The Old School Otaku Lounge

I think most guests are uneasy their first trip over, being surrounded by tall barbarians that bark crude Japanese and smell like beef jerky. I'm sure Asamiya quickly realized that none of us cared about his industry ties/situation. At panels you could tell who was a bit nervous about being dragged out of seclusion. Only one mangaka struck me as disdainful and short with her audience though, and that was Chiho Saito. She didn't even go along with director Ikuhara's little jokes when he made them. I feel like trading away the stuff I asked her to sign...

Wow, that's pretty disheartening, I love Chiho Saito's work.

Being at her appearances was like being in a shoujo manga. I got to play the scene where the school ruffian tries to converse with the proper and beautiful onee-san. Of course, you could say that guys who like robots-n-lasers shouldn't wander down the hall into the tea-n-gowns room

The UTENA animation guests were amiable, even though I wasn't able to afford/win art from the character designer. Here is the stuff I had autographed:

Haha, that does sound like a shoujo manga!

Beautiful pieces you got signed! *__* I have 2 Utena items signed by concept designer/animation director/key animator Hiroshi Nagahama:





I had him draw Saionji on the movie DVD because everyone else was asking for Touga & I wanted to be different...then the next time he came, he remembered me from the Saionji sketch, so he did another one! XD lol. (I should've asked for Chuchu on the second one or something, haha.)

It's amazing how quickly these pros can knock off an appealing drawing.

Labsenpai, it's cool to hear how Kenichi Sonoda gave everyone a nice sketch. "Priss in Concert" is awesome for 90 seconds. Although forgive my dirty mind for this observation: that doesn't look like a microphone she's holding...

Oh man, I thought the same thing. Dirty minds think alike, you could say. And I don't even really have that dirty of a mind...

haha omg I had just glanced at it before, but looking at it again...

I realized it's been a while since I posted anything on this thread, so I have a few things to share from a few months ago (sorry in advance for the crappy phone pics, lol...)


Vols 1-3 of Patlabor I found in the foreign-language section of Half Price Books for only a few bucks each! They're in great shape, too.


Some Animericas and REALLY old Dirty Pair (Eclipse Comics Dirty Pair!) someone sent me because they just didn't want them anymore.


An almost complete set of Evangelion TV series Newtype Books! Again, someone didn't want these, so they gave em to me for just the price of shipping. It's only missing the very last volume! I found one on eBay but of course, with shipping it's nearly $20. Ugh!
The same person also included this:


The "Anime Heroine Encyclopedia Vol 1"! Has a ton of photos and info on specifically sci-fi & mecha Anime heroines from the 60s all the way to the 90s. Sadly, it says "vol 1" but apparently no other books were ever made after it. A shame, it's a pretty neat resource!

And most recently:

2 Animedia mags from the early 90s! Again, someone just gave them to me for the price of shipping. Sadly, the Patlabor one didn't come with the furoku listed on the cover (a Wataru and SD Gundam poster), but it had some Patlabor stickers inside! The other one came with a freakin' RANMA poster, but it sadly has a rip right in the middle of it. ;___; If it was laid down flat, it wouldn't be that noticeable...but I was still kinda bummed about it because the guy promised they were both in "near perfect" condition (which wasn't the case...sigh!) But oh, well. Can't complain since I only paid for the shipping, I guess, huh?)

NEAT!

I totally forgot to post about this when I actually got it, but...I managed to get an Urusei Yatsura VHS that's autographed by Akira Kamiya!



It was on ebay in a lot of 10 random UY VHS tapes that were $10...so, I basically paid $1 a tape, and got this to boot!

I looked up his autograph on Google to compare it to this one...as far as I know, it's legit. (I don't think it'd be easy to copy his signature, anyway!) The person auctioning them off didn't seem to know much about it, so I'm assuming they were either given them, or bought them from someone? They didn't even know Kamiya's name, they just mentioned "it looks like one of the tapes are autographed". Oh, well, lucky for me!