do with the winners—but dang if seeing the MC get up and dance didn’t whip the crowd into a greater frenzy. ^_^
    At any rate, Jaana didn’t win any major awards (she got Best Rayearth Costume, which wasn’t announced at the conclusion of the show), but when she, Kat, and Arty returned she ended up having something even better.  She had in tow none other than Pyxie and Pokey, whom my regular readers will know from my other reports.  They too had been in the Masquerade, as part of a Street Fighter II group, with Pokey cosplaying as Vega and Pyxie as Chun Li (the same costume she wore two AXes later, which you can see in my AX ’01 Report’s photojournal section).  It was a rather brief meeting, to be sure, but it was an unexpected bonus to meet them, and perhaps it helped get Pyxie involved with the FFML—and hence FFML/AX—shortly thereafter.  Odd, you’d think we would’ve actually scared people away instead of convincing them to join...unless of course they were just as scary as we were. :D  Anyway, that’s about all I remember of Saturday.

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