Saturday Part II: Blue

We located Crazy Bunta after the Lupin gathering for our cosplay interview. Hopefully I didn't look too awkward on camera (I don't do interviews often). I can't wait for the finished product. After that bit of fun, Victoria and I headed back to the dealer room. The advantage to "Twilight Gemini" Lupin was that I could easily switch to live-action Onizuka from "GTO." It's a good excuse to be brash and it's a nice change of pace. Hanging out at the Tokyopop booth proved to be a good chance for photo ops. Yesterday Tokyopop had a Pictionary type game. I managed to get a manga from guessing "Battle Royale." Though Victoria did guess the same also. And so did many others. I guess shouting very loudly helped. Today I tried the Viz money catching booth. Victoria's short skirt would have been embarrassing. I caught about 50 bills. Not bad for a thief (or cheap school teacher).

I didn't have any real intention of doing the "Battle Royale" gathering. It was a back-up costume in case one of the main costumes went wrong. But with the acquisition of a certain fork from a certain restaurant, I figured I could spend a couple minutes at the gathering. I had the bloody shirt, my collar, and now my weapon. The gathering was already in session. People actually knew which student I was (Yutaka Seto; Boys #12). Victoria took some pics and clips as I mingled with Mayuka and others for a bit. While everyone may have had prop weapons that only looked lethal, my fork can actually be used as a piercing weapon (and it REALLY hurts the pride to be stabbed with a fork). I even planned to have it checked in at security afterwards. It was a nice gathering until people from different series started to crash it. The disposal of these interlopers didn't sit well with me. We left while plans of a BR viewing party were being finalized. I tried out being Kazushi Niida (Boys #16) with his movie weapon, but I decided that I didn't want to suffer the same fate as him at the hands of Chigusa.

Victoria and I changed for our Martian gathering. No aliens with big heads and ray guns here, just whatever characters came from Mars. In Victoria's case, Princess Mars. In my case, Spike Spiegel manga version. Nothing much was going on at AX at night. As predicted, the Princess House/Horse (or another word that kind of sounded like "horse" but started with a "W?") convention people were being loud, rude, and drunk. They were a bigger disturbance to the hotel than the AX attendees, and that's saying a lot. They had absolutely no respect for anyone filming AX activities and would walk into and ruin several clips of convention action. Someone ought to slap a warning at them. We mingled with a BR cosplayer for a bit, flipping off the occasional Princess Horse people that gave us dirty looks. Yes, Victoria's dress is a lot more original than yours. Deal with it.

Shifting gears, Victoria and I headed up to one of the BR viewing parties in the Marriott. We required a key to access the floor, but someone was going up there anyway so we got to that floor anyway. It was nice to see part of the movie with a group. We headed back to the Hilton and met up with someone. She suggested that we coul hit the Princess House party above. Despite being as well dressed as--and in some cases better dressed than--the Princess Horse attendees, they didn't let us into their dance. We spent some time with the saxaphone player that Victoria knew. Eventually we got a call from Jim asking if we were free to hang out with him. We were so we did. I ran into one of my friends Phil Bunbury (hadn't seen him in ages; I didn't know he went to cons now), who asked to borrow my camera for a bit as he headed towards the Initial D car. After AX, I scanned through the footage he took and was amazed he actually took a look at and inside the car. A certain Adam Sandler song about a car came to mind to describe that Initial D car.

Victoria and I headed to AX Idol after it was over. The only Idol I have ever liked watching was the one Indiana Jones was after. We found the lady who voiced Mokonna from "Rayearth." It was getting late again so it was time to turn in.

Costume Count: 04

Total Costumes: 14

And I leave you now with my version of a true AX Idle after a hard day at a con. Click to return.