Anyway, I'm back from my 3-day sojourn to New York City and the Big Apple Anime Fest therein. In actuality, we didn't spend a hell of a lot of time at the con (in fact, we were in the dealer room for only a couple of hours). However, the $40 price for a weekend pass was more than worth it. Some highlights:
- The dealer room gets very crowded very quickly, but it's an amazing place to buy cheap anime if you go to the right source. I got the Record of Lodoss War OAV boxset for $42 at the Central Park Media booth (dude didn't have change for $60
) and an Outlaw Star box elsewhere for what was probably the going price ($75). Picked up the Lupin III movie Castle of Cagliostro for $20. Got some Bebop books (Manga volumes 2 and 3 and Anime Guide #1 (which is woefully inaccurate and badly written)) at $9 a pop, 3 for $24. Also got an overpriced copy of Trigun OST 1: The First Donuts for $30 (it was an import). Some good prices, some bad ones. - My sister is absolutely insane. There was one booth selling VHS tapes for $2 a pop (something like 5 tapes for $10). She bought - are you ready? - a total of 78 tapes. She got 50 or so from that place, then the rest are coming in the mail - she bought three seasons of Star Blazers from the special booth that had one of the English dub voice actresses
78 goddamn tapes! She was hauling them around in a box for half the day! - Got me a real nifty Bebop wallscroll. If you don't know what a wallscroll is, look it up. They're basically fabric posters between two bars of plastic that you hang on the wall. Very nice.
- Saw four anime movies on the big screen. The first was The Sensualist, about prostitution in Japan way back. The film itself is 70s vintage. Had a lot of lewd comedy, but was more dramatic than anything. The other three were all directed by Satoshi Kon, who is now one of my favorite anime directors. This is the man responsible for the mindblowing Perfect Blue. His next two pieces are even better. The first was Millennium Actress, a love story which is done in a very strange sort of "memory documentary" style. A pair of doco filmmakers track down a reclusive actress and wind up following her on a journey of her life. The film is like her life told as a trail through the roles she appeared in (spanning over a thousand years of history) as she journeyed to return the key that her lost love dropped. There's a lot more to it than that, but I have to see it again. A bittersweet romance story; it makes a very nice segue from high comedy to drama.
Next (which I saw just this morning) was Tokyo Godfathers, which is now my favorite Christmas movie ever, following the lives of a gruff old man, an aging homosexual/wannabe-female drag queen and a runaway teenager after they find an abandoned baby and attemt to find her parents. It is simply the most twisted take on the Nativity I've ever seen. Like his earlier film, most of it is uproariously hilarious until all the threads start to tie together at the end, where all the true morals and sappy goodness seep through and stab at your heartstrings. Another comedy to drama segue, which seems to be becoming a trademark of this director. And during the end credits they did Ode to Joy Japanese-style.
Millennium Actress is actually coming out on DVD next month, so be sure to pick it, and Tokyo Godfathers (which was, oddly, abbreviated as TGOD on my ticket), up when they come out. - Karaoke. Some otaku are actually really good singers.
- It cooled off on the second night and remained cool into the third, so I didn't die.
- Started off in the video room for Wild Arms (which we thought led to the dealer room, which was still closed). Wild Arms dubbed sucks, but might be worth a glance subbed.
- Chinatown at noon in long jeans during a day of heavy heat and humidity is pretty hard on poor old Rob, but I picked up some more anime there too: Lupin III. The second TV series boxset #1. More w00tage. That was my last anime purchase. I need to save some money so that Discover stops calling me and leaving stupid jingles on my phone.
- Canal Street in Chinatown is the single most crowded place on planet Earth outside of Times Square at midnight on December 31. The McDonald's was so packed that it took me twenty minutes to wait on line to buy a small soda so I could go upstairs to use the bathroom.
- The Pennsylvania Hotel is the shittiest place I've ever stayed in. If you ever visit NYC, do yourself a favor and spend the extra dough to book a room at a name hotel like Holiday Inn or the Marriot or something decent, where the paint on the walls isn't peeling and the bathroom ceiling isn't covered in mildew. Walking there was like navigating a cave, most of the stuff was unplugged when we got in, and we got the barest of necessities. However, the lobby was quite nice.
- Waiting for a train that never comes sucks. Bah. Waiting over two hours for a table at Red Lobster sucks worse (though the service was spectacular).
- Boogiepop Phantom wasn't very good.
- I walked several miles in boots and now have a blister on my right foot.
- Karaoke. Some otaku are very bad singers.
The people I was with tended to drag me around and I didn't want to call you if I wasn't actually at the con. I was looking for you too, mind.
