RIA hits Yasumicon!



The title image for the RIA Adventure, "RIA hits Yasumicon!"

RIA hits Yasumicon!
A RIA Adventure

Check out our adventure at Yasumicon 2003!

Written by BurpingCat

I’m sure most of you at least know what a convention is.

It’s basically a “weekend getaway” type of thing for nerds where they can meet nerd celebrities that nobody else would care about, engage in various nerd activities with other nerds, and buy tons of nerd crap from vendors that set up shop there.

Conventions always lure out the most disturbing examples of obsession. Especially anime conventions. So when I heard that the nearby university was gonna have a FREE anime convention, I really wanted to take the opportunity to study just how LAME these things are.

Also, it was a prime target for fun-making. A good opportunity for a RIA ADVENTURE.

And it was free, man. That’s the reason for any season. Court defenses should all start with the point that the defendant’s dastardly deeds were free, so how could he resist?


So the initial idea was to just go to this thing and laugh at people.

I saw on the convention’s website that their would be a few websites and even a magazine covering this event. So I got this idea- let’s try to trick these people! Let’s try to get our pictures onto those websites and magazines!

In order to do that, we would need to dress up as anime characters. So, I decided that we should make up an anime, dress up as its characters, and screw around with people who think they know everything about anime (and probably do).

Then, we try to get our pictures taken by the photographers there. This would be encouraged by just standing around doing poses. We needed some costumes...


Leave it to us to come up with things the day before we’re gonna do them.

Here we are at the parking lot in front of Little Caesars Pizza. We ate pizza and DJ Benvenuto danced. My facial expression looks like I’m saying, “that might be going too far...” I also look like I’m hunching over like I’m dying from the pizza we just ate.

We took these pictures so that when you’re done with this RIA Adventure, you can look back to this and remember that we are normal people.


We went to DJ Wang’s for planning and- SURPRISE. Little Unconventional Improviser made a cameo appearance, actually the first of many incredible cameo appearances in this Adventure.


We deliberated over what to wear for costumes. The costumes would be fake and stupid, but at least convincing enough to make people think it’s an anime character.

So, even though it would’ve rocked, we couldn’t just wear anything crazy. We had a bunch of crazy stuff, though, like an elephant mask with a threatening dirty-deeding-trunk. DJ Benvenuto terrorized me with it as I tried on a jacket and a skeleton glove.

You can already see in that picture that those costumes rule. But, we needed to be more convincing- although I’m sure there’s some anime with a skeleton hand grabbing a monstrous elephant trunk dirty-deeding-style.

Time was running short... this was gonna be a really close call.

advertisement
-
now back to the blog...


So we’re at the convention, just checking out what’s going on and getting our first glimpses of this scary world. In this picture, we are in the “Gaming Room”, which was just like 4 TVs with some video games, and some tables set up for card games (of the nerd kind).

I’m wearing the same shirt from yesterday and sunglasses. DJ Benny is trying to imagine that he’s actually standing in a better place.

You can see our SECOND CAMEO, The Big Man, completely out of place with a wrestling t-shirt and his signature mullet and mustache. The Big Man is crazy and put fear into the hearts of nerds.

The Woodsman was also there. But he is better than a cameo because he stuck with us until the very end. You can see him in the picture looking at the map to find the treasure.


These are some of the sights of Yasumicon.

The lamester girl with pink hair was being totally lame. She was just standing in the middle of the hall like she was greeting people. Somebody like that guy in the picture would walk up to her and she would throw this giggly high-pitched voice and say one of the few phrases she knew in Japanese.

It’s already pretty bad when real Japanese girls do that... it’s a disaster when anybody else tries it.


Most of everybody else was actually pretty tolerable. Some people seemed to come simply to watch people play video games.


Others just kept to their little circle and talked among themselves. When we walked in, I saw a guy dressed up like a Gundam walk out. I wonder why I never saw him again..


These two guys seemed destined to meet each other. Maybe they will get into an epic battle? Sadly, we’ve actually seen both of them before.


One of the sad things about anime conventions is girls that attempt to make a career out of dressing up in skimpy clothes.

See, when it comes to girls, nerds seem to be pretty easy crowds to sway. There are certain pretty girls that just love attention- it doesn’t even matter if it’s from annoying anime nerds. So at these conventions, they make sure to dress up real skimpy so that they get tons of attention and get their pictures taken a lot.

If they’re good enough, the conventions are just a gateway to bigger things- OF THE DIRTY DEED STYLE. I’m not kidding.

advertisement
-
now back to the blog...


We checked out one of the events- a “Name That Tune” contest where the contestants had to identify what anime the song clip was from.

This event was nothing short of startling and disturbing. It’s normal to have your favorite songs memorized... it’s entirely something else to listen to the first second of a song and know what anime it was in.

These guys have to be nerd monsters. The highlight of this moment was when nobody could figure out what this one song was- a really intense, dramatic fight song.

Just as everybody in the room went quiet trying to remember, The Woodsman yelled out, “HAMTARO” and people looked back towards him.

I actually believed him, I’ve never seen Hamtaro.


This was the convention’s Guest of Honor: an ordinary Japanese man.

I think he works at the Japanese Embassy or something, but that doesn’t really change anything. He is just a regular Japanese man.

You can see in the picture that the lamester pink-haired girl was standing with him. I don’t know why, but I bet he hated her too.

Seeing this guy brought back fond memories of Japanese class and Taiwan Sensei (the Grenade-Throwing Japanese Language Instructor from Taiwan).

I ALMOST dubbed him Taiwan Sensei Jr.... because he was almost talking the same way as he was giving a Japanese lesson and writing on the whiteboard.

We should’ve stayed to watch this guy longer.


We were getting a little tired of all this lameness, and we were getting hungry. So, before we revealed our costumes, it was time for an intermission.


We went to the nearby Miami Subs to eat. They had an X-Men arcade machine in there and we started playing it.

We soon found out that this is the craziest X-Men machine... it gives you 63 lives for one quarter. With one quarter, you can beat the game at least 2 times.

DJ Wang and The Woodsman pretty much neglected eating for an hour in order to keep playing X-Men. It looks like he’s dying from playing so much X-Men.

advertisement
-
now back to the blog...


Big Pimpin’


It’s showtime.


DJ Benvenuto and I gathered our costume stuff from my trunk and into bags and headed back to the convention. We went into the bathroom and suited up.


This must be what happened to the “era of taking pictures in bathroom stalls”.


DJ Benvenuto finished before I did, because I had to think of stuff at the last minute. What is he dressed as? Well, it’s basically just Ozone from Breakin’ with a boomerang.

As soon as he got out, DJ Wang started taking pictures of him and a guy with a big expensive camera noticed. He wanted to take a picture of DJ Benny too.

Hell yeah, our plan is working so far.


Finally, I’m finished and we’re both together.

So, who are we? We are from the anime “Re-Verse”, a show that’s just starting to catch popularity in Japan. That’s why you haven’t heard of it.

My character’s name is “Futomara” and DJ Benvenuto’s is “Masu Gakite”, or Big Dirty Deed and Pleasurable Explosion Hand, respectively.

Now that I look at the pictures, I think DJ Benvenuto should’ve been Futomara. That boomerang looks like a giant dirty deed sticking out from under his vest... and it was like 3 times that I felt that thing rubbing up against my danger zone.

You can see that I am more like an evil ninja or masked magician type of guy... and “Masu” is like a rough-and-tumble hero.

Do we look convincing?

advertisement
-
now back to the blog...


We walked around trying to entice people to take our picture. Especially guys with big expensive cameras. The guys with big expensive cameras are the guys from the websites and stuff.

This is the pose we kept using over and over. Everybody kept giving me a really weird look. Like, they looked at me and their expression changed... trying to figure out who I was supposed to be. Then, they would either give up and look away, or assume that it can’t be real and laugh.

When people would ask us what anime we were from, and we told them “Re-Verse”, they just said, “oh” and walked away.


The third cameo is by The Minstrel. He showed up just to see our costumes. I’m not really pointing at something on the floor, that’s my pose.


Another cameo appearance, this time by DJ Firestarter. There were even more cameos, but we didn’t get pictures. I don’t think I was posing in this picture, and I still look menacing.

We were getting pretty bored by now because we didn’t get any pictures taken. All the picture-taking guys walked by us, almost scoffing. They seemed like lamesters.

I mean, I know that maybe you’re saving your precious rolls of high-quality film for the girls in short skirts... but what if we weren’t lying and Re-Verse is a real show? We would be the pioneers of it in America, and you totally skipped us.

This called for more drastic measures.

We would have to enter the costume contest.


We entered the costume contest because I was sure that all the cameras would be lined up to take pictures there. Also, it would add another hint of legitimacy to our scheme.

This isn’t actually a picture of us at the costume contest. DJ Wang, the picture man, left before the contest started. In any case, this picture looks badass.

We look TOUGH.
We look INTIMIDATING.
DON’T MESS WITH US.

In the contest, we went up on stage and did some goofy crap. DJ Benvenuto didn’t get any cheers until he took his vest off. I did a big jump off the stage and ripped my pants a bit.

We didn’t win, but the real test is to see if our pictures show up on the photo galleries and websites.

Nobody thought we would ever do this, and there we are, doing it. But I think I’ll never go to an anime convention again. It’s so horribly lame and more lame.

Even if this convention was small, the bigger ones just have more room for lameness.

Hopefully, our horrible time will pay off.


advertisement
-

=^..^= =^..^= =^..^= =^..^= =^..^=

Blog

YouTube

Website

Buy Me a Coffee

.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo.





advertisement
-