ONIcon98! Part 3: Reign in Hell (Part II) (As told by Catsy and her wonderful imagination@_@)

Neow. Now to get down to business! Normally, the CosPlay is the best part of any Con (it's where everybody goes to see some cool costumes, make fun of the crappier ones and all-in-all just have a good ole time). But the ONIcon CosPlay was the best part of ANY Con that I had ever been to or seen or even heard of!!!! It was soooooooo huge (over 350 entries), the new emcee (the one who replaced the "Shin" one) was funny as hell (he made great comments throughout the night about the overabundant supply of female CosPlayers dressing up as Kenshin and Golgo 13), and the judges (including but not limited to Ippongi Banged, Scott Frassier, the guy who did the voice of Astroboy, a woman who painted some background shots for Legend of the Galactic Heroes episode 24, and some guy they picked out of the crowd just because he thought that he had better taste than the rest of the judges) made some great choices in the end!

It seemed that the more the crowds loved a certain skit, the more beer bottles (empty or full) and chunks of bleachers they hurled at the stage! Cool!

  Now, the entire production went on for close to five hours, and that's how long you'd have to wait for this page to download if I showed you picks from every skit. So, I'll just show you the costumes and skits that won some of the many prizes, and I'll try to describe some skits that really stuck out too ^_^ Enjoy!

  Now, let's see...... After everybody had performed their skits, the judges left for a good 15 minutes to decide the winners. When they came back, the first costume chosen for an award was the Best Representation of an Anime Character. That went to San, the Mononoke Hime herself. Her skit was so totally rugged! Especially how she just walked up onto the stage, looked around, and then jumped into the seats of the already completed CosPlayers and sliced up any of them who had a gun^_^ It was definitely something to see!

"Hey, you! Where did you get the ****ing metal to make that gun?!!?"

  San is now another one of my idols@_@. After somebody came up on stage to accept the award for the Princess (she was already in police custody), the next winner was announced: The Best Looking 'Chick Mecha'. It was given to some chick in a mecha suit.... Go fig.

"You now have 15 seconds to comply!"

  She used her rear blaster-exhausts to fly up on stage. She thanked everybody who voted, and then there was a mad scramble by her to turn off her nuclear-powered engines that were overheating.... Neow. Well, she didn't make it in time and parts of her made it all the way back to the 40th row! No wonder The Experts of Justice were so concerned about Giant Robo's power-tcha!
  After the mop up, another award was given. This one was for the Goofiest Robot Wannabes From Shows We've Already Forgotten. Some guys who dressed up as goofy looking robots from shows that we've already forgotten snagged that one.

"We're goofy, and we're robots! We're goofy robot men! Now give us some candy!"

  After they were booted off the stage, the trophy for Best Mass Destruction was given. This one went to Pikachu and Team Rocket for sending another 500 audience members to the hospital. That little yellow electrode is f***ing dangerous to say the least! I didn't take any pictures of that skit for obvious reasons.

  Then came the award for Best Tight Fitting Outfit. That went to Sophia because the judges were horny.

Sophia Kamen?!?!

  The Best Street Fighter Costume went to Chun Li. Her skit was cool! She beat up Sophia^_^

"Yatta!"

  Then came the Best Final Fantasy VII Costume. This one went to Yuffie. She even had that giant shuriken which she could throw and have it return to her! The only prob with her was that some guy dressed as Sephiroth stuck his sword through her 'cause nobody dressed up as Aerith. It was really sad.

RIP

  There was a tie for the next award. The Best Gundam With the Most Plastic Parts went to both the Chibi-Gundam RX78 and this other one. I liked the Chibi one^_^ It was cute!

  
I would love to see these two go at it in that Gundam Battler game!

  The Gundams were okay, but neither of them exploded like the Gundam Chick did. That was fairly disappointing.
  The next prize went to the Cutest Pretty Sami. Out of the twenty six Pretty Samis this one won. I personally think that number 14 was the cutest, but apparently the judges had something for number 21. Oh well, at least I stole her magic stick from her after the show. I have to admit that it was cute the way she cried and cried like that^_^

I would LOVE to see a fighting game with nothing but Sailor Moon, Pretty Sami, Wedding Peach, Minky Momo, Creamy Mami and the like. For Playstation, of course.

  Yet another award followed! This one went to the Best Only Costumer to Dress Up as His/Her Character! Ashitaka got this one, even though he sucked with the bow and arrow and couldn't even catch an arrow with his bare hand (I didn't even use a bow, I just chucked it at him. What a wimp!).

"Next year I'm going as a Kodama!"

  Then came the Most Outdated Costumes. It went to the "WhoreLock Group" as Mulder so eloquently put it. I thought that they were okay, but *yowzah* were they outdated!

Double double toil and bubble. Point us to Arcadia or there'll be trouble!

  They were kinda scary. But after them came the Best Idol Singer. It of course went to Sharon. It was so cool how she hypnotized the entire audience into singing "My Boyfriend's a Pilot Now" with her! I think she deserved 1st prize (and no, that's not the hypnosis working).

"..... But I love Isamu even more!"

 After our beloved Sharon came the Last Three Prizes of the night! The Second Runner Up, the First Runner Up and the Grand Prize! The Second Runner Up was Nakatomi Nanaka! She was pretty cool! She flew around the stage on her broom and then showed us her little secret: She kidnapped Jeff-kun from Sae@_@ That was funny! She got the entire audience to laugh at that one (or maybe it was just the "magic dust" she sprinkled on everybody from overhead).

At least she said that she was over Ayanojou. He/she/it is just plain icky!

  The First Runner Up was then announced. Felicia and Morrigan got that one^_^ I was so happy that a catgirl placed so high! All they did for their skit was strike sexy poses for about five minutes. Hey, whatever works, ya know.

I have just got to find out how she gets her hair that shade of blue! It might be natural, but it'd be my guess that it's out of the bottle.

  After the Second Runner Up and First Runner Up received their trophies and prizes (2nd got $200 in cash, and 1st got $500!), The Grand Prize Winner was named! In all of it's glory, the EVA Unit 01 walked up on stage with its energy cord and all! This was the greatest costume I had ever seen!!! It also carried with it that progressive knife thingy and the Lance of Longinus!!! They even dimmed the lights at one point and we could see that the eyes glowed!!!! And whenever it opened its mouth the horrendous battle cry of the Eva would eccho throughout the auditorium!!! Everybody was completely blown away at how totally realistic it was! I don't think that anybody should ever have to make another costume ever again! This was perfection! This was the coolest thing I have ever seen in my kitty life!!! Behold, its splendor! Behold the EVA -01!!!!!!!

I can still see its eyes glowing in the dark in my head!

  The whole audience was on its feet applauding the purple demon on stage as it took a bow and let a final "howl" loose that we felt deep within our now shattered souls! It was glorious I tell you! GLORIOUS!!!! What was also glorious was the fact that out of all the skits performed, only two got booed (the male Kekko Kamen and the guy dressed up as Spiderman), for obvious reasons. I was impressed! The EVA-01 won $1,000 too along with a huge trophy-tcha.
  I found out later that the 13 year-old girl who dressed up as Washuu was supposed to win the 1st Runner Up award, but she was tragically mauled to death by adoring fans as soon as she stepped from the stage after her skit. She was cute.

  After the con people thanked us for making the CosPlay such an incredible success we left (we actually beat the crowds out of the theater by going back through the Playboy's tunnel. Once we all climbed out of the already occupied stall (Jeeeeeez, lady! We said we were sorry!) we hotfooted it over to the special showing of the Third Kimagure Orange Road movie: the Pyramid Murder Mystery. It may have been another novel by Matsumoto Izumi and Terada Kenji, but that doesn't mean that it didn't suck. This was even farther away from what KOR is than the first two movies (both of which I actually liked). The characters did things for no apparent reason other than to see how far away from their original personalities they could get, and the ending was just ridiculous! The only decent thing about the 85 minute piece of hell that we sat through was to see Kyousuke teleport through the information super highway! Never mind the fact that half of everything that occured was never explained! I hope that this is the last KOR ever made, or if they ever do make more, that they at least give it a plot! Is that so much to ask? (If you truly want to know what happens, check out the translation of the original novel found here. It may not be worth it though).

  Neow. That was a very negative experience. People actually cheered when the credits began rolling (even though they didn't even finish up the story with any satisfactory conclusion) and only about a third of the original audience remained for the end too. And I thought that the Crying Game was a waste of time and brought me horrible memories! Oy Vey! Give me a homosexual transvestite any day over total crap like that (I can't believe I just said that!).

  The Rossman, the Playboy, Chujo, Mulder and I went back up to the room after that. We erased the reminiscense of the terror of Hikaru from our minds by watching a bunch of episodes of SDF Macross in subtitles on the in-room anime feed. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah, it was just what I needed. We then left refreshed and ready for the Music Video Contest. Even though it was now very late at night, the main auditorium was filled with about 7,000 people! Wow!
  After we took our seats (we found some open in the center of the room and we made people scooch) we bore witness to incredible coolness the likes of which my slit eyes have never seen before-tcha! Over 80 music videos shown and I wanted them all for my personal collection! I wish that I owned every anime music video ever made, sure, but these were necesities!!!! Each and everyone of them a work of art!!!! I was in tears at the end of the showing.

  Because there were so many of them, there were tons of categories too with at least ten videos that fit into each. Now, to save as much space as is possible (Too late, I know. I'm just tired of typing-tcha) I'm only going to list the winners of each category and then the fan favorite (as the audience decided which vids won through their cheering [holy crap was that place loud! It was like a BullDawg home game!]).

  First up was the Romance Category. There were some great challengers, but the hands down winner belonged to the video of Meatloaf's Paradise by the Dashboard Light set to Urotsukidoji, End of Summer and the great Angel of Darkness (Think about it^_~).
  It may not have been for everybody, but it was timed perfectly! Then came the Comedy Category. This was a tough choice, but the winner was eventually the video of Blue Oyster Cult's Don't Fear the Reaper set to lots of people exploding or just plain dying from various sources (like Dragon Ball Z or X: the Movie). The whole theater was on the ground rolling with laughter!
  And even though it was a tough one to beat, I do believe that the winner of the next class did so. For the Drama Category we had Metallica's Enter Sandman set to Sailor Moon S, Super S and Sailor Stars! Every drum beat was accounted for, the quality of the visuals were LD perfection and it was Metallica fer krisesake! Well deserved.

  After all of the dramas came the Idol Singer Category (all these videos were based around idol singers, duh). It was a tough one, but Alphaville's Red Rose set to Lynn Minmay from 2012, and Macross: Love, Do You Remember? came through and trashed the competition in the end! I have to get my hands on a copy of this video! It is one of the greats@_@ It's just like blue sunshine ya know^_~
  The Action Category had some nifty entries. I couldn't decide between two of them, but everybody else agreed that ELO's Twilight set to Nadia, Eva, Gunbuster, Otaku no Video, The Royal Space Force and the brand new Kareshi Kanojo no Jijou was named the victor. Come to think of it, this one surely deserved it. Nicely executed^_^
  And the final video grouping of the night was the Sci Fi Category. All of these rocked the casbah so I just screamed my vote in for all of them. The winner turned out to be Asia's Don't Cry set to a lot of cool shows based in space (that had a lot of cute girls crying T_T). I've always loved that song too.

  After all the videos were shown, the "cheer in vote" for Best of the Night was held. They ran each of the faves over again and we voted for them as the guy in charge of the contest read off the names of the songs. In the end the champion was Minmay's Red Rose^_^ Well deserved, but congratulations to everybody who entered. You made my millenium!

The Playboy in shock that the video contest was over (I think he just fell in love with Minmay again).

  Neow. Everybody left the theater and most of the crowd headed up to their rooms. But the gang and I found a flyer that announced a cool premiere that the Con had just acquired and apparently had just been able to stuff into their schedule! We ran over to the West Brocade Room and caught the very beginning of the Kareshi Kanojo No Jijou marathon (every episode of the newly completed Gainax television series with subtitles!)!!! Even though we were really excited to finally catch the series with some subs, we found that we were just too tired to stay awake for the whole thing. So we trudged back up to our room and crawled into our beds/sleeping bags for a little shut eye.
  Day three was over-tcha.

  

  

Seek salvation! Return to the previous Day!			Go forward into the next Oni-rific Day.

Go back to the beginning of the Traditional Expo.

  Anyhow, after you're done with this page you can check out the UGAnime DEAD Ultimate Homepage, the Oni-chan Does L.A. and AX Page, the Catsy and Oni-chan's Wild Ride To, At and From Animazement 98 Page or the Fushigi Shin Seiki Expo 98: Catsy and Oni-chan Go To WAR!