Fanime 2019: May The Road To Nerdom Rise To Meet You!!!

Join In The Adventure!!!

So this was the 25th Anniversary of Fanime as a whole, and my 19th time attending Fanime. It goes without saying that Fanime is always special, but this one mighta been a little EXTRA special. It's hard for me to gauge if i felt like there were way more people in attendance this time around or not. I feel like Fanime kinda reached its peak attendance in between like 2010 and 2012. Those years were like, totally unreasonable. So crowded. Could hardly get around. The funnest nightmare you can possibly imagine. It's dropped off slightly since then, but it hasn't been exponential, and it's still a nice, big, well attended con. I was assuming at first, when they first announced that this year woud be the 25th Anniversary, that I'd see a lot more old heads making thier nostalgic return trip after having been absent for however long. I was KINDA right. We certainly did not outnumber THE YOUTH, but it did seem like the median age of the convention as a whole rose a lil' bit.

Despite it not being a crowded mess, I still felt very overwhelmed by the sheer amount of people in attendance, and for that reason, I did not get nearly as many pictures as I woulda liked. I definitely gotta few, don't get me wrong, but I definitely saw way more costumes that I woulda liked to get pics of that I just couldn't get to because we were going one way and they were going another, or for whatever reason. I'm gonna hit up some of the friends i was with for their pics, cuz I'm sure they got tons that I didn't, so check this space early and often for additions.

We stayed at a new hotel this time around. not "new" as in it had just been built but new as in we'd never stayed there before. The Hotel De Anza. i liked it! It had this great 1920's art deco jazz age thing going on and it was great. It really fit Fanime's 25th Anniversary vibe. They billed it as Fanime's "Silver Age" celebration and all the anime characters they drew up for it were all flappers or in three piece suits. It all jsut really screamed GATSBY and I loved it. The Baz Luhrmann movie's soundtrack wouldn't have been outta place here. We had a screen print of Peter Sellers on our pillows, for gosh sakes, it was brilliant.
One gripe tho, the bathroom! The bathroom was certainly not fit for five people (that's how many peeps were in our party). It did not have a fan AT ALL, which is ALWAYS a problem. It had a vent in thier ceiling, which I guess did a passable job at de-steaming after a shower, but you really had to work to dry yourself off. Also, there was barely any kinda shelf in the shower for your soaps and shampoos and stuff. I feel like even a single person staying in this room woulda struggled with that.

Apart from that, the room was great. We were blessed with a fridge AND a coffee maker. i'm not much of a coffee person, but having a fridge sure helped with leftovers and stuff. It was also just far enough away from the convention that it wasn't mobbed, but not so far that it was difficult to get back and forth to. In the past I had stayed at the Double Tree and the Marriott Residence Inn, which were both so far away, that they required shuttle service to get to and from the convention. It was nice that the service existed, but it was a lot less convenient than just walking over whenever you wanted to, ya know?

I arrived Saturday morning around 11. By that time, two of my party members, Rob and Courteney had already arrived and were storing their stuff at the hotel bag check, as actual check in wasn't until 3pm. I accidentally parked my car at the wrong hotel for the early part of the day and had to wind up moving it when I realized my mistake. kind of a hassle, but not too bad. I wound up giving my car to the valets because I didn't wanna give myself too much trouble getting my luggage upstairs. My bean bag was gonna be the main source of trouble, that thing is real comfy but it sucks to move from place to place. Tiger, one of our other party members clued me into a good strip of unmetered street nearby that I could park at, so i would up moving my car yet a THIRD time for the last day.

We'd been experiencing some kinda random weather here in the bay area as of late. A couple days of rain, a couple days of shine, etc. Just real on and off. We were all worried that Fanime was gonna get all rained out, but by the time the con actually started rolling around, the rain was tapering off and the sun was coming out, and like a MORON, this disarmed me enough to think that bringing a jacket with me was unnecessary. After a couple sunny days, the clouds started rolling in again, and I had to make a quick decision in the dealers room about what hoodie to buy. I'm sad that zippy hoodies seem to be falling outta fashion. The only ones I could find were the ones branded with the Fanime logo, and one from some random clothing line that again, just had their logo on it, and neither one came in my size. i bit the bullett and got myself a zipperless pullover hoodie that had Mamimi from FLCL on it smoking her "Never Knows Best" cigarette. It was the best decision I could have possibly made, considering the circumstances. i was really close to buying this one Pokemon umbrella I saw too, but decided against it, sincewe only really got one day of rain, and it was more of a drizzle than anything.

We spent most of our time hopping between the dealer's room, the artist alley and the gaming room. I saw something in the gaming room that I never thought I'd ever see, and that's a tie game during a match of Marvel Vs. Capcom 2. I'm just gonna go over real quick WHY this is such an unlikely occurrence. So, a tie match can only happen when the timer runs out and both sides have the EXACT same amount of health, so that means that a match has to go on for 99 seconds without one side losing, which is already hard because MvC2 is a FAST PACED game, and it's merciless! Also, each side chooses three characters, so the health level has to be completely evenly distributed between whoever's left. That can mean one side has one character left with 100% health and the other side has three characters left, each with 1/3 of their health, or one side with one character who has 2/3's of their health and the other side has two characters each with 1/3, or any combination LIKE that. this is hard to do because there's so much happening on an MvC2 screen that can drain health.

Here's an example of what i'm talking about, so you can see it for yourself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3icKOVx6Rc

So imagine a match like that going on, and to have both sides be completely equal at the end. Even the slightest discrepancy can sway the win from one side to the other. Seeing it in person was amazing and memorable. I've never seen it in my life, and the two people who were playing (Robert, and our friend Adrian), who've been playing this game a LOT longer than i have both said they've never seen it before either.
Sadly, our fun mood was dampened when we started to realize the controls on the left side of the machine were sticking and stalling. MvC2 is one of those games where precision control is so, so important, and going up against someone with janky controls, or going up against someone who has janky controls really takes the competitive edge out of it. To make things worse, the exact same thing happened to the Capcom Vs. SNK 2 machine (which is a game i'm actually good at). I DID play some Reflec Beat tho. I've only dabbled in ryhtm games and only played Reflec Beat once before, but I think I did okay. I got all the way up to a Level 9 song before I actually lost a match. I think I could do well enough to pass one eventually, and maybe even get on the level of my friend Tiger, who is VERY good at almost every Rhythm game I've ever seen him tackle.

One of the major highlights of the weekend was going to this one sushi place with my Hotel Party that was nearby our hotel. It was called Sushi Confidential, and the majority of it was outdoor seating near these awesome fire pits, surrounded by big tall palm trees while a DJ spun some Top 40 from the last 30 years. The general consencus among my friends was that the music "made them feel old" because they by and large and did not recognize it nor had any emotional connection to it. this was not a problem for me, however, a person who worked in a record store for almost a full decade and has made it a point to keep up with modern music since then and will NEVER feel old EVER!!! RRAAAHHH!!!

But by far, one of my favourite parts of Fanime was meeting up with a few of my online friends! first was Arisa, whom I have actually met a few times before at a few different cons. she's an expert cosplayer or something. Every time i see her at a con she look immaculate. I don't even know who she's cosplaying half the time, but i know she looks great doing it. I caught her early on during the first day, long enough for a quick selfie.

On Sunday, I managed to get my friend Sera and my friend Anwyn in the same place at the same time. i met Sera through online LGBT activist groups, and I met Anwyn because I saw her band play once all the way up in Arcata, CA. I've hung out with Sera at a few other cons before, but this is my very first time seeing Anwyn OFF stage and in person. she and I would up hanging out a lot on Monday during the closing hours of the con and afterwards as well. We went on endlessly about films and music and ate, probably way more sushi than we shoulda :P

But yeah, that was it. An amazing experience. I could keep going on and on, mention the Masquerade, but I'm sure a lot of it's on youtube now. I also went speed dating, that was kinda cool too. But yeah, this review's long enough. In a little less than two weeks I'll be going off to Sac-Anime, where i'll be debuting TransCat Issue #10, so THAT'S pretty awesome too.

If you were there, i hope you had a great time. If not, I hopee I catch you at the next one <3 p="">