Summer Travels: EVO 2012 World Championships

Day 1: Warming Up

Come early Monday morning, the tournaments were well on their way. I headed to the Caesar Palace's to catch Kozu's first match for KoF and to also scope out the floor. Sty finally woke up hours later and together we met up with some people we used to play with in a private Ragnarok Online server many years ago. We opted to have some quick food at the food court and then went back to catch more of the matches, such as the showdown between Noah and Mago, Air well representing Canada, Tokido getting beat by a fellow Canadian, and our .bRO keyboard-playing friend, Roogle's, match against Uryo.

Noah (left) vs. Mago (right)

Playstation All Stars was readily available for playing so I gave that a whirl and unfortunately I wasn't particularly fond it. Also, Street Fighter X Tekken is only amazing because of Toro and Kuro. That's all.

Later that night I convinced everyone we had to do the 24 hour buffet and thus our buffet adventure started with Paris' because of its location. It was sad Paris' has continued to drop in quality; it was a bit of a disappointment but still satisfactory nonetheless.

Day 2: Wandering
Our next buffet was at the Flamingo for brunch. The afternoon consisted of a round of P4A, getting an autograph (and photo) from Daigo Umehara, and wandering around the floor. The room was more packed than the day before so we had less opportunity to sit down to observe the matches.

Capcom's fancy car display plus bored car guard man

Our final buffet was at Planet Hollywood, which was safe to say was the best of the three we had. I also picked up a Evo 2012 T, which ended up becoming my autograph shirt. On the way to and from places, we encountered "celebrities" (sans locals except Air and JWong) which Kozu helped identify.

Day 3: The Finale
After having a string of buffets, we decided to get some fast food before heading to the last and most exciting day of all matches. The floor was cleared of exhibits and was all filled with chairs. Next door was the overflow room where the livestream was set up. Although the commentary was nice, the unexpected streaming failures were rather annoying. Without a doubt, the KoF and MvC3 matches were the most exciting games to watch whereas AE had very little battering between the two players, thus rather underwhelming.

Daigo's final AE match

The Prologue
After having experienced a fighting game tournament in person, it really inspires you to pick up a fighting stick and play some fighting games yourself. The energy, emotions, and rivalry in the room is incomparable to a mere livestream. As for me though, I may have an accessible fighting stick and may get my hands on a game or two, but I would sadly have no one to play/practice with. Despite saying that, I will consider dropping by LV for EVO again next year since flying to LV is rather affordable compared to other US destinations.

So, the next morning we had a pasta buffet. Don't do it; it's a trap! Pastas are so filling! What were we thinking!

Also on the way back, I saw Air while crossing customs. He's a Vancouverite!

And finally, loot picture which lazily includes Anime Expo shtuff too:

Thus ended my summer travels adventures and back to work I went, successfully still pale as a vampire. Take that 45°C Las Vegas weather! However, I did have to deal with a cold/flu/cough attack which lasted me a good 2 1/2 weeks. I'm beginning to see a trend in my health post-travels...

Sakuracon Repo 2012

Come Easter weekend, come Sakuracon.

This year's convention landed early in the month, mauling my birthday weekend but, hey, the regular dose of geekery was needed. The weekend started slightly earlier for me as I took the Thursday off to give myself some time to get some last minute things done. I ended up spending the Wednesday night finishing up small costume tweaks and my absolutely divine durian-filled cake. Caught a bit of shut-eye before waking up early to pick up Xenoblade Chronicles, a bday package (from my smexy mango sister) at the post office, and some delicious Chinatown nam sammiches with my brother. Mid-afternoon ToFu, Sty, and I made our way down to Seattle to arrive sometime in the evening and followed to unload our stuff at Garret's. Unfortunately the gang wasn't very pro-karaoke and were feeling very pro-pizza, so pizza happened. Ion joined us for food and brought over a Pokemon board game which we tackled for the rest of the night. Also, discovered that beer floats are generally pretty gross (at least the dark beer and vanilla ice cream combination).

Day 1: LineCon.

The convention decided to scrap the Will Call idea without notice this year so me and Sty ended up having to line up to register. Sadly their registration did not improve since I last experienced it a previous year where the wait time was a solid 3 hours. Regrettably, this year was no exception, as we ended up waiting about the same long 3-4 hours (I completely lost track).

With the registration horror finally behind us, we moved to our first panel of the day to a manga work-related talk panel with Zekkyo and Retsu Tateo. Some pretty interesting fetishes were revealed thanks to some smart questioning. We waltzed into the room next door after for the Gen Urobuchi, Atsuhiro Iwakami, and Katsushi Ota Q&A panel. There was a bit of an intro vid for some of their recent works (interestingly enough, all shown were scored by Kajiura Yuki). While barely paying attention to the less then stellar questions, I spotted LightningSabre a few rows in front of me (actually more like I saw his signature Shana jacket.) and flagged him down afterwards. His fancy press badge got me thinking about BLOGGING (= Press = Free). Something to consider! We stayed for the following panel for Wakeshima Kanon and she came out looking a bit rundown with the wig? bleached-dyed hair? that didn't seem to quite suit her. After the Q&A, we headed to the exhibitor hall's final hour to do some quick browsing. Fortunately nothing really caught my eye this time around, except for an artbook or two.

We reassembled our group, met up with ToFu's friend, Magister, and then headed out to finally get our first meal of the day at the Taphouse. I ate his caesar salad. Sorry, dude. :|

The Stereopony concert was already well on its way when we got back to the convention. None of us were huge fans and I wasn't particularly a fan of their music either so it wasn't a loss for any of us. We then spent the next while in the boardgaming room before the Iron Artist panel at 11. The panel turnout seemed bigger than the years past, but it might've been because of the the room size and layout. Unfortunately there wasn't an 18+ version of the panel this year either, but it was still pretty entertaining.

Day 2: Omiyage.
We allowed ourselves to sleep in a bit before making our way to the convention for some artist Q&As. Both panels featured a slideshow of some of the artists' work, projected on a wall that wasn't completely flat. Nothing out of the norm for questions but we did try and prod Zekkyo on her BLing and Retsu on her hot, bald men fetish.

After panels, I headed to check out the AoEx photoshoot which wasn't situated in the best location imho and then visited the ending of the PanSto photoshoot where Lester was at. Made our way to the autograph lines and started with the Aniplex trio, Urobuchi/Ota/Iwakami. Bumped into LS again before the lines started forming were allowed to be formed.

When it got to my turn as I handed my to-sign piece around the table, Ota reached under the table, handed me a Fate/Zero desk mat featuring suit!Sabre, and said "omiyage" (souvenir). So, the surprised me looking like @__@ thanked him, got my autographs, and moved along, still dazed. With a new desk mat in my hand, we wobbled to Steve Blum's extended Q&A panel and caught the last bit of it before returning to the autograph room for HIS autograph.

Fortunately he had some neato postcards featuring some of his work so me and Sty both picked ourselves one each for him to sign. It was a real shame we weren't able to sit in on his panel though. With the remaining time, we took a last visit to the exhibitor's hall before meeting up with the people for that day's round of food at, yet again, the Taphouse. Although this time around, we had a table of at least ten of us but food and drinks came quickly.

With filled bellehs, Sty, Lester, Ion and I returned to the convention to check out Wakeshima Kanon's concert (or at least the latter half). I felt the concert was a bit underwhelming, although it may have been because of the lack of songs I personally enjoyed of hers, so I'm probably just being bias. We trekked along to the autographs line afterwards and nabbed myself an autograph. We spend the next bit in the boardgaming room (a fancy anniversary version of Settlers of Catan which was defective!) before the swimsuit contest. I regret not snapping a photo of team Seigaku playing DDR outside the panel room. SO REGRET ...because the swimsuit contest was a huge disappointment. Not even worth mentioning the details.

Day 3: Finishing Up.
Autographs were held for both the Japanese artists in the morning. Sadly they only gave sketches for ticket lotto winners (none of us were lucky enough) so we still got ourselves autographs. Bumped into LS again somewhere here. :D

The rest of the afternoon was a blur, but I do recall checking out the Charity Auction and seeing people bid ridiculous prices on stuff. I do regret letting someone get away with a signed and framed Capcom poster at a mere $120. Oh and watched some of the Gundam EXVS tournament. Aside from that, we bummed around a bit before deciding on dinner and packing up our things for the drive back.

We finalized on Crab Pot again this time around, got our hands and faces dirty, and had a good seafoody feast.

No real loot this year... but I did come back with stuff:

PAX Prime 2011 Report: Part 2

 

Saturday - Aug 27: Disappointments.

• Star Wars: The Old Republic - We played the story option rather than the PvP/Capture the flagball. Eh, it's an MMORPG and I /dance'd.
• Torchlight II - Tried the Berserker this time around and had fun following the big crew of people going around, destroying mobs and things.
• Path of Exile - A point and click game that's free to play. Definitely disappointed, especially after Lester recommended it saying it was like Diablo. Very bland graphics and clunky gameplay...
• Wildstar - A bit underwhelming. A brightly coloured MMORPG that featured rather generic classes and character designs.
• Dead Island - The trailer gave off a different idea of how the protagonist and story would've been like. In the actual game, you're a drunkard who gets kicked out of the club for being a dick. Lovely.
• Rusty Hearts - Insanely confusing controls but the pretty up your character feature is definitely there.
• Dragon Quest Monster Joker 2 - K I originally played this for the swag but it was actually fun.

And the real disappointments:

• The 18-letter Word to your Moogle was missing a letter Sty left back at Garret's. Great. They ended up finding another person with the same letter and handed in the word.
• We were in a group of 4 at one point (with IonFONE and friend) and could've went to get our hands on a free T at the Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One booth but Sty forgot her head. They ran out of T's the next day.
• The Skyrim food truck ran out of food and drinks about half way through its one and only session. Extremely disappointed that they'd underestimate their fanbase.

The food we never got. :((

After another busy day on the show floor, we headed to the Square-Enix panel where Quantum Conundrum was introduced and demoed. The visual style features a cartoony style which would remind you of Team Fortress and the gameplay is very much Portal plus some new features like changing the state of the room on the fly.

I decided to skip the Weekend Confirmed panel since it was right smack between the previous and the Dragon Age panel. The DA panel itself gave us a general outlook of the series and a vague idea of what to expect. Felicia Day showed up and they played a new trailer of the Retribution web series.

By 10:30pm, we were finally ready for some food. We managed to get ourselves a nice, roomy table at the Taphouse where we devoured drinks and happy hour appys for the rest of the night.

Sunday - Aug 28: The last stretch cut short
We got all our stuff packed and ready in the car for our trip back before heading to the convention one last time. We established a plan to follow so we left at a reasonable time to make it back to whatever that was left of the wedding.  Unfortunately things didn't work out that way when some people decided not to follow through with it.

Anyway, the final game I wanted to get my hands on was Resistance 3 and that's exactly what I went straight for when the hall opened. Luckily there was still some space left when I got there. The game felt very reminiscent to R2 but its visuals were definitely tweaked. It was a short but sweet 5 mins of killing which I somehow still ended up 2nd place.

Things got complicated after this but long story short, we managed to regroup to check out Halo Fest and I was pleasantly surprised with the displays.

 

Chief-sama!

Before we left for good, we stopped by to get some cheesecake. <3

On our way up we also had some cheap McDix chicken nuggets.

The haul looked more or less like this:

 

• Favourite Game: ???
• Favourite Swag: Resistance 3 or DOM2 T-shirt
• Missed: Might & Magic Heroes, Borderlands 2, Orcs Might Die!, Wil Wheaton's panel ;<
• Forgot: Heroes of Ruin
• Underdog: El Shaddai
• What happened?: Firefall
• WHERE ARE YOU BAMCO?

I knew Sunday was going to amazing and yet we didn't get to stay for it. Gearbox panel which ended up with free Borderlands 2 codes (USA region or NOT it's still crazy), Tetris DS tourny (I missed out last year ;( ), and probably other random games you discover when you actually take your time walking on the floor.

It was definitely a very different PAX and it wasn't my most favourite. It didn't help that we were forced to leave early to head back for a wedding.  A number of the games on the floor were not entirely new (Torchlight 2, Rift, End of Nations, EVE Online, et al) and some were just not completely up my alley but I didn't mind trying them. It was also quite different walking around with my friend Sty since we don't normally talk about games together, other than the odd game she played here or there. In fact, I don't even know what she has played other than some western games. I personally skipped a number of games I probably would've stopped to try *points to Missed bullet point* but I didn't want her waiting on me. In exchange, her girl power somehow landed some really good luck in a lot of places... don't know how she does it.

I've been asked what the highlight of the trip was and, honestly, I can't seem to figure that out at all.
The trip felt incomplete but what can be done. :(
*goes off to play something*

Sakura Con 2011 Report

Admiring from a distance... Delicious Perfect Grade.
Easter weekend fell on the final weekend of April this year and Sakura Con followed suit. Things kind of worked out: worked furiously at my portfolio up until the week of Sakura Con to then work furiously on the changes for my costume. Thanks to stress, I had the worst migraine the night before but I managed to recover enough.

Thursday - Day 0
Would've took the day off from work if the workload wasn't so disgustingly big in the last month. Fortunately I was able to jet early and headed home to do some last minute packing before gathering the gang - ToFu and Sty. We ended up leaving Vancouver way later than planned due to all sorts of delays but luckily we still beat the border rush. We made a stop at the Premium Outlet which lasted longer than we originally wanted but it was a nice break from all the sitting.

When we finally got into Seattle, we decided on Kylie's Chicago (deep dish) Pizza for dinner, a mere half n hour before the place closed. After filling up we headed to Garret's place around 10:30ish to finally settle down. We stalked the Will Call page for as long as we could before we decided to call it a night.

Friday - Day 1
Will call finally opened early in the morning so we finally registered. We made our way to the convention to make it to VOFAN and Jo Chen's first panel where they demoed how they collaborated and completed the Sakura Con exclusive Japan relief poster. The level of complexity of the two art styles (Jo Chen and her 3D-style; VOFAN and his character design process) and watching their progress fast forwarded was pretty amazing.

After our first panel we checked out the Artists Alley and then took a visit to the Exhibitor's Hall where I tried really hard to find something I really wanted. I did spot Fate Testarossa Movie version for a whopping 280$ (overpriced 2x) which came out earlier this year. Sadly not happening. With a passing interest in the panel's title, we stopped in to see Jo Chen's BL Circle panel where my respect for her grew even bigger. :D

We finally had our first meal of the day at the Tap House before returning back to check out the "How to Talk to Girls" panel. To our dismay it really was just a counselor girl studying psychology? telling us that anime is not real life. Thanks for the wake up call. We escaped a few minutes into the panel to revisit the Artists Alley before heading to this year's Iron Artist where ToFu reigned supreme again against Garret. After kicking some drawing ass we went to the Swimsuit Contest. Horo and her can crushing with her thighs of steel was kinda cool. Just saying. We have no idea who won though since we left before the results.

Saturday - Day 2

Here's some Moriyama.
Autograph day: VOFAN & Jo Chen, Mitsuishi Kotono (fsking long line + angry fans), Moriyama Daisuke and finally Atsushi Suzumi. Since Atsushi's autograph line was short, we were able to request artwork as well. Lined up on her table were some of her other works and Tokyo Ravens caught my eye so I decided to request that from her. A pouty Natsume was completely up my alley!


Dancing girls in the distance.
Finally after hours of autographing, we hung out outside for some fresh air and watched some photoshoots happen. Checked out the Berryz Koubou concert a bit before heading to Cheesecake Factory for some food and to meet up with the SF gang. I had some firecrackers:


After food we loitered outside before I was spotted by some Touhoes. Decided to check out their little pre-party meetup at Gameworks and, yeah, lots of people showed up. I helped myself to their veggie platter to keep myself busy. P: There was some sort of role playing happening in one corner, Touhoes on a laptop in another, a bunch of non-cosplayer friends chatting to each other or karaoke (aka a capella). Eh. Anyway, I wanted to see that one DJ from Japan at the dance so I headed back to the convention. Unfortunately there was no schedule for the DJs performing so I didn't get a chance to hear that guy's music and I sure wasn't willing to wait around until 4am to find out.

Sunday - Day 3
We failed to leave on time in the morning and ended up missing some of the potentially interesting fashion shows. Following the schedule, we went to VOFAN and Jo Chen's final panel for some fun, free for all Q&A time. We ended up throwing a number of entertaining questions at them. We suspected that VOFAN was probably holding back on some of the answers to the questions since his wife was in the audience.

VOFAN and Jo Chen
Stopped by the Touhou panel after the Q&A to find that they were already doing the photoshoot. We made our final visit to the exhibitor's hall for any last minute deals and purchases to finish off the convention.

There was also an amusing encounter with the niconico.com stream. I'll just leave it at that.

Post convention: we made our way to Uwajimaya and Kinokuniya for some more shopping before heading to Crab Pot for dinner.




What a delicious mess.
My damage which mainly consisted of games I bought and shipped to my friend's place for my pickup convenience:


Gawd too many games.
Then came Monday and normal work life resumed.

Welcoming the next age bracket

Birthdays are great reminders that YOU ARE GETTING OLD. DO SOMETHING WORTHWHILE WITH YOUR LIFE BEFORE YOU BECOME EVEN OLDER.

I must admit, my original plan post grad was pretty well set if JET worked out. Now that Japan is still having trouble getting back up on their feet because of their nuclear mismanagement and frequent semi-big earthquakes, I'm not at all happy leaving home knowing that my parents will be worried sick every day. I only did just check my email to find that I was accepted as an alternate (the filler for those who decline). Almost wished I was outright rejected so I don't have this choice at all. I've still got a week-ish to sit on it and respond which I will definitely do with all my weight.

So, about age brackets. I now get to select the next age bracket up. To celebrate, I bought myself something... a bit big.


My very first purchase at Book Off!

Then had the best cake in the world.


DURIAN. FILLED.

One particular geeky gift card also did well persuading.


Looks like black sesame sponge cake.
Filled with a GTX570 though~

Speaking of food, I tried McDix's Angus Burger (Mushroom & Swiss version) for 1/2 off and it was a bit of a letdown.

Also attempted natto for the first time just earlier this month. Sadly not my cup of tea. It's fun to mix and make stringier though?

Other than getting old, I prepared for the worst (for my JET results) by redoing my portfolio (yet again) so I can get out of this hellhole job asap. I'll need some time to recover my drive to jump ship after spending all my energy this past weekend at Sakuracon though. Next up: con report.

Limbo

Time has never moved this painfully slowly. I mean that in the both literal and figurative sense.

My work area (at work) was never really comfortable. I was given the opportunity to pick my own chair from the company's office furniture supplier on my first week but little did I know how it would feel in context, with the table and everything else. The chair's arms ended up being too high for the keyboard tray pull out and as a habit I would rest on the arms. As for the keyboard tray pull out, it's adjustable to a certain extent - the lowest position touches my legs so I can't move or cross them; the highest position, I tried to level with the chair arm height, scrapes the bottom of the tabletop and either blocks access to most of the top left keyboard keys (my important keys: ESC and F2) or traps my fingers. There's also a built-in bar cushion for the keyboard on the tray which is just annoying and unhelpful in wrist cushioning. The mouse is not any better; I'm supposed to use the built-in, permanently inclined and non-adjustable mouse tray that's connected to the keyboard tray. In other words, it doesn't work for me because it's too low so I'm forced to share the keyboard space with the mouse.

It would be easy to ignore it, which I did for the past half a year I've been here and now it seems to have caught up to me. The veins running down my fingers, through my wrist and forearm are now showing signs of CTS. I bought a wrist brace for my dominant hand and it seems to be helping me wonders. Although I think I need to get another brace for the other hand now too.

I refuse to be burdened with such an avoidable issue so early in my life. Fuck this.

In other depressing news, after many, many awesome years of imported Japanese book goodness, Iwase is closing down mid-March. I remember buying my first super expensive "air-mail"-priced magazine ($20+ bucks) which was either an Animage or a Animedia. Every month after that I bought and tried out another magazine and eventually stuck with Newtype until I finally stopped my monthly magazine buying habit altogether last summer when I realized that I was 1. running out of space to store them 2. I've stopped watching anime regularly 3. money priorities have changed.

I recall my first manga bought there was Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne. I had all these fabulous plans on an amazing manga collection that included super long running series I always wanted to own for myself. Every time I visited, I'd stare longingly at the Sazan Eyes and Rurouni Kenshin shelves aiming to complete these series one day. As a side note: till this day they're still both quite incomplete. Having said that I still did start and complete a few series with Iwase (Card Captor Sakura comes to mind), although not many did see to completion after I discovered a much, much cheaper alternative called the Internet.

It was also because of Iwase I started this crazy, but brief obsession for pinky:st. As much as I wanted to support them, their ridiculous yen to cnd exchange rate couldn't be justified. I was grateful for their old school video rentals for my once a year visit after the new year for the latest Kouhaku event. Speaking of which, I didn't get to rent it this year and so I'll have to resort to downloading. :/

So I decided to stop by for the very last time last Saturday for a final farewell and to take a look at what this "sale" was all about. It was probably the busiest I've ever seen the place and the sale was more than just tempting. Sadly the manga and artbooks were not on sale but there were some tasty magazines and plenty of other books that were worth picking up depending on your interests. I honestly didn't really need to buy anything but 70% off just sounds so good, doesn't it? ...said the inner-shopaholic. I ended up buying some random, borderline gag-merch I knew some people would appreciate and at the very end, it didn't even really turn out that cheap for me.


My trivial distresses aside, the world hasn't been all too happy this year seeing all the earthquakes and weird weather patterns occurring all around the world. :/

One definitely positive thing I can say right now is that king crab season has started and I've already had my first.

But really though, work just feels like the calm before the storm. I can sense the danger looming before me, the workplace meteorologist within me warns me so.

Busy November.

First snowfall this week. I tried so hard to delay (and even avoid) the purchase of winter tires but I gave in hearing all the snowfall warnings. I'm glad I did get a set though seeing it really DID fall and there's still plenty of crazy drivers out there... crazy as in still driving at insane speeds regardless of road conditions. Funny enough, the roads were a lot emptier once the snow stuck. The drive home was quite pleasant 'cept very cold. The snow did come and go now that the weather's slightly warmer, the rain's been pouring like mad. I imagine we'll be seeing more snow later next month though.

I've finally submitted my JET Application earlier this week. I decided against sending it too close to the application deadline date (Nov 30) just in-case of unforeseen problems. I went through about 4 draft overhauls, more than I've ever done on any academic paper. I definitely wouldn't of gotten to my final version without the support of my English proficient friends (yeah you know who you guys are). Now that it's over and done with, I can get on with my next task - my portfolio. I'll have to try and not think about it for another 2 months before the next dreadful hurdle called the interview. :|

Amazon.com is the evilest POS (hint: not point-of-sale). They had a vid game promo for a buy 2 get 1 free and I somehow splurged. A week later some those games go on sale for even cheaper. UGH. On its way up the border, customs got a hold of it and literally attacked my special Record of Agarest War limited edition. No, sorry to disappoint but there's no bombs in the shape of oppai mousepads in there.




My porn has been spoiled. :(
Work's been a bit hectic. We recently (two weeks ago) opened a new location in Coquitlam and then followed to get robbed the next day. We also got a new POS (point-of-sale) system which we launched in the same month as all these happenings which is also a great POS (not point-of-sale). Outdated, unintuitive, slow, unfriendly, unreliable (crashes)... everything you'd want in an efficient software of the 21st century.

And so November comes to a close in a few days.

PS: Monsters is such a shitty movie. Don't watch it, even if's free!

Penny Arcade Expo 2010 Report: Part 2

PAX10 [Day 2]: Saturday - Shooting and Breaking Stuff
Joined the queue line around 9:30 which was already too late. My first stop was attempting at playing Portal 2, but by the time I got there, the line already wrapped around the booth one and a half times. Next door's line for Brink, however, was BEAUTIFUL AND SHORT.

• Brink - After a year and we only get a playable demo... not that I'm complaining. You got to play in a team of eight (but there was only 4 real people per team for the demo), each player picked one of the four jobs (the usual: infiltrator, engineer, medic, sniper.. whatever the actual names were) and you are given a mission (either offense or defense, in the multiplayer mode we were playing). I'm proud to say that I scored the most points out of the eight as a real human player, only to be beaten by the 4 NPCs of the opposing team. ETA Spring 2010.
• Infamous 2 - Played the game for my brother as he wanted the t-shirt. The guy was nice enough to give me a small too. ;>
• End of Nations - Tried it just because it was right beside Rift. I didn't really get it.
• Halo Reach - Never played a Halo before so I thought I'd check it out. Too late into the franchise to understand the hype. :|
• Dead Rising 2 - The shortest yet longest waiting line EVER. Funny thing was, all the three girls who were part of the same queue ended up choosing the three PS3s, me included. Kill over 200 zombies in ~15 minutes, get a bobble head = GET. (Killed around 280)
• Epic Mickey - Removing and/or putting back objects/structures to solve puzzles. Mickey's such a troublemaker. :|

Went to Weekend Confirmed (Hi! It's you again, Shane!), Totally Rad Show (disappointed.), and the Bonus Round where the live video recording was quite interesting and complicated. Insomniac's Behind the Scenes with their PS3 game was pretty neat though I didn't expect Ratchet and Clank at all.

First/Last meal of the day followed at Benihana for teppanyaki where we had a table of 13 people. Conversation was a bit difficult but even that size of a dinner's still pretty fun. We had a real(?) Japanese chef do the food dancing which was nicer than the not-so Japanese ones that did the other tables. Felt more authentic at least!


After satisfying the tummy, we visited the Console Freeplay for some SSBM but found out that they didn't have any GameCubes. :| We settled for the next best thing - Super Smash Brothers, the first. It was weird playing with a N64 controller again and trying to remember that all the yellow buttons did the same damn thing!

PAX10 [Day 3]: Sunday - The Last But Not Least Bit
Again, 9:30. Wasn't going to bother trying for Portal 2.

• Killzone 3 - I hovered around 3rd place... got shot down plenty by giant machines.
• Tera - Since the podcasters mentioned it, I thought I'd give it a try. Expected no less from the Koreans as the graphics were nothing but beautiful. The whole fighting direction and having to swing your camera around 360 with the mouse was rather frustrating though.
• Eve Online - Didn't really play it, but I got the lowdown on the game just so I have an idea of what it's all about.
• FireFall - Wasn't exactly playable but they did a live demo. While they were demoing, I couldn't help but listen in on the Dragon Age II talk that was happening next door. Side note: Hawke doesn't seem like a very fantasy last name.
• FFXIV - Yeaaaaaaaah, I wanted the FFXIV-branded USB stick. Fuck the girl who took 15 minutes to create her character. It's even more frustrating knowing they let her take her time and then gave her additional time on top of it just to play some of the story. Ended up not getting the USB stick as they ran out moments before. My time would've been better spent at the Gearbox panel or something.. which I should've gone to.

After that frustration, I settled down at the PC Freeplay to pass the time before ToFu decided to leave the BYOC room... and PAX for good.

The chalk artist was here again this year and drew this:


We had Dick's for an early dinner (well, first and last meal of the day) and chilled at Rift's place for the rest of the evening. Tried to force him to finish Ar Tonelico 2 - no good. We left his place around 10 for late night cheap bowling with PZAG at the Garage. So. Beer and bowling. It was 4v3, winner by team average and us 4 literally fell into the gutter the longer we played. By the end of three rounds and three pitchers, it was butt-ugly.

The drive back was me trying to sleep off the headache. Drunk shopping at Walmart was mightily strange too...

A look at some of my hard work:


I would've tried at the League of Legends tourny if it didn't take up 5 hours of the day. There was also the Tetris DS tourny but it was during Giant Bombcast. :( Somehow the schedule felt a lot more busier this year, not to mention the lines were longer, thus taking up more time. They also had us work for our swag by either playing the game (usually the case) or doing a survey. The untouchables were definitely Duke Nukem Forever, Portal 2, and Dragon Age II. Even Rock Band and Dance Central had to use a ticketing system.

So this year the venue "expanded" by extending the event to other buildings and the exhibitor's hall was able to take up a whole floor. Unfortunately, due to the amount of people at a sold out event though, things only got worse (crowd control! wait times! not enough swag to go around!). Not exactly sure how that would be remedied for the next year. Even so, I wasn't at all disappointed at PAX. It /does/ feel a lot more fancier with the new main theatre and extra large helping of big companies and games... I hope they're able to maintain this ratio of fans/community vs commercialism.

Anyway, final thoughts:

• Missed: King-Fu LIVE
• Forgot: Front Mission Evolved, Deathspank
• Favourite: Brink
• Would've been nice: Portal 2
• Wondered about: Medal of Honor, Sonic Colors
• Missing: EFFING DIABLO III. (BLIZZCON ANNOUNCEMENTS BETTER BE GOOD.)
• Still around?: Fallen Earth
• Tempted: MTGO
• Favourite Swag: Pens Garnier Shampoo Sample Torchlight 2 t-shirt
• Where art thou?: Bamco

Anime Expo 2010 Report [Day 4, Final Thoughts & Loot]

Oh how the 4 (5) days went by like nothing.

Day 4 - July 4
The final day was dedicated to the exhibitor's hall. Eh, in retrospect, it was way too much free time. I should've lined up for more autographs at the open autograph session; it would've been a better use of my time. I basically walked the exhibitor's hall about 3 times to scope out the competition and prices and only one store had some I had interest in. At the end of the hour, the store didn't even drop any prices so it was a waste of time to camp for it. There were some pretty insane price drops though... nothing I really, really wanted to get unfortunately. I was even bored enough to line up for the Hi-Chew raffle for free candy but only managed to get a magnet which I gave to Tofu. I got one final autograph from Kuuchuu Yousai who signed the back of my mousepad info sheet to finish things up.

When the hall closed, we all met up outside and hung around, figuring out what to do next. We spotted Nakajima Megumi trying to camouflage in with the crowd, but we let her have her fun. We finally decided that we needed food before our flight back so we drove all around town (and the surrounding towns) to see what was open on July 4th. We finalized on The Islands for some good ol' burgers and fries.


So. Overall it was an insane AX year, compared to the other years so far. I'm proud (and a bit sad) to not purchase any figurines this time around, however my final autograph count made up for it as I basically got all the autographs I aimed to get, and then some.

• Horie Yui (seiyuu)
• Konishi Katsuyuki (seiyuu)
• Kitamuri Eri (seiyuu) x2
• Nakajima Megumi (seiyuu)
• Morita Masakazu (seiyuu)
• Minami Kuribayashi (musical artist/seiyuu)
• CooRie (musical artist)
• UR@N (musical artist)
• May'n (musical artist)
• MELL (musical artist)
• Kuuchuu Yousai (illustator)
• Katakura Shinji (mangaka, illustrator)
• Yamanaka Takahiro (director)
• REDALiCE (musical artist, DJ)
• DJ CHUCKY (musical artist, DJ)
• NO+CHIN (musical artist, DJ)
• m1dy (musical artist, DJ)
• GUHROOVY (musical artist, DJ)

AX needs to stop this insanity, or I'll be forced to go every damn year.

Hm, final thoughts:

• The lanyards were so cheap this year. Mine even still have the MADE IN CHINA sticker still on it.
• They're making us pay for our concerts now! D:
• They almost made us pay for shuttles! D:
• There could've been more frequent or just more shuttles.  The shuttle buses got full way too quickly and we'd either have to walk in the heat or travel to another hotel to get first dibs.
• Outside events were unpleasant with the gawddamn heat.
• If I didn't have past AX experience, my autograph getting would've been shit (I guess that wasn't bad for me).  They should've used the number system again like last year.
• They needed bigger signs for the autograph lines.
• Konishi was put in too small of a room.  They underestimated him!
• I wish I played the FUNimation scavenger hunt... I wanted Higashi no Eden stuff :(
• I was sad there wasn't a vendor that sold manga (Japanese) and some other figures I'm still looking forever for.
• Almost every event was delayed at least 30 mins.
• Those vuvuzelas were annoying.
• That distance between the West Hall Lobby and the Exhibit Hall still sucks.
• They should've put the autograph area in the unused West Hall.  Forcing us to run through people in the exhibitor's hall was an ass move.
• Needed more late night events later than 2am karaoke.
• Badge pickup on Day 0 was shit.
• I have come to love and appreciate shikishis.

I need to thank Tofu and Rift for allowing me to experience such insanity this year. Can my graduation get any better? Nah, I think that was the final sign for me to get my ass into gear.

Sakuracon 2010: A Mellow Report

A somewhat spur of the moment decision lead to an Easter weekend at Sakuracon in Seattle.

Day 1
ToFu and me made our way down 6am, waited at the border for 1 1/2 hrs, got to the convention at 10am. The registration was absolute shit. For someone who reminded the friend to sign up for will call but didn't do it themselves is a total retard. Yes, THAT WOULD BE ME. So for the next 3 yearshours we lined up for registration while the will call line took a mere ten minutes max.

When we finally got out, we first went to meet DJ Sharpnel. After the autograph, there was the Noizi Ito panel that consisted of relatively standard questions, plus the expected confession of "I love you, will you marry me?" kind of deal. So she is married apparently. The panel nicely finished off with my friend asking about whether she was aware of the Haruhi genderbenders. Sadly she doesn't allow herself to draw them since they may be interpreted as official art. Damn, so close.

We did some wandering afterwards: dealer's, peeked into the speed dating, console rooms, Microsoft room. I somehow won the daily draw at the Microsoft room on our visit, but I regret not picking up Halo instead of a spare controller, especially considering I've been presented with a gold subscription (more on that at another time).

The registration lineup really tired us out though. We/I wanted to go to DJ Sharpnel's hour at the rave party (lol otaku rave) but it wasn't for a few hours so we tried to pass the time at random panels - AMV room and Press your Luck (some game show). As much as we tried to hang on, we finally gave up and decided to grab food at the Taphouse even though we originally considered starving until the next morning. We made it back to the convention for DJ Sharpnel. I suppose he sounds alright live but he used the same beat without much variety unlike his CD releases. Got to experience some strange otaku activities in there: girl in her underwear, strange clusterfuck jump-humping, random high people saying hi, and then the usual train dance.

After his performance, we finally decided to call it a day and not wait for the swimsuit contest (yes, swimsuit contest) so we made our way to ToFu's friend, Garret's, place. The downside of the area he lived in was the lack of public parking. We had to park on top of this insanely steep hill most of the weekend and that created an unwanted exercise routine. At his place, fortunately the two cats there did not phase me with the help of allergy meds so the sleep was peaceful, minus the angry truck that drove by early next morning.

Day 2
Garret joined us the next day. We went to a locally famous bagel shop for brunch and then it was his turn to wait for registration. His was a massive 4 hours compared to our 3. While he waited, we revisited the dealer's room and found a hidden gem table of goodies. My first purchase: $6. I sure started off well. After the quick dealer's room browse, we made our way to the Noizi Ito signing and then met up with Garret and Neku after they were done with reg.

Since I was questioned by a number of people whether I'd be going to the Touhou panel, we figured we should go take a look anyway since the turnout wouldn't be that massive anyway... or so we thought. We were wrong. The room was too small to fit everyone and there were some that had to stand outside and wait. The panel itself was nothing special: a rundown of the history of its popularity and some bogus statistics and facts that had little to no credibility.

The panel was followed by a photoshoot and some after meet which we did not attend. I forgot to take photos. They'll be around the internets prolly. Although I must say leaving early to make it to the concert that kinda sucked makes me wonder what they ended up doing. I'll need to work on my crossdresser senses though. There has been too many traps.


Back to the concert - Dazzle Vision and HIGH and MIGHTY COLOR. Dazzle Vision is angry death metal but with a cute-looking vocalist. HandMC has become this strange death metal as well, but Yusuke is losing his touch or something... due to the loss of Maki perhaps? Long story short, the concert was a disappointment. I decided against getting HandMC's autograph, so we went out for food after and Mina joined us as well. It was prime food-eating time, so our choices were limited and so we ended up at the Taphouse again. [insert joystick jokes]

After some good food, we went back to the convention for the Iron Artist After Hours and of course the two artists, ToFu and Garret participated. The After Hours version was definitely a lot of interesting since the drawing contest allows such words as 'thrusting' and 'banana hammocks' and how it was mandatory to draw boobs or it's a given that you won't get voted.

Day 3
As usual, the last day's main purpose was the dealer's room. We first got breakfast from an organic market nearby and made our way to the convention for the lolita fashion show! It was quite neat.. minus the traps. The girls who crossdressed the guys outfits were so much more better looking than the actual guys in the guy clothes. :/

After the fashion show, we went to the dealer's room real quick before making our way to the Vocaloid panel. We were late to show so we didn't get entry until half way through. The vocaloid panel was also hosted by some of the Touhou crew (surprise surprise). They made us watch through one of the one-hour plus long medleys. The panel followed by a photoshoot (more traps) and then we moved ourselves back to the dealer's room. In the last few moments, I managed to get a few deals there. Safest haul yet. A side note, there are no plans on beating that record.


After the fun in the dealer's room, that was that. We sat around the closing ceremonies because there was really nothing left and we were eventually kicked out. The rest of the evening was spent hanging out at Garret's place, playing BlazBlue while waiting for Summer Wars to finish downloading. We watched that and then just chilled until we realized it was already midnight and we needed to jet. On our way back up, we stopped by Walmart and got some US-exclusive goodies. The border was dead so the way up was pretty smooth, minus the nasty rain/wind/dark weather.

I don't usually take photos at a convention, but this Cloud was just that awesome.


Strange, both the trip started and ended up with wonderful spillages. Prior to the trip, nail polish went effing everywhere (not cool). Post trip, the ice tea I got from Walmart cracked in my car trunk. Life is telling me that REALITY SUCKS, ENJOY THE FREEDOM WHILE YOU CAN CUZ WHEN YOU RETURN, REALITY IS READY FOR YOU.

One Thing After Another

Parents rush-flew to and from China/HK the last week to see family and bring back my grandpa's remains for a brief ceremony here later this week. The next few days will be busy-rushed-hectic with the service preparations.

Last Sunday, my friend got his car broken into the night before that, getting all his electronics taken. It really sucks to hear about these things and be unable to do anything about it...

Strong winds also decided to blow down our backyard gate pretty badly the other day but we were able to fix it to some extent. Ugly but more livable than before at least.

To make the week even better, school has been heavily involved in establishing a theme for our grad show. My team from Team Robots in 2nd year worked decided to work together again for our concept. It began as a harmless bubble tea outing after class which evolved into a 4 hour discussion. We then had another amazing 6-hour bubble tea session another day to finish up our presentation preparations. However, due to personality/ideal clashes with the class, our thoroughly developed concept was shot down. There just seems to be this extremely sinister hate coming from at least a good half of the class for anything remotely Asian or 'cute'. SO back to the drawing board...


On the flip side, although not recent in the last month, one of my best friends went to Japan for the winter holidays. I've been using a magazine (ION Magazine to be precise, it's nice and square) as my mousepad since the wireless mouse doesn't like tablets (for obvious reasons) and it also collects dust way too easily off the table. I've had to work on my PC for hours at a time (doing ugh homework) ever since my laptop was out of commission so the wrist pain has finally set in. So I ended up requesting for a boob/oppai mousepad. No butts, no nipples, no porn.


She came back with a pink-haired, twin tail maid. :3

So! This girl's an original character drawn by Kuuchu Yousai, the character designer for Nanael from Queen's Blade and the Djibril series. And! She even has a bio to go with it: Hoshizaki Fuuka, 17 years old (!) high school 2nd year. She lost her family in an accident and now lives with the protagonist as his maid. Even though she has a dark past, she puts up a strong front but is a dojikko. Her signature moves are to spill tea and collide into walls. She's a classmate with the protagonist (which it notes is obviously a guy). Born on May 10th, blood type A. My mousepad has a background apparently.. I find that very amusing.

So guys, girls' boobs do not feel like this. Stop trying to trick yourself.

As for the FFXIII elixir, that was an awesome surprise. Sadly I will never open it so I will never know what trading figure it comes with. I'll just hope it's Lightning or Yung Fang and leave it at that. It'll be saved for an emergency when I'll need to break things like benches and cars with my head. Hm, much like how I never touch elixirs ever in game either.. waiting for the right emergency, but it never happens.

Alright, week 4 commences... 3 weeks till the Olympics.