-"We slept in until 8:00a.m. on Friday morning, but we figured 'What the heck.' I mean nothing really started until 11:30 anyway. Catsy turned on A(nimazement) TV and we began to watch this very hypnotizingly saccharin- filled kooky kiddie show that started out actually being pretty funny."

-"Neow. I liked it^_^ It was about this little girl who had a best friend, Seiya, who's dad owned a hospital or something and she was in love with this teacher guy but her friend (who's a boy) got really jealous and wacky hi-jinks ensued. We were really digging it until...... until the girl transformed into Nurse Angel Ririka SOS. We still thought it was an okay 'magical girls show', but there really isn't such a thing as an 'okay magical girls show'. The really scary thing is that as it started to get worse and worse with every following episode, we found that for some reason we couldn't stop watching it!! Let me tell you something.... I was scared."

-"You get scared from anything with any sort of cuteness factor in it 'cause it reminds you of your total lack of 'kawaii-capability'.
  So anyway, at least the theme song was catchy. Catsy and I are 'theme song junkies.'"

-"Not anymore! Remember, I went to therapy for that. I'm cured!"

-"No, Catsy, that was something else."

-"Well I liked Ririka's song^_^ It went something like 'Na na na na, na na na na na da da, na na na na- na na na na.'"

-"You are sooooooo lame! You can't even remember how it goes?"

-"Hey, devil-girl, you still don't know the words to 'Fly Me To The Moon' and that's an ole Blue Eyes song!"

-"Blue who? Anyway, we were finally able to break free of the Nurse Angel's spell and cleaned ourselves up in time to make it downstairs by 10:50. We snuck a peak at the dealers' room and started drooling when we could see just how well it was filling up with lots of cool looking fun anime stuff. I was in heaven! Damn it was exiting just imagining all that I was going to buy. I just hoped that they accepted Rossman Visa (I never leave home without it). Too bad nobody would let us purchase anything until they officially opened at one."

Mount Totorro was even bigger than Kings Mountain! But I agree, that's not saying much.

T-shirts and movies and EVAs, oh my!

-"We waited until 11:20 when they started letting people into the Video Room 1 for the Lupin III film clip give-away before the subtitled Cagliostro's Castle. We got in there and I asked two staffers where I could stand to get a good picture of the give-away. One of them looked at me funny like I was a dog-girl or something and said that 'It's in the programming Guide.'
  I looked at Oni-chan as she began to dig through the book for any kind of hint as to where people were going to line up to get a piece of actual film from an actual reel of Cagliostro's Castle. She looked up with an even more perplexed expression on her noodle than normal."

-"You're not even telling it right! They were trying to tell you that you were an idiot because everybody got a piece of the film in their Guide Book. Did you even open yours? It was right on the cover! Doobee doo bee doooooo."

-"Stop It! I caught on after he explained it to me for the eleventh time. By the way, I got Fujiko, while Oni-chan only got a clip of the Count^_^  Fujiko rocks the casbah!

  See. Devil-girl is too embarrassed to even show hers. Anyway, after we figured that out, we ran over to catch what was left of the Opening Announcements-tcha. Apparently it was veeeeeeery brief cause it was over only five minutes after it had supposedly started. Oh well, at least Opening Ceremonies was later on in the day."

-"Then the Cat and I ran our little butts (well, mine's the only 'little' one) back to the Video Room, sat back and relaxed as we watched the first hour of Cagliostro's Castle in subtitles. I can't believe how much Macek screwed up this one! I think he gets his kicks from destroying works of art. What an H-Nazi!
  After an hour of the good stuff we went over to see Imagawa-sensei's 'Director's Panel'. This is the kind of thing that Animazement will be known for, believe me (Catsy and I got out our Tarot Cards and read 'em like Hitomi to see its future)! Each of the great panels was an hour and a half long with time for autographs at the end. And the guest never left until everybody got an autograph that wanted one (even if they had to move to another room to finish them!). But once again I'm getting ahead of myself."

-"Imagawa was so cool-tcha! He started off by telling us how he started out as an in-betweener at age 18 but how even back then he had huge delusions of grandure as he always wanted to be a director. He even got his wish a year later, which was ten years earlier than most directors got their first gig!
  He went on to say that he almost quit on several occasions, but coincidence and perseverance paid off as his supperiors kept giving him more and more (and eventually better and better) work to do. The director of Gundam at the time, Tomino-sensei, was his tough motivator who actually punched and scolded him in order to give him some 'guts'! I said goddamn! Now that's training. Neow."

The translator is thinking hard on how to verbalize, "Do you like it wet and nasty, or dry and tasteful?" in Japanese. Good luck.

-"Imagawa went on by saying that he endured all of that 'cause he felt that he had to do something in animation that would make a difference..... and because of Rocky Horror (I knew he was going to bring that up^_^). His favorite line from that *ahem* movie is 'Don't dream it, be it!' and those are the words that he lives by. Dreaming is good for one needs dreams to be creative and to live, but a person also needs to do their best to achieve what they want and not just forget about the dream as soon as they wake up...... or something."

-"That was *sniff* beautiful, Oni-chan. I think-no! I know that I can become a street walker in L.A. if I set my mind to it! I just know I'll meet some guy in a really cool car that likes to stick gerbils where the sun don't shine (I like gerbils) and he'll sweep me off of my feet and I'll-"

-"Catsy! What have I told you about your Gere fantasies? That's right, keep them to yourself....Puh-leeeeez!
  Whoa. Anyway, Imagawa kept talking about how it took twelve years from conception to completion for the seven episodes of Giant Robo to be completed. He said that people first laughed at the idea that he had and told him that 'Nobody'd ever care for something like that.' What a bunch of tools! But he kept his dream and his endurance never faltered (even when some real retro-losers told him that his GR would never be the real GR from the cheesy live action series in the 60s).
  People also complained that his G Gundam wasn't the real Gundam so he soon started calling himself 'The Original Work Crusher'. Talk about an inferiority complex!"

-"Neow. You betcha. Imagawa-sensei then said that he doesn't like much of the current anime that is on the market today as almost all of it is simply imitation of everything else. Everything has already been seen before (to which he blamed both directors and the audience for continuing to support it... Ouch!). Giant Robo was his answer to this problem.
  Then he started to name the influences in his works. The only pure Japanese influence seemes to be Kabuki theater. He listed Star Trek (he was even wearing an 'Enterprise' t-shirt), Le Miserables and some old American show called Ben Casey (or something) as his biggest role models for how solid showmanship should ultimately look..... Star Trek-tcha?
  He was looking to make a classic with GR, like Les Mis, and he wanted audience members to feel the same excitement as he does from Trek and kung-fu movies. Now that kind of logic I can understand."

-"Then came audience questions. 'Why mostly MECHA anime?' was one of the first ones asked. He didn't know. It's just what he mostly got. But it's not like he doesn't enjoy doing it, he explained. In fact, his next project, another redo of an old Mecha Manga (Getta Robo), will be out in Japan in the fall. This was indeed rugged news! When pressed for general plot or if it was going to work into the Giant Robo story somehow he came close to telling us, but shied away when he thought that his superiors might somehow find out that he told. Yow! And I thought that Mulder was paranoid.

"Imagawa-san, the other freaky-looking gaijin in the back asked 'What the hell is that disgusting fungus growing on your translator's chi-' Hey!"

  It was then that some perverted hentai-lover in the crowd brought up how much he liked the Overfiend and asked why Imagawa never showed any T&A in his works. After I sent Catsy over to eat his spleen I listened to the master's response. He said that he wanted to tell stories that everybody could enjoy and that he wanted to prove how good a story could be without any hentai elements (which is why there isn't even one panty shot throughout all of GR despite how short most of Ginrei's dresses are).
  Imagawa then told us about the two kinds of directors (those who write the work and direct it, and those who direct stories from others and how he's done both and how each has its own benefits and probs) and how TV producers know absolutely nothing at all. I guess some things are universal.
  Before turning into a Disney-bashing panel (as they all eventually do) he said that Getta Robo will kick as much ass (paraphrasing) as Giant Robo in that it will have unusual directing and it will be totally different from the original manga. Then it was autograph time."

-"After that ecchi-man's spleen what I needed was an Imagawa autograph. We waited in a fast moving line and when we got up to the front he signed my belly with his funky little tanuki-like creature and he wrote the name of my favorite GR character at the top: Murasame Kenji! I kissed him on the head and went away happy. Oni-chan was waaaaay jealous! She jsut didn't have the cajones to have him sign her belly."

-"No, uh, that's not what it was. I just didn't want that pen touching my flesh after it touched yours. I'm not afraid of magic markers! I'm not!"

Imagawa writing out his will when he begins to get scared by how freaky most American otaku are and realizes that his life may be in danger.

We scanned in Catsy's stomach at the front desk so that she would actually bathe later. That was a personal promise to the con goers by us. If only others followed suit.

-"After that unbelievable panel we decided to spend money. Not ours silly. So we got the Rossman's ATM card out (apparently Catsy nabbed it before the old 'heave ho' out the window) and headed to what was usually a girl's best friend at anime cons... the Automatic Teller!

An ATM in the lobby, life is good.

  But as we ran into to dealers' room at full steam ready to blow our load (of cash you jerk) we came to a sickening conclusion..... Wherever we went, whichever table we looked at there was one thing that was constantly and disturbingly wrong. This was a Son May Free Con!!!! Noooooooooooooooooooo! Why, God, why?!? What didn we do to deserve this? *Waaaaaaaaaaaah!*"

-"Uh oh, it looks like Catsy's havin' another dealers' room flashback. This could take a while. While I agree that it always sucks when anime cons try to 'save' the con-goers from legal and morally acceptable things like SMs and wall scrolls, this was the only red mark against Animazement all weekend. That's saying a helluva lot! But, to get back to the prob, Catsy and I had $500 bucks that we were ready to spend, and a list of at least 13 CDs that we were looking for that we were ready to buy, but instead all I ended up purchasing was the Giant Robo II Soundtrack and the Final Fantasy VII 4-CD Soundtrack (haggled down to nearly nothing)."

Nice toys!! Too bad he didn't have the life-size Ikari Gendo punching bag. I need to practice on my right hook.

"Oh man! I waited in line for hours just to be the first on the block to get the new AC/DC album..... What? What the #@&% is 'Ah-knee-may?'"

-"*Sniff* Neow. All I got was two Giant Robo art books. Waaaaaaaaah! I wanted to spend money but I couldn't! Waaaaaaaaaaah!"

-"It's all right, Catsy. The bad times are over. Hmmmmm, maybe this will cheer you up: Remember what happened after we left the dealers' room? Do ya? Well, to fill in the people at home we met Catsy's favorite anime character of all time!......"

There's a helluva lot more Macek bashing fun on the second part of Part II: The Night The Earth Stood Still

Part 1: 3/19/1998	The Night of the Demon Goddesses
Part 2: 3/20/1998	The Night the Earth Stood Still
Part 3: 3/21/1998	The Moonlight Night
Part 4: 3/21/1998 Part II	The Night of a Thousand CosPlays
Part 5: 3/22/1998	The Illusory Night

Go back to the previous Illusory Night.			Go forward into the Great Wide Open.

Or go back to the very beginning of the Nights.