Part the Second (second half) 7/03/1998 The Mysterious New Century Expo (As told by Oni-chan and Catsy)

-"Neow. We ordered our Massive Peperoni-lover's Large and went back to the Dealer's Room. This is when the severity of the WAR really hit us! As we were walking to the elevator one of the wussy looking bell-boys (he was most definitely not a man) began to *snicker* at us and our costumes while not trying to hide it in the least! I was not pleased with his lack of respect for somebody who was paying a lot of money on a dead man's credit card to be staying there."

-"I felt your pain, Catsy (mostly 'cause he was laughing at me more than her). I remember I felt a little hurt too after we dumped his bleeding and shredded body in the dumpster behind the hotel. We found out later that most of the people in costumes were getting little to no respect from any hotel personnel. One girl even told us that they wouldn't tell her where the bathroom was apparently because she was dressed in a kimono with purple and green hair... but of course this was just hear-say (like the guards keeping people from going to room parties on the 5th floor on Saturday night or the cosplay chick who wasn't given a replacement key to her room cause she looked 'freaky-like' [which she did]), and I don't want to fan the fires of otaku rumors any more than they already have been! I just won't do it."

In the darkest hours of the WAR, it appeared as if the Allies had no allies beyond their bloody own. Another front had opened up and they barely had enough man power to hold everyone at bay, yet alone push the lines back. It soon became clear, though, that the AX powers fell under the same fate. As hurt as they were, the knowledge that all armies were now equal was their only reassurance that they still might be able to win.

-"Oooooookay. After that we husstled up to the Dealers' Place to buy all the yummy stuff we had staked out before-tcha. As we rescanned the aisles trying to remember what we wanted and didn't, I saw the scariest- most hideous sight my young eyes had ever seen!!! AAAAAAaeeeiiiiiiaaaaaaggggghhhHHHHH!!!!!!!!!"

Pen^2: Evil incarnate or Incredibly cool penguie? You make the call.

-"Tone it down please. Oy, my ears! Relax, Catsy. It was just Pen^2. Trust me when I tell you that he has no relation what-so-ever to your mortal enemy. Pen^2's Japanese anyway: He wouldn't even know that 'Doobee doobee dooooooo' song to begin with."

-"Shhhhhhhhh! Don't even hum it! He'll hear you, he'll hear you and come to take me away! He wants my kidney for his nafarious purposes!!! Oh no! Oooooooh no! He won't get me! Not this time!"

-"Catsy needs a breather so I'll just tell you what we did. We cruised the 64 exhibitors (it was like 150 booths and ten ailes!) and found a bunch of stuff that we just couldn't wait to get (stuff that would sell out soon). We got the last copy of Master of Mosquiton OAV Soundtrack Volume 2 (nobody even had 1 dammit!) in the whole place, Final Fantasy Celtic Moon (cool muzak from FFIV [trust me, this one's even better than VII!]) and a Lupin III background music double CD! I just love that jazzy theme^_^ Da da da daaaaah, da da da! Da da da daaaaaah, da-da da da! I couldn't wait to listen to them all up in the room!

When we saw this huge quilt of las tres amigas de Eva I almost spilled out the $150 to buy it, but then I remembered that the person who would have liked this the most was the Rossman, and he was dead (and besides, if I truly wanted to get him a gift of 'sleeping with Rei, Asuka and Misato' I could just hire a few hookers and pay them to dress up. It'd be a lot cheaper and he seemed to like it for his Christmas gift last year).

  By that time our pizza was done and we hurried up and retrieved it before any other starving otaku (that's kinda like an oxymoron isn't it?) could claim it as their own. Catsy was just coming to and the smell of the greasy pie made her stop mumbling 'They're coming to take me away- Ha ha!' over and over again."

-"Neow. That pizza really hit the spot! It hit my stomach faster than Carl's and then it went right through it!... At least that's what it felt like-tcha. Anyway, Oni-chan and I plugged in our mini CD player and hooked up its lil' speakers and started to play our music that we just bought. That MoM soundtrack was even better than the Lupin III! Cool^_^  But of course the Celtic Moon just blew them both away (BTW, is it 'Keltic' or 'Seltic'?... I got no friggin' clue myself)."

-Well, the good news was the pizza wasn't playing piñata with my tummy-tummy, but the bad news came to us when I turned on the TV again looking for some AX programming but once again there was none to be found. The hotel even had 13 channels set aside for in-house programming but it appeared that the Expo wanted no part of that. This was probably the biggest dissappointment of the entire weekend (probably tied with the fact that there was no rugged gameshow at the con this year too.... What the hell was up wid dat?!?!)."  

-"We checked out CNN for a minute or two to see if the world was ending or something while we had fun dressing as fictional animated characters inside our own little worlds but all we saw was that Clinton was still on his gay little trip to China. That guy is HUGE (and I don't mean popularity wise!)! He needs to just sit back and think a little harder before his next Big Mac attack urges him to chug some more fast food mas rapido than that baby goat in those old Droopy cartoons. Man oh man!
  After making fun of ole Tubby Bubba we went down to the Video Room 1 to check out the biggest premiere of the whole con: El Hazard OAV 2 (which would be out in the States in about 3 weeks anyway)!"

Nanami, getting the moves put on her by Makoto- er, Fatora (geez what a Skank!). Well I hope Nanami learned a lesson from this (i.e. always give those who say they're Makoto that special 'greeting' that Crocodile Dundee gives ugly chicks).

-"Yeah, that's true, but we still got to see it before most people. There were probably around 500-600 people packed in this enormous room (bigger than most main halls for anime cons) with this gigantic screen that everybody could see even if they were seated in the back) when the Pioneer logo appeared to a thunderous applause (first time I'd ever seen that happen o_o).
  People were really getting into this video (as well they should^_^). Laughter would explode at all the right places (like Miz's engagement scene and Fatora's Skanky traps). It was definitely a fun time... too bad they only showed the first episode at this time (the second was scheduled during the time I knew we'd have to start waiting in line for the CosPlay tomorrow). Oh well."

-"Neow. At 4 o'clock we went over to check out the Disney - Tokuma Deal about the Ghibli and Miyazaki films. They had a cool video slide show running when we got there, that answered a bunch of FAQs about the specifics of the deal, and inbetween topics they showed scenes from each of the movies to be released-tcha. It was very nicely done. Only one thing bothered me and that was the dub of the Americanized Kiki (which they showed about 6 minutes from).

If Disney even thinks of actually changing the name of the flying island in their *ahem* 'Castle in the Sky' dub I will personally do something very nasty to those in charge! Grrrrrrrr!

  Now Oni-chan and I watch each Miyazaki film ever made (including Cagliostro^_^) at least once a month and we know them and love them by heart..... So this 'dubbing' of Kiki really disturbed us-tcha!"

-"Well, all things considered it wasn't a bad dub per say... it just wasn't anything close to what a Miyazaki film should sound like. For instance, Kiki's voice (Kirsten Dunst) sounded like she was waaaaaay too old! It wasn't 'cute' in the least. And that really catchy opening them song on the pocket radio as Kiki's flying away from home is gone! I understand that they might not have been able to get the rights to it, but they could have at least tried to make up something close to it! Yikes!"

-"Neow. The one thing that I would have thought would have been the screw-up of the century for Kiki was actually the best part of the Dis Dub: Phil Hartman as Jiji (my favorite Miyazaki chacter of alllllllll time^_^). Now I'm not just saying that because of, well, you know... I mean it, he had the funniest lines and they were timed perfectly. The only problem (yep, there is one-tcha) was that those in DisHQ thought, 'Hey, ya know what? Let's add lines to Jiji that he never really said! The deal only stated that we couldn't take stuff out.' Although Jiji was funny, he would never shut the hell up!!! He just kept on talking and talking!!!! My Jiji was never a blather-mouth."

"How come there are so many blimps in these Miyazaki films? Hasn't anybody ever heard of a little invention called the 'airplane?' And how come every Miyazaki heroine looks like Clarisse? Don't you find that the least bit strange? And what's up with Kiki? She sounds like she's in her late twenties but stuck in a 13 year-old's body! Does she have that 'Emanuel Lewis' thing going on? Could she play Garry Coleman's long lost sister on a Different Strokes reunion, I mean come on! And by the way I heard that it's not safe to blah blah blah blah blah....."

-"I feel you pain. And another thing I noticed was that the other witch that Kiki first comes across was made 10Xs snottier than in the original. I guess to make up for a lack of a villian the morons in Disney are just going to make everybody whom Kiki comes in contact with ultra bitchy. Aye-yi-yiiiiiiiiee! That is sooooo not right."

-"The show also had all of Bobby 'C-Ko' Beaver's cool videos and then we saw some really cut-ass rugged material from Mononoke Hime!!!! Oh my GAWD!!!! I had to see it as soon as possible!!!
  Neow. Then the panel people sat down at the desk in the front when the presentation ended. They began to tell us how ultra cool the script writer is for Mononoke Hime (some guy named Gaiman who writes lots of moody and dark stories) and how he actually showed a draft to some Ghibli men and they loved it. They also calmed us down too by telling us that Miyazaki himself would have the final say in if it's a go (as he can read English very well-tcha)."

"So when Disney asked us our opinion on the Laputa translation we just told them to call it 'The Flying Filthy Dirty Slut Whore Island of the Sky'. It was the same general idea, we thought."

-"Apparently this Gaiman guy keeps in touch with Nausicaa.net as he got there advice on many translation problems and he even let them in on a few secrets which of course we are going to share with you now ^_^. Moro no Kimi is going to be played by agent Dana Scully and the release date is 2nd to 3rd quarter 1999. Now, almost immediately after this panel we met somebody very high up in the industry who has friends inside both camps (Ghibli and Disney), and he told us that MONONOKE HIME WOULD BE RELEASED IN THEATERS THIS NOVIEMBRE!!!!!!! This was Ultra Mega Supah Powah Kick Ass News!!! We would get to see this baby on the BIG screen in just a few months*@_@*!!"

-"Ne-OW! I was happy ^_^.... Okay, I'm okay now. So anyway, we left the panel in good spirits but were a little disappointed to find that the Dealers' Room was already closed. Damn! What time was it?!?!"

-"It was after 6, Tidy Cat brain! Anywhen, we started wandering around a bit when we saw the line starting for the Meet the Guests Gathering in the far wing past the first Video Room. As we jumped in line we started talking to some guy who turned out to be the Dark Elf from last year's CosPlay. He was pretty cool as we talked about different cons we'd been to and what the anime scene was like in both Washington and Georgia when... IT happened."

-"Neow! I had to hold my nose as it smelled like a skunk fell into a vat of smelly sulfer and then died and began to rot!"

-"No, it was worse than that..... It was Otaku-Funk!!!!! Dear Lord that fanboy was ripe! Catsy and I turned to face him as he approached the line and we raise our claws and attacked in full force in the hope that maybe his spilled blood would cover the scent of the terrible terrible odors freakishly flowing from his unclean body! But just as we were about to connect our talons with his (had to be) decaying flesh -

WATCH OUT FOR THAT KENJI!!!!

  -Murasame Kenji jumped in between us and sheilded the Otaku-fiend with his body! We, uh, just couldn't stop in time, heh heh."

-"Waaaaaaaaaah!!! We hurt Murasame-chan bad! *Sniff!* I just couldn't stop once I had the momentum going ya know.... I really didn't mean to! I'm soooo sorry Ken-chan! *Sniff!* Please forgive us!"

-"I really don't think we hurt him all that much. Anyway, after he wiped most of the blood off of his face something else hurt him more than we possibly could. I think that was when he realized that the O-Funk boy we were trying to kill reeked!  That was when he bowed to us, said something like, 'Oh oh oh oh, mone shairies, Ah deed nut ray-ahlize zat zees smelly boy was so out-rah-geslee smelly! Please forgive me.' (Man I wish I could speak Italian!) Then he quickly turned around, grabbed the kid by his belt and chucked him out the window in one fluid movement! Damn!!! I'd love to see Ken-chan in that WMAC tournament! He'd kick everybody's hiney like there was no tomorrow!"

-"Neow. Then all of us apologized to eachother (Kenji for trying to stop us and us for almost killing him again) for at least ten minutes. Then we asked him what he'd been up to recently. He told us that since the Eye of Vogler was now gone he'd just been bummin' around the world, seeing the sights and all.... Then I had to bring up Sailor Moon - D'oh!"

-"Yeah, that was a smooth move, kitty! Ken-chan just hung his head and told us that she dumped his sorry ass last week because he just kept on bitchin' about Paris and Ginrei and dying over and over and over again yada yada yada (Get a grip, Kenji!)... We then consoled him for a bit and then Catsy thought of a way to cheer him up^_^"

-"Yeah! I thought he would be happy if he realized just how cool his power really was, so I killed him! And then I did it again! Hee hee! And again!.... It went on for quite a while but then I realized that we should probably go and buy ourselves tickets for the 'Meet the Guests Reception'! I wanted to mingle with them and drink punch and hang around and do cool things! So we left ol' 'Pinky' crumpled up in a big pile of torn trenchcoat and blood as we headed over to the main counter-tcha."

-"Little did we know that the room capacity for the reception was only something like ten people and there were already 7 guests.... Needless to say it was sold out. I don't know about Catsy, but I was bummed. I guess that she hinted to the fact that she was disturbed by the news of 'No sale, no ticket, no nada' by setting the information desk on fire with her little home-made napalm grenade, but then again she'd been planning on doing that for over a day."

-"Neow-tcha. Well, I was planning to do it on Saturday the 4th for a AX FIRE-works display, but the news just made me forget tradition for an instant and I acted hastily. Oh well, I had another^_^
  We went back to play with Kenji but he was already gone leaving nothing but a pool of crimson where we last left him. Eh, we'd find him later. We then went to our room, ate some (by now) cold pizza and watched the Simpsons. After we were full and belched the alphabet for a bit we went down to the fourth floor for a good laugh.... It was Karaoke Time!"

-"We just had to see if 'Apollo-less' meant bettah (I mean, it had to be.).... Unfortunately it really did not. Ugh! The sad thing is that we actually waited 20 minutes to get into the room for it while the fan fic panel (just like their stories) ran toooooooo damn long! Then we got into the room and waited another 50 minutes for it to begin. By this time both Catsy and I were getting really psyched up thinking that the contest was going to rock the casbah something fierce!..... Holy heavy handed sadistic let-downs, Batman! It blew. It blew bigger than any animal living or dead that may have ever existed in this giant and unending universe. The contestants were making up gibberjabber or simply humming to the first Rayearth theme and the Eva opening... It was a muy triste día por my ears! Oh if only Johnson and Johnson made some kind of 'Clear Eyes' for the ear drum!"

-"After that we went over to the video game room to see what was going on... Not much-tcha. Just the typical fighting and puzzle games. They didn't even have any cool anime-based games set up. Oh well.

"Let's see. I think we should get a Tekken 3 game... Hmmmmm, maybe another Tekken 3 and maybe another just for good measure. Oh, I know! We'll set up a Tekken 2 just to have something different! And we better get one more Tekken 3 for the last TV."

  After the video game room we decided to check out another video. Psychic Wars was playing in the main theater and it sounded cool. Psychic Wars! Psychic Wars! Cool ^_^"

-"Sounds may be deceiving, grasshopper. As PW was pretty sucky if I do say so myself... and I do. It was almost as bad as the Karaoke contest (man do I feel sorry for those judges. I hope that they were just a bunch of masochists looking for a good time because they hit the jackpot!). It had okay animation, but it couldn't decide if it was going to be a supernatural action battle royal or a soft porn. It just didn't do anything for this lil' Oni (get your mind outta the gutter!).
  We fled the scene as fast as we could and found ourselves in the Convention Center just in time to catch Gamera: Defender of the Universe! Kick ass! Gamera may not be as cool as Gojira (read: not the American Godzilla), but he does have it going on. I just luv the way he flies too^_^ He the turtle!"

-"Neow. It was okay, but Gaos and Gamera didn't really destroy half as much of the city as I hoped they would. At least Gojira knows how to bring the town down... or something. I did like the SFX though. They were pretty cool!
  After the Turtle feature we rested a bit in the lobby and then we thought we'd check out the dance. It was, uh, dark to say the least. I don't even know why they called it a 'dance' anyway-tcha. All people were doing was either jumping up and down in the center of the room or sitting at tables in the back feeling sorry for themselves because they never learned how to jump up and down. There's nothing worse than 'geeks among otaku'. It reminded me of a highschool dance (kinda like prom where my best friend's date and I snuck out the back and got wild and crazy for a couple of hours after we left his date plastered at our table with some vodka that I snuck in^_^ Ahhhhh those were the days!)."

 
Jump around! Jump around! Wow! These guys liked to party like it was AX99!

-"NANI!?!?! It began that far back?!?! You are dead, kitty!!!! Dead!"

-"Anyway, Oni-chan and I jumped up and down for a few minutes and then we hopped for a little while longer. But soon even that lost its magic and we snuck out the door. It was at that point that I saw one of my biggest idols just strolling down the hall! Grandis Granva! She is so kewl and in control.... Just like me^_^"

"Hanson! Samson! Kill the stupid kitty!"

-"Catsy, you are sooooo mega baka. That wasn't Grandis! It was that Eva chick from Magnetic Rose! Don't you remember the CosPlay? She did that wicked opera thing? You are so out of it. Anyway, while neko-baka-chan was busy idolizing poor ole Eva here (and Eva was busy trying to call hotel security to get the rabid looking furball off her leg) I found a weird looking flyer for something called 'Gilgemesh' up on the 8th floor that said 'Nobody under 18 allowed'. I thought it had to be something dark and disturbing with lots of blood and profanity... or maybe even some tentacle stuff (I thought it would be nice to bring back a story or two that the MegaPlayboy could really appreciate^_^). So off I went.
  The door was closed and so I knocked only to be greeted by this weird looking dude with such blood shot eyes that it appeared as if he hadn't been able to close them for hours for fear of missing a second of the major orgasm that was emanating from the TV they had hooked up in their chambers. It was some kind of twisted movie review show where apparenly the female reviewers could only watch and talk about movies while sitting naked in a bath tub and lathering eachother up. Those Japanese sure have some weird customs.
  Although I thought that their movie reviews were better than Siskel and Ebert's I forgot that I left Catsy with Eva and I left the spanktastic party to find her hoping against all hope that she didn't kill anyone without me."

-"Neow. So that's where you went! After you disappeared some tubby guards came and dragged me away. I think you came back just as they were trying to stuff me into that itty bitty travel kennel."

-"I don't know how they got your big butt into that thing, but it was a funny sight! Too bad I ran out of film already. I hacked the chunky monkeys into sushi and pried your rear end out of the cage, so don't complain.
  Then we went back to the dance for a while before we headed over to the Convention Center one more time for Doomed Megalopolis, the live action version. Cheeeeeeezy! Whoa-boy!"

-"Then we crashed for the night. Neow. It seemed like an entire week but it was only one day. Goodnight-tcha."

Go back into the past Mysterious Day.			Go forward into the next Mysterious Day.

Go back to the beginning of the Mysterious Expo.

If you feel the overwhelming need to get in touch with me (or even Oni-chan), just give the message to Ayeka and Ryoko, and as soon as/if we get it you can be sure that one of us will laugh at you