Anime Detour: 2005


MOCHI > The Scrapbook > Convention Memories > Anime Detour > 2005

During a bright and shiny hour of Friday morning, Contingent B (Toasted, Grandis, and company) arrived, ready to start in on the convention. Daifuku, who is not a morning person, was mollified with an offering of some nice lemon bars from the pasty shop A Baker's Wife. Then it was off to collect badges, place work in the Art Show, and to see -- well, what there was to see. About half of us had been to last year's convention. The other half wasn't sure what to be expecting.

Unfortunately for us, it looked like there wasn't much that would be open for a while. So, we went to that Capitalist Mecca, the Mall of America, to pick up a few items and oggle places like the small Sanrio gift shop. The hit of the trip, of course, was the small shop that sells bubble tea. There were some interesting flavors available, like red plum, taro, and sour apple.

By the time we got back to the hotel, it looked like the convention was beginning to hum.

Most of the convention space is located along one side of the hotel, although there are a few rooms scattered elsewhere. (Most of those rooms were not used by Anime Detour.) The con staff had mentioned several times in their web forums that the halls were going to be a bit narrow -- and they weren't kidding. Anime conventions seem to take place as much in the hotel hallways as it does in the actual panel or video rooms. With most of the event space being approached by one main hallway, it got crowded as people sat down along each side.

For most of MOCHI, the video rooms were a bit strange. With most of the guests being American voice actors, there was one room devoted to dubs. Other dubbed work would crop up, from time to time, in other rooms. Since two members of MOCHI are quite fluent in Japanese and another is a fan of seiyuu (Japanese voice actors), it was sometimes irritating to find a show that you wanted to see but it was only being shown dubbed. It was nice, however, to see a convention that was actively showing titles that had some relation with the convention guests.

One thing that was a major hit was one of the video gaming rooms. Since most of MOCHI are interested in fighting games only as a potential source of interesting costumes, we usually don't find too much that grabs us. However, with the growth of music video games and more puzzle-based gaming, convention game rooms are definitely more interesting. Although Daifuku was disappointed that there wasn't any Katamari Damancy, Toasted was overjoyed to find Pop'n'Music.

Pop'n'Music is one of the bemani (beat mania) style games. You have to smack a set of plastic "bubbles" on the "bubble-board", as directed by a set of colored cues on the screen. Of course, the colored cues are falling down and you can only hit the cues as they hit the bottom of the screen. Cues will sometimes drop at different rates, so if you anticipate too much, you'll find yourself smacking the bubbles horrendously out of order and causing some very unhappy sounds to be coming out of the monitor. Do it right, however, and you actually get music. [And an opportunity to drop things on the heads of your opponents! -Toasted]

There was a small side room that had a few more of the keyboard-style music games. The real gem, though, as far as MOCHI was concerned, was the Donkey Konga machine. Heck, once Toasted Mochi found out that you could bang your way to the tune of the B-52's "Rock Lobster", we pretty much knew where he was going to be for most of the weekend.

In fact, both Toasted and Daifuku Mochi had to be pried away from Donkey Konga to greet Spiky Mochi, who had finally arrived. MOCHI then decamped to a favorite Ethiopian restaurant, The Blue Nile, where much injera (flatbread) and yummy stews were consumed.

[Day One]