ANIME NORTH 2003
PAN'S CON REPORT

FRIDAY MAY 16th, 2003


When we arrived at the hotel, I left to get one of those people with carts to help us carry all our stuff. I was dressed as Inuyasha, so the second I stepped in the doors, I was already asked for photos. I told them nicely that they could get pictures later, since I was carrying stuff, and I had a ton of stuff to do at that exact moment. I think a few pictures were taken anyway. *heh*

After I got the nice guy to help us with all our stuff, Blue Rose guarded it and I got in line to check into the hotel. I was carrying my Goku staff with my Yugi wig on the end. I kept yelling, “Yugi is slain!” for some unknown reason.

In line to check-in, I ran into Shinji and said hi. Besides that, the check-in was fairly uneventful. I put everything under my name, and even though I asked for four room keys, they gave me two.

After that, we brought everything up to our room and started unpacking. In other words, we made a mess in a pathetic attempt to get organized. I started setting up all my electronic equipment and got my stuff ready so I could go and take pictures.

Blue Rose wasn’t feeling very well, but she came downstairs with me anyway. She was nice enough to carry my clipboard and stuff while I went around taking pictures. She was dressed up as Sanzo from Saiyuki, and boy did she look it. We couldn’t get three feet without someone wanting a picture. ^^ We ran into a really good Shaman King cosplay group, and I recognized most of their members. They were really really good! ^^

I chased around some Weiss cosplayers. I adore Weiss! ^^ Blue Rose and I also touched basis with Kira who was dressed as ShuShu. Yay for Weiss! Err... In the lobby, I ended up talking with a nice girl dressed up as Atsuro from Kaiken Phrase, and it was around the same time that I noticed how many of the people there I recognized. Of course, there were new faces, but I could name the costumes many of the cosplayers there had worn at previous cons. It was a very odd, yet comforting feeling.

While in the lobby, we noticed we had left Killtron 2000 (giant box costume I made with Chapel for Chapel) in the corner. Freaking out, Blue Rose and I grabbed it and started heading back to our room. It was rather funny to see Sanzo and Inuyasha carry around a box with stuff written on it, but it was Anime North, so I doubt anyone cared too much. ^^;

After we finally got Killtron back to the room, we did some repair work on him, then headed back out. I was told that we we’re to pick up our passes until four o’clock. It wasn’t four yet, but we headed in that direction anyway. They didn’t know where our passes were at first, but soon found an envelope addressed to LELOLA. Blue Rose and I took a moment to go through a press kit, put on our badges, and headed out to take more photos. We passes by YTV’s setup, took some photos, then went back to following cosplayers around and taking pictures.

We somehow ended up back at the YTV booth, and went to where the press was aloud to take pictures. I recognized the other photographers there from previous conventions and said hello. At this point in time, YTV was filming segments for the Zone. Sugar and Carlos (the two hosts) were talking with the Beyblade voice actors. I was mistaken when I thought only three of theme were going to be there. All five of the main voice actors were there in the flesh. WAI! ^^

Since they were recording, I turned the flash off in my camera and took some pictures. Man, these guys are cool. ^^ They all introduce themselves in their respected character voices, then jumped off the stage. It didn’t make much sense until I watched what YTV aired on while the convention was going on.

Nona was also there talking with the voice actors. I took some pictures, and then talked to some of the YTV crew. I also had the opportunity to talk to Sugar and Carlos. They’re really nice people, and have wonderful personalities. ^^

I was surprised at Sugar’s height, and so we ended up standing back to back to see who was taller. According to Blue Rose and Carlos, I was taller by barely an inch. This was surprising since I’m taller than very few people. Sugar mentioned how Paula (the Vortex host on Saturday mornings) was even shorter. ^^; It was a rather nice conversation.

Then, Blue Rose and I headed back to where to Beyblade voice actors were hanging out and talking to the press. I got normal and crazy photos of all of them but Daniel DeSanto (Ray’s voice actor). There was something really nice about all of them. All five of them were filled with energy and spirit. It was really refreshing.

David Reale (Kai’s voice actor) was really nice. I talked to him for a bit about his experiences at the convention so far and some other random stuff.

Considering the Beyblade voice actors were not announced as guests until a few days before the convention, let me just say that they were a pleasant surprise. ^^

Then we ended up heading towards the YTV main office so I could ask a question. On the way, we ran into David Reale and I took a picture of him. I also asked him how long he’d be at the convention. Turns out he would only be there until Saturday afternoon. I must admit, I was a little surprised. They were only there to do press stuff, and then leave. I guess when I realized that they didn’t get to explore and enjoy everything to convention had to offer, I felt a little weird. Don’t ask. I guess it’s one of those things. I said a few more words to David-san, then Blue Rose and I took more pictures.

Lots of random stuff happened. I know that’s not descriptive at all, but it works. I glomped some random cosplayers, and mistook a Suguru cosplayer from Gravitation as Tachi from Gravitation. Hmm... oh, and since I was dressed as Inuyasha, people were taking my picture a lot. Since I was with Blue Rose, who had an awesome costume, the amount of pictures that were taken of us is huge. People kept calling me cute. I have no idea why. Probably because of my body language. I dunno...

We took even more pictures. I recognized the Chibi Vash and Knives from Trigun, but I didn’t get a chance to talk to them. When we took a photo of the really cool looking Kaiba and the Rare Hunter with him (both from Yu-Gi-Oh!), I asked him about the Midnight Duel that was to take place latter on in the evening. He didn’t just know about it—he was running it! WAI! ^^

We found Shinji and asked him about a Fushigi Yuugi cosplay group photo shot. We planned to hold one on Sunday at noon. I informed every Fushigi Yuugi cosplayer I ran into after this point about it.

We also ran into Scott McNeil, who recognized me. ^^ We talked for a while. Last year, I promised that we’d have another interview this year, but the press was prohibited to hold private interview this year. Meh. It was still fun. ^^;

I ran into a guy named Rob who was dressed as Spike from Cowboy Bebop last year (I will refer to him as “Spiku” from now on). One of my friends had a he crush on him. Just because I could, I took a bunch of pictures of him. ^^; At some point around here, we brought out the camcorder and recorded some of the sights and sounds of the convention.

After awhile, we went back upstairs to our room to drop some stuff off. Blue Rose still wasn’t feeling well, and I had to all but order her to stay in the room and rest. I figured it would be better to miss some of the con and be healthy for later, than be sick throughout the entire thing.

The hotel room was interesting. There was always someone in it doing something. I’m not sure if Becky was there at this point in time, but I think Rem was. I dunno...

I headed back downstairs and got more photos (seeing a pattern here?). I ran into Scott McNeil again and asked him about his tattoo. We ended up talking about tattoos and what he was planning to do with his. Apparently, his tattoo is only half completed.

Around six o’clock, I met Kira in the lobby for a special Weiss photo shoot thingy. Kira had been planning it for months. Since our friend Richard was dressing as Farfarello (Farfie) from Weiss, and Kira was dressing as Schildich (ShuShu), the plan was to get some interesting photos of the two of them. Kira even got people to stand on guard to make sure Richard wouldn’t run away. ^^;

I made the mistake of video taping more of it than I took pictures of. Oh well. It was very entertaining indeed. ^^; By the end of it, Laura and Kira were trying to shove Richard into a garbage can. *heh*

I went around taking more pictures after that. I ran into Josh who was the Heero (Gundam Wing) that was kissing a Duo last year. For some reason, he recognized me before I recognized him. ^^; He’s such a cool guy. ^^

Like always, I had my clipboard with me to write down the names of the cosplayers. As the day progressed, I started using it less and less, so much of my information is incomplete. It just became too much of a hassle.

I met up again with Blue Rose and we headed to the Red and White Show/Skit Contest. Our group (Inuyasha Pants Inc.) was actually going to perform in the Skit Contest, but we had to cancel due to some difficulties. That aside, my friend Amanda has informed me that her group was performing, and since their performances are always excellent, I wanted to get it on film.

While we were waiting for the show to start, I met a girl dressed as Miaka named Micheru-chan. Actually, I think I met her before, but it was here that she realized that saying “osuwari” (“sit” in Japanese—it’s an Inuyasha thing) to me would actually make me fall on my face. What? It happens everyday at school. It’s a force of habit. ^^;

After being “osuwaried” about ten times I sat back down. Blue Rose escaped at some point, and I ended up talking to the kids that were to perform martial arts. They were nice and I talked to a bunch of them about Yu-Gi-Oh. ^^

Since they were already running a half hour late and I had other places to be. I made a mental note to come back, then ran off. I got a picture of Sarcasm-hime dressed as Ayumi Hamasaki and a bunch of other people. I saw a Miroku cosplayer from Inuyasha, and we took some pictures. ^^

I ran into Blue Rose again at some point and we wandered around some more. We stopped to talk with two Gravitation cosplayers dressed as Shuichi and Ryuichi. Their costumes were not only dead on, but they were sitting on the floor with a sketchpad and crayons. ^^ I started screaming “Monster! Roar! Automobile! Weee!”, and they started screaming it too. ^^; ‘Twas fun.

What they were drawing also caught my eye. Shuichi was drawing The Cheat from HomeStarRunner.com. WAI! ^^ My friends Becky introduced me to the website awhile back, and I’m a huge fan of Strong Bad’s e-mails. Anyway, we talked about the website for a little bit and I got a picture of Shuichi holding up her masterpiece. ^^

At some point, I got fed up with waiting and ran off. I met up with Blue Rose and we went back to taking photos of cosplayers. Around the main lobby, we ran into Buru and said hi. By “hi”, I mean I screamed “TOHMA!” and glomped him. ^^; He introduced me to Ian, who I am pretty sure I scared. *sweatdrops* Oh well. Buru was looking for his friends, who I had not seen yet. I told him I’d keep an eye out.

About three minutes later, we ended up running into Buru’s friends who were looking for him. I told them I had just seen him, and since the main convention area is circular in shape, and because I had just seen Buru, I figured running one way would probably get them to Buru. And so began what is now dubbed as the “Tohma Chase”. I ran with Buru’s friends looking for Buru. We got half-way around the circle, when sure enough, I spotted Buru and Ian. And so, Buru and his friends were reunited. *heh* Soon after, I managed to get two cute photos and Buru and Ian. ^^ They were really sweet!

After the “chase”, Blue Rose and I checked in on the Skit Contest. Sure enough, Amanda and her friends were performing at that very moment. I videotaped as much of their performance as I could, but since I kept getting yelled at to move, the footage came out a little crooked. Meh. I have to say that their performance blew me away. It was really well choreographed, and considering the amount of people, it’s impressive just to pull something like that off. ^^

Soon, it was time for a question and answer session with the Japanese guest of honor: Hikaru Midorikawa. We headed next door to where it was going to be held and met up with Laura, Butterfly, Kira and the rest of the gang.

Micheru-chan was also in the audience waiting for Midorikawa-san to arrive. Once she spotted me, she “osuwaried” me so much, I can’t count the amount of times I fell down. *heh* On the plus side, it turned out to be quite a crowd pleaser and made waiting all that more enjoyable.

I was also setting up my camcorder. Since I wanted to take part, and take pictures, I got my friend Chapel to videotape the event for me. Of course, Micheru-chan kept “osuwaring” me, so the first footage from the question and answer session is me falling on my face. *heh*

Everyone continued to wait, and the room was filled with excitement. It was also filled with the sounds of the karaoke from next door, but that’s another story.

Finally, a man came up to the front to introduce Midorikawa-san. He kept mispronouncing things, and the fans kept correcting him. That was all right since he was such a great sport about it. ^^ After stalling for a few moments and a short discussions about Midorikawa-san’s works, Midorikawa-san, himself, arrived through the doors.

I am a seiyuu person. When I watch anime, I can pick out the voices of many seiyuu and by doing so, I have created lists in my head for certain seiyuu and their respected roles. My favorite seiyuu are the four Weiss seiyuu, but them aside, Hikaru Midorikawa is on the top of my favorites list. I adore his work and have been a fan of him for years.

This is why seeing him in the flesh seemed almost surreal to me. It was as if it was a wonderful dream. I guess I found it hard to comes to terms with the fact that he was actually there in the flesh.

I’ve been to Midorikawa-san’s official website before, and through doing so, I was aware that he had very basic English skills. The first thing he need was give a little speech in English, then another one in Japanese.

Then they opened the floor to questions. If anyone had anything to ask, they were to line-up at the right-hand side of the room. I got up and ran across the room. As I did so, there was a little uproar of laughter from the audience. Many of them had seen my fall on my head repeatedly for the past fifteen minutes, so I guess the idea of the short Inuyasha asking the first question was amusing.

Of course, my first question was “Do you like cats?”

This did not only cause the audience to laugh, but surprisingly, there were some people in the back of the room that shouted, “Oh my god! It’s Pan!” which caused me to flush. ^^;

As it turns out, Midorikawa-san likes cats, but if he had to choose between dogs and cats, he’d chose dogs. Oh well. He still likes cats! ^^

There were lots of questions asked. Laura and Kira both asked questions. Kira asked what Midorikawa-san thought of ShuShu’s new design in Gluhen, and I think the translator misinterpreted her because his answer was about how he got the role of ShuShu on Weiss.

Actually, the translator kept misinterpreting many things. I don’t think she was that aware of the English anime fandom and its slang. Certain words would give her trouble, which was understandable. That aside, she did a good job.

I was surprised at how many people there spoke Japanese. Many fans choose to ask their entire questions in Japanese, while the translator tried to translate everything.

Someone asked Midorikawa-san to sing. I found the way this question was handled very interesting. I’ve wondered for a long time whether seiyuu keep practicing songs after they no longer have need to practice them. Midorikawa-san could not think of a song to sing, and when fans started screaming out song titles, he asked if anyone had any lyrics on them.

It was at this moment that something clicked inside my head. For the first time in a long time, the seiyuu felt, for the lack of a better word, “human”. They were tangible, and I found that comforting.

Someone in the audience had Japanese lyrics on them, and so Midorikawa-san sang a few verses for us. He has a very dreamy voice. I swear I could’ve melted into the floor.

Near the end of the session, I went up to ask another question. Well, not so much a question as a request. I let the last few people to get in line go ahead of me since I wanted to be last. What I was able to try was going to take time, and I didn’t want to eat up his remaining time so that fans couldn’t have their questions answered.

When, finally, it was my turn again, I started explaining rock-paper-Zazel and its relation to Weiss. I wanted to play it with Midorikawa-san using Kumagoro and two pens rather than a bowl and two squeaky hammers. Even though the audience seemed to be thrilled with the idea (as I suspect many of them were Weiss fans that knew what I was talking about), I think that perhaps I made it too complicated. In the end, I asked if I could play sai-sho-wa gu against him. He agreed. ^^ He wanted to know if it was a popular game in North America, and the difference between sai-sho-wa gu and rock-paper-scissors was explained.

We started playing, and the first result was a tie. The second time around, he stopped asking about pronunciation. I said “sai-sho-wa gu” a little differently than what was expected. Oops? This is what I get from learning a game from unsubtitled footage of the Weiss seiyuu. *heh*

Anyway, we continued our game, and after two more rounds, I won. I was honestly hoping he would win, but hey, I’m not complaining. I did a little bow and thanked Midorikawa-san, before sitting back down. ^^ Thank you, Midorikawa-san, for being such a good sport!

Midorikawa-san signed some autographs, and I took a few more pictures of him. I took some pics of Midorikawa-san and a nice girl. It turned out later that she’s a friend of Amiboshi. It’s a small world, ne? Then I returned to my spot with my friends. We talked for a bit, and Chapel was happy that he could stop videotaping now. ^^;

After Kira and I chased Midorikawa-san for a while and got some pictures, we returned to the session room.

At some point around here, two boys showed up who knew who I was. I didn’t really get to meet them, but according to some of the others, they were trying to figure out a way to approach me. *sweatdrops* That’s pretty cool, actually. Wish I got a better chance to meet with them.

Before we left the conference room, I ended up standing on one of the chairs singing the lyrics to “Spiritualized” sung by Midorikawa-san as ShuShu from Weiss Kreuz. It’s one of those songs that’s fun to sing for the sole fact that it’s almost entirely Engrish that makes no sense.

And so, I stood on a chair and starting singing:

Goodbye my mars
I shot your pigs
Goodbye strange fruits
Get higher! Get higher!

I think what scared me more than the looks people were casting my way, were the people that knew the lyrics and sung along. *sweatdrops* Go figure...

After that, I headed back up to my room to get ready for the Yu-Gi-Oh! Midnight Duel that Kira, Kelsi, Becky and I were planning on crashing.

Blue Rose wasn’t feeling that well, so I kept yelling at her to go to bed. Rem, PA, Eddy, and the rest of them were nowhere to be seen, and so Becky and I got ready for the Midnight Duel.

I got barely any sleep the Thursday before Anime North, and by this time, I was exhausted. Meh. I got ready to go anyway. I put on my pajamas, fit my hair under my Yugi wig, and put on my Millennium puzzle. When Becky, too, was ready, we headed over to Kira’s room.

Once there, I got to see Kira’s Malik and Kelsi’s Black Magician Girl costumes for the first time. They were amazing. ^^

In Kira’s room, there was a large cardboard box. It reminded me of Killtron, and I think I put it on despite the fact it had neither arm nor eye holes. *sweatdrops*

Long story short, we ended up wandering around the lobby, where our little group was stopped for pictures every two feet. ^^ In the lobby, we also found Scott McNeil, Kirby Morrow, Mark Hildreth and Brad Swaile. ^^ WAI! They were wandering around and meeting unofficially with the fans. I got a few pictures. I had never met Brad Swaile or Mark Hildreth before, so it was a treat. ^^

After wandering around for awhile, our insane Yu-Gi-Oh! cosplay group stopped to take a series of equally insane photos. I stopped some poor man and made him take a ton of photos for us. *glomps him* I don’t know who you are, but thank you! ^^

Looking back on it, that photo-shot was insane. Not only was Yugi carrying around Kumagoro wearing overalls, but Black Magician Girl had an astounding Yugi plushie, and the Rare Hunter was carrying around a Kumagoro dressed as Heero fro Gundam Wing. There was a giant hammer involved when Shinji showed up, and I ended up attacking a random Kaiba that walked by. *sweatdrops*

We all ended up at the duel eventually and popped our heads in to say hi. ^^ Somebody asked about my wig, so I took it off to show them what it looked like and how it was made. Afterwards, Malik and the Dark Magician Girl eloped.

Errr... after running around for awhile, Becky and I headed back up to our room. On the way, we ran into Spiku and I took more pics of him. ^^;

By the time we got back upstairs it was about a half-hour after midnight. Blue Rose was asleep (or at least trying to sleep), and Becky was going through all the stuff she bought during the day.

I took a small stack of white cardboard to the convention as I was going to use it for signs, but it was gone. It turns out the PA, Eddy, Rem and the rest of the guys took it all to use as autograph cards and signs reading “Which way to the Ballroom?” *sweatdrops* I was going to make signs that said “CRASHERS” and put them on the doors of the Yu-Gi-Oh! Midnight Duel. Oh, the horrible pun.

We were hanging out all night. It wasn't until well after four in the morning that we finally attempted to get some sleep.