Dragon*Con 200! My first unplanned, unknown con. What did I expect? Another anime con? What was I told? SciFi con. And YES, its definately a SciFi/RPG con. But its done Very well and the hotel was perfect. Plenty of space and so many events to attend. My main resoning in going were 2 famous celebrities: Amano Yoshitaka (Illustrator for Final Fantasy, Dream Hunters, HERO, Vampire Hunter D and a few others) and Apollo Smile (Live Action Anime Girl)

I went with my new Hardcore Otaku friend Shawn. We stopped off and got film before going, not to mention the 2 Whoppers for $2 at BurgerKing. We left at around 4pm... plenty of time to make it to the Apollo Smile concert, right? Execpt for the fact that I'm crossing over time zones which means i LOSE an hour. Ack

So we arrive in Atlanta, the hotel is HUGE! Before we went in a large group of Obi-wan costumers (like 20 of them) crossed the road. "Did we accidently go to JEDICON?" Shawn said. hahah.

Inside was kinda confusing. The registration was on the floor below the Lobby, which we "kinda" found out from information. the people really should know whats going on, especially if theyre working for the information desk. Well thats when Roo arrived. She had a really cool raver getup, spiked armbands and all. Yet still had the sign of an Otaku with the Shinji necklace. She helped us find the Registration so we went there, got the registration for 3 Days (evene though we only stayed 2, but the price would have been the same for 2) then headed straight to the Apollo concert. We made it, but only in enough time to catch her last song, which was still Very cool. Then we just....wandered.

Walking around the con, we found every floor had another set of rooms that all had events going. A big change from the usual cons that have eerything on one floor. One room (here goes my Rant) had some Klingon meeting where the femal Klingon demanded:
"Get In Here!" I just kinda laughed it off saying "Thats okay"
"Did I ASK you?!? Get in here!" Now I'm not dissing Klingons here, but of the...umm...two episodes I've seen of Star Trek TNG, wasn't Warf a nice Klingon? Guess I still have much to learn about em. But still man, for being in character, she was quite rude. Other rooms were Live RPG, Magic Card & other card games, an X-Files panel, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, and a REALLY large game room with over 60 computers all in three rooms hooked up with some truely awesome multi-player games. I didn't go to any of the panels tho. Shawn and I were looking for one thing: ANiME!

We finally found it, in the -2nd Floor, in the dark dark corner of the convention. Wow..umm one room. but that was enough to keep Shawn happy. After that, Shawn just kinda stayed there the rest of the time (yes, he was there for over 9 hours that day, and 10 hours the next...not counting the 2 hours of sleep ^_^) they played some nce Anime though. All subtitled. Lain, Galaxy Express 999, Queen Emereldas, and Sorcerer Hunters. There was also an HK Movie room next to it. And since the room was run by the guys at AWA, they played Saturday Morning Cartoons. Yay! GO-BOTS! ^_^

I then wandered the con some more. I bumped into Elly, which we have never met in person but we've talked online for quite some time. She was costumed as a character from Angel Sanctuary (a manga that has yet to be translated, get it if you can). Her costume was awesome, but EVERYONE was asking why she would have three wings on the angel, but they took lots and lots of pictures neverless.

That evening Roo and friends were all going to the Cruxshadows concert. I've never listened to Goth music, but she told me theyre very cool, so I thought i'd check it out (oh, and I got to wear Vinyl Pants there! Thanks Roo!). It turned out that a guy i talked to earlier (who i thought was costuming as Jhonny The Homicidal Maniac) was the leader/vocalist for the band! Too cool. The concert was so great! What confused Roo and I was that people sat down watching it! And this music was pretty good for dancing to. During the last song we got up and danced with the other goths/ravers, and he saw that and said "Hey all of you sitting down! Get up and dance!" heh, cool cool. Richard (vocalist) has such a style with his concert. He actually went out in the audience several times in his concert! And then he would go in front of the video screen that was playing a looping music video and do like sillouette moves. And with his hair, it looked very cool.

I then went and hung out with Tearbolt. She was dressed, well, as a goth. We checked out the con suite, which was alright. Usualy crowd of smokers and conslugs. Soda was cool, they had a big syphon coming in for each drink so i suspect the drinks would never run out. Then the usual candies and other junk foods were all there too. Room Parties; we only found one or two. Nothing special. They had some pretty strong booze and a good amount of drunkards to go along with it. Multi-coloured lights filled the room, giving it a way trippy setting. Nice touch.

Tearbolt and I spent awhile just checking out the place, the outside drummers, and random events. We went back to the dance to see if anything was happening there. Well there was quite a lot of room in the dance floor, but not enough of an audience. The music was okay, just standard techno and rock, so I didn't dance all that much. Quite a few Glow Sticks to light up the place. I saw Commander Havok and Bunny-chan there. A Real suprise to see Bunny. Havok died his hair reddish, it looked smooth! Neither were in costume though. Actually mostly all of my friends just kinda slummed this con, going in standard clothes rathe than flashy Anime costumes. After all...its not an Anime con, I had to keep reminding myself that.

Sleep... I got really tired. But why wouldnt I? I mean people actually SLEEP at this con. Stange, most cons are open 24-7, but this con actually sleeps. So Shawn and I just chilled in the Video Room. But sometime around 5am they cleared the room saying "Clear Out!". Geez, if it weren't for the 6 people sleeping and snoring like jackmhammers, they probably would have kept it open longer. So we head out to the streets to find a restaurant to chill at. On the way to and from we were partitioned by two steet bums trying to get money off of us. They didn't even know what Dragon*Con was! Man!

Nothing was open and the the hotel breakfast was an outrageous $9 for a buffet. So we got some drinks and just chilled for awhile. I went upstairs and talked to Roo, who was listening to her CD and drawing a cool picture of Rouge/Richard from Cruxshadows (which he said "FanArt!" later on and was pretty shocked!)

The Anime video room again opened and I finally got to get some sleep. "Moocha-con" Mooching rooms off people was much harder here than others, considering they all mooched off of someone else, ack. I went to sleep wathcing Go-Bots and woke up to CardCaptor Sakura.

Then I remembed that dealers room is now open! So I head upstairs to see....MOG! Wow, Elly made a terrific Mog costume which everyone was getting pictures of. Both Elly and I are big Amano fans so we went to the Neil Gaiman/Amano Yoshitaka Sandman panel. It was neat, they talked about Dream Hunters, and what its potential was. There was even a talk about a Movie! But then he told everyone that the rights to The Dream Hunters was under Warner Brothers, (a very deep Homer Simpson) "DOH!" was the perfect description for that. If anything it should be animated, just like Vampire Hunter D and Angel's Egg. After the panel, Amano went offstage with a Huge crowd of die-hard fans trying toget autographs and pictures. So i missed out. But then I heard he was later doing a Demonstration, yes!!

Dealers room. Oh my, get this, was in Another building. Dragon*Con totally took over this section of downtown. I mean if you have to go to Another building to get to the Dealer's and Art rooms, you KNOW its a big con. Well in the dealers room there were plenty of new cmomic book illustators, but I had NO money this year, so the only thing I bought was a fansubtitled (yay, bootleggers ^_^) Pokemon Movie 2: Revelation Lugia. Well guess who happened to be in the dealers room? Apollo Smile herself! Wow, heres my chance to finally meet her. The line wasn't that long but since Apollo is sonice she actually has a little conversation with her fans. Thats so cool! When it was finally my turn I was just so amazed to meet her I just talked away. She was really nice and glad I'm such a fan. What really suprised her is that I had her ORiGiNAL CD. She said my version was early early print and would be woth a lot when she gets her new TV show (Sugoi! ^_^). Then, guessed who just happened to pass by; Alisa Farrington and Derek. Alisa was wearing her Ulala costume from Space Channel 5, which Apollo just DiED over! considering she is the voice of Ulala, it just totally amazed her. I told her she can go ahead and take pictures of them. I can wait. (Aww, whatta great guy) Apollo and Alisa did "The Walk" Ulala does, and all sorts of other little dances. It was funny! They got so many pictures then! Apollo then signed my CDs and Comic. She thought Mappyman was a really great nickname so she called me "Mappy" from then on. "Stay Groovy Mappy!" "U ROCK Mappy!" Apollo is so great. She told me that she would have joined the military too if the Entertainment business didn't work out. I told her she has to go to AWA this year. I really hope she does.

Time was getting short now. Elly was still hanging out with me (or...was I hanging out with Elly?) and she was really hungry, but then again the Amano demonstration started soon. Feh...Amano is more important! ^_^ But when we went there he was a fashiopnably 45minuites late. Someone said it was because he got caught selling autographs (Neils idea? heheh) We watched in awe as Amano drew several amazing sketches. Mainly of "D" from Vampire Hunter D. Someone asked why he likes drawing D so much, he said (well, his translator actually) that its because he can do anything with D, hes a perfect character for that.

Other questions asked:
-"How long did it take to draw (the looong picture in the book) DAWN?"
10 days (Which from what I hear by a fellow painter/artist is DAMN Fast)
-"What are Amano-sama's favorite movies?"
Blade Runner and (heehee) Gone With The Wind
-"Can you draw Sephiroth?"
Who is that? (Yes, can you believe Amano forgot who Sephiroth was?! Someone showed him thr FF7 box, but she wanted to see Sephiroth's face)
-"Amano's favorite colour?"
Red
-"Does Amano listen to music during his paintings?"
Yes, all the time. Usually Classical
-"Is there a name for the dog character in HERO?"
No
-"What about the DreamCast RPG coming out he's doing artowrk for?"
In 3 more years...
-"In the DreamCast RPG, will he be doing Characters or Scenery?"
A simple and explanitory answer, YES ^_^

As the sketches went on, people shouted out requests for what drawing to make next. "Draw A Monkey!" "Draw The Crow!" then Elly shouts "Draw MOG!!" and being in a moogle costume, everyone laughed, but guess what? Amano drew MOG! Hah, a cute little Mog sitting in a little innertube with a cocktail glass. Kawaii!!! Elly just adored it so much she asked if she could have it. Amano tunred aound and saw her costume, which he must have somehow missed seeing earlier. And Elly got her drawing. An actual Amano Yoshitaka original! How very very lucky! The sketches went on and Amano made drawings from "Tale Of Genji", "Gatchaman", more "D" (even a chibi-D drawing on a t-shirt), and some Final Fantasy Amano has such amazing style with his art. He starts from the top of the picture and works his way down. All sketchy, nothing definatel. Like D's cape was just a quick strike of his pen on the board, so specific design, just kinda waves around. So amazing to see him at work. Amano is definately a dreamer. His watercoloring was just as amazing. Just light little strokes of the brush. Nothing dramatic, yet the finished product looks like he spent soo long on it. I'd say each of his drawings were finished in easily under 10 minuites. And even though I wanted to stay longer, I had been at the demonstration for well over 2 1/2 hours (yeah, it was only sceduled to be an hour). Time was just flying by, and I had to go. So, off I went with my copy of Dawn still not autographed and no pics of me with Amano. Aww.

Arriving back at the hotel I bumped into Nee-chan, who I had no idea (and heh, neither did she!) she would have gone here. She was here with two friends and I would have loved to stay and chat, but I was just on my way out, and she was just on her way in, bummer. I signed her HighSchool yearbook quickly and told her sorry I couldn't stay longer. Hey people! From now on, TELL me if you're going to this years cons okay? Heh

All in all, Great Con! I won't complain about the lack of Anime because its not an Anime Convention. But the hotel was very impressive, all events (at least the ones I attended) were right on schedule. People were nice (cept for that evil Klingon), I got to see some old friends, and costumes were REALLY good (Darth Vader, you rule!). At first I tended to whine, but in respect for the con, the place was very well made. I mean its so large they had multiple buildings hosting this con! Wow! Concerts were impressive and none of the elevators broke.My main gripe would be the price, Yes, I understand they have to get allof the guests here and rent out several hotels, but the price just irks me, especially when i have to buy a 3-day pass when I only planned on staying Fri-Sat. Maybe $10-20 less would be possible, that would make it better. Oh! And the slacker Information Desk people! Goodnes, get a clue! They couldn't even tell me where the registration desk was! And where are the maps and schedules? Oh, and please give me a program book, or tell me where to find one, ok? I got lost trying to find some of the events.

Will I go next year? If Apollo and Amano are there, so am I. Now I know what to expect. I had no idea what was going to happen this year, so i was thrown off a little. Next year I'll fully know that its not an Anime con, and since I've never been to a convention outside of Anime, i guess I had some standards. But because its such a popular con and I know i'll end up knowing several people, and finding new interests (hey! I like Goth music now, cool, ne?) I'll most likely attend. If only the price could be a little lower I might stay the entire weekend.

Well theres my review. I hope I havent offended anyone in any traverse manner. Again, I had no idea what this con would be like so this is a first-time non-anime con review. Pax everyone and keep smiling! ^_^