Reactor Anime Conference
By Trevor.M

The Ride

Leaving at 6 P.M. Michigan time we ventured towards Chicago, Armed with technology, a mini keg and a bottle of 1915 Jack Daniels. The trip was uneventful and I took the time to read one of my books and level up a couple Pokemon. We arrived at around 10 P.M. Chicago time. Too late to hit Portillo’s so we unloaded our car in record time with the help of our female pack Animals led by my friend Beth. The rest of the evening was spent with her doing last minute touches to my Doggie Krueger costume before the Con began.

Friday

We awoke! As always at an obscenely early hour so as to allow ourselves to get to the registration line early. Of course since the hotels alarm clock came with a CD player we were awoken to the sound of the Star Wars opening theme. A good start to the con.
As we made our way down to the pre-reg line one of the staffers looked up at me and said “oh hi Trevor!!” unfortunately for me, this was a person that remembered me back from my Cosplaying Miroku days, so it took me a while to sort through all my memories and remember where I knew her from.

With badges in hand we were ready to explore the con. Opening Ceremonies weren’t until 6 P.M. for some reason and my panel wasn’t until 8 so we began exploring. We ran into my friend Stephan first and chatted it up with him while he registered, then found out about his super secret Cosplay skit for Saturday. Which involved almost all the Midwest Cosplay juggernauts “Kill Will Vol. 1”. As we talked some more I looked down the hallway and there were the girls. Beth was even fully clad in her DekaPink costume. I raced back up to the rooms and changed into My coat. The dog head will be done by Ohayocon but for now this would have to do.

As we made our way downstairs again, we were assaulted by people wanting pictures. Always a good thing and we were happy to oblige. At one point a man with a rather large camera approached her and asked if he could take pictures for his magazine, she obliged but had me come along, good thing since he took her to a secluded spot about 4 blocks from the hotel for the photoshoot and emptied an entire memory card on her. Not exactly normal and I was glad I came along. Around 9 A.M. We stood waiting in line for the dealers room to open. As we did I swiped Beth’s SP License from her belt and made freak out while she hunted for it, when I finally gave it back she threw a judgment right in my face, as the ticker sounded down, Steve threw up a judgment as well with his license. As I stood there waiting for deletion I saw my life flash before my eyes, then they both hit the judgment button at the same time. DOUBLE INNOCENT! For anyone who owns an SP license toy you’ll know that getting an innocent is darn near impossible and here I was with 2!!!

In frustration Beth’s friend Amy grabbed the license and again tried to judge me, once again I was found innocent. About 15 minutes later when I wasn’t looking they attempted to again. Innocent once more. I was Un-Judge able. Hours passed and dollars where spent. Opening ceremonies passed uneventfully. The only thing of note was the creators of Red vs. Blue coming out on the stage each one carrying multiple beer bottles. Not a good sign. Also guest of last year Tetsuya Aoki of Sentai designing fame was there.
Once again as was the case with his colleague Daisuke Koayashi, The word Sentai never left their lips as even when speaking Japanese they referred to the show as Power Rangers. The night Progressed and My Gundam Panel was held, only moderately successful as this loud mouthed idiot who attends the Midwest’s cons known only to me as “Jason” continually insulted my from the crowd and wouldn’t leave, causing general chaos in the room! Throughout the rest of the evening we wandered the halls with the mythical bottle Of Jack, given some out to the guests, but generally speaking the bottle saw very little damage done to it….The damage would have to wait till Saturday!

Saturday

Well usually Saturday is the busiest day of any con. But not much happened until 2 PM so lets skip ahead to that! The mecha design Panel with Tetsuya Aoki. Like last year's panel there were very few people at first so I was literally right there in front of him, the room eventually started to fill up, but I was still front row. He started with a brief depiction on his role. That he is part of the annual Sentai design team and his role includes making sure everything can be converted into toy form. He then opened his laptop and showed a bunch of super artistic drawings of Sentai Mecha. For some reason (hehe..riiight) he selected me from the audience to see if I could name all the mecha. I did pretty good missing a couple from Sun Vulcan and Jetman (The Jetman one was a setup!!) There was even this extremely rework Daisujin and an Orgasmic awesome Picture of Galaxy Mega. We then went on to my favorite part of his panels. It was time for all of us in the audience to help him design a sentai team. (after last years ruckus about a theme which resulted in the ever-awesome Beer-Ranger, I had a theme all picked out. Elements! We had the rangers of Earth, Fire, Water, Forest and Electricity…oh and we threw in a 6th Ranger for Space for good measure. Also we added a military theme to it all so their Weapons ruled!!. After the panel he gave out a bunch of stuff. Like every year I was utterly defeated in the Rock/Paper/Scissors contest and walked away with the spider dude from Kamen Rider Ryuki action Figure. Oh well. Time for the cosplay.

About 2 hours prior to the event we received word that almost no one had signed up. In fact for a two hour event only one group had shown up. So a large number of cosplayers began forming into groups and signing up to help out. We ended up collecting two other cosplayers and writing a skit that sounded mildly funny to us at the time. (basically we killed the announcer form DekaRanger). The cosplay came, the first skit. “Kill Will” went off without a hitch, then the time for the judging of their group came. As the walked out onto stage my friend Stephan fell over and accidentally knocked over one of the judges glasses of Jack Daniels. Of course I was backstage so all I could hear were a long list of obscenities over the speakers. But once I found out what had happened I directed by friend Ed to run up to the room and snatch the bottle of 1915 Jack. The second group came and went. Then our group was up, The first guy went up to stage for what was supposed to be a funny 30 second monologue, it went on for about 2 minutes because he froze up there and couldn’t remember his lines. Finally the rest of us went up. The crowd erupting at the sight of a pink ranger. We finished the skit, and just as we were about to be judged, Edward ran up with the bottle of Jack Daniels. A bottle which then made it’s way into the judges hands. Needless to say they were very pleased. Out of many comments made the total score was 10,9,10,9,10,9,3. Apparently the guy from Red vs. Blue didn’t like our skit because I handed the bottle to the other side of the table, despite the fact he got some. Of course upon reviewing our tapes when I got home I saw that he trashed every group up there telling them they all suck. Bold words from a man who’s job is playing Halo and dubbing the clips. After everything was said and done we walked away with the first place trophy and a legion of fans all excited about our pink ranger. The rest of the night was one huge party.

Sunday

Not much happened aside from packing up. We went to the Manga panel where Kieth apologized for not having any new announcements, he did tell us about the 10th anniversary Ghost in the Shell DVD, but that was about all. We hit Portillo’s on the way out and headed home….good Con.

Trevor M.