"Given the similarities of these current cases, I can safely conclude that stupidity is contagious."

Saturday Gallery

I wanted to debut my Red Mask cosplay from the old school epic anime Giant Robo to my dear friend Tetsugyu at Anime LA. But that was simply not the case this year. Now drowning in a sea of younger anime fans, only the grizzled old veterans of the anime scene recognized me. In any case, looking like a ninja businessman never felt so fun for me until now.

But back to Saturday night. Masquerade has always been the highlight of the convention. At least that is what the masquerade department of every convention claims. I learned to take such hype with a grain of salt, preferably the salt lining the rim of the margarita I had before entering the main events room ahead of the crowd. I set up my camera for optimal capturing and braced myself for the crowd storming into the room and occupying every seat and later forming a standing room only crowd.

My main concern with the Masquerade was the inability to shoot the participating groups before the show. While the opener was finalizing their dance moves, the lighting was too dark to shoot cosplayers on the backdrop set up for them. But that was a moot issue considering that none of the performing cosplayers were present in the seating reserved for them. Going from outside sources, they were waiting in the cold outside waiting to perform. Some prior arrangements to make better use of the time, space, and waiting cosplayers would have helped.

As for the show itself, acts ranged from sketches, choreographed pieces set to music, and cosplayers dancing to music. As a personal opinion, I would have liked to see the dancers use music that had something to do with the characters they were cosplaying. Taking something that the MC Pikmin Link commented out of context, these acts could have easily been turned into a separate cosplay dance contest event and freed a few slots for sketches. While we bring up possible things to implement for the next SacAnime, where the hell is karaoke?

With a strict two minute limit for acts, writing sketches became a significantly difficult task for the generally younger attendees of SacAnime. Thirty seconds more would usually give enough time for writers to come up with setup and punchline for their sketches. While I cut those out, a few instances of playing the wrong soundtrack for certain sketches might have thrown a few sketches off. Filming the walk-ons of the fashion show was like trying to play Duck Hunt while the ducks were on speed. As for the sketches themselves, it was pick and mix. Some stood out well like the Best in Show while others were great ideas at the time.

The end of Masquerade marked the time for attendees to fulfill dinner plans since studies still argue that eating during a convention is considered a good thing. Staff already provided me with a light dinner and the heavy breakfast was still keeping me strong. According to Hanako, Ten arranged dinner plans with her and me, which I found odd since I did not recall talking to Ten all day. But that plan was rendered moot when Hanako found no trace of Ten. So now I had a hungry little sister and her friend to take care of. A simple plan of taking those two out grew complicated when the other little sister present and her friend wanted to change, get their gear, and leave the convention. Oh, and they were hungry as well. And they had an entourage following them. By now my agoraphobia was kicking in and dealing with so many people was causing me a headache as I aimed to get people rides to get fed, get certain people away from other people, and eventually get everyone else away from me so I could recover. The simple plan of dividing people got complicated when one driver got a sudden headache and another seemed unhappy with his scheduled load. A couple ibuprofen pills helped restore the social norm and we all finally ventured for some cheap Chinese food with Carl's Jr. for ice cream. I felt pity for the Chinese food restaurant owner as we kept him open later than usual and then managed to block his car when he wanted to leave.

Returning to the convention after bidding Trina and Jaimie farewell, Ryu and I settled down for a couple of drinks and talking like men before Hanako and Heidi called on us for some late night convention exploration. We hit the rave for a bit before I received a text seeking some unusual assistance for a similar case I was already consulting on. In order to ditch the other three, I had to play a little game of tag that bordered on horror film. It was not the most subtle way to bid people farewell, but I learned never to question my own methods. Some colleagues might not approve of my methods, but that was what made them my methods. Anyone attempting to do what I do usually tends to be a bad idea given the differences in size, nature, and concept of consequences.

After that consult, I helped Yomi close up the video room. The special night with the gaming department was once again not intended to happen that night. One thing that the video room taught me was the contrast in anime that gets licensed for me to review and the unique stuff I miss out on. While bizarre, the unlicensed stuff shows me how homogenized and "safe" the licensed stuff is. Those anime fans who do not know better and detractors of anime can simply regard the licensed stuff as "the same old crap" while missing out on what SacAnime showed. I wished I actually remembered the titles though.

Sadly, sleep after a long day of SacAnime became difficult due to the noisy neighbors. Remembering an earlier convention, Santiago and I attempted to bluntly request, "Would you mind? We're trying to have sex in here?" They countered that so were they. Before we could attempt to stage our act, Yomi had us check out Jonas and the gaming department to see if they were up for food now or breakfast later. But when we arrived at their room, they told us how the electronic door lock shorted out or died. They could not enter the room. I could only chuckle slightly since I recalled on Friday that the hotel assigned Yomi that room before she requested a switch. Perhaps women's intuition kept us indoors while the gaming department looked for alternative shelter. I closed the night watching the final episode of Death Note. Having everything summarized in that episode really saved me the time of having to watch that series.