You convention story?

Conventions and other events, fandom, stores, manga-ka, animators, and other people, etc
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Fireminer
Posts: 292
Joined: Mon Jul 09, 2018 7:42 pm
Anime Fan Since: 2012

You convention story?

Post by Fireminer »

Why don't we share our convention stories? Are there any interesting people, events, etc. that make you remember a convention for your entire life?

When I visited Japan, my older brother dragged me to a cosplay convention in Yokohama. There was a raffle for visitors, and I won what seemed to be a fan-made deck printed with Fate characters. When I returned to my brother's boarding house that night, I opened the deck and found out it was full of card blanks. Were it to be just a deck of normal playing cards, then the whole thing wouldn't be weird. How did these people get their hands on a stack of card blanks is the weird thing.
George W
Posts: 69
Joined: Thu Oct 28, 2021 6:06 pm
Anime Fan Since: 1985
Location: Rochelle, IL

Re: You convention story?

Post by George W »

I got to sit in on some panel sessions at CactusCon 87 (The NASFiC since the WorldCon was out of country).

The panel sessions were on Anime. Torin Smith was also on one of them. We had a good time talking about Nausicaa and similar anime.

However, the highlight was seeing Laputa on the big screen at a theater across the street. The theater smelled kind of musty, but it was cool inside, and the translated movie was absolutely STUNNING. After watching anime on my 27" TV, it was just INCOMPARABLE.

I still get chills from the finale. That one will never leave me.
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Drew_Sutton
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Joined: Tue May 07, 2013 6:19 pm
Anime Fan Since: 1994
Location: Atlanta, GA US/Hackistan, Internet

Re: You convention story?

Post by Drew_Sutton »

Hardly a "classic anime fandom" story but one of my favorite stories I like to tell -

While I was in university, while at Anime Weekend Atlanta, one of my university friends always like to throw a room party at the con. Decent drink options, lots of folks gettin' chatty and having a good time, fun little printed invites for folks. Good times. Outside of immediate friend circles, the only criteria for getting an invite was "yeah, I'll show up". In a wild ride, said Uni friend wound up working in France for much of that year, only getting back in town a few days before AWA. He's getting everything ready for the party, stack of invites in his hand, and winds up in the elevator with on of the Guests of Honor. So, he figures, why not - and invites the guest to his humble little room party. Even if the guest doesn't show up, it's a funny little story.

So it's late night, party's going, everyone's having a good time. We hear some commotion in the hallway, a couple people poke their heads out and see someone looking intently at a card, then the room number for each door, knocking occasionally. It was the guest,escaped from his handlers, looking for our room. We invite him in; he naturally speaks little English so I have to muster up semi-sober Japanese while we're trying to get another friend of ours who's fluent up to the room. We pour the guest a drink and start toasting (easiest way to get a conversation going lol). Eventually our other friend shows up and we trade off (though admittedly, he did the lion's share of the effort). The guest, being a mangaka, wants to know what everyone's favorite manga are, so we're going around a circle talking about manga - I forget what a lot of other people's answers were, some typical things like Dragonball or Naruto or the like. Mine was Touch and admitted that Adachi was not very popular here. We eventually get to the host. He's a big dude. Like 6' 3", 6' 4", probably at that time like 275 or 280. "What's your favorite manga?" Without missing a beat, he responds "Yubisaki Milk Tea." A quick back and forth, confirming that the huge guy in the room likes the girliest title mentioned.

We continued talking and drinking for a bit longer, the guest wanted to take some pictures, so we all took a few shots together with him. Allegedly, one or two of those shots got used as reference photos for some background characters in a panel or two of Tsukiyomi: Moon Phase. I haven't found them yet, so I don't know if that's actually true; I'd just heard it from someone who was at the party a few years later.
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