I'm back from Kumoricon and currently undergoing the recovery process. It's very nice to be able to cook for yourself again after four days of living on McDonalds crap. Anyhoo, as for the con itself, it sorta sucked. The hotel was much too small, and the hotel staff much too uptight and jerk-ish. Trying to walk from one event room to the next was like trying to navigate through an elaborate puzzle designed by a diabolical villain bent on spreading madness throughout the world. It was a bizarre system of one-way halls and overstuffed elevators. I am not alone in my complaints. The general consensus this year was that the con sucked, primarily due to the venue. But hey, let's move on to some more positive notes...
The Anime Hunters panel was hilarious as usual, even though after waiting in line half an hour I had to stand in the back. Panel rooms were way too small...but anyhoo, they also hosted the opening ceremonies in a very awesome fashion with a Final Fantasy 7-themed video explaining the convention rules, similar to the Phoenix Wright thing they did last year.
The hentai panel was probably the highlight of the convention for me in terms of official events. I was accompanied by a female friend who has a very weak stomach toward anything related to anal sex, and...well, let's say her reactions to certain scenes were quite hilarious, especially a scene that involved a glass test tube...
Throughout the seven conventions I've attended, I don't recall going to any industry-related events...except the Dark Horse panel Sunday morning of this con. Nothing else was going on, so I figured I'd check out what this was about. It was a surprisingly fun panel, featuring two of their manga editors and the guy responsible for all of their license acquisitions. They made the panel entertaining and informative, and seemed to have a deep knowledge of manga, name-dropping certain titles like Kaiji and The World Is Mine, which I didn't think anyone but I knew about.
The exhibitors hall was decent, though not exceptional. I picked up a large amount of the Eden, Blade of the Immortal, Sanctuary, and Astro Boy manga, as well as a few t-shirts. Also bought the second volume of the American hentai book Dragofest, from Neolucky. She's one of the few Americans I've found who can make cartoons sexy.
I made conversation with random people more often than I do at most cons, partially because there was nothing better to do. On Friday I met a pretty freakin' awesome chick who was doing a Vegeta cosplay. We hung out some more on Sunday while countless people harassed her into doing the "Over 9000" thing. I also got to hang out with some of my friends who I scarcely get to see, which was awesome. Sunday night, I wandered around talking to random girls. This was fairly successful. I ended up having fun conversations with five different girls, and collecting some contact information. The social aspect of this con definitely helped make up for the failure contained within the official event aspect.
That more or less wraps up my con experience for this year. Overall, I had some fun, but the convention was held at the wrong place and was horribly mismanaged. I'll probably skip Kumoricon next year and focus on Sakuracon instead. Better events, more people I know, and far fewer annoyances to deal with. Anyway, the con report's done, but I have a few other notes to make...
Aria is a ridiculously relaxing anime. It's a slice-of-life series about female gondoliers. It's cute, but not in an annoyingly moe fashion. It's relaxing, but not boring. The atmosphere of the series makes watching it a great way to unwind. Worth checking out if you like to use anime as a form of relaxation.
I went to Ponyo and Inglorious Basterds yesterday, finally. Ponyo was the first anime movie I've seen in theaters. The animation was superb, as expected from Miyazaki. The storyline was fairly simple and straightforward, but nonetheless pleasing. I'd give it something on the order of a 7/10 overall. Good movie, an excellent piece of animation, but not groundbreaking and pretty much the type of thing you'd typically expect to see from Miyazaki.
Inglorious Basterds was amazing. Possibly my second favorite Tarantino movie next to Pulp Fiction, though it's a fierce competitor for the top spot. Most of the movie is conversational dialog, which some people might expect to get boring after two and a half hours...but those people would obviously have never seen a Tarantino movie. This movie never leaves you bored, and produces some extremely tense moments. I can't go too deeply into some of the things I loved about it without giving mass spoilers, but in any case...watch this movie. It's the best thing to hit theaters in a long time.
One other movie I watched recently was Pink Floyd's The Wall. This was somewhat disappointing, as I had imagined some more interesting visualizations for the album. Still, it was an interesting experience, and had some crazy art. Worth checking out if you're a fan of the album, but don't expect too much from it...
That wraps it for this week. I'm still exhausted, so I think I'll grab a quick nap before finishing unpacking and hitting the reading for college. Hopefully I'll make time for some movie-watching and manga-reading so that I have some interesting things to report on next time. Oh, and I shall work on getting my pictures from Kumoricon uploaded. I didn't take many, and the ones I did take are on my phone, and I'm not sure how to get them off of there, so...yeah. Till' then...
I've recently begun watching Hajime no Ippo. Despite my usual distaste for sports anime, I'm liking it a lot. The characters are memorable, the fights are interesting and heavy on tactics, and there's constant plot progression (noteworthy for shounen anime). I'll definitely make it through both seasons and the accompanying movie/OVA, but I can't imagine starting the manga anytime soon. 80+ volumes is just too much for me to start chipping away at right now.
Dorohedoro is amazing. The opening page involves a lizard man biting someone's head off. If that's not enough to catch your attention, the series also involves a toilet connected directly to hell. Still not enough? How about a rich, deep, though often chaotic plot that will make you think. A diverse cast of personality-filled characters. Extremely detailed artwork often involving surreal, cool-looking situations. A setting that is a world extraordinarily different from ours, the differing customs and culture of which will make you feel like a visitor in a foreign land. This is Dorohedoro.
The folder displayed in the above image took me about an hour to organize. It's a combination of my anime, manga, drama, and games folders. I decided to set an arbitrary limit of 9 to each of those. This doesn't involve my archives, of course. It's just the stuff I'm currently using. The limit is to keep me from going overboard, and trying to follow way too many manga at the same time, causing me to lose interest in most of them and fall horribly behind. I was followed somewhere around 35 manga before this. Now, 9. I don't feel very bad about the cuts, really. Some of them I might return to once they're finished. Others, once given closer examination, didn't seem to give me any reason for wanting to continue them. Either way, it's the absolute best of the best now.
