-=Mappyman's Review=-

Friday morning we all got packed up and jammed backpacks and VCRs into the trunk. Heading to Jon's to meet up with everyone else, I figured we should bring an extra TV since we'd want to both play games and watch Anime. The Commodore didn't quite fit so we had to sit that between me and Sushi. Also, before leaving we printed out the con schedule and made quick plans as to which panels we'd attend. We took several group shots and then we were off. Since I didn't want to waste time changing, I just wore gloves and goggles early on the way there.

Friday- arriving, I got in line for my PRE-registered membership. "Mappyman" written on the badge even, sugoi! After that I headed straight to the place that mattered most... our hotel room!(thought I'd say dealers room, ne?). Anyway, dropped off my stuff, and THEN my group and I headed to the dealer's room. Whats this?! two! this year had it made, two dealers rooms instead of one clustered one. Lots of walking space, which was a dramatic improvement over last years.

Outside the dealer's room were several artists selling off comics/CDs/promotional goods. One of them was my idol, Shawn The Touched, infamous creator of White Radish and #1 fan parody; Fast Food Freedom Fighters. I excitingly introduced myself and got copies of the 4F script and other 4F goods autographed. Since I wrote him about it, he brought me the Original Master copy of Fast Food Freedom Fighters Remake, asking that I bring it back the next day. Its a great thing we brought 2 VCRs and a TV with us! Shawn you rule! Right after this I met Elfy and she told me that some guy wearing a trenchcoat was looking for me. Going by alias' she couldn't quite remember his name, and from what I remembered, quite a few of my online friends said they were meeting me and are wearing trenchcoats. He eventually showed up and WOW, it was Slaynn. A person who I talked to right after AWA4, but then lost track of. We conversed for awhile, then began the...

Opening ceremonies- since I arrived a bit late, I sat near the back. Dogbert was there with Bunny girl and Hentai Pope. This was another first time meeting for me, so it was very exiting. Bunny was all over Dogbert, it was crazy. Ceremonies were pretty standard, explaining the con and what happens when. My driver, Loki and I planned to leave to watch Slayers Gorgeous as soon as the Magic Card burning ritual was over. It was great! They showed a video someone sent in with various ways of totally destroying Magic Cards ranging from running over, exploding, driving a katana through, and even putting it on the barbecue!! It was hilarious. So in the end we missed Slayers Gorgeous, but still had lots of fun.

Karaoke OK was great. Wasn't held in the Main room like last year, but was much longer. I quickly signed up to sing....dare I say it? The PokeRAP.....in English. All my friends were so exited about it. Other Karaoke was funny. Some dude named "Techno Monkey" did the DNA2 song, Ed Hill sang his "Minky Momo" theme song, which was funny, Carolina not only sung Kitty Nakajima's song from Bust A Move but danced to it as well! Then when the song kept playing Captain Havok and a costumer dressed as Heat joined in! Of course the same group of girls sang Sailor Moon, Eva, and Rayearth songs.
After about 23 songs, it was my turn; "Pokerap! Singing by Mappyman!" the crowd cheered. In the crowd was Mike Corbitt of HarshMistressTV, who thought it was so great that I was singing that he just came up and Gave me his music video tape! I told him just to wait until After I embarrass myself infront an audience of 100+ people ^_^. I hadn't quite memorized the entire song and I wasn't about to make the same mistake I did last year by half-singing the song, so this year I took the lyrics sheet along with me. Well in the end it was great! The audience apparently had seen the show before and sung the song along with me, going absolutely nuts over the Pikachu line! I got insane cheers from everyone which was really awesome! 3 of my friends got it on tape, and even more on camera.

After that the new group I joined; Elfy, Slaynn, Duncan and some others walked around then headed to the pool. The only ones who actually wanted to go in were me and Elfy though. Why? Because I've always heard about indoor/outdoor pools but never been in one, and now was my chance to finally try it out. Well that, and the fact that swimming is my favorite sport of all time and I'm very good at it. Ok, want to know the real reason? Elfy! There, happy now? ^_^

Since I had no trunks, I had to settle for a pair of grey (gray...whichever) shorts I planned to wear with my Team Rocket costume. Without the shorts underneath, I don't have any pockets because for the bottom part I used sweatpants. Well anyway, my situation wasn't half as bad as Chris & Loki's. They went swimming in normal blue jeans and shirt!

the pool was great! Heated to the point where the water wasn't at all uncomfortable, just the right temperature. We saw nobody was using the Spa so we went in that too. Just acting crazy, Chris went from the Spa straight into the outside freezing cold pool. Then he pulled me in too! Ahh!

Later that night Elfy, Duncan, and I randomly went around talking with people, hanging out in rooms, tossing bread, all sorts of other things. I was really thirsty so I went out for a drink and I saw Slaynn hanging outside one of the rooms. Turned out he didn't have a room so he would be walking around the con all weekend long. I also let him borrow my Kenshin fansub earlier so we had a discussion about that.

Crazy Bee and I heard from Slaynn that they'd be a burn party...and who else could host an anime con burn party? WEDOCA! It was great, Tony and I finally met in person (although I had to introduce myself twice until he remembered me). Tony even offered to copy me Storm Riders, an awesome SciFi Kung Fu movie made by the people who made Drunken Master 1 & 2. Party was great until hotel security came in and busted us for begin too loud.

Later that night, my group wanted to all play video games and make a copy of Freedom Fighters, since the "Blind Copy" we made earlier didn't come out. Turns out this hotel's VCRs had the back cables blocked off so you couldn't hook up your VCR of video games to them. I actually had several offers by people who brought their systems and couldn't play them. (Sorry room #466 DreamCast party with Arcade pad Marvel VS Capcom grand prize!)

We needed 3 plugs: 1 for Commodore, 2 for VCR1, 3 for VCR2. All we could find were 2 plugs and the next one would be too far for cords to reach down. Then we found some...and of all areas! It was a small corner near the lobby between the phone booths and restrooms and right outside of the hotel staff room. Last year we convinced the ConSuite video room to play it, but this was fine considering how many people it attracted. The 4F group totaled to about 15 at a time, since the area was so small. Not to mention the hotel staff needed to get by us every few minutes. They didn't seem to mind, well I'm guessing they did, but I didn't hear any complaints so we just kept watching. Chris and I being the 4F experts we are, pointed out just about everything different in the revision including one of the scenes missing from the original! Yes, we are obsessed over that parody! Also watching were Nee-chan, GoldenBoy, Brenda, and a few lurking in from the lobby. It wasn't as glorious a showing as last year, but we managed to snag a few fans into liking it. ^_^

After making a perfect SP copy of 4F, I hooked up the video games and played them for awhile. People came in and out asking about which ones they were or where they can buy our games...heheheh ::evil grin::. One of the people was Brandon! Yay Captain Havok! I played him quite a few times in BeatMania. (I'm better tho ^.^) He hadn't played the more recent game in the series, "GottaMix" so we played that. It was so much fun! Even though he asked to give up, I persisted in challenging him just a few more times before all of us headed up to our rooms.

Saturday-I didn't really sleep at all that night. My eyes had actually turned a reddish colour! Shortie's mom and everyone else's snoring kept me and Sushi awake. So we just kind of lazed around until sunrise. Since I had left my Team Rocket costume's boots and Rose at Bee's, I figured I'd just walk around for a few hours then change. I got a few heads turned, but not much more. The typical response came from 10 year olds saying "Oh, Team Rocket" under their breath. I did, however get a Great picture with Carolina and Amy when they costumed as Sorcerer Hunters (whoever took that pic, if you're reading this contact me!!!)

Professional awards were funny! Although earlier than scheduled, I managed to snag a corner in the far back corner. Standing on my knees, the videos looked pretty great, and as always, humor got the biggest reaction.

Cosplay. Alright, I could take the side of everyone else and use a meg of webpage space complaining, but I'm not. Well maybe just half a meg ^_^. Waiting in line was preposterous. I had Elfy hold me a spot in line while I go change out of my now extremely uncomfortable Team Rocket costume. When I got back, the line had doubled, nearly tripled yet still they weren't letting people in. Last year we somehow managed to "Sneak" in front of a guy, since he had no complaints, we just acted as if we had been there from the start. This year, there was no chance of that. Even though I wanted to insist that I get in because I had a camcorder, I found the Video Feed room to be a lot more spacious and quieter than the extremely packed main room.

The room filled immediately as they opened it. Slaynn managed to get me a spot on the side table of the room, which served perfect for recording because I wouldn't get people's heads in the way, and the sound would be clearer. Carol Ann was there too (no real point to saying that, just wanted to put my finally meeting her somewhere in this review). First few minutes of the Cosplay were totally unorganized. Nobody knew what was happening, cosplay was out of order, sound flickered on and off, things got really awkward, but I suspect that the reactions in the Video Feed room weren't nearly as bad as the actual room. AWA4s cosplay was worse than AWA2s, so I wasn't expecting any better. There were a few select skits that were really good, those being the humorous skits dealing with total irony or just references to other Anime. Like a girlfight over Zelgadis, debate over whether a play Cabbit was real or stuffed, Rent-A-Ninja, and the Fiddler of Hamlin who couldn't quite play because of the noisy conboys interrupting his skit. Not saying that the audience participation was bad, but it got a little out of hand this year.

Alternate Music Video Contest was pretty good this year too. Crazy Bee and I stood in the back enjoying just about every video played. Only 1 Weird Al song "Bohemian Polka" this year unfortunately, but it was a riot the entire way through. Those seem to always go over well. I mean how can you NOT make a good video from Weird Al's songs? Using Ping Pong Club to Lords Of Acid was hilarious. Brad De Moss came through with a remarkable combination of the Titanic theme with Yamato. The audience was almost dead silent during that. Job well done.

Sunday- I woke up and took one last roam around the dealers room. Con seemed to have died out by now. Everyone's a little sleepy I guess. Get back to the room and packup. I haul all my stuff down to the car because the plan was to pack up everything first then when the time came to leave, we'd all be ready. As I put all my stuff in the trunk and walk off I learned that Loki and Chris had left the keys in the car. Oh no! Now what? Well after attempting to open the car using a coat hanger and even the cars antenna (you can imagine that didn't quite work, actually it got stuck in the car door) we finally agreed to call the Pop-A-Lock guy. I headed to the front desk and asked them to find me someone (anyone?!) who could recommend me a locksmith. Well nobody showed up so Loki just called whoever. Renee then came up saying she was finally going to make her trip to Rainbow Video. the Entire convention we had planned to go there, and this was my last chance. I figured, hrm...about 1 hour until Pop-A-Lock comes by to fix the car, I should be back in time ^_^

So Renee, Jen, Ryouga, and Reubeus, and I all left to the infamous Rainbow Video. According to the hotel staff (Baka!) it was 5 minutes away. 35 minutes and a couple of wrong turns (mah bad, heehee) we arrived. the place was jam packed with bootleg Raw Anime tapes, it was an Otaku's dream vault! Everything unsubtitled, undubbed, totally straight Japanese! The one thing I wanted though, was Unico. they had it, but they didn't. Rainbow copies tapes for a business. they didn't have a copy of Unico unfortunately. "Can you just mail me it?" and sure enough they did! What great people!
Next the group went next door to a Japanese food store. Again, I was suprised to see all the Raw Japanese stuff there. Pokemon food galore which would sell for 10x as much on Ebay! Also, my favorite snack of all time, Pocky! I bought a second pack to share with friends.

Arriving back wasn't so pleasant as I thought it would be. Sure I was only back about 5 minutes later than I said I was, but it caused way too much commotion. I looked for the car, but didn't find it. Did they leave me here, in Atlanta? Surely not. I checked around the dealers room. Slaynn told me he hadn't seen anyone from my group, but would tell them I will be in the lobby. Jenn and I walked around the parking lot searching, then I found Jon and Wushuquan. "You're 3 hours late!" which was total BS, but I realized I should have stayed in the hotel lobby until Shortie's mom came so I could explain to her where I went.She was a little pissed to say the least, but I can see why: I worried her as to my whereabouts. The drive back was pretty cool. My friends had lots of CDs to listen to.

-Good points-
Meeting people. With over 2,000 people and 3 days, it was a great chance for me to meet up with all my online friends, and even make new ones. Pool, while even though closing at 11pm (which was about 10 minuets after I went there) was fun. New panels were a nice touch, and dealers room didn't cease to amaze me with all its imports.

-Bad Points-
Cosplay was decent. If pre-planned it would have been great. There were a few gems, but some cosplay just reeked of "Ad-Lib". Hotel TV's blocked off the cable connector, so you wouldn't be able to hook your VCR or game system up to them, which was a real bitch. Its a good thing I brought my own ^_^. Karaoke needs to be in a bigger room, it gets full, fast!

-Extra Notes-
Fansubs at the dealers room were great! I already know quite a few groups, but a bunch of my friends were first-time conboys, and the idea of getting fansubs was the greatest thing for them. Something I'd didn't expect to see, but hope to see again.

With more people means more fans...and more fans means more girls. Unfortunately more girls means more ConSlugs. I'd say in the entire weekend I counted about 100 ConSlugs. Some in groups of 5-7! That's not good. Go do something else, watch movies or something, you hormone-enraged freaks!

AWA2 had the best CosPlay ever. Dave had a humorous anecdote for every skit, and the cameraman did a great job. AWA4 slacked a little, but cosplay didn't suffer too much. AWA5 just needed work. Humor is great...to a point. The Ryoga getting lost shenanigan is getting way too used. If a group isn't 100% ready for they're cosplay, don't let them go out and embarrass themselves. What did they do at this year's Cosplay Rehearsal anyway?

Overall, great con! Not AS good as AWA2, but considering the overcrowdedness, I think they did pretty well.