Comic for Tuesday August 3rd, 2004

"Otakon Report Part 1" Tuesday - August 3rd, 2004

I don't know if any of you were anxiously awaiting this, but here it goes anyway... River's Otakon 2004 Report!!!

So I was up till 6am on Thursday morning finishing the comic and ended up getting little under an hour of sleep. I went to work came back and mowed the lawn. I wasn't concerned. The plan was to go to sleep at 8pm and then wake up at 4 to drive down to New Jersey and meet up with Dave. When I finally went to bed at 12 pm, things were not looking good.

I woke up at 4am and then headed down to New Jersey to grab Dave. The whole trip took a touch over 4 hours. I think I only got really sleepy once. Oh and there was a big tractor trailer accident. I have no idea what happened, but the truck was pretty f'ed. I got to New Jersey with no problem, picked up Dave and then headed straight to Baltimore and Otakon. We got there at around 11 or 12 and checked right into our hotel. We then met up with Dave's friends from work Mike, Seth, and Beth. A bunch of very cool people who I had the pleasure of meeting for the first time. Mike was sorta the mastermind behind the trip and was an old Otakon veteran. We all just hopped on for the ride.

We then finally headed over to the convention where Dave and I split up from the rest of the group because we had preregistered. We then hit the opening ceremonies. What a train wreck that f'in thing was. I mean it wasn't bad, but the unintentional comedy was through the roof. I mean they set the whole thing up to be like a sportscast with these two dorkhammers pretending to be sports announcers who would announce each featured Otakon guest as if they were competing in the Otakonlympics. Like the Sports Guy says, I couldn't make this stuff up.

So when they finally announce the guests they make them come out with like a flag representing what country they come from. The people in Japan looked like pretty good sports, but I'm sure if they really knew what was going on they'd be pretty pissed they were being made to look like jackasses doing some high school sketch comedy gag. Anyway they introduced each guest and they had a few words to say and that was pretty cool. Then the J Pop group Angela sang the opening theme for anime Stellvia.

Only they had to start the song over and over again because they couldn't communicate to the sound guy that their monitor speakers weren't working. I understood them as did a number of other people fluent in Japanese, but unfortunately for all those involved, the sound guy was not one of them. Finally a translator found his way to the sound board and the problem was cleared up. We enjoyed the one song so much that we decided to come back later that night for a full song set by Angela.

After that, we roamed the convention center and hit the Dealer room where they sold every kind of anime related merchandise available. After that we went to Artist's Alley for a bit to catch some of the artists in action. Both were pretty cool. We then went to the Angela concert where before the show even started the lack of sleep caught up with me and I assed out for a minute or two. However I woke up in time for the concert and we ended up having a good time and enjoying the music quite a bit.

By then it was around 7:30 or so and we finally went to go eat. After eating we went to a big screening room to watch a few fan parodies. We ended up watching one called Nescaflowne and it was probably one of the most hilarious things I have ever seen. If you have watched Escaflowne it was even better. Basically it remade the series by basing it on the premise that the kingdom of Fanelia or Folgeria had a secret coffee that was desperately wanted by the Starbach empire. After the fan parody we went and checked out the new Ghost in the Shell TV series and since it was 11pm I was out like a light halfway through the first of four episodes. We stayed for two and then called it a night.

To be continued...

PS- I wanted to make a quick comment about the most recent comic. I've gotten a lot of feedback mistrusting Beth and Tenko still. I guess I've turned a bunch of you into paranoid conspiracy freaks... That's pretty cool seeing as I was aiming to just make a simple comic, which it still is at it's surface. Sorta like how you can read Animal Farm and enjoy it at distinct levels. On one hand you have a simple story about these crazy animals which made you realize pigs were bad and you never want to be a horse. On the other you get this paranoid diatribe about the evil of communism and how it is a corrupt system. My new slogan...Ninja Spirit- the Animal Farm of webcomics.

PSS- For those of you forum goers who have braved this rant this far may delight in knowing that Series Two of the Ninja Spirit card collection has been released in Joe's Shop. The quantity is limited so get the ones you want while they're still there!!

Vote for Ninja Spirit!!

River is guilty of late updating.