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Anime convention memories
Mar. 11th, 2024 12:11 amAnime Weekend Atlanta, 1998.
A bunch of friends and I loaded up in a conversion van and drove down to Atlanta for AWA. A long way off and the van was a gas hog but that was the only thing big enough for the 5 of us and gas was 90 cents a gallon back then. The van had a TV in the back and we connected a Playstation to it, we took turns driving, and overall it was an incredibly fun time the whole weekend, from start to finish.
"Are we in North Carolina now?" "Yeah." "So that explains why he just bought pork rinds and I felt my IQ drop several points."
On the way back, it was my turn to drive, and I went from one gas stop to the next, 320 miles. We calculated the van slurped down gas at 11MPG for the 4 hours I was at the wheel. Hey, I was just going with traffic, and the lights in the instrument cluster didn't work so I couldn't see where the needles were pointing or how fast I was going. Gas might have cost us $100 for the whole trip, or $20 for each of us.
South Carolina had the cheapest gas, as it usually does. It also had a different vibe from NC. In SC, places will just randomly and suddenly close. Permanently. And nothing moves into the old location, the whole building is just left to return to the earth. Or if something else does move in, they don't make any improvements to the structure because they figure they won't be there long either. You could be driving along, see a lot of neon for something, and when you get close enough to see what the fuss is about, you discover it's for a strip club in what may as well be a hollow log.
AnimeEast, 1995.
My friend and I arrive at the hotel after a 5-hour drive (would have been less if my car's radio hadn't stopped working), and we're early enough that the vendors room hadn't opened yet. There is no line for it, just an unruly mob. The room opens late, and everyone pushes in. Somehow I kept calm the whole time. Maybe it was the anticipation of all the anime goodies that awaited me on the other side of those doors.
When I was a kid, and we went to things like amusement parks or carnivals, with lots of people and lots of noise, I sometimes felt a sense of being overwhelmed. Sensory overload. It manifested as slight disorientation as though my head was about to float away like a balloon, and my hearing would try block things out to be more selective. I went anyway, because the parks and carnivals were genuinely fun enough to be worth it. I would expect the over-stimulation to take place, knowing what it was when it happened, and the sensation was less intense each time. Then it turned into intentionally pushing myself to that point, trying to force it to happen, like a mental hot-wings challenge. I don't know if it was some kind of phobia or anxiety or some other mental fuse on the verge of popping. Whatever it was, and whatever was left of it by the time I was 20, was burned off completely at AnimeEast. I never had a problem with dense crowds at anime conventions since.
Now just because that worked for me, doesn't mean it should be prescribed to someone with the same condition. I made that choice on my own and went as far as my own comfort levels allowed. Which turned out to be much further than I thought. I was then rewarded with the ability to experience things I would have otherwise denied myself. Wanna go to the party? There's gonna be a lot of people there. Can't party if I can't people.
Also at AnimeEast: I'm exploring the convention, looking for events to check out. Or maybe I was on my way to something else? I come up on a room, can't remember if it was a panel room or video room, but they were watching an older anime (which in retrospect wasn't all that old at the time). There was a comical scene of some kids getting pulled into something, which turned out to be a spaceship, which then ejected two of the kids. For some reason (maybe I was on my way to meet someone), I moved on without getting the name of that anime.
For decades, I would sometimes think of that scene and wonder what it was from. I knew that my memory of it would only get fuzzier with time. Then one day I was checking out the latest anime torrents and a show called "Alien X from A-Zone" appeared. That seems unique, I thought. So I downloaded it and watched it. Lo and behold, that was the anime I had seen a clip of so many years ago. Then I celebrated by also buying the LD for it from Surugaya.
Katsucon, 1996.
This was back when Katsucon was in the Virginia Beach area. Was it Friday night or Saturday night? The video rooms ran non-stop. I settle into one of the rooms for some obscure anime. One of the titles was "Butt Attack Punisher Girl", which had the audience laughing for almost 2 hours despite being untranslated. Then that was followed by "Combustible Campus Guardress". The ending theme song "Innocent Heart" turned into an earworm that haunted me until I found a crappy .wav file of it online and needed over an hour to download the 6MB file. At which point the first thing I did was copy the song onto some blank audio tapes so I could listen to it when not at a computer. (We're still in the 90s here. That's before burning mp3s to CD-R.) Shortly after, while at a DC-area anime club known for shenanigans, someone was selling bootleg anime music CDs from Taiwan/Hong Kong and one of the CDs had a bunch of OVA theme songs, and "Innocent Heart" was one of them.
In addition to someone selling the CDs of questionable origin, the club used to have its own anime tape library that members could borrow from, and I made use of that. Then there was a kerfluffle involving the "Mononoke Hime" movie. Someone at the club managed to get a fansub of it really quickly, and a club officer made the mistake of announcing "hey we're going to show the latest Studio Ghibli movie" and that attracted a lot of attention the club didn't need. End result was they had to shut down the tape library and pop-up CD "store" in addition to not showing the movie. That anime club is still going, last I heard.
Animazement, 2002.
By this time, I was largely settled into my new/current job. I had money again! My friends and I arrived just too late to go into the vendors room. Oh well, there's always tomorrow. I look at the video schedule. They're showing all of Mahoromatic, starting at midnight. Can I stay up that late again? Spoiler: Yes. I watched all 12 episodes and stumbled back to my hotel room at 5AM, with the ending theme having successfully invaded my ears. Thankfully, unlike with "Innocent Heart", I did not have to wait 2 years to find that song. Someone in the vendors room that weekend was selling the Mahoromatic soundtracks, with the opening and ending themes.
You are now imagining "The Hollow Log" in pink cursive neon.
A bunch of friends and I loaded up in a conversion van and drove down to Atlanta for AWA. A long way off and the van was a gas hog but that was the only thing big enough for the 5 of us and gas was 90 cents a gallon back then. The van had a TV in the back and we connected a Playstation to it, we took turns driving, and overall it was an incredibly fun time the whole weekend, from start to finish.
"Are we in North Carolina now?" "Yeah." "So that explains why he just bought pork rinds and I felt my IQ drop several points."
On the way back, it was my turn to drive, and I went from one gas stop to the next, 320 miles. We calculated the van slurped down gas at 11MPG for the 4 hours I was at the wheel. Hey, I was just going with traffic, and the lights in the instrument cluster didn't work so I couldn't see where the needles were pointing or how fast I was going. Gas might have cost us $100 for the whole trip, or $20 for each of us.
South Carolina had the cheapest gas, as it usually does. It also had a different vibe from NC. In SC, places will just randomly and suddenly close. Permanently. And nothing moves into the old location, the whole building is just left to return to the earth. Or if something else does move in, they don't make any improvements to the structure because they figure they won't be there long either. You could be driving along, see a lot of neon for something, and when you get close enough to see what the fuss is about, you discover it's for a strip club in what may as well be a hollow log.
AnimeEast, 1995.
My friend and I arrive at the hotel after a 5-hour drive (would have been less if my car's radio hadn't stopped working), and we're early enough that the vendors room hadn't opened yet. There is no line for it, just an unruly mob. The room opens late, and everyone pushes in. Somehow I kept calm the whole time. Maybe it was the anticipation of all the anime goodies that awaited me on the other side of those doors.
When I was a kid, and we went to things like amusement parks or carnivals, with lots of people and lots of noise, I sometimes felt a sense of being overwhelmed. Sensory overload. It manifested as slight disorientation as though my head was about to float away like a balloon, and my hearing would try block things out to be more selective. I went anyway, because the parks and carnivals were genuinely fun enough to be worth it. I would expect the over-stimulation to take place, knowing what it was when it happened, and the sensation was less intense each time. Then it turned into intentionally pushing myself to that point, trying to force it to happen, like a mental hot-wings challenge. I don't know if it was some kind of phobia or anxiety or some other mental fuse on the verge of popping. Whatever it was, and whatever was left of it by the time I was 20, was burned off completely at AnimeEast. I never had a problem with dense crowds at anime conventions since.
Now just because that worked for me, doesn't mean it should be prescribed to someone with the same condition. I made that choice on my own and went as far as my own comfort levels allowed. Which turned out to be much further than I thought. I was then rewarded with the ability to experience things I would have otherwise denied myself. Wanna go to the party? There's gonna be a lot of people there. Can't party if I can't people.
Also at AnimeEast: I'm exploring the convention, looking for events to check out. Or maybe I was on my way to something else? I come up on a room, can't remember if it was a panel room or video room, but they were watching an older anime (which in retrospect wasn't all that old at the time). There was a comical scene of some kids getting pulled into something, which turned out to be a spaceship, which then ejected two of the kids. For some reason (maybe I was on my way to meet someone), I moved on without getting the name of that anime.
For decades, I would sometimes think of that scene and wonder what it was from. I knew that my memory of it would only get fuzzier with time. Then one day I was checking out the latest anime torrents and a show called "Alien X from A-Zone" appeared. That seems unique, I thought. So I downloaded it and watched it. Lo and behold, that was the anime I had seen a clip of so many years ago. Then I celebrated by also buying the LD for it from Surugaya.
Katsucon, 1996.
This was back when Katsucon was in the Virginia Beach area. Was it Friday night or Saturday night? The video rooms ran non-stop. I settle into one of the rooms for some obscure anime. One of the titles was "Butt Attack Punisher Girl", which had the audience laughing for almost 2 hours despite being untranslated. Then that was followed by "Combustible Campus Guardress". The ending theme song "Innocent Heart" turned into an earworm that haunted me until I found a crappy .wav file of it online and needed over an hour to download the 6MB file. At which point the first thing I did was copy the song onto some blank audio tapes so I could listen to it when not at a computer. (We're still in the 90s here. That's before burning mp3s to CD-R.) Shortly after, while at a DC-area anime club known for shenanigans, someone was selling bootleg anime music CDs from Taiwan/Hong Kong and one of the CDs had a bunch of OVA theme songs, and "Innocent Heart" was one of them.
In addition to someone selling the CDs of questionable origin, the club used to have its own anime tape library that members could borrow from, and I made use of that. Then there was a kerfluffle involving the "Mononoke Hime" movie. Someone at the club managed to get a fansub of it really quickly, and a club officer made the mistake of announcing "hey we're going to show the latest Studio Ghibli movie" and that attracted a lot of attention the club didn't need. End result was they had to shut down the tape library and pop-up CD "store" in addition to not showing the movie. That anime club is still going, last I heard.
Animazement, 2002.
By this time, I was largely settled into my new/current job. I had money again! My friends and I arrived just too late to go into the vendors room. Oh well, there's always tomorrow. I look at the video schedule. They're showing all of Mahoromatic, starting at midnight. Can I stay up that late again? Spoiler: Yes. I watched all 12 episodes and stumbled back to my hotel room at 5AM, with the ending theme having successfully invaded my ears. Thankfully, unlike with "Innocent Heart", I did not have to wait 2 years to find that song. Someone in the vendors room that weekend was selling the Mahoromatic soundtracks, with the opening and ending themes.
You are now imagining "The Hollow Log" in pink cursive neon.
