Yesterday was awesome. No, I did not go to homecoming, I forgot to buy a ticket :( Although, if I had chosen to go over to Mike's, I may have been able to catch the last hour of it free of charge. Oh well, them's teh breaks I guess.

No, what was so awesome about yesterday was that I went to an anime festival in San Francisco at the Metreon. It wasn't so much of an anime con as it was more of a film festival. While there were some exhibits and booths, the main event was the all-day screening of anime in a theatre. I went with Rodrigo, Brice, Justin, Ray Steensen, and Maz. We got there too late to watch the first thing, but just in time to watch what I had been looking forward to: the premiere of the first episode of ARMS. I didn't really know too much about it. All I knew is that it was "really good" and that it had to do something with bionic arms. After all, it's kinda implied in the name of the show, isn't it? It'd suck if the show was called ARMS and it wasn't really about arms.... It was kinda interesting. It fused high school drama with government project conspiracy pretty nicely. The one thing I didn't like about the localization was the American logo they made. They changed the name to Project Arms, and the lettering looks really really fruity. It was pretty funny, because it started out dubbed in English, then a few minutes in, the screen said "Japanese". Eveyone cheered, but then the screen switched back to "English". Everyone then booed, except for one person who shouted "Yes!!" We all laughed, but then cheered when it turned out that it was indeed Japanese dialogue with English subtitles. The story was about some kid who survived a building explosion/collapse and then was given heavy surgery to recover. Years later when he's in high school, he runs into some weirdo who makes his right arm vibrate like crazy and claims that they are mortal enemies. Eventually, some government dudes try to take them back, but they manage to fight them off and then get into a duel themselves. The weirdo's left arm turns into some weird gun/sword type thing. It was freakin weird! I gotta get one of my friends to download more of it.

The next thing to be shown was the first episode of Inu-Yasha, but I had already seen it. Besides, i heard it was going to be dubbed, so me Brice and Justin decided to head out and see some of the exhibits while the others stayed to watch it. I noticed a table outside the screening room with various DVDs and tapes. I looked through them and noticed some pretty good ones, and wondered if I had enough money to purchase them, and if I did, whether I should or not. Then I turned one of the DVDs over.

The price tag said $9.95.




My eyes bulged out of my sockets.

DVDs in general usually go for $15-20. Anime DVDs usually go for $20-30. And here I was holding in my hand, an anime DVD (one I wanted too!) for the low, low, very low price of 10 bux. Naturally, I had to buy it. More on that later.

Anyways, the other two screenings I caught were the premieres of Meltylancer and Argentosoma. Meltylancer was the story of a small faction of warrior women who were hired by the government. It was very entertaining because it took the path of having many varied characters. For example, there was a priest of an ancient temple, a very important politician, a young magician, an animal loving cat girl, and two others who didn't really stand out. It seemed the Meltylancer team was very successful when they were together, but they disbanded a year ago. Now they are being called back for reasons unknown. Not much else to say. There was a battle, but the episode was really designed to introduce the characters.

Argentosoma was..........strange. It was about this college student who's girlfriend had been spending a lot of time working with her professor on a secret project. When he discovers what the project is, he is forced to help with it too. The project is to bring a giant alien robot mech that crash landed on Earth back to life. When it does, it wreaks havoc in the laboratory and kills the professor and the girl, leaving the guy to mourn. That was quite literally what happeend. While it was cool, it didn't seem to go anywhere and kinda wrapped itself up pretty nicely. I wanna see more, but I can't imagine what else they can do with the story...

Those were the only screening I caught, because we had to leave at around 4:30, and we wanted to spend the rest of time looking at the exhibits and hanging out at the arcade. Back to the subject of the DVDs. While many of the DVDs were actually either of regular price or only about $3 cheaper, I noticed that there were many clearance sales on titles that I had been wanting to buy.. Acting on this opportunity, I decided to go into my account for the first time ever and withdraw money. I was going to buy these anyways, so I decided I might as well do it while it's super super cheap.

Titles purchased (each DVD at $9.95):
Bubblegum Crisis: Volume 1-3
Key the Metal Idol: Volume 2-3
Urusei Yatsure: Volume 2
Tenchi in Tokyo: Volume 1
Akira (tape, $4.95)

This was a GREAT deal. The boxed set of BBC at Best Buy would have gone for about 60 bucks. Although, the boxed set would come with one more DVD, a music video DVD, I coulda gotten that one too for another 10 dollars. I just chose not to get it, didn't seem worth it.

It was kinda funny seeing people cos-playing at the Metreon,since this wasn't reallya full-blown anime con and it seemed more of a quiet affair instead. We saw a Sailor Moon cosplayer, someone dressed up as Misato from NGE, various Inu-Yasha characters, the girl from Noir, and many others. Kinda sad when you think about it, but also kinda cool. You have to be there I guess.

After messing around for a while, we finally decided we had to leave, cuz a lot of us needed to be home before 6. I had work, Brice had parents, Ray had meetings with navy recruiter. Realizing that some of us hadn't had lunch (there was a small period where we were split up into 2 groups cuz we got lost), we headed over to Jack-in-the-Box and got some food. We had to hide it while in the BART station until we got on the train, cuz we were afraid that the officials would narc us for it. However, after waiting a while, I decided "screw it" and started muching on fries and drinking my soda. Shortly after, an announcement came over the PA reminding us not to eat, drink, or smoke to keep the BART stations clean. Brice started making fun of me, and I responded with "I'm pretty sure that was automatic..." Heh, it was pretty funny. Later on the train, i started eating my Jumbo Jack, and Brice said in a PA-voice, "SEat #135, why are you eating?" Once again, I responded with "I'm pretty sure that was automatic..." I gotta say that was one of the funniest things I'd said in a while. Good times, good times...

AFter I got back, I immediately had to go off to work. Work sucked. it was really busy, cuz it was Saturday and it was Homecoming, so there were a bunch of parties. And i broke two things :( One was an actual dish, the other was a pepper shaker. I had legitimate reasons for both, but I still felt kinda embarrassed. The manager assured that I had about 20 more to go before it would start being a problem, but still, no one likes to break stuff.

In other news, I shoulda gone over to Mike's house that night. Seems there was a bit of a makeshift Homecoming Party. Lotta people attended, good time had by all. Parents didn't let me go, but they went to bed pretty early, so I coulda snuck out. Next time, next time... In the meantime, i have a loooooooot of anime to watch (grins!)


Oh yeah, and cuz I fogot:

THE AMAZING RACE REPORT:

Leg 2: Mexico City to Tulum, Mexico

Currently in first: Derek and Drew, twin brothers and models. Last time they came in as the last team before the eliminated team. They used the fast forward to jump ahead, which was very badly needed for them.
Eliminated: Tramel and Talicia, the very entertaining brother and sister

Phil (host): "You've both been eliminated from the race."
Talicia: "Well, that's alright"
Tramel: "I'm sorry,what? I wasn't listening. Y'know what? Tell me at the next pit stop, I need to get some sleep"

Detour: Manpower or horsepower
Use a waverunner or a kayak to search a lagoon for the next clue. The catch is that if you choose the kayak, the area to search will be pretty small, while the area to search on the waverunners will be huge.

Roadblock: Swim with the dolphins in a lake while searching for the clue underwater. it was really cool, I would have liked to do this one.

Fast Forward: Do some weird falling from a pole while hanging by a string attached to the top with some weird guys called the Voladores. Taken by Derek and Drew.


Yeah, I had a LOT of work last week, so I didn't gte a chance to do much of anything, much less write a report.
That's all I got for now.

Quote of the day: "I'm pretty sure that was automatic" -me