Specifically, it’s Anime North 2010 time. Talk about your last minute posting! The con starts in a few hours and it lasts all weekend. I don’t have any specific plans other than the shmup game room and what appears to be a Touhou panel, but everything is subject to the whim of the moment. I also have yet to decide if I want to stalk NNL at karaoke.

Anyway, if you see me, say hi. I don’t have a cool Strike Witches hat like that guy, but if it helps at all, I have a Flandre strap on my bag and my t-shirt repertoire is mostly comprised of J-List stuff (since I couldn’t use Photoshop and design my own shirts to save my life). There aren’t any notable guests, but the con is usually a fun local event, and I have high hopes. See you there!

~ ETERNAL
つづく

P.S. I have a “real” post scheduled for tomorrow morning, don’t worry.

©2010 Memories of Eternity. All Rights Reserved.

Thankfully, New Year’s Day is more about looking ahead than looking back. Without further ado, I bring to you my personal list of goals for the year, filled with as much starry-eyed dreaming and inevitable cynicism as you might expect from a self-proclaimed Passionate Anime Fan™ who spent New Year’s Eve on 4chan.

In the year 2010, I will attempt (or attempt to attempt) to…

• Achieve Privileged/Contributor status on Danbooru. (That was seriously the first thing to come to mind).
• Change my lifestyle so that gaining access to the loli tag is not the first thing that comes to mind when I think about resolutions.
• Beat another Touhou game on Lunatic. I can’t run away forever.
• Stop throwing in the words “actually” and “really” where they don’t belong.
• Stop throwing in words where they don’t belong, period.
• Find a synonym for awesome.
• Sleep less, and set an alarm if I need to.
• Stop waking up on time to turn off my alarm and go back to sleep until 11:00.
• Play ef as soon as it gets translated and write an extremely long post filled with burning passion.
• Play Rewrite and excrete varying amounts of bricks at the inevitable Ryukishi07 killer lolis.
• Play Love Plus (I guess this one is out of my hands).
• Start learning Japanese so that these things would stop being out of my hands.
• Memorize more stuff from the ErogameScape database, including staff of games that aren’t translated or adapted into anime.
• Read more manga. My Days Completed is <10!
• Learn more old memes.
• Not become one of those people who tries to swear off internet slang. They’re terrible.
• Not become one of those people who tries to swear off eroge. They’re even worse.
• Watch some good Western movies that everyone watched decades ago, like Citizen Kane.
• Read books that are not in any way related to anime or school.
• Not get caught up with school to the point that I can’t read anything else.
• Figure out how to use a washing machine. (I’m probably a little late with this one…)
• Figure out how to drive with one hand. (Not recommended despite seeming easy)
• Figure out if Beato exists. Uu-!
• Watch some Gundam and Macross.
• Watch Legend of the Galactic Heroes. All of it.
• Watch Soul Link so that I’ll get the joke when people make fun of it.
• Find an anime worse than True Love Story, which, for some reason, is the worst thing I’ve ever seen.
• Take part in a fansubbing project in some way, shape, or form.
• Finish most of the translated VNs so that my moe withdrawal will force me to study Japanese.
• Stop making self-depreciating comments.
• Stop doing things that force me to make self-depreciating comments.
• Finish Sepia Tears, or at least come close to it.
• Find something better to do on Christmas Eve than working on a visual novel scene set on Christmas Eve.
• Pull a Keitaro Urashima and become awesome after leaving his harem to dig up fossils.
• Pull a Tomoya Okazaki and become the greatest harem lead of all time. OF ALL TIME!
• Find a harem? Nah… but find a Good End.
• Keep using visual novel and gaming analogies to describe real life scenarios.
• Clear 10th Dan in Beatmania IIDX. I’m stuck at 8th!
• Play some Mushihimesama Futari Ver 1.5 and not get utterly destroyed.
• Learn to play BlazBlue and compete with the anime club, Genshiken style.
• Join the anime club, Genshiken style.
• Pull a Kohsaka and- no. Pull  a Madarame and increase my power level!
• Increase my power level no matter what happens.
• Learn some more MTG and play semi-regularly.
• Learn Riichi Mahjong and play with anyone who is willing (preferably using my weeaboo Shuffle tiles).
• Play Poker with my weeaboo Yoakena cards.
• Play in a band with my weeaboo Yui castanets. (No, not really).
• Keep getting involved in the blogosphere, maybe do a podcast or start a revolutionary team metablog.
• Make an online friend from Saskatchewan, New Zealand, or Poland.
• Find some cool people to plan a trip to Otakon.

…And above all, I’ll pull a Honey and Clover and search for that elusive thing, even if I never find it.

- – -

In a year’s time, I’ll be a different person, having finished my first semester at university and experienced life away from home for the first time. In a decade’s time, I’ll be a completely different person, working towards my career goals and doing whatever it is that old people do. But when it comes down to it, it’s the small, tongue-in-cheek goals like these that say a lot about yourself as a person, even if all they say is that I spend more time around Japanese cartoons and 2D girls than can possibly be healthy.

At any rate, I might joke about spending the holidays on the internet and hitting F5 on /jp/, but I feel far more satisfied than you’d think. Thanks for a great year, anime blogosphere, and I look forward to joining you as we experience what 2010 has to offer!

~ ETERNAL
つづく

©2010 Memories of Eternity. All Rights Reserved.

Or, my plans to end the year in style. Quickfire points ahead:

• The Reverse Thieves are hosting a Secret Santa project, and I’m taking part. The show I selected is Kamichu!, and I’ve heard good things about it. I’m expecting the review to go up on the 24th.

• CCY‘s 12 Days of Christmas has made its rounds for a couple years now, and I’ll participate if it happens again this year. I’ll probably do something along the lines of what IcyStorm did last year, highlighting one memorable anime event and one memorable blogosphere or internet event per day.

• Somewhere along the line, I plan to rewatch True Tears. I know that I liked it when I first saw it, but the fact that I have no real opinion on it means that I must have missed something. I can’t promise any blog posts – and if I do write one, I’m not sure what kind of post it’ll be – but I fully expect to gain something from the rewatch.

• Along the same lines, I’ll start playing the Kanon visual novel as soon as I can. It’d be nice to write a post on it over the holidays, but I have no idea how long it’ll take me to finish. I’m not sure if listening to a Key/Shiori fanboy talk about Kanon is your idea of fun, but suffice to say I’ll be writing something at some point.

And with that, let December begin!

~ ETERNAL
つづく

P.S. Umineko post is coming in a couple days. I’m sure that’s relevant to some of your interests.

©2010 Memories of Eternity. All Rights Reserved.

The eternal sakura tree(s) are pictured above, albeit indirectly. Now for the more important things.

• I decided to start a blog. Bet you didn’t see that coming! There’s a bit more detail on the site itself, but basically, it’s a side-blog for me to go off topic and post random pictures. It’s nothing too ambitious; I’d put it in the same category as Tumblr and MAL. That said, it’ll probably be updated frequently, so check it out if you’re interested. I’m excepting to keep each entry under 200 words so as to not detract from my real anime blog here.
• Sepia Tears is underway, despite the outdated website. I w0n’t post anything online until I actually have something substantial to post, but rest assured, all of my creative energy is being poured into this one (instead of, say, NaNoWriMo). If you want to do the male characters designs or background designs, contact me. I have a feeling it won’t be easy to find the latter, but hey, it’s worth asking.

Anyway, that’s all I have to say for now. It would be kinda awkward to launch a side blog and not notify anyone of it, even if it’s mostly irrelevant. My posting schedule has been a little funny lately thanks to a multitude of things to do – university applications don’t wander into the most suitable schools by themselves – but I’m still at it. I’ve got a juicy post scheduled for Tuesday that you might find interesting.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to sleep and completely re-arrange my mindset for the English essay I’m working on tomorrow…

~ ETERNAL
つづく

©2010 Memories of Eternity. All Rights Reserved.

It’s been a year. Isn’t it funny how quickly time can pass when you’re not looking at it? In this case, it feels like I’ve been too busy to notice the months slip by. I think I’ve been having fun, too. It was a year ago that the internet was raging at Code Geass R2, making memes out of Charles and the legendary trainwreck episode; a year ago that I first clicked the “publish” button on a WordPress post, writing and rewriting less than 500 words on the last day of the summer holidays.

Looking back, though, it’s hardly felt like a journey at all. If anything, I’m just glad that I didn’t run from the prospective work and criticism and loss of free time, and end up missing out on something this satisfying.

It was kinda fun to read my first post again. I’m glad a better Shiori picture finally surfaced on Danbooru, and it’s a little ironic that I haven’t even played Kanon yet even though it’s translated. It’s also fitting that CCY was my first commenter since it was his rotating banners and witty fanboy ramblings that inspired a lot of my early blogging ideas.

If by some chance you’ve been reading me since the Old Days, which I define as anything before the start of 2009, you’ll know that I underwent some major changes along the way. Even now that I’ve been doing semi-serious editorial blogging for many months, my style and content still waver from time to time, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. More importantly, though, I’ve grown comfortable with my classmates and teachers and short-tempered overachievers in this little Gakuensuki.

What else is there to say? My life as a nerd isn’t too complicated. I grew up on GameFAQs with Nintendo and JRPGs, I learned of the otaku side of anime fandom through the infamous OT, I watched Suzumiya Haruhi during the summer after it aired and felt moe for the first (or maybe second) time…and after that, time passed. I played Hourglass of Summer and fell for the fluff of visual novels and dating sims, I discovered online stores and got into otaku merchandise collecting; you know how it goes. Later on, I abandoned my dream of becoming a pro gamer after Super Smash Bros Brawl proved ineffective as a fighting game, which may have been for the better since I doubt I could have made it anyway – and with one major hobby out of the way, I swore to learn everything that I could about anime and become like that guy in Otaku no Video. Except that I hadn’t actually seen Otaku no Video at the time.

Fast forward a year and a half: a certain ex-otaku named Ment0r became my first RL friend to know more about otaku culture than I did. Overjoyed at the opportunity to talk to someone about VNs and figures – a new opportunity since I was more or less internet-illiterate – I simultaneously gained experience and had fun. A few of us at school decided to make a visual novel (which turned into Sepia Tears, which later fell into my hands as I was the only one with a desire to finish). Near the end of that school year, our conversations opened my eyes to the blogosphere, and I knew what I had to do.

If you know me, you’ve seen this picture all too much.

Having come this far, I’d like to say, for the millionth time, that this site is basically a means of growth for me. The process of writing about anime and communicating with fellow fans has taught me far more about the medium and culture than I could have learned alone, and I’m also quite pleased at an accidental side-effect: at the risk of sounding cheesy, the friends that I’ve made along the way.

And on that note, in no particular order, I’d like to thank:

• CCY, for being the standard that I set myself against. There’s nothing wrong with a tl;dr filled with moe passion!
• M12, for being my first frequent commenter and reader.
• Digitalboy, for reminding me that I’m not crazy for dreaming big.
• Owen, for being the standard that I aspire toward. There’s nothing wrong with making people think on your blog, even if I must wax poetic about Clannad!
• OGT, for accidentally being like the big brother I should have had. I feel like I’ve learned a whole slew of miscellaneous but interesting things from having him around.
• lelangir, for making the blogosphere a better place. Period.
• Omisyth, for unintentionally keeping me on my toes whenever I feel like slacking off and not posting. He’s like my antithesis in anime taste but clone in blogging.
• animekritik, for making me laugh at the few philosophy jokes I actually get.
• Wildarmsheero, whose otaku knowledge and experience I’ll always respect, even if he’s not reading this and doesn’t want my acknowledgment.
• Omo, for being the kind of all-around awesome anime fan that I want to be as an adult.
• Shinn, for making me feel normal. (no offense, we all love bisexual lolicons!)

And, of course, to every one of you. I realize that lists look exclusive to those not on it, but there are many others who have made an impression on me through their writing rather than through conversation, and even more who I simply enjoy talking too. Besides, you know as well as I do that this place wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for all of you, blogger and non-blogger alike. There will always be many people that I look up to, people that inspire me, people that are fun to be around – more people than I can list – and when it’s all said and done, maybe I’ll be of inspriation to someone else too.

But I’m in no rush. For now, all that matters is moving forward: searching for my Hontou no Jibun, as usagijen call it, in both anime fandom and real life. Thanks for making this such a great year for me, and I’m genuinely looking forward to talking about Japanese cartoons with you guys in the future!

~ ETERNAL
つづく

©2010 Memories of Eternity. All Rights Reserved.

~ ETERNAL
つづく

P.S. threaded comments FTW
P.S.S. I’ll probably hit publish on that massive Honey and Clover post tomorrow morning. Don’t worry, it’ll be my last pretentious tl;dr for a while.

©2010 Memories of Eternity. All Rights Reserved.

Ah, shounen episode titles. Gotta love ‘em.

That aside, I’m pleased to say that after a seemingly long adventure, I’ve returned home; to the internet, and the aniblogosohere. I may not have a confession under a firework-lit sky planned, but I’m sure I gained something from this reprieve, even if it’s something intangible. Life changes, after all. It keeps rotating, like that weather vane I’ve seen countless times while rewatching Honey and Clover. But things have a way of smoothing themselves out, one way or another.

Anyhow, I realize that I’m not making much sense, and that’s quite fine. During my break, I conclusively realized that blogging is very much a personal journey for me, and that it’s more for the sake of educating myself than to educate others. In retrospect, that might explain some of the shaky analyses and mock-intellectual writing I’ve churned out from time to time, sometimes succeeding, other times failing. It’s only natural, I suppose, since you can’t improve without failing a few times. I also realized something quite obvious: that there’s a lot to do in life and very little time in which to do it. I have a year of high school left and I can almost guarantee that I’ll have to disappear for a bit next June, but even aside from that, people and situations change with time. They keep revolving.

But at the end of the day, there’s one thing I do know: the blogosphere is a community that I enjoy spending time in and that I’ve learned a lot from, and I have no intention of doing anything to hinder that learning process.

In other words, I’ll be here for a while.

And with that said, I’d like to say another temporary goodbye since I’ll be heading to England for a couple weeks with my family. I’ve got a few posts planned, though the longest (and either the most insightful or most tedious) won’t come until I get back. After that, I’m not quite sure what I’ll do, but after almost a year of getting to know this little sphere in the vastness of the internet, I think I’ve got a good feeling for what I want to accomplish and the direction I want to walk in.

Until then, this story is still “to be continued.”

~ ETERNAL
つづく

©2010 Memories of Eternity. All Rights Reserved.

Anyway, as much as it pains me to say it, I’m afraid that the dreaded H-word has finally seized control over me after a thoroughly enjoyable 9 months of blogging. I’m not burned out: I’ve been watching anime for years and I know that I still have a lot to learn. I’m not sick of the blogosphere: I”ve actually learned more about the world from you guys than from the mandatory careers class at school. I didn’t give up: I know that it takes time to get better at anything, and I’m nowhere near ready to abandon my dreams.

So why did I succumb to the almighty Hiatus Disease? Most likely because I need a break.

That’s all there is to it, really, and I’ll keep this short since it definitely isn’t a goodbye. I’ll probably still be around Twitter (follow me if you’re not already), I’ll be watching anime whenever I get time and I’ll try to keep an eye on the blogosphere, but unfortunately, I need a break from writing. A large part of this is due to the fact that I’ve started working on one of my fictional stories (you know, those), which will be occupying most of my brain power for the next little while. When you add that to the fact that aniblogging doesn’t work without watching anime, and the fact that all I really want to do is kick back with a few VNs and the remainder of the Hitchhiker’s Guide series, I simply won’t be able to keep writing.

But I definitely won’t be gone for long. My estimate is somewhere around a month. Really, I’m not sure if this warrants a hiatus note, but I don’t want anyone thinking that I got cocky, subscribed to the Slow Blogging theory, and started assuming that people will still care about me even if I post twice a year. (It works for some people, I know, but I wouldn’t take the risk). I always do what I can to keep up a decent post flow, and because I won’t be able to do that for a fair chunk of the early summer, I owe it to you to at least mention it.

Anyway, I’ve droned on for long enough. Keep writing, keep reading, and keep watching anime; I’ll be drifting around the interwebs in the meantime, and you can look forward to a full-forced return in approxitately a month’s time.

~ ETERNAL
つづく

©2010 Memories of Eternity. All Rights Reserved.

Spring has sprung and con season has begun, but unfortunately for some of us, it has already come to a close. Canada’s biggest anime convention, Anime North, has been a tradition for me since my early days of fandom in junior high, and it has once more left me with a bottomless pit of bittersweet memories. Well, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but anime cons are a great occasion for fans to get together, geek out, buy questionable merchandise, take pictures of attractive goth-loli cosplayers, eat overpriced Pocky, and avoid contracting the Narutard virus.

Strange as these things may sound, however, they all come together quite nicely when you’re with friends, and even if you’re not, there’s some kind of aura present at conventions that allows for the impossible. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a hotel room and I don’t have a car so I didn’t spend 100% of the weekend at the event, and I was too busy lazy to take many pictures, so think of this as a general impressions post rather than real coverage.

Would have been more awesome if he were standing in the middle.

To make things simpler (for me), let’s go in chronological order. Friday is always my shopping day. Why? Because I find it nearly impossible to resist the allure of the Dealer’s Room, and because I never like to take the risk of letting the good stuff disappear. Besides, shopping for otaku goodies always gives me the equivalent of a sugar rush, and it’s a nice follow-up to the general hype that builds up to and climaxes at the moment you walk through the doors and into the vast space of the TCC.

As for my purchases, I wound up spending a decent amount ($300+), though I didn’t buy a single figure. Most of my loot consisted of artbooks and miscellaneous manga/light novels that I could have gotten off Amazon but was too lazy to do so. About half of this stuff was from The Labyrinth, which is a great otaku bookstore located near University of Toronto. Loot pic is forthcoming.

It looks pretty nice when it’s all laid out like that. I’ve been wanting to take a picture like this since I started blogging.

Anyway, as you can see, my purchases are almost entirely Dead Tree Format (incidentally, The Animanachronism is the second Google search result for the term). Starting from the bottom, we have some sort of bishoujo picture collection by a variety of well-known artists, less than half of which had names that I could actually read; a Serial Experiments Lain artbook in the middle, which looks great but I have yet to open; and a Pita-Ten book, which I bought for shallow reasons and has subsequently convinced me to watch the series for equally shallow reasons.

Above, we have a collection of manga and light novels with titles/covers that you can read for yourselves; notable purchases include Pluto by Naoki Urasawa, mangaka of Monster and 20th Century Boys, and Strawberry Panic, just because I can. I think I also have some more yuri fodder in there. The Zelda book looks quite interesting – it’s this one, about the philosophy in the series – and it looks like it might make a good read for the Super Fanicom folks. I don’t think I’d tackle it just yet, but it’s obviously a worthy purchase for any fan of the series. I later picked up some doujins from Twinbells Doujinshi and a Type-Moon Complex from Hen Da Ne (link not working at the moment). Needless to say, the store owners did a good job of keeping me and my friend occupied while we thumbed through the boxes of porn erotic Japanese art (and, ironically enough, TM Complex isn’t even hentai).

Finally, I got some great prints from what I will continue to call the Artist Alley, and I have Mou-s and Aka-Shiro to thank for that. I will never cease to be impressed by fanart that looks like it belongs in a professional anime or visual novel. I would have gotten some Kaze-Hime prints if I didn’t already have a few from last year, though I think I’m already regretting that decision. The con has really opened my eyes to the world of good fanart, much to the benefit of my otaku spirit and the detriment of my wallet.

Last but not least, I got a couple VHSs from the Nominoichi – a Golgo 13 OVA and the Ghost in the Shell movie. Why? Because I could, and because their combined cost was less than KFC on a Tuesday.

I heard there were a couple more Mio cosplayers but I only got one. Moe moe kyun~

I concluded Friday by attending a live recording of the Anime Roundtable Podcast, which was fairly entertaining. They took a while to setup, but it was interesting once it started moving, and one of the listeners did a good job of reminding the audience that quality high school anime clubs really do exist. It’s just that they’re about as common as a shiny Pokemon.

Fast forward through an adrenaline-filled car ride home, a sore right shoulder, and a surprisingly decent night’s rest that led me to 9:00 am the next day: Saturday was panel day for me, and it was far more enlightening than I expected.

Writer’s Gene? (Saturday 11:00 am)
Not spectacular, but not bad either. One of the panelists is a sci-fi author with a few published books and short stories, and the others had positions in various places in the industry. They all talked about the dangers and reality of selling out and reminded me of why I’d hesitate to take up creative writing as a means of putting food on the table. The publishing industry can be harsh, and potential is often never discovered unless by chance. That said, their message was not entirely discouraging, and was nice to see them take a realistic approach to the art of writing.

Anime Soundtracks (Saturday 12:00 am)
The panel was pretty empty and I didn’t have much to contribute since I hadn’t put much thought into anime music until recently, but suffice to say it was great. The panelists knew what they were talking about and they didn’t seem to be too old nor did they try to be professional – it’s like what I’d imagine an anime music panel run by lelangir and zzeroparticle to sound like. I get the feeling they’ve been doing the panel for a while, and I’ll definitely go next year.

Fan to Pro (Saturday 1:00 pm)
What was I just saying about younger panelists being more approachable? Fan to Pro was run by a man in IT, old enough to be my father, and it was great. With age comes experience, as they say, and his professional, seminar-like presentation was as entertaining as it was informative. He explained a lot of what I had already realized, focusing on the skills we gain in fandom without even realizing it, but he articulated the concept far more clearly than I had ever done. I wouldn’t go again since the information will more than likely be repeated, but I’d recommend going if he does it again next year.

Mythology in Anime (Saturday 2:00 pm)
This one was a bit trickier since the room was full when I got there – there’s very little buffer time between panels – and the questions were very scattered. The downside was that the panelists hadn’t seen a lot of anime that they probably should have seen, rendering them unable to discuss things like Mushishi and Ergo Proxy, but they seemed to be educated enough in the field of mythology. Not a bad panel, but a bit too Q&A oriented to be truly informative.

Being Cool AND a Geek (Saturday 10:00 pm)
It’s applicable to about 75% of con attendees, and it’s something we’ve all thought about at some point. Unfortunately, nothing of value was gained, though I blame the lackluster questions and responses of the audience for that. At least one of the panelists seemed to know what she was talking about and touched on the cold truth of the social hierarchy, but there was too much otaku circle-jerking for anyone to have left the panel with a higher chance of not failing at life. Fortunately, the event was at least thought-provoking and there were a few key comments that reinforced my own theories, but in many ways it was just a recycling of information that your elementary school teachers tell you about self-confidence and uniqueness.

All in all, I was very pleased by the panels, and all except the last one left me with at least a fragment of new information. After that, I met up with some friends and passed the rest of the day hanging out – the very crux of the con experience in my opinion, save for a good concert or video game tournament. I passed on gaming in favor of having fun – and fun was certainly had, especially since I was with people that I rarely get to see outside of AN weekend – and I very much enjoyed sleeping in on Sunday. I didn’t bother going back for the last day since there’s never anything much to do, but the experience from a full two days was more than fulfilling, and like always, it’s left me with the burning desire to continue to delve into the depths of otaku culture as fast as humanly possible.

Totally forgot to mention that I found this in the Nominoichi. Fake? Maybe. Worth it? Definitely.

To summarize, the weekend of Anime North was great, and it gave me a slightly better picture of how to further enjoy the con scene next year. Of course, a convention wouldn’t be a convention if there weren’t at least a few lessons learned – the most notable one being that it’s arguably more fun to shop for porn than to read it – and I know that I gained a lot from the experience. Here’s to many more years of anime convention goodness, a limitless supply of the noobs and elitists that maintain the balance in the community, an Artist Alley filled with yaoi and a doujin shop filled with hentai, fat Konatas and petite Soras, and maybe even a crossdressing Sailor Moon or a Shiori; but most importantly, here’s to you, and me, and everyone else that partakes in the enjoyment of anime and the con experience. Until next year!

~ ETERNAL
つづく

©2010 Memories of Eternity. All Rights Reserved.

As you can infer from the title, this post bears little relevance to you if you happen to not live in or around Toronto (which is the case for many people). Feel free to read if you enjoy wasting your time, but really, it’d be more productive to clear out the other unread items in your feed reader.

Having said that, however, I’m sure that there are at least a few of you that are planning on attending the con, and for those of you who are, I wanted to write a post in the name of raising awareness. Following CCY‘s lead in campaigning for Fanime, I felt obligated to mention the con a few weeks in advance: and here it is, my not-so-informative and all-around useless post that could technically be classified as filler!

Useless as it may be, however, I urge you to click that little blue link below if you’ll be in the area from the 22nd to the 24th. Organization is the secret to success!

Well, “organization” might be an overstatement since I’m not actually organizing anything. But these guys are (I hope). If you didn’t know, ACG is a group that aims to build a community around otaku, gamers, and all sorts of nerds, and I believe they’re planning a meetup for the con. And even if they’re not, they’re probably the most organized local group that can provide a fun time for everyone who cares to meet them, so if you’re interested, do us all a favor and contact them.

Failing that, you can always comment here, or use your common sense and contact someone; meeting people at anime conventions isn’t a science. However, it wouldn’t do us much good if you stay silent, so assuming that you’re not one of those real-life lurkers that likes to hide in the shadows and wear a mask under the guise of cosplay, there should be several opportunities to meet up and enjoy the event.

Because, as many would testify, the people are what make anime cons what they are – not the mediocre shopping which can usually be topped by HLJ and Amazon Japan, not the panels with industry spokespeople that are worse than the editorials at ANN – it’s the fans that make the $55 worthwhile. Admittedly, Narutards and Sailor Moon Men aren’t exactly my idea of fun, but with the right group of people, an anime con can create an experience than no number of chat logs on IRC can amount to.

So, with that surprisingly not-so-long-winded speech out of the way, I sincerely hope that the convention gets as many guests as possible, and that we can enjoy ourselves while we’re there. Unfortunately, I don’t have any enticing bandage-moe rewards to offer you like the Fanime goers, but then again, I’m certain that Hendane can cover for that.

So, to summarize: info is here, organizers are here, and I hope to see you there! (And maybe, if we’re lucky, No Name Losers will be there and hold a panel…hint hint)

~ ETERNAL
つづく

©2010 Memories of Eternity. All Rights Reserved.