CN ANIME 2002

Pan's Journal of Events

Saturday, August 24, 2002


WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

Before I begin, please note that at the most, I got three hours of sleep Friday night, so I was very tired throughout the day. What can I say? Friday was very exciting with the con starting and all! ^^ This is also why this entry was not written on Saturday night. I will mess up the order of events and forget some stuff. There's no need to yell at me because this entry makes no sense. I will yell at myself and Kumagoro will eat my dinner for me. And without further ado, I present Pan making a fool out of herself part 46. ^^ Enjoy...

When I stepped out of the car this morning, I spotted the male Tohma cosplayer and immediately screamed, "Tohma!" So, as you can see, today's events were as normal as ever.^^

Since the dealer's room hadn't opened yet, there was a huge line to enter. It stretched all the way around the convention center. My friends entered the line and I went to check in with the press. I talked to a nice lady about interviews with Kirby Morrow and the two DragonBall Z voice actors, then went off. I walked along the giant line to look for cosplayers to take pictures of.

I soon ran into my friend, PhoenixSong, and she hung out with me and my friends. She's really cool! ^^

When the dealer's room opened, I wandered around taking photos. Lots and lots of photos. The girl that was Bakura on Friday was dressed as Yuna. PhoenixSong and I saw her and then got lost trying to find her in the crowd in trying to get her picture. I finally got it though. ^^

At eleven, we met Laura and her friends in the theatre showing the most recent Fushigi Yuugi OVA. I own all of Fushigi Yuugi and the OVAs, but I hadn't seen this new OVA yet. PhoenixSong hadn't seen any Fushigi Yuugi so she was a little confused.

The OVA was good, but some of it was weird (like Chiriko). The only real complaint I have is the quality. The first episode of the OVA looked as if it was swimming underwater. The second one had excellent animation quality, but the sound was quality wasn't all that great. Besides that, the OVA was great! Everyone cheered when their favorite characters appeared - especially Tasuki. He almost got a standing ovation for appearing on the screen.

After we left the OVA, we passed by the room where the Kirby Morrow spotlight was going to be held. Since I had to be upstairs at that point in time, I couldn't stay. I did spot Kira (cool Youji) waiting for Kirby and talked to her for a bit. She was planning an anime dinner for Sunday after the con. ^^ After I left her, I spotted Kirby and talked to him. He agreed to do an interview after his next autograph session. I thanked him, found my friends, and then we continued back on our journey upstairs.

There was someone in an awesome Diablo costume in the main hallway. He was huge and people were all around him taking pictures. I asked him to pose with Kuma and all of a sudden, the number of flash bulbs doubled. I guess Kuma is pretty popular. There are lots of pics of him flying around. In fact, there are more pics of my pink bunny then there are of me. *heh*

I also ran into Reenin. She was dressed as Pan from DragonBall GT. ^^ I gave her Gravitation and she gave me a pic she drew. It was of the Black Magician Girl from Yu-Gi-Oh and I could tell that she put a lot of effort into it. *hugs* Thankees, Reenin! I'm going to hang it on my wall! ^^

Anyway, on the escalators, I spotted my friend Steven (Fanatics Gaming Network) that I had met at when the DBZ hummer came to Fairview Mall earlier in the year.

I was supposed to have an interview with the DBZ voice actors at this time, but they hadn't arrived yet, so I did some more prep stuff and then got more photos. The girl from the KikiWai both knew I was Noriko! WAI!

We met up with Peter again at some point here. We wandered around and found ourselves in Artist's Alley where I ran into Steven again. He had a light saber and was being attacked with it. *heh*

Steven came with us, and then we all ended up eating lunch with Chapel's cousin and her friends.^^ I saw Tohma nearby. Anyway, during lunch, we all talked about different things. Steven explained his light saber and I talked with Peter about LELOLA for a bit. Someone spilled orange soda on the floor so Kuma got a little dirty.

Then we met up with Laura and all of us went downstairs to meet the DBZ voice actors. We set up everything for the interviews, but since they were delayed, they had to eat lunch, so couldn't do the interview (the irony). On the plus side, I got to meet them. ^^ They were very nice and I talked to Kyle-sama about bean dip (referring to his official site, which I am a huge fan of).

I met up with everyone after that and told them what was going on. Chapel was filming us. Laura showed us her newest stuffed flamingo (she collects them) and Steven showed off his light saber some more.

Eddy, Yui, Aggie, PhoenixSong, Peter, Chapel, his cousin and her friends and I went to go find Kirby Morrow. He still has a lot of autographs to sign before the interview so Peter came with me to get more photos of people cosplaying. Everyone else was talking and drawing. PhoenixSong was drawing some awesome pictures. She's an excellent artist. She even gave me some of her art. WAI! *hugs* I think I'm going to frame some of this! ^^

Since we had time to kill, we set up a rock-paper-Zazel tournament. I found my friend Amanda and she played too. For those of you who are confused, here are the rules to rock-paper-Zazel...

You'll need a bowl and two "squeaky" or soft hammers. Set them on the floor between you and the person you're facing. Play rock-paper-scissors like you normally would, but replace "rock-paper-scissors" with "sai-sho-wa gu, jan-ken-pon". If you win, you're objective is to grab one of the hammers and hit your opponent on the head with it. If you lose, you need to grab the bowl and cover your head with it before you're hit with the hammer. If you don't block in time and are hit in the head with the hammer, you lose and your opponent wins. If you do block it, it's a tie and you keep playing "rock-paper-Zazel" until one of you manages to bash the other person in the head with a hammer.

We using Kuma and two highlighters. ^^ The tournament was a hit and we even attracted a small crowd of people. In the end, it was down to Aggie-chan and Amanda. Aggie-chan won and was crowed the champion of the first rock-paper-Zazel tournament. ^^ It was such a hit that I think we'll do it again at Anime North next year. ^^

Since Kirby-sama was almost done with his autograph session, we got ready for the interview. Steven and Chapel spotted a guy dressed as Indiana Jones in a line. Steven came up with an idea and Chapel thought it was great so he video taped it.

I went up to the Indiana Jones in the line and looked at him. After starring at him for about thirty seconds, he was confused. As he was about to ask if I needed anything, I screamed "You're not Harrison Ford!" and ran off. *giggles* It was actually quite funny. Indiana Jones wasn't sure what was going on, but he spotted the camera and then us. We waved at him and he waved back. ^^

After knocking down a metal pole a few times, and then listening to another Kirby Morrow interview, it was time for our interview. I sat on his autograph desk. He would've sat on it too, but we were kinda scared that it would collapse.

The first question I asked came from my friend, Daniel, who dressed up as Otaru at Anime North. I asked Kirby-sama if he liked cats and a bunch of other stuff. It was really fun!

I read that his personal hero was Terry Fox. One of my heroes is Terry Fox so I decided to talk to Kirby-sama about that for awhile. Kirby actually had some great advice and said some powerful words. I'm glad we video taped it. This way I'll be able to type up everything he said. ^^

And, of course, we played rock-paper-Zazel. He was surprisingly good at it! He beat me! ^^

After the interview, I asked him if he could sign a Gundam Wing manga. It wasn't mine. I ran into the girl cosplaying as Daisuke from Digimon. She was waiting in line, but couldn't get his autograph so I wanted to get it for her. ^^

We got some great pics and Aggie-chan was in heaven. She's a huge fan of his and she assisted him with rock-paper-Zazel earlier. She was very happy to be seeing Kirby-sama.

After bothering Kirby-sama for way too long, we let the poor man leave. *heh*

After this, we went to find the DBZ voice actors. They were gone. I would've been there sooner but I was interviewing Kirby-sama (again, the irony).

We all ended up sitting down downstairs. The masquerade was going to start in a few hours and the line was already long. It was huge. By this time I was really really tired and melting. Taking this into account, as well as the fact that even though I could get into the masquerade, my friends couldn't, I made the decision that we should skip the masquerade. I figured that we might as well go back and sleep. That way we'd be refreshed in the morning.

To make up for it, I went through the line of contestants and took pictures of them. Most of the costumes were gorgeous! They really were. ^^

I also walked through the line of people waiting to get into the masquerade. I ran into Laura and her friends a few times. Laura got me to explain what's going on with Digimon this fall to the guy standing in line behind them. Actually, now that I think about it, many people are confused about Digimon. I should really post a detailed explanation about everything. Oh, and for an interesting side note, many Digimon fans are over 25. *winks*

I also got pulled over into a photo with a bunch of people who thought me and Kuma (who was still riding on my head) were cool. I think they were some of Kira's friends. ^^

I also talked with Amanda some more. The girl in line next to her was asleep. *heh* I saw Shinji too. He looked dead tired as well. Actually, Shinji had brought a stuffed fox to the con on Saturday. Since the fox is the sworn enemy of the bunny (aka Kuma) we had a lot of fun with it. There were times when we he was chasing me and Kuma around leaving a lot of very confused people. ^^

Moving on...

It seemed Butterfly lent her Kuma (my Kuma's twin) to this other girl who was wearing Kuma on her head. By chance, we ran into each other. Here were two girls with pink bunny rabbits on their head. I guess a lot of other people found this interesting as well because we were blinded by flash bulbs. ^^

After that, my friends and I got ready to go. Why? So we could sleep and be rested by the morning. And I'm glad we did get some rest. For tomorrow would require lots of energy and be lots more fun than any of us could imagine.