AMECON 2004

20 Aug - 22 Aug 2004, Leicester, UK
Report by: Marc Brownett (badge name: Dante Kimachi)
If you seen your photo here without your name under it, or I mention you, please email me.
Check out the thumbnail alt tags to see some 'descriptions' and then click on them to open them in a new window at full size.

I’ve been trying to type up this con report and phrase it all correctly and stuff for a while now, but since it’s from my point of view anyway I’ll just go over the more amusing and interesting points that I actually witnessed myself. If only I could be in more than one place at a time…
If you don’t get what I’m on about most the time, check google or anipike, they are your friends.

FRIDAY: the first day

Getting there
I had been to an anime convention some years back but just for most of one day. This was to be my first full weekend event and, unlike before, I didn’t actually get to watch much anime at all. Heck, I saw more anime music videos than actually anime episodes.

"Ame" means rain in Japanese and yes, it did rain on the first day, which I was unhappy about being caught in because I was still getting over the flu at the time. After a bit of instant messaging the week before, I met up with Edge, who I had once met at a Pokemon game tour. We grabbed a taxi to the con and surprisingly registered in no time. Showing ID and handing over the deposit for the hall room key also supplied us with a con bag containing the con book, a TokyoPop Sneaks manga, and several adverts and flyers.
The con ‘badges’ (more like a big dog tags) were great, having my badge name under a beautifully drawn image of the mascot holding a flower. These images were different depending on which university hall you were in. We were in Villiers.
The pocky was picked up on the next table and munched instantly.
We then moved onto Villiers where we dropped our unneeded gear off. The little sign on Edge’s door proclaimed that a ‘wanton sex goddess’ had resided in there before him, whereas I had a Gina’s room complete with a photo, probably of her and a friend, in one of the cupboards. Why each room had a bible, I don’t know.

Mooking around
Already I had seen people in cool cosplay and was being massively jealous, wishing I had the skills myself to make a costume.
The timetable told of the opening ceremony still being hours away but didn’t mention the dealers room and that’s where Edge wanted to be the most... quiet often actually. We decided to embrace the rain and try and find Stamford Hall. After a while we found it to be closed, which made sense, but it worth a shot as nothing else was happening. We then decided to acquire a stash of food (as it was self-catering) by getting lost before finally finding the Asda supermarket. Seeing cosplayers in a supermarket is great! Coming back along with our unhealthy but sugar-high inducing food we later made it to the opening ceremony. One of the points brought up by the committee (after a funky opening animation about a huge l33t speaking cat-thing taking on a spaceship from Ashe Raven, the Makenai Team, and the UK Voice Acting Alliance), was that the university were ‘forced’ to open the cafeteria due to there being about 1000 of us. It could not go unnoticed that one of the committee members wore a large yellow afro-like dome on his head with crazy shades covering his eyes. He told us after the speeches that if we were curious, to watch episodes of Bobobo~bo Bo~bobo and all would be revealed. I caught one episode of this anime along the weekend and it’s one of the most surreal I’ve seen, come on, dude fights with his nasal hair.
The first actual screening we saw were several anime music videos people had entered into a competition while the room waited to show whatever was supposed to be on (actually we found it was a panel about piracy but they cancelled). Our favourite AMV was ‘Ninja of the Night’ based on the anime Naruto. It was funny if you’d seen the anime or not and very well made, so good in fact that I downloaded a copy the moment I got home. The winning AMV was called 'The Narutrix', also a Naruto based one, parodying a long Matrix trailer.
Later we waited for over an hour to get into the dealers room, half of the time spend outside in the rain, the queue still constantly being added to. I couldn’t believe how much stuff was there, I also couldn’t believe how little money I had and I refused to dare touch my credit card. I’ll type up the overall list of stuff I bought/received throughout the weekend at the end.

Karaoke and ‘odd’ anime
After more floating around we wound up in the karaoke room, a huge screen displaying txt files or actual jpop or anime opening videos. The more popular ones seemed to be the Outlaw Star and Azumanga Daioh openings, with Edge hyped that he got to hear a Gundam song done, while I bounced with joy that they actually did do the Dragon Half ending theme at the end with most people joining in.
After that we were knackered and decided to call it a night, ready for the big day tomorrow. Well, not before checking out the nearest anime screening. That happened to be in the same room and on came Battle Programmer Shirase. We were mostly disturbed by this particular show, if it didn’t have so many dodgy references to underage naughtiness with the characters then this could have come off as a good hacker anime. Saying that, Smash Hit was just as bad, although at least the small girl was actually in her twenties. I decided to skip seeing more and read the con book in my room until I was sleepy, the flu still keeping me awake.

Friday - Saturday - Sunday - Results - Other reports