Major Tom
07-16-2006, 09:16 PM
After a hectic week, the perfect way to finish it off is with an anime convention.
AVCon 2006 was held last weekend (15-16 July) at the University of Adelaide, and I feel it is my duty to report. I did take pictures, but since I couldn't find the digital, I had to break out the old SLR and buy some film. They are currently being developed.
On the Saturday I hooked up with a couple of friends of mine, Lankey and Ali and we caught the train into the city, arriving a little late. The theme this year was Pirates vs Ninjas, and since I didn't have the courage to go full cosplay, I bought a piratey hat and wore that around. Ali had more of a costume, and Lankey had none.
We joined the line at about 10:30, before discovering that the long line we joined was not the preregistration line, which was further down and much shorter. However, because they had to find out name badges, the other line actually finished before we did.......
First things first, to the Dealer rooms! Nothing better than spending money. There were a number of vendors, each offering a good selection of Manga, artbooks, DVDs toys plushies and other assorted bits and bobs. I snapped up a number of manga volumes from various series I've been collecting, and a few new ones when I saw they were running a bulk special (yay, I now have 4 volumes of BECK!), and a couple of CDs. Ali found a clear case gameboy for $9 (he later found that it didn't work), and I ran into ShinoMatrix. We then headed down the the chillout room to sit down and actually get our bearings and figure out what we going to do.
First on the list was Ouran High School Host Club. A couple of episodes were showing, so I strongly suggested that we go see it. We had missed the first episode, but they enjoyed the second, even if they didn't quite get what was going on. Off to get some lunch, and back just in time for the One Piece Movie.
We ran into some of Lankey's friends, and we all watched One Piece. Not a bad film. Ali had to leave at that point, and the rest of us trundled down to watch the Pirates vs Ninja's game show. That was quite amusing, as the well planned show seemed to fall apart at the seams, with questiosn going missing and such, wrong answers from the judges (Starboard is the left side? Yarr, somebody needs to walk the plank!). Still, with the shoe going overtime I left Lankey and his friends behind to to go take a seat at the Madman panel.
I walked in on the art panel. It seemed everything was running behind schedule that afternoon. Still, I like art, so I sat in and learned some intersting things about using photoshop, CS2 and mixed media. No doubt I'll have forgotten them by the time I actually get to put them into practice. As the art panel was finishing up, Lankey (minus friends, they went home to play WoW or something) joined me for the Madman panel.
Madman, Australia's main anime distrobutor. I like sitting on these panels, I get to hear what's coming out, or even something that is in the works but not ready for an 'official' announcement. This time around we had Speed Grapher, Baki the Grapppler and some others, but what I was really interested in was the retro stuff. This year they are comign out with Mask and Ulyesses 31, 2 shows I grew up with and loved. They also said they have a special surprise title as well, but they weren't giving anything away. I guessing it's probably Samurai Pizza Cats or old skool Ninja Turtles. Lankey reckons it's going to be Inspector Gadget.
They also announced that this year, being they 10 year anniversary, they will be re-releasing Bubblegum Crisis on DVD, the first title they ever released, complete with 80's music and all. Then came question time, and there were various questions about obscure Toei titles, certain Godzilla films out th roughly half million made, and I found out that Yukikaze will finally be finished in November.
With that, we decided to call it a day. We were tossing up the idea of staying for the quiz night, but we didn't have the numbers to make a team.
(I'll put in Sunday later, as I have to get back to work now)
AVCon 2006 was held last weekend (15-16 July) at the University of Adelaide, and I feel it is my duty to report. I did take pictures, but since I couldn't find the digital, I had to break out the old SLR and buy some film. They are currently being developed.
On the Saturday I hooked up with a couple of friends of mine, Lankey and Ali and we caught the train into the city, arriving a little late. The theme this year was Pirates vs Ninjas, and since I didn't have the courage to go full cosplay, I bought a piratey hat and wore that around. Ali had more of a costume, and Lankey had none.
We joined the line at about 10:30, before discovering that the long line we joined was not the preregistration line, which was further down and much shorter. However, because they had to find out name badges, the other line actually finished before we did.......
First things first, to the Dealer rooms! Nothing better than spending money. There were a number of vendors, each offering a good selection of Manga, artbooks, DVDs toys plushies and other assorted bits and bobs. I snapped up a number of manga volumes from various series I've been collecting, and a few new ones when I saw they were running a bulk special (yay, I now have 4 volumes of BECK!), and a couple of CDs. Ali found a clear case gameboy for $9 (he later found that it didn't work), and I ran into ShinoMatrix. We then headed down the the chillout room to sit down and actually get our bearings and figure out what we going to do.
First on the list was Ouran High School Host Club. A couple of episodes were showing, so I strongly suggested that we go see it. We had missed the first episode, but they enjoyed the second, even if they didn't quite get what was going on. Off to get some lunch, and back just in time for the One Piece Movie.
We ran into some of Lankey's friends, and we all watched One Piece. Not a bad film. Ali had to leave at that point, and the rest of us trundled down to watch the Pirates vs Ninja's game show. That was quite amusing, as the well planned show seemed to fall apart at the seams, with questiosn going missing and such, wrong answers from the judges (Starboard is the left side? Yarr, somebody needs to walk the plank!). Still, with the shoe going overtime I left Lankey and his friends behind to to go take a seat at the Madman panel.
I walked in on the art panel. It seemed everything was running behind schedule that afternoon. Still, I like art, so I sat in and learned some intersting things about using photoshop, CS2 and mixed media. No doubt I'll have forgotten them by the time I actually get to put them into practice. As the art panel was finishing up, Lankey (minus friends, they went home to play WoW or something) joined me for the Madman panel.
Madman, Australia's main anime distrobutor. I like sitting on these panels, I get to hear what's coming out, or even something that is in the works but not ready for an 'official' announcement. This time around we had Speed Grapher, Baki the Grapppler and some others, but what I was really interested in was the retro stuff. This year they are comign out with Mask and Ulyesses 31, 2 shows I grew up with and loved. They also said they have a special surprise title as well, but they weren't giving anything away. I guessing it's probably Samurai Pizza Cats or old skool Ninja Turtles. Lankey reckons it's going to be Inspector Gadget.
They also announced that this year, being they 10 year anniversary, they will be re-releasing Bubblegum Crisis on DVD, the first title they ever released, complete with 80's music and all. Then came question time, and there were various questions about obscure Toei titles, certain Godzilla films out th roughly half million made, and I found out that Yukikaze will finally be finished in November.
With that, we decided to call it a day. We were tossing up the idea of staying for the quiz night, but we didn't have the numbers to make a team.
(I'll put in Sunday later, as I have to get back to work now)