At 8/23/98, Christopher Angel wrote:

Well, I'm back from my first anime con, and since I've seen loads of other
people write these, I thought I would too.

First of all, I'd like to say it was a decidedly mixed experience.  I really
feel that my money was NOT well spent in going to this con.  Colin, my
con-going sidekick, agreed with me.

Seeing as how loads of people comment on other peoples convention
experiences, I will too. :)
For the amount of money it cost me, it was a much better deal. However, it
was still a mixed experience overall.

Friday
------

A curse upon all stupid travel agents, especially the dim little gits who
set our reservation for 7AM as opposed to 7PM.  I did NOT enjoy waking up at
5AM to catch a plane, especially since I had been getting little sleep the
past few days.

Should have gone with Curtis and the gang. Cheap and fast. Flying such a
short distance (about 400km) is a ludicrous waste unless you need to save
time, which you didn't. 

So there we are in Toronto, at our hotel at 9AM.  Joy and thrills, we can't
check in til 1PM!  So, Colin and I went wandering around.  That was when we
discovered a blessing of our chosen accomodation:  It was near downtown
Toronto - the edge of Chinatown in fact - sowe didn't have to walk very far
to get to the con, or to any of the other sights that interested us.  We
went and spent a couple hours making like hick tourists and went up the CN
Tower, then we went over to look at the Eaton's center.

I ended up at the Toronto Hospital Hostile, which as strange, as it was
supposed to be fully booked, yet had plenty of rooms available. Admittedly
though, I wouldn't stay there again, as it was very accommodating, and I
could have afforded better. The bonus was it was less than 5 minutes walk
from the Michiner Institute, where the con was held, and was also in the
heart of downtown Toronto. I also spent Friday night walking around
downtown. (I'm amazed we didn't meet) However my big beef for the evening
was that it was garbage night. That, combined with the smell of Lake
Ontario (essentially, a large stagnant body of water) was truly
unbelievable, and eventually I retreated earlier to my room. 

I skipped all the tourist spots, as they hadn't changed since the last time
I was in Tor, and called up Satoru (irc.fanfic.com guy) and we went
cruising the malls. (I still owe him for dinner and gas). Anyway, hitting
the large 'chinese' malls proved to be interested, as Ottawa simply has
nothing like it. Saw my first Sanrio store, and ran like crazy...

At 1PM we returned, checked in, and I slept for about 5 hours, until Colin
dragged me out of the place so we could go eat.  We returned, and I read
late into the night, since it's kind of hard to fall asleep after a good nap
like that.

I slept okay, except for the guy watching TV down the hall, oh well.

Saturday
--------

We reached the con around 11:30AM, just in time to catch the last 20 minutes
of MKR OAV.  Neat show that, a lot more like the second season than the
first though...much more violent.  Then, after that, we caught the first
episode of the dubbed Bastard OAV.  One word: CRAP!  Good lord, did they
butcher that.  Didn't even keep all the name puns.  Bleah.  We ducked out to
see the end of a panel on the Tenchi Universe(s) interesting points there
about how much of the cells and AIC artwork have NOTHING to do with the
show.  I saw John Demita there (played Seriyo in the OAVs), and it was a
kick.

Was there around 9:30 myself, stood in line for the next hour, because I
hadn't pre-regged (I didn't even know I was going till about a week
before). Got in just in time to get the last ten minutes of the Bandai sub
of Gundam 0079 Movie 1. Looked like a good subtitling job, got a free
AnimeVillage mouse pad, although it's too tiny to be of any use. Wandered
around looking for Geoff (Tenkawa from irc.fanfic.com) and his friend Brian
(Thrikeen form irc.fanfic.com). eventually, I found him, only to lose him
in the dealers room, oh well. Speaking of that, what a rip off that place was.

Dealers room:

Graphic Novels in French. MKR, 3X3 Eyes, A!MG. Hmm, I can buy them cheaper
from the local Chapters.
Pioneer cells. Guy selling them claimed the listed price was American
dollars, and that he had to mark everything up. Sorry, list price on any
item in Ontario is the sale price, irregardless. It's the law. :)
H Doujinshi, table full SM and Eva stuff. Gone in half an hour. When I
asked they were $40, later I heard he sold them for $18. DAMN!!! ;P
One of the nicest selections of stuff was from RGB, a dealer local to me in
Ottawa,. D'OH!!!!

Oh well, bought a t-shirt.

Skipped all the guests. I'm not really into the voice actors or graphic
artists themselves anyway, just their work.

THEN we had the General Fanfiction panel.  That was where I discovered (much
to my shock) the ammount of um...fame?...notoriety?...I have among fanfic
readers.  One guy actually said to me: "You're no Biles, Davies, or Lawson,
but you do good work."  That was a kick, but not as much as meeting Bert Van
Vilet.  He showed up for Saturday only, and sat in on the two panels I was
on...more on that later.  However, I'd just like to say meeting Bert was the
HIGH POINT of the whole experience.  The panel was disappointingly
unfocussed, but we managed to touch on some fun topics.  For some reason,
people kept on eyeing my bokken suspiciously, though.

Yeah, the panels where terrible. They need an assigned moderator, who had
final say over the panel. And Bert should have been ON the general fanfic
panel. Oh well, the rooms could have been larger as well. Track 1 was a
panel room. (it had plush seating, and couches people slept on).
And next time, everyone on the panel must have PUBLISHED! at least one story.


The best panels were the Evangelion panel, and the Hentai panel. (but then,
that's probably just biased opinion)

Hime-chan no Ribbon called to us, so we watched the first two eps of that,
followed by eps 2 and 3 of Tetsuan Birdy...wheee!

Club Anime! will be showing the rest of Birdy the Mighty. We do have it.

Then we had my second panel: Self Insertion Fanfiction.  Gee, I guess
someone saw me coming, hey? ^_^;;  Anyway, that one went decidedly better,
especially since Katchan (sp?) was decidedly against the genre, mostly
because she had been jaded by all the bad DBZ ones she'd seen.  Bert sat in
on that one too, and I TRIED to get him to be involved, but he had to duck
out anyway.  GRRR.  We mostly focussed on the differences between quality
SI's and...well...crappy ones.

Skipped it. I'm not sure what I was doing then, I think I was eating lunch.

Food run...heh.  There was an "anarchist" demonstration near the con hall,
and the cops warned me to keep my bokken out of sight, I might get attacked.
Heh.  Sat in Subway and ate, never saw anything.

Yeah, the police special response teams assembling outside the FRONT DOOR
of the con was certainly an interesting moment.

Went back, watched Psychic Wars (dumb), tried to get in to watch a panel on
Sailor Moon Censorings, but it was WAY too packed, so we went to watch Hyper
Police (fun).   Saw Alexander next...all I can say is if you like Aeon Flux,
you'll love it, they're by the same people.

I was killing time then, waiting for the Anime Club's get together. I tried
watching Hyper Police, but couldn't get into it because they started at
episode 6. (They treated the con as a continuation of their regular showing
schedule, and didn't realize most people hadn't seen it from the
beginning). Looked good though, we'll try to get it for the CA! showings.

The Club's get together was cool, because we talked about running a club
and such, but after Rob Wong came up, it went downhill from there.

Went out to dinner, came back, the masquerade was packed, so I had to miss
it. hung around till it ended, saw all the costumes. Somebody will have a
web page about it, so I won't really comment about it.

Next, a panel I watched on Shared Universe fiction.  Most of it was centered
around the Revenge Wars, but I thought it went well overall.

I was at the hentai panel, which had a female panel member who took the
lead. Eventual conclusion was that hentai anime we really liked, was the
romantic stuff with a plot. In other words, stuff that held our interest
enough to be watched again. 

We would have covered alot more than we did, except they had a hentai video
showing in one of the rooms, and we all left to watch that. (which, btw,
was an Arctic sub, and we heckled it to death)

Headed home, and discovered the BAD part of out chosen accommodations: It
was near downtown Toronto.  Lots of people sleeping on the street and street
youths wandering around.  I felt decidedly...uncomfortable, coming from a
much smaller and cleaner city.

Yeah, that's true in downtown Ottawa to a degree as well, you just don't
live there, so you don't see it.

Sunday
------

Checked out of our rooms, and wandered over to the con again.  Watched a
panel on Disney and Miyazaki - John Demita was there again.  From what he
and the others said about the deal between Disney and Miyazaki, I was left
with the impression that it would be a more or less good deal...I still hope
they bring out subs though.

I wanted to be there, except I went to lunch, then watched Ping Pong club.
Something I want to show now. ;)

Around 1pm, I left the con briefly with a few friends, and we went cruising
some of the Toronto mall's for, uhm, items of interest. Got back around
4:30pm for the closing ceremonies. 

Watched KOR TV eps 1 & 2, and once again considered buying the set from
AnimEigo.  Went to watch ep 4 of Birdy and a couple of the music video
entries...then wandered over to sit in the last few minutes of a
Self-Publishing Manga panel.  That was followed by a panel on war in Anime
which touched on some really good points, although one of the panelists was
a little too hung up on the older stuff for my tastes...he spent to much
time saying everyone should watch Star Blazers and Harlock, and not enough
discussing the topic.  The physicist guy they brought in was a welcome
voice...he talked about a lot of interesting things.

Finally, we had my last panel...on Sailor Moon fanfiction.  THAT was a
disaster!  3/5 of the panel were part of this one SM group, and they
essentially dominated the panel with self-plugs and telling us all about
THEIR works.  THe rather roudy set in the front row didn't help either.  I
gave up about 15 mins in on getting anything done, and was happy to leave
when I could.

Yeah, we had to wait for our driver to extricate himself from that. Heard
it was a total waste.

Went to the airport, caught our plane (it was late) went home (arrived 1.5h
late).

Got in the car, nearly died on the way home. Oh well, don't you love rental
vans.

Epilogue
--------

As I said, I really feel my money was wasted.  I think the panels could have
used an acutal moderator, instead of just being free-form the way they were.
I also felt that things were planned poorly - damnit, I never got a chance
to see Fred Perry!

Poor planning and structure was definitely the big killer.

Lovely weather the whole time, BTW.  Hot and humid, yay - I HATE Ontario.

It was air conditioned inside. it could have been much worse.

Anyway, I can say for sure I won't go back next year.  Maybe to CNAnime, or
I might just save up and go to one of the BIG ones in the US...

They are moving to an actual Convention center next year, and I hope to get
more involved in planning. So it should be better.