Nekocon 11 Report

Friday

Drove down to Hampton. Pretty uneventful, hotel was easy to find, convention center a block away, blah.

Saw AMV Salad and AMV Salad 2, it's a blatant ripoff of AMV Hell that has its moments but mostly recycles old jokes. Surprise, they're making a third one that's a multi-author collaboration.

I killed my thumb on the fucking d-pad playing Arcana Heart. Since I don't know any moves for any of its characters, I was just trying random quarter circles. D-pads are awful for fighting games. Had a blister the rest of the con. Arcana Heart itself was pretty fun, though a bit slow and clunky like Street Fighter.

Went to the Giant Robot DanceRave only to discover that the only thing Giant Robot about it was the name. Speakers were too loud (I could hear what was either audio compression artifacts or sound equipment being pushed past its limits, probably also the reason why the DJ was unintelligible (either that or it was because the DJ was practically shoving the microphone into his mouth every time he spoke into it)), ears hurt for the rest of the con. Why the fuck were there no earplugs available for those of us who like being able to hear? The DJ played the Katamari Damacy theme song at one point, but that was the only redeeming thing about the entire thing. The song the DJ played "for the Youtube generation" I so wanted to be either Never Gonna Give You Up or Chocolate Rain, but instead it was some shitty techno song with Chris Crocker sound clips. The rest of the music was generic shitty techno, for example, Sandstorm. I'll repeat those two words again: shitty techno.

At about 1 AM we realized we hadn't had any food and walked to a nearby Denny's.

Saturday

Went to the re-run of the AMV contest (due to having been on the road during the original run). Action category was good, Drama category was ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ... (seriously, drama AMVs are boring as fuck), and Comedy category was awesome. If only I had a ballot or could remember the names of any of the videos, I'll just have to search Nekocon 11 on amv.org and hope I recognize something.

Went to the panel titled "Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann: Piercing The Heavens" just because. It was run by people cosplaying Yoko, Kamina, and pre- and post-timeskip Simon (that's pronounced "see-mohn"). We all shouted "ROW ROW FIGHT THE POWAH" at the beginning, and there were some lulz throughout.

We decided we'd go out for "teh f00dz" early enough that places other than Denny's would be open. We were also too hungry to walk any farther than the restaraunt closest to the hotel, which so happened to be a McDonald's. Whoever salts their french fries must have been really happy.

Went to the beginning of Live Action Whack-a-Catgirl just to see what the fuck it was. It was kinda boring and the people that were the game pieces for the Fangirl Stampede card went overboard on the first stampede and gave the catgirl a nosebleed. I got up and went to the Import Videogames panel to listen to one of the dealers' room vendors talk about piracy for an hour. Bleh.

After that, I defied our danchou's orders to go to the dancerave (This one was titled Cat Scratch Fever, but according to our danchou, they didn't actually play Cat Scratch Fever, making it fail just like any other rave) and went to the game room to play some Guitar Hero 3. They so fucking obviously played favorites with the systems, because the PS3 guitar is soooooooooooooo much better than the PS2 one. The strum bar is quieter and Select/Start are where they were on the GH1/2 SG. Something was off with my alt-strumming which led me to fail One on Expert twice in the same spot, where it briefly returns to the Darkness Riff at the end of Fast Solo B (or the beginning of Fast Solo C, haven't bothered to check). At least there weren't any elitists within visual range, everyone was generally sympathetic, kinda like what would happen at MAGFest in that situation.

At this point I realized that I'd spent the con disappointingly sober, so we went down to the one of our hotel rooms where all the alcohol was and I had two rum and cokes (mixed in the coke can due to general laziness) and looked up funny images on macrochan (yay free hotel wifi) while others played Hearts and generally lulz were had.

Sunday

Nothing interesting ever happens at an anime convention on Sunday. I blitzed to the dealers' room to get in as soon as it opened and pick up the Tsuruya figure I'd been debating about buying for the entire con. Gave one last futile search for volume 18 of Negima!, went back to the hotel room, lamented about my failure to pick up a cup of coffee from the hotel's continental breakfast on my way to the con (the continental breakfast closed at 10 AM, the dealers' room opened at 10 AM), and packed up.

We went to Denny's for lunch and then left for Charlottesville.

And one of the guys in my car left his towel in my trunk, so now I get to make the "no matter where you go, you always need to know where your towel is" Hitchhiker's Guide reference when I give it back to him.

Merchandise Haul (more like Merchandise Pickup, it's not nearly enough to be classified as a haul)

Manga:
Negima! volume 19 (I'm missing 18, couldn't find it at any of the three vendors that had manga)
The Third volumes 1 and 2

Shirt:
A panel from the Nyoro~n Churuya-san doujin with Churuya going "nyoro~n"

Figure:
Yakisoba cafe maid uniform Tsuruya for the win

Button:
A button I saw in Artists' Alley that had a cute looking chibi Yomi on it.