FanimeCon Summer 2012 - Day 1 Log

My plans for this weekend, May 25-28, is to attend an anime convention in San Jose called FanimeCon, or Fanime for short.  What's to do at an anime convention?  Well, hang out with fellow nerds, admire the cosplayers - people who dress up as characters, meet professionals in the industry, and many more cool things.  It's hard to explain what exactly it's like, but it's usually a lot of fun, especially once things start going in full swing.  Previously, I attended SacAnime, and I had a lot of fun there, so I can't help but imagine how good the much larger and better-known Fanime will be.

This is the log for Friday, May 25, the first day of the con.  It is by no means a complete log, but it should give you a decent idea of what I did there.  It also contains quite a few comments of the major events.  What it doesn't mention is all the cosplayers I ran into, and there's a good reason for that; I ran into a lot of them.  A LOT.  I have to sort out a ton of my photos still, and I plan on doing that on Monday, the day I've decided not to attend.

6:00 AM - Left home for Tracy ACE Station.  I got completely lost, and right when I was about to pull over and call home for help...
6:22 AM - Arrived at the Tracy ACE Station AHEAD OF SCHEDULE.  Figure that one out.
7:10 AM - Boarded the ACE Train.  During the ride, I met a group of people who were also attending the con.  When I learned this, I showed them my SKET armband (from the anime SKET Dance), and they were impressed.

I found this to be surprising, because I kind of half-heartedly threw it together using a normal black wrist sweatband and sticker paper.  It looks like total crap in my opinion.

8:45 AM - Arrived at San Jose Diridon Station.  Helped the group find the light rail boarding area.
8:50 AM - Boarded Light Rail 902 North.  I barely was able to buy my ticket and get in the train, and the group ended up missing it.  Oh well.
8:55 AM - Arrived at the Convention Center station.
9:00 AM - Entered the absolutely gynormous preregistration line.  I met a Veitnamese guy named Vincent.  He introduced me to a game series called Ys that I'm going to check out.  Also, I bumped into Reinier, the Vice President of the CSU Stanislaus Anime Club.  He told me he still hadn't gotten his badge, then pointed to the press line with all  of two people in it.  Because he does a show on the campus radio station, not only does he get to enter the ludicrously short line, but he also has the entry fee waived.  Thankfully, he's not the person to brag about this, and is as shocked as I am that he's able to get away with it.  Also, did I mention that he got let into E3 last year because of that radio show?  That's his greatest personal achievement.
11:30 AM - FINALLY obtained my badge, and all it took was two and a half hours of waiting.  Still, it's a really nice badge, printed on hard plastic, and it even has my name on it:

I will cherish it always.  Meanwhile Vincent got the lousy regular badge because he only did Early Registration.

12:00 PM - Walked to Meeting Room A3 and watched Hayate the Combat Butler: The Movie.  It kind of failed.  Scratch that; it really failed.  It was entirely unnecessary, adding almost nothing to the plot, and not much happeded.  In my opinion it's one of the weakest regular episodes of the show, but poorly stretched out to fill a 1-hour timeslot instead of the usual 30 minutes.  Vincent walked out on it, and I didn't see him for the rest of the day.
1:00 PM - Decided to walk to McDonalds.  Ordered two McChickens and a small fry.  Also, I posted a message to Facebook saying how I was not too impressed so far.  On the walk, I took a look, and sure enough, the preregistration line was still just as long.
1:30 PM - Arrived back at the convention center.  The preregistration line was STILL just as long.
2:00 PM - Checked out the Gaming Room.  I was not impressed.  They had quite a few arcade machines, but at a dollar a pop, they weren't worth it.  Also, almost all of the regular consoles were doing fighter games, which in my opinion is a big fail.  Still, they had a few that were doing bullet-hell shoot-em-ups, and a Dreamcast with The Typing of the Dead:

It's a lot like the light gun games, only you type instead of shoot, and it is amazingly well done.  If you want to learn to type in a way that's actually fun, play that game.

2:30 PM - Now that the lines to the Dealer's Room were cleared, I decided to take a walk through there.  To my great surprise, there was only one vendor selling Pocky.  I call shenanigans; even the much smaller SacAnime had three dealers selling Pocky, yet Fanime with the three-times-as-large Dealer's Room has only one.  Speaking of SacAnime, they had a promotional booth setup in the dealers room, and to be honest they were really selling it well.
3:00 PM - Walked through Artist's Alley.  I was simultaneously impressed and not impressed.  Yeah, the artists there are really good, easily at the professional level, but hand-drawn art really doesn't do much for me.
3:20 PM - Went roaming and taking pictures of the cosplayers.  Checked out the preregistration line, and sure enough it was STILL just as long.
4:00 PM - Sat down in Meeting Room A2 and watched my favorite comedy series, SKET Dance.  Also, people noticed the SKET armband I was wearing and complemented me on it.
4:45 PM - After two episodes I noticed the time had come for me to begin preparations for leaving.  I decided to check out the preregistration line.  IT FINALLY GOT SHORTER.  It still stretched outside the building, though, so it wasn't much shorter.
5:10 PM - Boarded Light Rail 902 South.  Helped a lost person figure out what station to get off at; the one after mine.
5:15 PM - Arrived at San Jose Diridon Station.  I had to ask around to find out what track the ACE Train was on.
5:20 PM - Boarded the ACE Train.  Began typing this timeline.
7:10 PM - Arrived at the Tracy ACE Station.  Left for home.
7:40 PM - Arrived at home.

To be honest I wasn't too impressed.  Yeah, it's bigger than SacAnime - the previous anime convention I attended, but there's not as much to do.  I ran into a lot of good cosplayers, but that alone didn't make it all worth it.  Other than that, I didn't do much of anything I couldn't do at home.  Still, I ran into a familiar face from SacAnime:

Make that two familiar faces.

On Monday I'll go through all the pictures I've taken and show off the complete photo album.  Seriously, the best part of these cons is always the cosplayers.  Some of them can take an overused character, such as Mario, and be incredibly creative with it:

Not Pictured: Something that will ever appear in any official Mario video game.

That's all for now.  Oh yeah, if you attended and you're wondering why the ambulance was called earlier that day, I think it's because I may have upset this guy by saying he looked like a bartender:

"I awoke several hours later in a daze." -- Peter Griffin.