Event: Sakura Con 2006

Date: 2006.03.23~25

Location: Seattle Convention Center, Washington

Written: 2006.06.15

I've been attending Sakura Con since 2001, so this year marked my sixth trip (it was my husband Josh's 8th trip....he's been every year except the first!) It has grown and grown each year, and this year it finally moved to a larger venue after spending several years in a space that was gradually proving to be too small (the previous year they'd reached the attendance cap and had to turn away tons of people). It moved North from Sea-Tac and straight into the heart of Seattle at the convention center (where there were also a couple of other conventions going on that weekend, including a forensics convention....it was pretty funny to see old guys in suits carrying brief cases getting all freaked out by the cosplayers ^_^). While the space was much larger, not much seemed that different except the number of people and the dealer's room....oh, the dealer's room ^_^ I'll get back to that in a minute....

So as usual, Josh and I made the trip from Portland to Seattle on the Thursday night before the con started. Upon arriving we quickly realized one of the downfalls of the Con taking place in downtown Seattle in that we had to pay $20 a night for valet parking at the hotel >_< So there's $60 right away that could have been spent in the dealer's room already gone! We got in around midnight (Tara and Mike had gotten there earlier in the day) and pretty much went to bed since we needed to get up at 7AM to get in line to pick up our badges (sucked for me, since I'm used to going to bed around 3 or 4 AM, and my body refuses to go to sleep any earlier unless I'm exhausted).

So we woke up around 6AM (after about 3 hours of sleep for me :P) and made our way over to the Convention Center (about two blocks away) by about a quarter to 7. We chatted with some fellow con goers in line (There was an Eiri and Shuuichi from Gravitation standing right behind me), and looked at the schedule that Tara had gotten the previous day to help plan out what we'd be doing (we figured out right away we'd be doing a lot of waiting in line the first day). At a few minutes past 7, the massive line started moving....slowly. We didn't move much for awhile, until someone said for all the pre-reg people to come get in a different line (I thought that we'd already been in the pre-reg line, since that was the line the signs had directed us to, but whatever :P). So we got into a line that moved much quicker, though there were some of the same problems as the previous year, though not as bad (The A-E section was always open and calling people up from further back in the line....damn you, A-E! And the good old R-Z line was mysteriously stalled when I was just a couple people away....probably another one of those "oh, gee, this is the pre-reg line? I thought it was the line to register!" dumbasses who always manage to muck things up :P) But I got my badge by about 7:30ish, so it wasn't too bad.

First thing we decided to do was go to a video room to kill some time before we started waiting in line. Even though the video rooms were supposed to be open, we found that none of them were, so we went to our first line-waiting adventure: getting tickets for the AMV contest. They were scheduled to start handing them out at 10, so we had a couple hours to kill. Tara, Mike, Josh and I kind of took turns wandering around in pairs. First Tara and I looked around a bit to get a feel for where things were. Then Josh and I went off to the console gaming room, where we found OMG!old skool! gaming, including NES, SNES, and even a couple of things from a bit before my time like Atari and Coleco Vision. We played a little Duck Hunt on the NES. I was much better when I was younger with the gun one foot from the screen than I was standing a few feet away as an adult ;P I wasn't used to using the little aiming thing, but Josh was since he'd hunted some growing up (he lived in Montana, so of course he could hunt, while my city girl ass didn't have a clue :P) I then played some Super Mario 3. I was surprised that my fingers went pretty much into auto-pilot, even though I hadn't played the game in years. It was, like, crazy muscle memory going on or something, because I wasn't really even thinking about what I was doing, I would just start a level and then BOOM 40 seconds later I was finished (I was surprised at how short the levels seem, comparing to things that came later). After awhile, Josh and I went back to the line, where I told Tara about the old skool gaming and she wanted to go there too since they had Bubble Bobble. So we left again (LOL, I spent the least amount of time in line out of anyone ^o^) and played some more games. I'm more used to the puzzle type one (called Bust a Move in the American version....not to be confused with the Japanese game called Bust a Move which was renamed to Bust a Groove in America....err, never mind :P) rather than the NES one, but Tara loved getting to play it again. We returned to the line where we filled out one of the sudoku puzzles in the Con guide as a team to kill time (there was a mistake in one, since they put two 6s in one square :P) and right around 10, they were ready to hand out tickets. We were only a few people back in line, so we got them pretty quickly. And then we were off to....

Our next waiting in line adventure! The dealer's room opened at noon, so we plunked ourselves down and stuck it out (well, actually, we took shifts again....for awhile, Josh and I went back to the hotel room for food, and we brought some back with us for Tara). We did the other sudoku puzzle, but messed up somewhere along the way and couldn't finish it. At noon, the floodgates opened....and I was in awe. The dealer's room was much bigger than it had been during previous Sakura Cons. The size was comparable to one of the rooms at Comiket (which were freakin' huge, and there were three of them at Comiket). I looked at every single booth on my first trip through, and an unbelievable three hours had passed by the time I was done! It honestly didn't feel like nearly that long, I was sure it had only been, like, an hour when I first looked at my watch. Some of the items I acquired on the first day were a cool Dragonball Z gashapon set (yes, I already have several, but it was cool looking!), the English Gravitation novel, and a Kyou Kara Maou keychain featuring Wolfram (w00t). Josh ended up getting a sexy Armstrong pin to put on his jacket ^_^ I was also highly amused by the maneki neko shirts that had the cats giving the finger instead of the beckoning gesture....we have tons of those cats at my work, and when I got back, I suggested to my manager that we should carry the shirts, too :P

Tara and I, after having left early from the Kumori Con 2005 version of the Antonia Levi's "Yaoi Zowie, I think they're gay!" panel due to annoyance at the plethora of irritating fangirl tangents, decided to try attending the panel again at Sakura Con. The venue was much smaller than the room at Kumori Con, so fewer people means fewer tangents, right? Well, not necessarily. Although it wasn't as bad as before, there were still tons of little side comments that led to side discussions that had nothing to do with the topic at hand. So Tara and I ended up leaving early again ^_^;; I don't want to give up on yaoi panels yet. I'm sure we'll try again at the next con, but I'm afraid the results will probably be the same :P

On Friday night, we went to the AMV contest. Tara was holding a place in line (though technically the security people had said a line couldn't be formed until a certain time was reached, so a lot of people hung around in a "non-line" before the real line was allowed to be :P) while Josh and I spent some time in the arcade gaming room (didn't get to play much, it's too crowded during the day, which is why I prefer to do my gaming late at night). We came to the line right around when seating was about to begin, trying to find where Tara was. We wandered up near the front of the line, and then we heard a Con guy announce to split up the line into two groups based on the color of our tickets. So, in the chaos of everyone switching lines right there, we ended up being at nearly the front of the line! We were seated in the second row, which was as close as we could get since the first row was reserved seating. It was fuckin' sweet ^_^ And so we settled in for the long contest ahead of us....there were tons of videos, it ended up being over three hours long! But it was a lot of fun....there were a couple too many Fullmetal Alchemist ones, though (but what do you expect, it's very popular and a great series, too). The Comedy and Trailers categories are always fun (one called Anime Academy Heroes was really well done), and this year they also added an "offbeat" category for stuff that's just kinda weird (but some were pretty funny, too, like The Interrogation using Paranoia Agent).

Later that night, we watched some more AMVs. There was a room where they were screening some, and also taking requests for things people wanted to see. There was some great stuff, like the Azumanga Die-oh series that included a segment called "Osaka High" (I think? Or was that one separate?). Finally, an explanation for Osaka's flighty behavior ^_^ Josh also enjoyed the segment with Yukari-sensei being all evil since she's his favorite character from Azumanga. They also showed Shounen Bushidou, which is a freakin' awesome video that cased major fangasms for all the females the first time I saw it screened at a con (it was either Sakura Con or Kumori Con 2005). Just thinking of all the work that must have gone into it....wow (but that damn song gets stuck in my head too easily! I'll just be sitting around doing nothing and suddenly find myself singing "Never give up! Never give in!" :P After we'd had enough AMVs for the night, we headed over to the gaming. I tried to play some Para Para, but the line was always long and I only had the patience to go through it once :P I mostly stuck with playing DDR and Pop 'n' Music until we went back to the hotel room for sleep around 3AM.

Up the next morning, don't remember doing much except going to the dealer's room. It was a day when we did a little smart shopping. Josh and I both love the manga series "Iron Wok Jan", which we had been checking out at the library. We decided we wanted to purchase the series, so we looked around at the different booths selling manga. It's not a very popular series, so there were only three places we found that had it: One that had volumes 1-16 for sale at the regular price of $10, one that had volumes 16 & 17 for sale 20% off, and one place that had volume 5 in a bargain bin of random manga for $5 each. So we bought volume 5 for $5 at the one place, then went to the place that had most of them and bought 1-4 and 6-15 at the regular price, and then bought 16 & 17 at the place that had them for 20% off. It's fun to go bargain hunting ^_^ I also bought some little busts of One Piece characters (in one of those rare cases where it's a little closed box with no openings but they still show you which character is inside). I got Ace (because he rarely wears a shirt ^o^), Zoro (because he's sometimes shirtless AND has three swords), and Sanji (because....well, I just had to complete my trifecta of hotness ^_^). I also gave in to NES nostalgia and bought one of those little magnetic displays that show scenes from games like Super Mario Bros. I got one of Luigi discovering that the princess, in fact, is not in this castle ^_^ And, upon discovering that Josh's Armstrong pin had gone missing, I bought him another one.

We checked out another Antonia Levi panel on Saturday afternoon, this one being about animal transformations in anime. It was a pretty good panel, not marred by nearly as many tangents as the yaoi panels. We left a little bit early since Josh's sister Andi wanted to borrow Tara's badge awhile so she could look around the dealer's room, so Tara and I ventured out of the convention hall (gah....daylight....so bright >_<) and were treated to the sight of a Sonic the Hedgehog cosplayer freaking out the normies on the street ^_^ He waved to people on a bus, who looked rather confused. It was fun just to see the reactions he got walking down the street. But anyway, we made our way across the street to The Cheesecake Factory....holy crap, that shit is good! I had a tough time deciding which one to get, they all looked fantastic! I eventually got some sort of cheesecake thing mated with a brownie sundae....fuckin' heaven! Afterwards, we hung out in the hotel room for awhile, watching anime on Tara's laptop. She made Josh watch some Prince of Tennis, since he had such a ball making fun of it back at Sakura Con 2003 We also watched some Yakitate Japan (which I really need to continue since it's funny as hell, but I keep forgetting I have it on disc >_<). Josh brought the card game Munchkin, so we also played a game of that (it's based on role playing, but you don't have to be a role player to like it....I should know, I enjoy the card game but can't tolerate role playing :P).

We made our way back over to the Convention Center in the evening. Caught some of the cosplay skits, but didn't watch for too long. Our main purpose was to catch another AMV showcase that night where they were going to be showing AMV Hell III. It was in the same room where the Battle Karaoke was going on, which was running a little late, so we caught the end of that (crazy, crazy otaku ^_^). Before the AMVs started, Josh got into a 20 minute argument with some guy about AMV quality and the value of drama AMVs and stuff. Me and Tara were sitting right in the middle of it. I was trying to ignore it, but found myself just getting annoyed everytime I looked behind me in the room and saw this couple making out with each other....for like, ten minutes. I mean, geez, go play kissy face in your hotel room, no one else wants to see you :P But anyway, the argument, it was pretty funny since Josh doesn't know a whole lot about AMVs besides just seeing them at cons, while the other guy seemed like someone pretty knowlegable who's actually been into them for a while and made his own. But Josh just loves to argue and always believes he's right, so off they went to argument land as Tara sat there looking like she was just praying for it to end (me, I'm used to Josh's ways, it didn't really phase me :P). They stopped when it was announced that the show was about to start, and parted ways amicably, both saying they had enjoyed having their discussion :P

So anyway, then we watched AMV Hell III, which was hilarious. The premise is similar to the Adult Swim show Robot Chicken, in that it's like channel surfing through a bunch of AMVs, seeing anywhere from a few seconds to a couple of minutes. Of course, with the huge number of clips shown, not all of them were great, but overall I was thoroughly entertained. I died at the DBZ one featuring Gokuu and Vegeta....I won't say what music it was set to because that woule ruin the fun for anyone who hasn't seen it, but I was crying I laughed so hard! I'm a Vegeta fangirl, so that sort of reaction is to be expected from me, but that clip still had one of the biggest reactions from the whole audience.

The rest of Saturday night was pretty much the same as Friday night. We watched some more AMVs, then went off to do some gaming until about 4AM (we hadn't planned on staying that late, but it turned into one of those things where Josh and I were both thinking the other person wanted to stay longer so we kept waiting for each other to finish what we were doing). We grabbed Tara out of one of the video rooms, where she was watching Angel Sanctuary, and went back to the hotel.

And then it was Sunday, time to pack up all our crap and go. But first, we had to go buy some more crap to haul back with us ;P While putting our stuff in the car, Josh discovered his Armstrong pin in the parking lot, which meant he now had two....but now that means he has one to wear on his jacket and one for safe keeping ^_^ We took one last spin through the dealer's room. At the beginning of the Con, I had thought that $300 was too much and I could never spend it all, but on the last day I was discovering that it actually hadn't been enough :P I ended up using some of Josh's money when I found a booth that had some VegetaxBulma doujinshi (OMG straight porn!) The three books I bought cost me $52 total....man, how I long for Comiket where most books were around 500 yen (about $5 American). With the last of Josh's cash we ended up buying a cute Haro clock. Earlier in the weekend we had considered buying an Azumanga doujinshi that featured Mr. Tadakichi (Chiyo's dog o_O) on the cover having his way with two of the girls from the show, just out of morbid curiosity, but we discovered on Sunday that it was already gone. So no beastiality for us :P

And that was about it. We sang a little ditty called "The Dealer's Room is for Porn" (parodying This) as we headed back to the car, where we dropped off our recent purchases and then did a little exploring of downtown Seattle. With our Con memberships, we had each received a coupon for 30 minutes of free gaming at a nearby arcade, which was cool (except for the fact that I nearly made myself seasick on a rafting game and had trouble using the card needed to play the games after it got a little bent from being in my pocket). We got some food, sat in a "sound circle" for awhile, and drove back down to Portland, with Andi and Tara watching Loveless in the backseat the whole way.

So overall it was a good con experience. However, there were a couple of things missing. At previous years' Sakura Cons, I'd always participated in the Anime Music Guessing game and the Anime Trivia game, but this year neither were to be found. It was disappointing, because with my competitive nature, I considered those events to be some of the highlights of the Con. I can only hope that they'll bring them back next year so I can show of my uber l33tness to all the n00bs out there ^_^

Pictures

My badge.