The Dealers’ Room
The dealers’ room wasn’t as impressive as it has been previous years, or so I’m told. The room was spacious enough, but it was only a little over half filled. The usual dealers of anime and related things were there, but the pickings were a bit slim compared to some other conventions. This didn’t stop people from lining up an hour before the room opened each day. Unlike previous years, the dealers’ room opened more or less on time.
Panels and Bad Smells
The panels, in contrast to the dealers’ room, weren’t a disappointment. Several of the panels dealt with retro or old-school anime, which I heartily approve of, while others tried to tie anime into the real world. All of them were well-presented and organized; just starting a panel on time is something of an accomplishment for most fan conventions.
The first panel I attended was “Fandom in the Before Time”, hosted by a couple of genuine paleo-otaku (assuming that’s a real term; if it’s not, I’m going to dedicate my life to making it one). Stories of grainy third- and fourth-hand VHS tapes without dubbing or subtitles abounded, as did tales of ancient otaku fighting for respect at sci-fi conventions by cramming as many people as possible into a hotel room to watch. This was almost enough to make me wish I could travel through time back to those days of the early 80s with a bunch of DVDs and a player and rip a paradox in the fabric of the universe that would destroy everything. If only those guys back then knew the kind of thing they were starting.
“I Heart the 70s” was, despite the VH-1esque name, very similar. These are shows that are homaged, spoofed, and reimagined all the time, but I hadn’t actually seen very much of them on-screen. After that, it was off to the “Mecha in Anime IRL” panel, which was more or less just a shouted discussion across the room as giant robot geeks tried to outdo one another. I managed to get a laugh when I explained the difference between robots and cyborgs as one having “squishy bits”.
I ended up staying in the same room, since the next two panels I wanted to see, “Anime 1982″ and “Spot the Reference” were there, too. All three of them were well-populated. Three hours in the same crowded, none-too-large room with some of the attendees having not bathed since AWA 2006, and with the air conditioning not turned on, was something less than pleasant. Even winning Pocky at “Spot the Reference” (I can’t remember what question I answered) didn’t help.
The Concert(s)
I’ll let other people cover the concerts in more detail, but I’ll give a short review from The Chef’s perspective. I saw The Captains, they were very loud and nonsensical, and I’m an old man who hates everything but Matlock. Wait. Scratch that. They were awesome, even if my eardrums rang afterwards. I didn’t stay for Peelander-Z or The Emeralds.
The Viewing Rooms
In the viewing rooms, most of the showings were subtitled, which tickles my dark little heart and confuses the illiterate heretics who watch anime dubbed into a language it was not meant to be in. One of the rooms was even dedicated to classic anime.
Contrary to popular assumptions, The Chef did not attend any of the hentai showings. Although I try to keep an open mind about such things, I have seen enough demonic tentacles, blushing really-we-swear-they’re-not-underage schoolgirls, bondage rape scenes, and bodily fluids spraying where they shouldn’t be to know that Japanese porn isn’t my cup of tea. The Japanese are way ahead of us in many ways, and if my stupid gaijin brain can’t yet grasp the future of erotica, that’s the way it’ll have to be.
The Chef was born 856 years ago on a small planet orbiting a star in the Argolis cluster. It was prophesied that the arrival of a child with a birthmark shaped like a tentacle would herald the planet's destruction. When the future Chef was born with just such a birthmark, panic ensued (this would not be the last time the Chef inspired such emotion). The child, tentacle and all, was loaded into a rocket-powered garbage scow and launched into space. Unfortunately, the rocket's exhaust ignited one of the spectators' flatulence, resulting in a massive explosion that detonated the planet's core, destroying the world and killing everyone on it.
When the would-be Chef awoke from his torpor, he looked around at the new world he found himself on. His first words were, “Hey, this place sucks." Disguising himself as one of the planet's dominant species of semi-domesticated ape, the being who would become known as the Chef wandered the Earth until he ended up in its most disreputable slum - Paris, France.
Taking a job as a can-can dancer, the young Chef made a living that way until one day one of the cooks at a local bistro fell ill with food poisoning (oh, bitter irony). In a desperate move, the bistro's owner rushed into one of the local dance halls, searching for a replacement. He grabbed the ugliest can-can dancer he could find, and found himself instead with an enterprising (if strange) young man who now decided, based on this random encounter, to only answer to the name “Chef".
His success as a French chef was immediate (but considering that this is a country where frogs and snails are considered delicacies, this may or may not be a significant achievement). Not only was the Chef's food delicious, it also kept down the local homeless population. He rose to the heights of stardom in French cuisine, and started a holy war against the United Kingdom to end the reign of terror British food had inflicted on its citizens.
When the Crimean War broke out around France, the Chef assisted Nikola Tesla and Galileo in perfecting the scanning electron microscope, which was crucial in driving back the oncoming Communist hordes. It would later be said that without the Chef, the war would have been lost. He was personally awarded a Purple Heart by the King of France.
After that, the Chef traveled to America, home of such dubious culinary delights as McDonald's Quarter Pounder With Cheese. He immediately adopted the Third World nation as his new home, seeing it as his job to protect and enlighten it. When the Vietnam War began, he immediately volunteered and served in the Army of the Potomac under Robert E. Lee and General Patton. During the war, the Chef killed dozens of Nazis, most of them with his bare hands.
Marching home from war across the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, stark-naked and freezing, the Chef wound up on the shores of Mexico. He spent several years there, drinking tequila with Pancho Villa and James Dean. He put his culinary skills to the test when he invented the 5,000-calorie Breakfast Chili Burrito With Orange Sauce (which is today still a favorite in some parts of Sonora).
Eventually, the Chef returned to his adopted home of America, where he met a slimy, well-coiffed weasel who was starting up a new kind of buffet - one dedicated to providing the highest-quality unmentionable appetizers to the online community. The Chef dedicated himself to spreading the word of his famous Lard Sandwich (two large patties of fried lard, in between two slices of toasted buttered lard, with bacon and cheese), as well as occasionally writing about his opinions on less-important topics than food.
Every word of this is true, if only in the sense that every word of this exists in the English language.
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