Per my last entry, I wasn't at Anime Banzai. Really, I wasn't there. No table, no sketches, no merchandising... that's what being "at" a convention is for me, so there I wasn't. I did bring my 11-year-old daughter to the event on Saturday, though. There were some "bored," "tired," and "uncomfortable around all these people" patches, but by the end of the show I couldn't drag her away. Before we get too far below the fold, here's a picture of me wearing one of my new favorite "convention attendance" shirts. This one got dozens of compliments.
Credit goes to Shawn Handyside of Staccato Comics. I traded him a book for this shirt. Maybe he'll sell 'em on the web someday, and you too can look like a donuts-and-dice fanboy. I'll confess -- I did do a little of my usual convention attendance shtick. There was a Webcomics panel, and while I intended to sit in on it quietly and see what was said, I can't keep my mouth shut in that sort of setting for long. Ultimately it came out that I was a full-time cartoonist, and then the tone of the panel changed from "what are good ways to get hosting?" to "how do you make a living at this?" Blah, blah, blah, I talked a lot, and later apologized to the moderator for hijacking his event. But back to the "dragged my daughter to a convention" train of thought: in the morning she wanted me to be with her wherever she was. By 3:00pm she was running around on her own. At 5:30 as I was leaving the dealer's room (where I sat down for a podcast interview, I think it goes live in a week, I'll post links when I've got 'em) Security told me "your daughter said if we see you to tell you that she's at Registration." So I went to registration where they told me "she said to tell you she's in Viewing Room One watching Naruto." Well, okay then. I arrived at Viewing Room one as it disgorged the 150 people who had been watching an Anime Music Video presentation. Kiki (the name I use for my daughter when I blog) was among the 25 or so people who were NOT disgorged. Apparently she grabbed a good seat right in the thick of a darkened, crowded theater so she could wait for Naruto to start. *sigh*. Daddy's little girl can take care of herself. So I said hi, told her to stay put, and drove to Wendy's to pick us up some dinner. Sure enough, nothing horrible had happened to her in the 20 minutes that she was completely alone and without backup at a 1000-attendee anime convention 50 miles from her home. Oh, and she was glad to have the food. She actually ate what I ordered for her instead of making a fuss. I watched the last half of the Naruto feature (it's the one with the Stone of Gelel and the giant fortress-on-tank-treads), and then Kiki made me stick around for Inuyasha: the Fourth Movie. My take on these -- if I'd been renting them at home and watching them by myself they would have lost my interest. Sitting in a crowd of people who knew when to laugh and when to cheer made both features a lot more engaging. I guess that means that for all my efforts to grok anime, me still no grok. So... there you have it. I wasn't there at my tenth convention of the year, and you don't have a convention report, complete with no pictures.
