AnimeNEXT 2018 was the first time in years where I was fully able to unwind, relax, and enjoy myself on vacation, and it remains one of my all-time favorite convention experiences. I've seen enough sequels to know that the second time isn't guaranteed to measure up to the first, so I had no illusions that the 2019 convention would be anywhere near as magical. Still, my wife and I secured tickets and spent several months planning and getting psyched for AnimeNEXT 2019.

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Now, then. Convention stories!

LODGING

My wife and I have been staying at bed & breakfasts since our honeymoon. Usually we select a B&B based on some combination of unique character (eg, a castle built from found materials, Halloween decorations out the wazoo), scrumptious breakfast options (eg, a rotating menu prepared by a legit pastry chef), and fun perks (eg, cats on the premises, homemade shortbread at all hours). When my wife booked the Carisbrooke Inn, only three things mattered: it was close to the convention center, reasonably priced, and still available.

Had we not been conventioning, we would've gotten more out of our stay. But the designated breakfast times of either 8:30 or 9:30 AM didn't mesh well with our optimal timing for getting into costume and getting out the door. The paper-thin walls put a damper on coming back from the convention around midnight and discussing our plans for the next day at normal volume levels. And we certainly weren't around to take advantage of the free wine at 5 PM.

Our particular room met our needs: it had a comfortable bed, a full-length mirror for checking costumes, enough space for us to lay out all our stuff and maneuver around each other, and a place to sit. Parking was offsite in a tiny lot around the corner, but the neighborhood seemed safe enough and the weather was nice. Overall, our stay was fine, just not ideal for the weekend we had planned.

One anecdote worth sharing: We were showed to our room by a summer intern, who had some difficulty demonstrating how to turn on the TV. When it finally came on, there was some infomercial about—I swear I'm not making this up—butt surgery. With color diagrams. And either he didn't notice or was unsure how to turn it back off. My wife and I had to hold in our laughter for a good 2-3 minutes while he finished giving us the tour of our room with the TV on at full volume.

FOOD

Our meal planning at last year's convention is best described as "winging it." That is not to say we only ate chicken wings; nay, my vegetarian (now vegan) wife would have protested. Rather, we failed to scope out food options in advance—basically the opposite of how we normally plan our trips.

Last year's impromptu dining decisions took us to Tun Tavern (more my kind of place), where I bumped into the host of the fun voice acting Q&A panel we had just attended; to Cavo Crepe Cafe (more my wife's kind of place), where we hurriedly ate outside as the staff started to close up shop and the wind nearly swept us away; and to one of the many food kiosks at the convention center, where I ate a mediocre pizza. Wait, I wasn't going to tell you that last story.

This year, we identified several restaurants within 10 minutes of the convention center, making note of their business hours. Given that my wife only eats during a convention if (a) she's about to pass out, and (b) there's nothing else of interest on her schedule, I knew I'd be fending for myself a lot of the time.

Still, my wife and I joined up for a hearty Saturday dinner at Los Amigos, a Mexican restaurant that appealed equally to both of us. We also had a supremely enjoyable Thursday dinner at The Continental. I had French onion soup dumplings, which were incredible. We loved the decor: our "outdoor" table (technically indoor, because we were in a mall) was next to a fire pit on a little island surrounded by water, and the rest of the restaurant was some combination of the original Star Trek, original Battlestar Galactica, vintage Doctor Who, and a David Lynch film. Very cool.

We also had breakfast together every morning. The B&B had a set menu of a half-dozen options—pancakes, eggs, bacon; all the usual fare. This was fine for me, but my wife was restricted to avocado toast because she's a filthy Millenn—I mean, uh, vegan. Actually, my wife informs me it was avocados and oatmeal. Either way, our hosts were very accommodating, and the orange juice was on point, so that's what really matters.

I ended up having all my other meals at the convention center, but I was smart this year: instead of sodas and greasy grub, I opted for Powerade and vaguely healthy sandwiches (vaguely healthy in that there was a lettuce leaf on top). Physically, I felt much better this convention, what with being properly hydrated and not traveling everywhere with a lead stomach.

SUMMARY

I think that pretty much covers everything. AnimeNEXT 2019 was—oh, I guess I missed some stuff.

COSTUMES

Well in advance of the convention, I had agreed to doing a couple's cosplay with my wife. She reckoned that we'd have more fun and be more recognizable as two characters from the same series. We both had our demands: I required a costume that was relatively easy and unobtrusive; she wanted something that didn't require a wig. We settled on Dr. Mikhail Cossack and Dr. Noelle Lalinde, two scientists from the Mega Man franchise (the latter from the Archie Comics continuity).

The costume components were easy enough to assemble. I had a pair of brown shoes that looked fairly accurate, and a pair of fake glasses left over from the Lowery Cruthers cosplay I did for a Jurassic Park/World movie marathon some months prior. I don't mean to brag, but I own a pair of khaki pants. I found a perfect tie and shirt at Goodwill. I picked up a lab coat from a uniform store—not the cheapest costume piece I've ever bought, but it opens up numerous future cosplay options. My hair and beard were already the appropriate length and easy to style.

I forget what all my wife had to do to pull together her costume, though I suspect there was some sort of Sailor Moon transformation sequence involved (or maybe just lots of sewing).

Now, my wife's intention was to bleach her hair, cut it to the character's specifications, and dye it the appropriate color. She had hassled with transporting, styling, pinning, and enduring the weight of two different wigs at the last convention, and she simply did not have the patience or energy to go through that again. Unfortunately, there was a mishap when she trimmed her own hair. And then another mishap when she attempted to salvage it for a secondary costume that fell through. Instead of looking like a comic book character, she turned herself into Little Lord Fauntleroy.

With tears in her eyes, she drove off into the sunset looking for a place that would sell her a wig.

Of course, costumes alone wouldn't be enough for anyone but the most diehard Mega Man fans to recognize us on sight. We needed props. So my wife went to work on a plushie (well, a round cat toy strung with wire and covered in fabric) of Beat the robotic bird, laminated fold-out "photos" of my fictional daughter (including official art, manga and comic book panels, and a screenshot from OH JOES!), and name badges for the both of us (complete with fake bar codes made of inverted tiles from Pharaoh Man's stage in Mega Man 4). I think everything turned out pretty darn well.

I don't think I've ever gotten so many requests to have my picture taken at a convention. A few times, people called out, "Hey, Dr. Light!" to me—and though I always set the record straight about who I was, I was happy they at least got the right franchise. My wife pointed out that Mega Man 11 was still fresh in people's minds, and young Dr. Light isn't too far off from Dr. Cossack if you're just going off of memory. Maybe that's a costume for another convention.

​My wife also went to the effort of drafting an essay written from the perspective of her character, and putting it in a binder with robot schematics on the cover. Although she didn't end up doing so, she toyed with the idea of hamming it up and handing out copies of her essay to random conventiongoers to warn them of the dangers of making robots seem too human.

We took a break from cosplaying on Saturday; my wife needed a respite from the wig, and I thought I'd be happier in street clothes for a day. Although my neato Super Metroid shirt got a few comments, I was surprised to find that I missed the recognition (and extra pockets) of the costume. I was also a little chilly at times; the Atlantic City convention center cranked up the air conditioning the appropriate amount for hordes of people in costume in the middle of summer. Good on you, AC. I reprised my role as Dr. Cossack on Sunday, while my wife changed into her alternate costume, "Woman Who Can't Even With This Wig Anymore."

THURSDAY/FRIDAY

After standing in line (a comically long line extending the entire length of the convention center, down the stairs, and back up the same stairs) to pick up our badges on Thursday night, we spent some time poring over the program and schedule. I had already downloaded the Guidebook app (a precaution after last year's scheduling problems), but I was pleased to discover that the print schedule completely matched up with the online one, at least for everything I wanted to attend.

Unfortunately, everything I wanted to attend was distributed in the worst way possible. Either there was absolutely nothing of interest, or 2-6 really compelling programs all happening at the same time. I had wanted to see the film Summer Wars, for example, but it would've required me to give up a panel on Lupin III (my favorite anime franchise), dinner at a reasonable time, and two competing events that I was tossed between. And if I gave up on Summer Wars after a few minutes—which would be consistent with the "not really feeling this" and "can't read the subtitles from my seat" reasons I had for abandoning videos the previous year—the Lupin panel would be half over and probably filled to capacity anyhow.

So, here's how my Friday went:

Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water: I wasn't thrilled about starting my day with random video programming, but the dealers' room wasn't open yet, and most of my other options were introductions to things outside my sphere of interests. So, I watched an early '90s adaptation of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. It filled the time just fine, but I wandered off after two episodes to go find my wife.

Anime Car Show: I think it's cool that there were half a dozen cars on display from Initial D or with anime-themed decals all over. But Doc Brown's DeLorean, KITT, and my personal vehicle when it's carrying newly purchased dessert are about the only cars my wife and I get excited about. The fact that we showed up, even briefly, to look at cars that didn't travel through time, talk to the driver, or contain dessert should indicate how our morning was going.

AnimeNEXT Family Feud: Family Feud is my favorite game show and one of my favorite TV shows in general. There was no way I was missing this. Disappointingly, the organizers were running on little sleep due to unforeseen circumstances, hadn't had a chance to test the technical equipment, and kept forgetting how certain elements of the game were supposed to work. The pace was slow, and most of the questions were either too broad ("Of all the Gen 1 Pokemon, which would you want for a starter?") or too narrow ("Name a Devil May Cry character with white hair"), and the majority were gaming questions instead of anime questions. The high point was playing rock-paper-scissors against our fellow audience members to gain a seat on stage, and tying about a dozen times in a row with the person behind me. Ridiculous. Also, I lost.

Dealers' room and artist alley: With nothing else on the schedule until early evening, I strolled through aisle after aisle of manga, plushies, keychains, tiny boxes from Japan containing models of the Fisher-Price Enterprise from Star Trek (2009), and any other merchandise you can think of. As with last year, I didn't want to bring home much more than a book full of sketches (more on that later), but I allowed myself a few purchases over the course of the weekend—mostly video game art prints for myself, but also a Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai art print for a friend, and a few varieties of Pocky to share at my workplace.

Lupin the 3rd With Various Guests: This panel was hosted by Richard Epcar, Lex Lang, and Ellyn Stern, who had lent their voices to various Lupin III dubs over the years. Now, I've only ever watched Lupin (and most anime, for that matter) with subtitles, but I was hoping that my passing familiarity with these people (who've played bit parts in such favorites as Heroes of Might and Magic III) and our shared interest in Lupin would be sufficient to enjoy the panel. In retrospect, I really should've gone to Summer Wars; there was a lot of discussion about the Blue Jacket series on Cartoon Network that I haven't seen, and it seemed like Ellyn and Richard weren't in sync about how structured or serious the panel was supposed to be.

Companies That Knew Nothing About "ANIME FAN WANTS": This was a treasure trove of hilarious horror stories and unbelievable anecdotes from now-defunct companies in the anime industry. George from Land of Obscusion regaled us with tales about everything from DVD production ("No, we totally didn't charge money for a DVD set that just sloppily ripped a fan translation from the Internet") to subtitles ("Hey, when you translate this anime, could you avoid using words with the letter 'Y'? The keyboard I'm using to type the subtitles doesn't have a functioning 'Y' key"). Tight presentation of interesting material.

AMV Contest Screening: I missed the first half because of the previous program, but my wife saved me a seat. I arrived in time for the beginning of the Dramatic/Serious category, which hit me right in the feels with the likes of "Parallel" (Violet Evergarden + "Restless Soul" by Flor). In the Artistic category, I was captivated by the psychedelic "Pachyderm Panic" (Puella Magi Madoka Magica + "Pink Elephants on Parade" from Dumbo). "The hero we need" (Astro Boy + "Captain Underpants Theme Song" by "Weird Al" Yankovic) was an amusing surprise in Fun/Upbeat, and funnier (to my tastes, anyhow) than anything under Comedy. Shockingly, last year's trend of everyone using the same two songs from The Greatest Showman continued unabated.

AMV Sing-Along AFTER DARK: Our first choice was the too-popular-to-get-into panel on hilariously bad anime, so we settled in for a less restrained version of the family-friendly AMV sing-along that cheerfully capped off last year's convention. Notably, this was not labeled as an 18+ panel, but it was late enough that the hosts felt comfortable with just giving a warning before any video with questionable content. There were gems such as "Clubbin' with Lupin" (Lupin III, One Piece​, and others + "Jack Sparrow" by Lonely Island feat. Michael Bolton), plus a few of the bawdy AMVs you'd expect from an "after dark" panel, but there were also some horrifically gory ones. Like, "how did my child get into this without a wristband" gory. And I am supremely squeamish. I spent what felt like a quarter of the sing-along looking away from the screen.

Richard Epcar's Famous Outtake Panel (18+): I think this is what I wanted out of the Lupin panel earlier in the day. Richard Epcar, accompanied by Lex Lang, showed a multitude of voice acting outtakes (audio paired with the video clips they were trying to dub) from Lupin III and other anime they'd been involved with. I could've done without so much locker room humor; my favorite outtakes were the flat-out silly ones, with actors catastrophically stumbling over their lines, making up random nonsense, or breaking the fourth wall with absurd observations about the show.

Thursday/Friday cosplay photos:

This was hastily taken as my segment of the snaking registration line curved around a corner, briefly matching up with where these cosplayers were. Left to right, we have Rin Hoshizora, Nozomi Tojo, Umi Sonoda, and Maki Nishikino from Love Live!

Serendipitously, our first cosplay encounter of the convention proper was with a character from the same franchise as us. Metal Man from Mega Man 2 is pictured here with two random nerds.

Shizuo Heiwajima and Izaya Orihara from Durarara!! stopped to duke it out.

The crew from Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid was in attendance: Quetzalcoatl, Elma, Fafnir, Tohru, and Kanna.

It's great to see a whole family (or else a bunch of convincingly familial strangers) cosplay together: Ryuko from Kill La Kill; Flynn Rider from Tangled; and Dr. Eggman, Cheese the Chao, and Miles "Tails" Prower from the Sonic games. Eggman's hand gesture summarizes my feelings toward the accuracy of these costumes.

My wife tells me these are Red Blood Cell and Macrophage from Cells at Work. I tell my wife that she can watch shows like this without me because blood is icky.

I was impressed by this superb Brock and Steelix from an obscure series called Pokémon.

I saw more cosplayers from The Seven Deadly Sins than from any other show I recognized, and it was fun scrutinizing the differences in construction and detail between similar costumes. I held out on taking any photos until I found a group, and Meliodas (and Hawk), King, Escanor, and Diane were kind enough to oblige.

Final Fantasy VII's gloriously polygonal Cloud was one of my favorite cosplays of the convention. So clever.

I'm glad to see that good ol' Vash the Stampede remains a convention staple some 20 years after Trigun stopped airing.

Kirby's King DeDeDe would like to ask for your place in line. Best not to argue with that hammer.

SATURDAY

By the time we got back to the B&B, it was technically Saturday. Our biggest mistake was staying up past 2 AM trying to reassess our initial program selections now that we'd been conventioning for a whole day.

Even without getting up early to don a costume, I was exhausted when I woke up. In large part because of that exhaustion, Saturday ended up being the least enjoyable day of the convention, though not without its high points.

Experiences as an Anime Singer Songwriter With Shihori Nakane: Although I was unfamiliar with this person's work, hers was the one and only morning program that wasn't an educational workshop of some sort (tough luck if you're not interested in crafting, cosplay, or putting your brain to work before lunchtime!). I'm glad I tagged along with my wife; I got to hear some fun stories, including one about meeting the legendary Yoko Kanno. Nakane idolized Kanno and was giddy and nervous when meeting with her to collaborate on a song. Kanno introduced herself by offering a bag of snacks to Nakane. Awestruck, she thought to herself, "God gave me snacks!"

AMV Contest Screening: As the arts and crafts programming continued into the lunch hour, I got caught up on the AMVs I had missed the previous day. Trailer/Parody is usually my favorite category, but this crop of AMVs relied on being familiar with a bunch of series I've had minimal exposure to. Romance/Sentimental gave my feels no chance to recover from the previous day, assaulting me with "Happy Little Clouds" (various series + "Bob Ross Remixed" by Melodysheep) and "Chihiro in Wonderland" (Spirited Away + "C'mon" by Panic! at the Disco). Action didn't seem as action-y as usual, but I enjoyed "The Deciding Moment" (Haikyu!!, Ace of Diamond, and Kuroko's Basketball + "Seki-ray" by Gackt). I'll refer you to this playlist for all the AMVs I didn't mention; there were a lot of good ones.

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time: "Slice of life with a sci-fi twist" is one of my favorite anime genres, and my wife and I enjoyed this tale of a girl...well, you read the title. Lots of clever surprises and fun character interactions, and the ending gave us plenty of conversation fodder. Probably the best part of the day for me.

The Anime Bubble of 2008: What We've Learned: We apparently learned nothing, because I have no recollection of this panel, aside from showing up late and taking a photo of some cosplayers on the way out.

Why Visual Novels: Tales from a Beta Tester (18+): I'm not into visual novels, but I play one on TV. I mean, uh, I know people who make visual novels, I have actual beta testing experience, and I'm interested in behind-the-scenes stories from the video game industry. Mike (I think his name was Mike) was an engaging presenter, and his stories were funny and insightful. He described the workload (tens of thousands of words to review), the wide variations in how tester-friendly games might be, and how testing games with naughty content isn't as glamorous as it sounds.

AnimeNEXT Match Game: After Dark (18+): We attended this last year, and it was the highlights of the convention: Match Game but with audience members participating as the characters they were cosplaying. At that time, voice actor Bill Timoney was on the panel and brought a sense of humor and professionalism that elevated the whole thing. This time, I arrived late and missed the introductions, so I had no clue who was on stage. If I hadn't read the description, I wouldn't have recognized the program as a game show; participants were rambling about NSFW topics (and after Epcar's outtakes, blunt sex jokes were wearing thin for me). I left after maybe 5 minutes.

New Cutey Honey OVA '94: Either I got the wrong room or they switched what they were showing, because this OVA about a crime-fighting android looked an awful lot like a grossly underage busty girl undressing before a grossly underage boy. I left after maybe 5 seconds.

These Are a Few of My Favorite Scenes: Regrouping with my wife, I resigned myself to random video clips for the rest of the night. At its best, the panel was a parade of share-worthy videos, such as a very cool animated Star Wars short film called "TIE Fighter" and the supremely absurd "Daffy Duck the Wizard." Just as often, however, it was a prolonged introduction from one of the four hosts, or an uncomfortably gory clip that once again had me closing my eyes. I'll add that this was not labeled as an 18+ panel. We left around midnight; there was another hour to go, but my exhaustion had finally reached its limit.

Saturday cosplay photos:

I appreciated the double dose of Samuel L. Jackson, with Nick Fury from The Avengers and Frozone from The Incredibles.

Princess Daisy is ready for some Mario Tennis. I saw a number of good Mario cosplayers, but I was especially excited to see one of my mains from an underappreciated spinoff series that I love.

Compared with last year, the total population of non-anime cosplayers dropped by half. I suspect Nick Fury had Thanos flashbacks and used his cosmic pager to summon Captain Marvel's Captain Marvel to the convention to help.

I DON'T KNOW WHAT THIS IS, BUT IT'S AWESOME apparently it's Garuda from Final Fantasy XIV.

With Hunk and Voltron from Voltron: Legendary Defender on hand, I knew the parking garage would be safe.

I ate lunch with All Might and Katsuki Bakugo (as influenced by Best Jeanist). I don't know what those words mean; my wife told me to say them.

Lastly, two characters I could identify unassisted: Little Witch Academia's Atsuko “Akko” Kagari and Diana Cavendish. I also spy Solid Snake from Metal Gear Solid in the corner trying to sneak into or out of this photo.

SUNDAY

I wish we could've started with Sunday's programming; this was the convention I was here to attend. An eclectic assortment of options, timed neatly enough to minimize awkward gaps, gave me the freedom to attend whatever I felt like without agonizing over what I might miss.

How to Panel 101: As a Minor Internet Celebrity™, I've long considered applying to host a panel at a video game convention where people might recognize my work. I've recently been given opportunities to present at small local events, so I figured it wouldn't hurt to brush up on the basics. This presentation was invaluable. A lot of the advice was common sense, but the way the information was organized really helped to emphasize the importance of having someone proofread your application to host a panel, practicing your presentation, and preparing for every worst-case technology scenario.

Creatures in Features with Voice Actors Lex Lang and Sandy Fox: Hands-down the best part of the convention. The first half alone would've been one of the best panels I attended, and accessible even to people with no prior knowledge of these people. The affable hosts discussed how they got into voice acting; some of the roles they've played; and their involvement in loop groups, who fill in all the grunts, gasps, background chatter, and animal noises (you wouldn't believe the training involved for animal noises) needed to flesh out the sound in movies and TV shows. They talked about how Amy Jo Johnson, the original Pink Power Ranger, contributed to getting into that line of work. They played clips from some of the movies they've done and pointed out where you can hear them; Sandy cheered as the candy spectators in Wreck-it-Ralph, and it turns out Lex is my favorite velociraptor in Jurassic World.

The second half is what made this panel truly special: the audience was invited to do the looping for a scene from one of the newer Planet of the Apes movies, with the takes recorded and edited on the spot. A few people were background apes, and Lex coached them on how to grunt and ook convincingly. One person was a more prominent ape who got to shout. I was Breathing Man, as we called him—some poor schmoe who wandered into the jungle for the express purpose of breathing heavily and gasping at apes. I'm plenty comfortable with voiceovers, but I'm definitely not a natural when it comes to nonverbal reactions. Still, between thinking back to my theater days and getting some fantastically supportive coaching from Lex, I eventually produced some usable noises. When everything was spliced together and the music track was added, you could've convinced me that I was watching the actual movie. So, so tremendously cool.

Anime Openings & Endings THE MAN Doesn't Want You to See: I was tossed between this and a workshop on learning to play hanafuda. However, we wanted to wind down with something passive, I recalled how much I enjoyed last year's panel on the best anime openings of the '80s (including one from Kimagure Orange Road that was logistically fascinating), and I saw that George from Land of Obscusion would be hosting. This was an entertaining collection of footage that never made it stateside due to licensing or other issues, such as the Astro Boy opening that doubled as an advertisement for Glico (the Pocky people), or the trio of openings where composer Rui Nagai kept getting in trouble for ripping off other people's songs.

Animation in Anime: After a final run through the dealers' room, where I realized I'd blown my chance at getting a Ridley amiibo, I joined my wife for our final program, already in progress. There were two other panels I was considering attending, but I saw that this was co-hosted by Evan Minto, who ran two of the best-presented panels that we attended last year (one about the evolution of faces in anime, and one about the various appearances of burgers in anime), so that won me over. This was a discussion of the techniques and processes that bring anime to life, and I was especially interested in the part about visual continuity. Apparently, each scene in a show or movie might be done by a completely different animator. My favorite moment was, when discussing the importance of checking for quality and consistency, this image was left up on the screen:

This makes me laugh every time I see it.

Sunday cosplay photos:

We weren't able to get a clear shot of a fantastic Alex Louis Armstrong cosplay from Fullmetal Alchemist, so you get nothing.

ARTWORK

...I'm sorry; I glanced up at that goofy screencap and started laughing again. What am I talking about now? Oh yes. Artwork.

Last year I brought a sketchbook to the artist alley and solicited doodles from anyone who was willing. This year, I brought the same sketchbook (plenty of pages left to fill!) and a pocketful of dollar bills. My wife, herself an artist, said that even though these doodles weren't formally commissions, it'd be only fair to thank the artists with a little financial support. So, until the allotted cash ran out, I went around artist alley asking folks, "If I give you a dollar, would you draw me a doodle? Anything you want; wherever there's a blank spot is fine."

There were still many blank spots among the doodles I got in 2018. To save you the effort of comparing these images against the ones in the previous convention recap, my wife has drawn yellow boxes around any new doodles on old pages.

Most people were receptive to the proposal; a couple were busy or just watching the booth until the artist returned. One artist wanted some time to think and had me come back later; another couldn't decide what to draw, which prompted the first suggestion I've ever made (RWBY, specifically, after looking at what was on display) since making sketch collection a habit.

One girl who was a convention attendee saw me soliciting sketches, and she asked if she could draw something. The woman with her (I'm assuming her mother) apologized and tried to dissuade me, but I was more than happy to give the girl a dollar for the boxy little robot she drew.

Instead of drawing his own doodle, one artist thought it would be fun to add to someone else's doodle. Apparently he does this all the time. I'm still not sure whether to be amused or annoyed that I paid a dollar for a breath puff.

I wasn't choosy about the artists I solicited; I started on one end of artist alley and systematically worked my way across, circling back to a booth later if it was too crowded when I got there. I've found that the sketches I receive often bear no resemblance whatsoever to the art on display, so I even asked the people selling jewelry and sculptures to contribute.

I'll stop yammering for a while and let you get on with looking at sketches.

I like how it looks like the ghost is spooking the doodles to the right.

Important note: these are gay bees. The artist said so.

These last two are best viewed in the sketchbook itself; the scanned images don't give the full "flip book" effect of looking at the first one and then turning the page to see the second one appear directly behind it.

SUMMARY

Overall, I enjoyed AnimeNEXT 2019, but it ranks just below average among my convention experiences. I'm grateful that the convention staff listened to last year's feedback about the print schedule, and the program booklet was organized much better than before. I was pleased that every video I watched had subtitles where I could see them. Any other improvements from last year were ones my wife and I introduced: costumes that were more recognizable and fun to wear, planning out our meals better, downloading the Guidebook app to supplement the print schedule.

I wasn't a fan of how the programming was distributed; awkwardly staggered start times and too many panels appealing to the same audience at once (especially when they dominated an entire hour block) made it hard to be satisfied with my choices. My wife reports that most of the many concerts she attended didn't do the performers justice—too large a stage for just one person to command. I intend to have a word with the convention organizers about how graphic violence doesn't suddenly become appropriate for all ages after 10 PM.

Perhaps the biggest lesson for me was that the presenter is more important than the material being presented. Shihore Nakane was interesting because she's fun to listen to, not because I had any connection to her work. Previous attendance at panels hosted by George, Evan, and Lex swayed my decision to attend panels they hosted on Saturday and Sunday, which ended up being some of my favorites. Of the four game shows I attended between this year and last year, the only one I genuinely liked was largely because of the special guest.

Despite the low points this year, a lot of things we liked about last year's convention remained unchanged: great location, perfect attendance size, interesting events with interesting guests, good-quality cosplay, a dealers' room and artist alley with plenty to see, friendly convention staff, friendly convention center staff (those folks don't get nearly enough credit), and a very reasonable entrance fee. We're excited to try our luck again next year.

AnimeNEXT has become our convention of choice, just like Otakon was over a decade ago. Even when things don't go as well as they could, it's nice to have a place to call home.

Back in my Exfanding days, I wrote at length about attending Otakon, PAX East, and New York Comic-Con. I've been to other conventions since then—Castle Point Anime Convention and Trekonderoga, off the top of my head—but you'd never know it from this blog. It's been several years since I've posted anything about a convention experience, and my last attempt was essentially a self-reminder to have fun at conventions. I must have internalized my own advice pretty well, because I had a fantastic weekend at AnimeNEXT 2018.

...Wait, didn't I just get back from AnimeNEXT 2019? Apparently I've been sitting on a half-written convention writeup for the past 11-12 months, so I'd better discuss last year before moving on to this year. Here goes.

THURSDAY

I scooted out of work a bit early, picked up my wife, and began the trek to Atlantic City, NJ. My wife and I are relics from the era of putting together mix tapes for car trips, so she had burned a CD for the occasion: an assortment of intro and ending songs from anime series we'd watched together in the last few years. There's nothing like tunes from Bleach, Silver Spoon, Restaurant to Another World, Kill la Kill, Yuri on Ice!!, Himouto! Umaru-chan, Arpeggio of Blue Steel, Valerian and Laureline, Magical Girl Ore, Kakuriyo: Bed and Breakfast for Spirits, Bodacious Space Pirates, Free!, Orange, Little Witch Academia, and the original Devilman to get you pumped for sitting around in traffic. And there's nothing like the preceding list of titles to get you to question our taste in anime.

Our first destination was actually just outside Atlantic City—we had a room reserved at the historic Joseph Pitney House in Absecon. Ever since our honeymoon, my wife and I have been staying at bed and breakfasts instead of hotels whenever we have the opportunity; the food, hospitality, and unique charm are often as memorable as whatever we're in town to see or do, plus we tend to get better prices and quieter neighbors than we would at a hotel. We arrived fairly late in the evening, picked up our room key, visited the always-open snack pantry for some homemade shortbread, and settled into our spacious room.

We missed the window to check in early at the convention, so we didn't have our schedules and program booklets to be able to plan out our first day. Instead, my wife doodled around on her tablet while I read a book (specifically, Live From New York, a fascinating and highly entertaining collection of interviews recalling the first few decades of Saturday Night Live). My wife laughed about how we were spending the first night of our vacation doing exactly what we'd be doing at home. "Yeah," I responded, "but we don't have to worry about cleaning, or cooking, or going to work tomorrow; everything's taken care of, and we can relax without feeling like there's something else we should be doing."

I cannot begin to articulate how comfortable the bed was—once my head hit the pillow, the world beyond the bed ceased to exist. It was magnificent.

FRIDAY

The world beyond the bed reasserted its existence at 5:30 AM. My wife had a different costume planned for each day of the convention, and today's required over 2 hours to prepare. Taking into account when breakfast would be served, how long it might take to find parking at or near the venue, and how long the registration line was likely to be, we resigned ourselves to an unpleasantly early morning. Fortunately, I was cosplaying as "dude attending an anime convention," so I went back to sleep.

Eventually, I left the bed to pursue the "and breakfast" part of the arrangement, and it was delightful. Vanilla yogurt parfait with granola and berries (I'm not big on berries, but I'll eat them if sprinkled sparingly on yogurt parfait), followed by a two-egg omelet and a glass of orange juice—enough to fuel me through the start of the convention.

I get anxious driving around unfamiliar urban areas, what with their endless traffic lights and surprise one-way streets and claustrophobia-inducing architecture right up against the sidewalks, but the drive to the convention center was downright pleasant. There was plenty of parking onsite at the convention center—and as I would later discover, there were several food vendors and even a train station onsite, making this the most convenient convention venue I think I've ever been to.

I remember PAX East being obnoxious because the layout made no sense and there were waiting lines for everything (my wife refers to it as "Line Con"). I remember it taking forever to get around Comic-Con because of the incredible masses of people everywhere. The last Otakon I attended was uncomfortably over capacity, to the point where even the restaurants outside the convention center were overrun by otaku at all hours. As a midsized convention in a well-organized space, AnimeNEXT had none of these problems. The convention never got in the way of the convention, if that makes sense.

AnimeNEXT had the dealers' room, video game room, and concerts on the second floor; all the panels and screenings on the third floor; and all the niche events and novelty rooms (eg, the Cosplay Repair room, which I think is a brilliant idea) on the fourth floor. Escalators were plentiful and logically placed; and the design of the convention center gave every level a good view of the ground floor, where audience-participation events such as a cosplay wrestling tournament would occasionally occur. I also have to credit the building staff—from the folks in the parking garage to the folks at the front desk—for being friendly the entire weekend, and for being incredibly helpful every time I approached them with a question (mostly pertaining to food).

Of course, the first order of business was getting through the registration line. Ahead of us in the lobby was a group with one person cosplaying as Shrek, and someone in the group periodically used their smartphone to play a selection from the Shrek soundtrack to get us pumped for standing around in line. We struck up conversations with other attendees as the line snaked back and forth, commenting on one person's clever "Shyguys Burgers and Fries" t-shirt, praising an excellent Castle Crashers costume, and asking about a superb Stephen Universe cosplay we didn't recognize because we'd never seen Stephen Universe. I swear this was an anime convention.

Oh, but that was just the line to get into the registration line. Once we made it through the big doors into the registration area (which was the size of a basketball court), we split off into the queue for people who preregistered for tickets. There we encountered new cosplayers, such as Blair from Soul Eater, whom I mistook for I-No from Guilty Gear because my brain still thought we were at a video game convention. The hardest part of appreciating convention cosplay is that, as my wife put it, it's like playing one big trivia game all weekend. "Name that character." Which gets harder and harder with every passing year, thanks to new characters I've never heard of and old characters who've slipped my mind.

Case in point: my wife was cosplaying as Ujibe, the coach from Keijo!!!!!!!! (yes, there really are that many exclamation points in the title), and not a single person made any indication that they recognized her. This was a little heartbreaking to me, knowing the effort she had put into this costume. She had painstakingly reviewed clips and screencaps from the show to ensure every detail of her outfit was accurate. She had hand-dyed her shirt in an involved process using tea and tumeric. She had hand-stitched the clover logo on the shirt (never mind that it was rotated 45 degrees; it was late, she was tired). She had spent the morning styling her wig and beauty mark to precise specifications. I was proud of her for what she pulled off.

Granted, Ujibe is a side character in an anime that a lot of people might not admit to watching, on account of its subject matter. (I swear I watched it for the story, but it's about girls in bathing suits hitting each other with their butts.) However, I think my wife hit the nail on the head: she believes people just aren't accustomed to seeing plus-size women cosplaying as plus-size women. If people assumed my wife was pretending to be one of the bajillion characters as scrawny as Sailor Moon, of course they wouldn't recognize her costume. This would account for why one dude thought she was the 4chan mascot.

Anydigression, as soon as we cleared the registration line, we sat down with our schedules and mapped out the first half of our day. I marked up anything that seemed remotely interesting (I wanted backup plans, in case anything was a dud or too full to get into), but I opted to follow my wife around whenever there was any overlap in our interests. Our last Otakon was marred by the logistical frustrations of trying to meet back up with people after going off to do our own things, and I was more concerned about having a fun convention together than getting to do and see everything I wanted most.

Japanese Feminism 101: In our first dynamic panel of the day, we waited about half an hour for the presenter to show up. Around 11:35, one of the convention staff wandered in to see why we were sitting around in an empty room. Apparently, there had been schedule changes since the agenda was printed.

Look, I understand that plans change. But nobody at registration told us about it. Nobody put up a sign. Although we later discovered that the most current room schedule was displayed in a tiny box beside the door, that didn't help anyone trying to plan their day before they got to the room. I asked the staff at the information desk whether they had a list of corrections to the printed agenda. Not only did they seem surprised about there being schedule changes, but they directed me to view the updated schedule online—which is a poor solution for anyone who doesn't have a smartphone or has to deal with roaming data in a place with no public Wi-Fi. We eventually noticed a widescreen monitor rotating all the events and their locations for the next couple hours—not ideal, but better than nothing.

Game the Gamer: With an unexpected hole in our schedule and the dealers' room not yet open to the public, we wandered over to the only event that wasn't already deeply in progress. The premise of "Cutthroat Kitchen, with Wii games" sounded like a decent use of the next hour, but I started to lose interest when too much time was being spent auctioning off more sabotages than I felt were necessary for the first round. I stuck around long enough to see one of the contestants attempt WarioWare: Smooth Moves while handcuffed to a chair; my wife stayed for the whole thing, but I headed out somewhere around when they were trying to get someone to play Smash Bros. with a Wii bowling ball.

Kaibyo: The Supernatural Cats of Japan: I'm sorry I missed the beginning of this, because I'm interested in Japanese mythology and folklore, the presenter (Zack Davisson) was very engaging, and I'm enough of a cat person that my wife and I meow at each other as a form of communication. At least I got there in time to laugh about cats who gain power from wearing silly things on their head, see the tragic portrait of a cat minstrel playing a shamisen (an instrument that would have been partially constructed of cat leather), and learn about the origin of Japan's fondness for catgirls. The Japanese government at one point prohibited artists from drawing or painting people of a certain social variety (eg, prostitutes)—and the artists cleverly got around the issue by creating the exact same art, but with anthropomorphic cats instead of humans.

Lunch: I think I had a barbecue chicken wrap. I'm not a big wrap guy, but that's what they served at Esquires, the food stand in the train station attached to the convention center. I don't know about you, but I don't think of wraps when I hear "Esquires."

Finding Your Anime Voice: I popped in a bit late for what I hoped would be a panel on doing different voices, which would have been helpful for me on Twitch and YouTube with all the dialogue I read aloud while playing games. Unfortunately, the part for which I was present consisted mostly of random audience members trying to speak in a different register (eg, head voice) with minimal coaching. I left after maybe 5 minutes.

Dealers' Room: With an unexpected hole in my schedule and the dealers' room now open to the public, I meandered down to peruse the treasure trove. Geekery in every format was for sale—posters, wall scrolls, books, clothes, figurines, body pillows, DVDs, video games, and so on. Normally, this is where most of my convention budget goes, but I found myself exercising an unexpected amount of self-control.

Much of the merchandise was from new anime series that I hadn't seen or didn't have a special attachment to, so that helped. But I'm also in a different phase of my life than I was the last time I attended a convention with this much for sale. There's very little I actually want anymore—and I'm subscribed to the Star Trek Official Starships Collection, so shelf space in my home is at a premium like never before. I think about all the other ways I could be using my money—bills, charities, clothes that fit.

To that end, one of the few things I bought for myself was a t-shirt mashing up Mega Man and Iron Man. I also picked up a copy of the NES game Faxanadu, which has been on my radar for a while, as well as a RWBY poster. I'm particularly happy with the poster, because I had a similar image as a desktop wallpaper for a while and I love the multi-panel aesthetic.

HIATUS

Then I saved this post as a draft and didn't come back to it for almost a year.

My original intention was to pick up where I left off, using the online schedule for 2018 (with the numerous updates not reflected on my print schedule) to jog my memory and organize my storytelling. However, at the time of this post, I can only find online schedules for 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017...and 2019. As much as I want to keep going with the blow-by-blow recap, I recognize that this is a good excuse to scale back the verbosity and focus on the highlights. Nobody needs to hear about the mediocre pizza I ate.

I could regale you with tales of the three minutes I spent at an 18+ panel that I thought would be like Mystery Science Theater 3000 for adults only, but ended up being a YouTuber showing us his skeevy hentai game playthrough videos and creepily talking over his own recorded commentary. I could gush about Anime Burger Time, the BYOB (Bring Your Own Burger) panel where the host chowed down on Johnny Rockets while showing us clips of hamburgers appearing in various anime. I could recount what I recall of the Mazinger Z: Infinity movie, or of the Gaijin Girl: Life in Japan presentation. I could describe the hilarious Bad Anime Bad! panel and invoke the infamous names Garzey's Wing and Titanic: The Legend Goes On.

Instead, I'll attempt to work some untold stories into my writeup of AnimeNEXT 2019, where they'll still be relevant due to how often I found myself thinking back to 2018. If I write in a less comprehensive and detail-oriented format, I may even finish before the 2020 convention. In the meantime, please enjoy some photos from 2018, which we'll pretend are the intended conclusion to this post.

NOTE: If you (you, the reader) are in any of the photos below and don't want to be featured here, or if you'd like to be credited, please let me know (see the main page for contact options) and I'll action your request accordingly.

First up, a couple scenes from the convention in general:

A couple characters I don't recognize, but their costumes looked cool:

Some woman I'm married to, cosplaying as Tamako from Silver Spoon and then Ujibe from Keijo!!!!!!!! in an alternate outfit:

Umaru from Himouto! Umaru-chan, Uno and Nico from Nanbaka, Ryuko from Kill La Kill, and Dark Samus from the Metroid Prime series:

Nora, Ruby, and Yang from RWBY:

Buncha characters from the Phoenix Wright series:

Lastly, some group cosplay from Fullmetal Alchemist, Black Lagoon, and Gurren Lagann:

Ah, but that's not all. Carrying on with a tradition my wife started at the 2011 New York Comic-Con, I purchased a sketchbook and went around collecting doodles from the people at the booths in artist alley (regardless of whether they were an artist or just the person looking after the booth). These weren't formal commissions; rather, I asked for whatever they felt like drawing, if they felt like drawing anything in the first place. No pressure, no restrictions. Surprisingly, only one person drew genitalia.

Here are the sketches I collected—and as with the photos above, please contact me if your art is featured here and you'd like it to be removed or credited:

So there you have it. AnimeNEXT 2018. At least, as much of it as is contained in this post.

March was another busy month. No sooner had I submitted my entry for the Make a Good Mega Man Level contest on Sprites INC than another contest opened up: designing any number of six-screen level segments for the upcoming Mega Man Endless fangame. Between friends, family, work, and my deadline-driven side projects, I was going almost nonstop by the end of the month. It was exhausting, but it was also a reminder of how I thrive on having a variety of activities to keep me occupied. Let's see what all I have to show for myself.

This Website:

I might not write many posts anymore, but the ones I do write are ones I want to hang on to. The story of my concert experience with Star Trek: The Ultimate Voyage is one of my favorite things I've written for this blog, and I think it's the biggest indication that I've finally moved away from the "general bitterness commentary" that weighed down my writing only a year or two ago. Also, I've decided to start linking to my individual Series Opinions articles once they're finished, regardless of whether everything else on the page with them is finished. I've still got a lot of Star Trek and Mega Man to write about (and rewrite about, because opinions are subject to change), but I'm one step closer to having my definitive take on every part of my favorite entertainment franchises all in one place.

- Retrospective: February 2016
- The Ultimate Voyage
- Series Opinions: The Misadventures of Tron Bonne

YouTube:

Due to all the time I spent making Mega Man levels in February and March, I wasn't able to focus on playing Mega Man levels, (meaning my playthrough of Mega Man 8 got delayed)...but I did subject one of my friends to a level I made, so we can call that a compromise. I did keep another one of my recording projects going, though, carrying on with the next installment in what is possibly my favorite first-person shooter series. I like MotS less than its predecessor, but I think I like this playthrough more than the one I did for the original Jedi Knight. So it balances out. Pardon the choppiness of the first video; it gets better.

Flashman85LIVE:
- Star Wars: Jedi Knight - Mysteries of the Sith (Live) - Part 1: The Noisy Asteroid of Ugly Awfulness
- Star Wars: Jedi Knight - Mysteries of the Sith (Live) - Part 2: Wireframed and Imprisoned
- Star Wars: Jedi Knight - Mysteries of the Sith (Live) - Part 3: A Pirate's Death for Me
- Star Wars: Jedi Knight - Mysteries of the Sith (Live) - Part 4: Nothing I Want at the Swamp Meet
- Star Wars: Jedi Knight - Mysteries of the Sith (Live) - Part 5: Taking the Bonus Level for a Bespin
- Make a Good Mega Man Level Contest - "Maze of Death" Blind Playthrough (With Special Guests)

GCDotNet:
- The GameCola Podcast #90: A Not-So-Spooky Halloween

The Backloggery:

Wow. This portion almost isn't worth mentioning. My wife and I played one round of LEGO LotR and were put off enough by all the glitches and gameplay issues that we haven't found the motivation to go back yet, and I played just enough of Nintendo Land with friends that it qualifies as Beaten by my standards. Oh, and I chipped away at X-Men Legends and played a little more of the 3DS Mega Man Legacy Collection, so it's not like I completely abandoned my favorite pastime.

Started:
- LEGO The Lord of the Rings  (Wii)

Beat:
- Nintendo Land  (WiiU)

...And that's just the stuff I finished in March! April oughta be pretty big, and I'm in a great mindset going into the month.

Star Trek has been a part of my family for as long as I can remember. Growing up, our Saturday night tradition was homemade pizza and whatever iteration of Star Trek was on the air at the time. Since I met my wife in college, we've been working through every episode of every series together. My sister and brother-in-law are now doing the same. Star Trek is a constant in our lives, an unending source of meaningful conversations and satisfying entertainment for the entire family—a family of musicians, I might add.

Star Trek: The Ultimate Voyage brought together three of my favorite things in life: family, music, and Star Trek. It's up there with Star Trek: The Exhibition as one of my favorite family excursions in recent memory, and I still get a big dumb grin anytime I start thinking about it. Fifty years of Star Trek history expressed through live music, with thematically arranged video clips and narration by Michael Dorn to tie it all together. A lifetime's worth of fond memories with the people sitting next to me. And we all had homemade pizza together before we left for the concert. Jeez, I'm tearing up already.

A lesser concert would have consisted of a live orchestra on a boring stage playing all the main themes you expect to hear from a concert like this. But this was a 50th anniversary concert, and you could tell it was organized by people who were as big a fan as anyone in the audience. It was a celebration done right. The front of the stage was dressed up to look like the exterior of the Enterprise-A (or the refit Enterprise from the earlier movies; your preference), as though the audience were out in space and peering into the bridge from afar. The back of the stage was lit with stars, and behind the musicians was a mockup of Worf's tactical console from the Enterprise-D. The icing on the cellular peptide cake was the ambient noise while we waited for the concert to start—the familiar low rumble and all the pings and beeps you'd expect to hear on the bridge of a starship. Talk about atmosphere.

I came prepared, of course, wearing my Original Series crew tie with my concert-appropriate attire. At least two others in the audience had me beat, though: one man was dressed to report for duty in engineering on the original Enterprise, and one woman looked like she'd just come back to Starfleet Command from the Khitomer conference. Even among the people in plain clothes (no doubt time-travelers from the 24th century trying to blend in), there was was an air of comfort and kinship, almost like you get from being at a convention. Even after the concert started, no one tried to hush any of the respectfully quiet (and relevant) side conversations among my family, because Star Trek is something you're supposed to talk about. People laughed and cheered in all the right places throughout the performance (and you could tell where the Voyager [VOY] fans and the Spock-ophiles were sitting by the unusually large reactions they gave to certain video clips and pieces of narration). Everyone in that auditorium was family, in a way. What a great feeling.

The first piece the orchestra played was a smart place to start: the closing theme to The Motion Picture, which mostly doubles as the opening theme for The Next Generation (TNG). Everyone has their favorites, but the majority of fans can agree on liking The Original Series (TOS) or TNG, so this was a good attempt to please everyone. The next piece was equally equitable: the sweeping overture from Generations, the movie that brings together TOS and TNG. At least, that's what my brain registered it as—you'll have to forgive any lapses in memory or music recognition, given that we didn't have a concert program to take home for reference. I kind of preferred it that way, though; there was a certain joy in playing "name that tune" and making predictions about what the orchestra would play, and I loved some of the surprises along the way.

As the overture from Generations was played, the screen behind the orchestra came to life with scenes from the beginning of Star Trek V, where Kirk is slowly climbing the mountain. It took me a few moments to wrap my head around this seemingly out-of-nowhere clip selection, but it fit well with the music—a sort of metaphor for Star Trek's long climb to this milestone anniversary. The gorgeous vistas and sumptuous swells of the music drove home the scope of this adventure that we've been on for generations. Whoo, I'm tearing up again.

The first half of the concert was fairly heavy on TOS and TNG, both in terms of music and video footage. The second half was pretty balanced among the different series, though still a bit light on footage from Deep Space 9 (DS9). Unsurprisingly, The Animated Series was nowhere to be found, but we did get some music from the Starfleet Academy video game at the end of the intermission. We were also treated to the iconic Klingon theme, the sinister Borg theme (which loses a little bit of its oomph when played without that otherworldly synthesizer twang), and the overtures or main themes from most of the films and TV series.

When my wife and I were watching through DS9 at home, I liked to have fun with the opening music. There's a part at the beginning where the orchestra holds on a note, and an asteroid comes hurtling past the camera. I would always fill the space by singing a complimentary low note and the word "ROOOOOOCK" as grandly as possible, sweeping out my hand for greater dramatic effect. When the live orchestra played the DS9 theme at the concert, I waited for the appropriate moment and then asked the family member next to me to pass down a "rock" to my wife. It took a few moments for the gag to register, but I got a smile. Or maybe a shake of the head and a roll of the eyes; it's hard to remember without a program to refer back to.

Interestingly, Star Trek (2009) and Into Darkness were treated less like the new face of the franchise and more like films 11 and 12. Every other major part of Star Trek history got a proper voiceover introduction and a title card with the relevant air dates listed, but the one piece of music from the reboot films received no such treatment. The few video clips used elsewhere in the program were practically all from the good parts that don't make me cringe. I smiled at the thought of the concert organizers deliberately downplaying the divisive impact of the reboot and focusing on the Trek-worthy parts. This was my kind of concert.

Still, what I liked about the video selection was that it embraced all of Star Trek, including things that some of us might like to forget. There was a segment celebrating some of the franchise's biggest villains, and Shinzon was right there alongside Khan and Dukat. There was a touching montage about friends, family, and the loved ones these characters have lost, and suddenly a brief clip from "These Are the Voyages..." kicked us in the gut again. Star Trek isn't just the parts that everyone likes, and the low points have united fans just as much as the high points. A lesser concert would have excluded entire films and episodes from the program on the basis of popular opinion. I think it's a mark of integrity to tactfully acknowledge the whole canon and let the fans exercise selective memory if they want to.

One of the best surprises of the concert was getting to see whole episode clips where the music track was replaced with live music from the orchestra. We got to relive the excitement of Spock and Kirk's fight to the death from "Amok Time" as well as the pivotal space battle with the Dominion in "The Changing Face of Evil." We were swept up in the emotionality of Janeway's sendoff at the end of "Year of Hell," the null-gravity scene between Archer and Mayweather at the beginning of "Horizon," and the conclusion of "Encounter at Farpoint." We got chills (well, I got chills, anyhow) from Sisko's final log entry of "In the Pale Moonlight" and Archer's speech to the assembly in "Terra Prime" (which, as far as I'm concerned, is one of the best monologues in the whole franchise, and perfectly sums up what Star Trek is all about). The orchestra did a spectacular job of bringing the music to life and heightening our appreciation of these scenes that were already pretty darn appreciated.

Of course, my absolute favorite moment in the concert was the re-orchestrated cliffhanger scene from "The Best of Both Worlds, Part I":

"I am Locutus of Borg. Resistance is futile. Your life as it has been is over. From this time forward, you will service... us." Slow camera close-up on Riker's face. Music so tense it feels like the universe is about to snap. "Mister Worf... FIRE."

BUM BUM BUM! BUM BUM BUM! BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!!!!!

INTERMISSION.

Awesome.

I'm more sentimental than I might let on, and things that are exceptionally cool have been known to get me misty-eyed. It's the extremes—the best and the worst—that crack my semi-stoic exterior. Before the end of the concert, I had simply run out of tears. The emotional music from First Contact got me. Kirk's brilliant "risk is our business" speech from "Return to Tomorrow" got me. All the funny moments, like Data scanning for those precious little lifeforms in Generations, got me. The exciting suite from Wrath of Khan, concluding with the iconic final scenes of the film, got me. The amount of love the concert gave to Undiscovered Country, my favorite film in the franchise, got me. Being surrounded by family and by friends I've never met, listening to a dynamite performance by a dynamite orchestra, got me. Everything was right with the world. It's been a very long time since all was right with the world, and that got me, too.

But, as they say, all good things...

After about 2-1/2 hours, it was time to return to my own century. The orchestra took a bow and shuffled offstage. But we knew they had to come back, because there was one more theme the concert would have been incomplete without.

The orchestra returned, and a single note was all it took to eke out one more tear from me before the end. "Faith of the Heart," the opening theme to Enterprise—was nowhere to be found, just kidding. No need to cause a riot.

The concert ended where it all began, with the theme to the original Star Trek. Whereas the rest of the music had been accompanied by clips from the shows and movies, the encore was filled with candid photographs of the cast and crew, the kind of things you'd see in a behind-the-scenes featurette. People getting into makeup and laughing on set, and the grinning countenance of Gene Roddenberry. There was no high soprano with the orchestra to drive the melody, but the conductor helped maintain the buoyancy of the piece by bouncing along with every swipe of his baton. When the music ended, the orchestra took their final bows to a standing ovation, and several musicians raised their hands in the Vulcan salute. What a fun way to end the concert.

Filled with such great joy and gratitude, I almost floated away after we left the theater. You had to tractor beam me back to earth. This was how I was supposed to feel about my favorite entertainment franchise. This was what a family outing to a professional concert could be like. This was a 50th anniversary celebration done right.

You win some, you lose some. And sometimes you do both at once.

If you caught any of my Mega Man Legacy Collection livestream, you know of my disappointment with the Challenge Mode of this otherwise superb collection. Faithful ports of the six NES Mega Man games, a music player, a comprehensive enemy database, and a sizable art gallery were well worth the $14.99 price tag on Steam for new players, but we old-timers were counting on the Challenge Mode to provide the one thing we didn't already have. We envisioned The Wily Wars, or the Game Boy games, or even the Challenge Mode of Mega Man 10, but instead we got whole chunks Mega Man 1-6 smashed together to form fifty-something time-trial stages. I don't think it's what any of us wanted, but I was willing to keep an open mind.

There are some clever challenges that transform these familiar sections into devious deathtraps. Some challenges start you in the middle of a hectic section without any chance to prepare. Other challenges run you through a gauntlet of boss fights or disappearing brick puzzles. The best challenges are disorienting, grueling, and have you exploiting every glitch and trick to shave a few seconds off your completion time. The worst challenges, unfortunately, are far more numerous. A person can only be expected to survive the moving platforms in Guts Man's stage, dodge the falling crystals in Crystal Man's stage, and square off against Charge Man so many times. Filler, repetition, and an egregious underuse of MM6 characterize the bulk of the challenges, and that's why I'm disappointed.

That's also why I got so excited about the Mega Man Legacy Collection Challenge Contest that Capcom held back in September. An opportunity for fans to submit their own challenges for inclusion in the 3DS release? Sign me up! Not only was this a chance to put my amateur game design chops to the test and contribute to my favorite video game franchise, but it was a chance to help make things right with the Challenge Mode. Ten new good challenges could go a long way in exploring the full potential of Challenge Mode and enticing veteran fans to pick up the collection.

I knew right away that my challenge submission had to have a theme. I considered stringing together a bunch of ice or water levels or mashing up all the most interesting Hard Hat sections, but I figured those were obvious enough that someone else would surely come up with them. After much consideration, I finally came up with a challenge stage I was proud to submit, excited to play, and thought had a low chance of being duplicated by someone else. Here's how I pitched it to the judges:

"The current challenge roster has a lot of emphasis on the earlier Mega Man games and the Robot Master stages, so my goal was to show a lot of love to some of the fortress stages we haven't seen much of. I also wanted to include sections that have a slower, safer way and a faster, riskier way to beat them; I feel this adds a layer of complexity to speedrunning strategies. Finally, I wanted to keep players improvising by choosing unconventional starting points as often as possible, and by including one section where Rush Coil must be used creatively in place of Rush Jet (assuming "Buster Only" just means the default options you have before beating any bosses, which would include Rush Coil in this case)."

Here's the kicker: In order to show the judges exactly what to include in the challenge, participants were asked to link to YouTube playthroughs of the Mega Man games in question and provide timestamps for the start and end of each segment. Guess who makes YouTube playthroughs of the Mega Man games? This guy. I can now say with certainty that someone at Capcom has seen some of my Mega Man videos, because I got an e-mail about two weeks later congratulating me on winning the contest. AWESOME. I didn't come down from that high for at least a week.

The months passed, and I still got occasional pangs of excitement when I thought about this wonderful thing that was going to happen. Finally, the 3DS Legacy Collection hit the stores, and I was there on release day to pick it up. Again. At double the price I had paid for it on Steam. I tried to ignore the visions I had of lighting money on fire and reminded myself of everything this version would contain.

Stickers! Great box art! The option of playing the original Japanese games! An even larger art gallery than before, complete with stuff I didn't already have elsewhere! Fun new backgrounds for my 3DS home menu! And, of course, ten (wait--eleven?) new challenge stages, one of which I designed. I was so psyched. Fortunately, I had the foresight to pick up a Mega Man amiibo well before I needed him to unlock the new challenge stages, so I could avoid shelling out $50 for the deluxe edition with the gold Mega Man amiibo that no one I've spoken with seems to care about.

(Side note: I totally would have bought the deluxe edition if Mega Man were in a color scheme associated with one of his special weapons...say, Gemini Laser? But I digress.)

During the entire ride home from the game store, I felt the kind of anticipation building inside myself like I used to get when I unwrapped a new video game as a kid. I don't get overly excited about much these days, but this was one of my childhood dreams about to come true, seeing a Mega Man level I designed in an official Mega Man game. As I fired up the game and started poking around the menu screen for new features, I started to feel that sense of wonder that helped get me hooked on video games in the first place. With the benefit of hindsight and plenty of time to incorporate fan feedback, surely the designers and developers alike had constructed some awesome new challenges that blew the old ones away.

Of course, the first thing was to see whether the contest winners were acknowledged in the credits. Important stuff.

THERE I AM! SO VERY COOL. You can tell this is an authentic screenshot and not Photoshopped, because it's blurry and crooked like an actual photograph. An actual photograph demonstrating alarmingly low hand-eye coordination for someone who plays Mega Man. But I digress.

I touched my Mega Man amiibo to the screen and was whisked away to a beautiful little menu of eleven challenges with fun-loving names. I scanned the list and determined that "Fortress Fun House" had to be mine. I was fully aware that the developers may have taken some liberties with my challenge idea (they even say so in the contest rules), so I wasn't expecting a perfect translation of my vision. I also wasn't expecting to feel like Alan Alda in Sweet Liberty.

The challenge I designed had ten segments. It started with MM5's fourth Proto Man stage (blast pillars and dodge spikes as the floor rises), transitioned to the first Mr. X stage from MM6 (at the intersection where you can take the highly dangerous shortcut to the boss door or the long, safer way around), and moved on to the boss of MM3's third Wily stage (the Mega Man clones). I felt this was a nice little trilogy of beginning, middle, and end; it front-loaded the challenge with a few areas likely to wreck a speedrun; and I'm pretty positive that none of those sections had been used yet in any of the old challenges.

Fortress Fun House skips those first two segments entirely. At least the boss fight is intact, and it's everything I'd hoped for.

Next up in my challenge were the brief underwater portion of the first Wily stage of MM4, the part of MM6's first Wily stage where you need to have mastered Jet Adapter to avoid impalement on the spikes (plus the alternate path for clever players), and the few screens at the end of MM4's first Cossack stage where the snow in the background kicks in.

Fortress Fun House includes the underwater section, once again omits the MM6 stage (it's official: they have a vendetta against MM6), and uses the completely wrong section of the Cossack stage. I was horrified to discover my utility-heavy vertical climb had been replaced with enemies popping out of bottomless pits (a trope I've come to despise). Adding insult to injury, the segment ends one screen before the part I wanted to include. Worse still, this exact section had already been done to death in the old challenges. I am so sorry that I'm somehow responsible for this segment; it is not what I chose.

My challenge continued with the second Proto Man stage of MM5 (the gauntlet of bouncing enemies between the pillars) and the second Wily stage of MM3 (full of bees and way too many power-ups). The latter would be an interesting experiment. The plan was to toss the player in the middle of a hectic section with hidden clamps biting at their ankles; after the initial shock, they'd proceed to the point where Rush Jet is required to reach the boss door. Except there would be no Rush Jet. Or any other special weapons, for that matter. But the interesting part about buster-only segments is that you still get Rush Coil by default for the games that have it. If you're creative, you can navigate the end of the stage with only Rush Coil. I'd hoped this would add a memorable puzzle element to an area that usually requires no effort whatsoever.

Fortress Fun House perfectly implements the few screens from MM5 and then sends the player off to the fourth Wily stage of MM3, where the junk bots start dropping out of the ceiling. At least there's still that initial surprise of enemies coming out of nowhere, there's a mess of power-ups in the middle, and it's not a segment that was used much in the old challenges, so it's a reasonable substitution. I can live with the change, and I wasn't really expecting that segment to go unaltered anyhow.

The home stretch of my challenge included the final stage of MM2 (lava dropping from the ceiling), starting the player a couple screens in to throw them off balance. Somehow, this iconic challenge (I believe) is 100% absent from the old challenges. The entire last leg of MM1's third Wily stage was the conclusion. The obvious place to start is at the beginning of the penguin tunnel, so I of course wanted to start at the point where it becomes a flying bomb tunnel. This would continue all the way through the boss fight against the dreaded bubbles of doom (CWU-01P, in case I need to prove my Mega Man cred). Similar to how the first part of the challenge formed an arc, so too did the last part—the gauntlets of death before the boss.

Fortress Fun House skips the MM2 segment altogether. Sure, why not. The MM1 segment is almost what I wanted, except it starts with the penguin tunnel and ends...right at the boss door. Which means I'm stuck with another segment that's been overdone in the other challenges. The boss was the important part, as I don't recall seeing it anywhere else (and it's a good strategic challenge), and the rest of the stage is pointless if you start where everyone expects you to. Bummer.

So, of the ten segments I—hang on; the challenge is still going. For some reason we're in the underwater spike-lined shaft in the third Wily stage of MM2. I don't even know where this came fro—oh, and now the challenge is over. Hey, look, I got a gold medal on my first try. Woo.

Of the ten segments I submitted, only three were implemented as I proposed. Two used a different portion of the same stage, two more were added from stages I didn't choose to include, and five were completely omitted. I don't know what's more disappointing: having my challenge almost completely gutted except for the "fortress" concept, or having my name attached to something I almost don't want to take credit for. Was this even the challenge I designed anymore?

I could understand removing or changing sections to cut down on length or avoid duplication, but that clearly wasn't the reason here. Almost every other new challenge was notably longer than mine, and the amount of duplication was unreal. Off the top of my head, I remember another pass at the penguin tunnel in MM1 and the watery spike shaft in MM2, two bouts with Napalm Man and Doc Robot Quick Man, two or three excursions to the line-guided platforms in MM2's fourth Wily stage, and three or four additional trips to the underwater part of MM4 that I used. And that's to say nothing of how many times most of these segments had been used in the original challenges.

Consequently, most of the other new challenges blend together in my head, but I can pick out a few things. No Swimming Allowed might be my favorite; it's a smart compilation of water levels (I knew someone else would come up with that!) that includes one or two segments we rarely or never see. Doc Robot Rematch fits nicely with the existing boss gauntlets. I like the concept of Ready Set Go; each segment is the beginning of a different stage, but too many are ones we've seen too many times before (particularly Cut Man).

Some of the buster-only segments of the other challenges are pretty good about forcing you to face situations that are totally doable with the buster but are almost always done with special weapons. The Wily stage from MM6 that I had wanted to use gets a brief but delightfully evil cameo. Starting the player in the middle of the MM3 Wily 3 hologram hallway was a stroke of genius. There are some great moments. There are also some horrid ones, such as three awful visits to the spike-filled Foot Holder corridor in the first Wily stage of MM1—two of them without the Magnet Beam to make it bearable. The worst part of Crystal Man's stage comes back to haunt us (whyyyy!?). I even gave up on Wily's Machines after failing my first attempt to take down Wily Machine 1 with just the buster; a projected 20 minutes to presumably fight a bunch of bosses that simply aren't fun without special weapons was not appealing to me.

These new challenges could have been a real treat for 3DS owners and a wonderful showcase of creativity from the fan community, but most of them are indistinguishable from any of the old challenges if you take away the amusing names. Segments are still being duplicated with no variation in start or end point. Whole stages are still unaccounted for, and MM6 is still lucky to be included at all. I'm not upset that my challenge was overhauled; I'm upset that it was overhauled to be more like every other challenge! I would love to hear what the developers and my fellow contest winners have to say about the matter. How many of these challenges still resemble the original submissions, and why was so much changed?

Ultimately, what the developers did with my design is all on them. I can still be proud that I designed something good enough to get me credited in a Mega Man game that people around the world are paying money to play. And that is a Very Cool Thing indeed.

I'm not the world's biggest comics fanboy. I have a respectable collection of graphic novels, enjoyed the X-Men arcade game back in its heyday, and still have a few Batman toys from when I was a kid, but I'm only casually interested in comics. I am, however, a big fan of continuity. When books and games and movies sow seeds for future plotlines and make references to previous events, I am a happy camper. Fictional universes seem larger than they really are when nothing happens in a vacuum, and it's rewarding for diehard fans to notice little details that everyone else might overlook. That's why I got hooked on the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), despite having only a mild passion for superhero stories.

Iron Man, at the time, was a cool-looking action movie that happened to be based on a comic I'd never read. The film was funny, engaging, and explosive enough to convince me to sit through The Incredible Hulk, which was rumored to connect with Iron Man somehow, despite my complete lack of desire to see what I (more or less accurately) predicted would be 90 minutes or so of either a green guy punching things or a wimpy guy not punching things. I looked forward to Iron Man 2, which cemented my interest in this Avengers movie that these new Marvel films were working toward. Fantasy and mythology generally aren't my cup of tea (or mug of ale, as it were), so Thor was a strictly perfunctory viewing that left me no more excited about the character and his world than before. Captain America was the last obligatory piece of the puzzle; WWII is an interesting time period but overdone in the entertainment world, and Cap fell into the "mostly just punches guys" category of superhero that doesn't usually interest me. Fortunately, the film exceeded my expectations and got me genuinely invested in its characters. So that was two Avengers out of four to get me psyched for the team-up movie.

The first half of The Avengers is everything I'm tired of seeing in movies: origin stories (in the form of assembling the team), heroes spending more time fighting each other than the villains, and mind control making the good guys either ineffective or subservient to the bad guys. The second half is everything I want out of an action movie: eye-popping visual spectacle, great one-liners, and heroes being awesome. I was more excited than ever to see the continuing adventures of Tony Stark in Iron Man 3, but Thor 2 still couldn't get me to care about the Norse god of gratuitous shirtlessness. Captain America had proven himself worthy of my interest (I say that like it means anything), so I was curious to see Winter Soldier. Guardians of the Galaxy probably would've had my money regardless of its affiliation with the MCU, because I've never been one to turn down comedy and action in space. Phase 2 of this huge film endeavor was in full swing, and with the connections getting stronger and the movies looking more up my alley, I was officially hooked.

To gear up for Avengers: Age of Ultron, my wife and I started getting caught up on the MCU TV series, starting with Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Everyone loves Agent Phil "Everyone's Favorite Character" Coulson, but I had trouble connecting with the other characters at first. I quickly warmed up to the show as those connections I love kept working their way into the story, and as the show kept subverting my expectations. There were several times where my wife and I would go, "Noooo! Don't tell us you're going to do that to us!" and then they didn't. AoS was different from your average monster-of-the-week espionage show (assuming those exist), and it had both humor and heart, so I was willing to forgive a few of the less-desirable plot points along the way. The first season ended on a very high note, which made the second season's incongruously serious tone, loss of focus on external connections and character development, overemphasis on the generically evil main villains (to the point where we started calling it Agents of Hydra), and insistence on doing exactly what you expect all the more unpleasant.

Agent Carter proved to be a more evenly enjoyable experience. My wife raves about how they nailed the time period and how Peggy Carter is a wonderful example of how to write good female characters. While I agree, I also found myself missing the superpowers and high-tech gadgetry that are so integral to the rest of the MCU, despite the best efforts of Howard Stark. I also don't feel like I have as deep of a sense of the characters as I'd like, but there's always next season.

As for Age of Ultron? Well. There's a story behind that one. It's called the Ultimate Marvel Marathon.

Previously, my longest movie event was approximately 20 hours of Harry Potter, eight films in all. Similarly, the longest I'd ever stayed awake continuously was 36 hours—rising early to sing at a summer church service, hopping a plane to France, not sleeping on the plane because I was a fool, and sightseeing for an entire day before hitting another pillow. I knew I had it in me to do this.

This, of course, being two days at the movie theater to see Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger, The Avengers, Iron Man 3, Thor 2: The Dark World, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy, and the premiere of Avengers: Age of Ultron, one after the other, with a break of 20 minutes or so between films. I lost track of how long I'd been there after the 30-hour mark. Between striking up conversations with strangers in line next to me, packing a change of clothes and a stick of deodorant in lieu of showering, and not sleeping until my body shut down on me during Snore 2: The Dark Theater, it was just like being at a comic book convention.

My brother-in-law and I got there a good five hours before the start of the marathon. You might think that's excessive, but when you're also reserving seating for your wife and your father, and when the alternative to waiting is risking front-row neck strain for 11 straight movies, queuing up early sounds downright sagely. The challenge here was that the marathon didn't start until the evening; despite my best efforts to sleep in, I had already been awake for several hours before arriving at the theater.

Every other crazy marathon I've done has started in the morning. Wake up, roll out of bed, Lord of the Rings Trilogy: Extended Edition. You don't start a marathon, let alone one of this magnitude, around the time most people are getting home from a full day of work. I can trick my body into thinking I'm staying up extra late if an all-day marathon spills over into the next day, but there's no way to disguise a 20-hour extension to the part of the evening reserved for warm milk and pajamas.

The odds were against me staying up the whole time, but smart planning and a lot of unexpected support kept me going.

What worked: Sleeping in beforehand. A trunk full of outside snacks, including muffins, Pop-Tarts, Clif bars, fruit snacks (shaped like sharks, because that's important), apple juice, assorted chips, and snack cakes. Meals from the snack bar at meal times, and snacks from the snack bar only when nothing else would do, and never the same thing twice. Drinking caffeine-free root beer throughout Day 1 and water throughout Day 2. Between movies, stepping outside for fresh air and sunshine (when available) and enforcing a mandatory bathroom break. Chatting with people. Cheering with the rest of the theater when something satisfyingly cool happened, or when Agent Phil "Everyone's Favorite Character" Coulson showed up. Having the theater manager and a local YouTube comedian interact with the audience every other movie, asking trivia questions and giving away posters.

What didn't work: This wasn't my living room.

I think about all the marathons I've done at home, from the aforementioned Harry Potter one to the 2012 Mega Man Megathon, and they were successful in large part because of the venue and structure. You can stand up, walk around, grab hot food or a drink refill, make a pit stop, change seats, and crack wise at the screen without worrying about bothering the people around you, tripping over things in the dark, getting caught waiting in line, or having to wait for the fryer to heat up. You can cut the break time between movies down to however long it takes you to swap out the discs after the credits are over (which would have trimmed entire hours off of this marathon). You can plan a proper breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert at the times you need them the most. There's something to be said about the energy of a movie theater crowd and the spectacle of seeing these films on the big screen, but the Ultimate Marvel Marathon almost felt like more of an endurance test than a marathon.

The entire first half of the marathon, I was fine. I was excited, well fed, making notes between films, and asking my family for a critical assessment after each film. (Age of Ultron notwithstanding, we'd seen them all before; amusingly, one of the other people in the theater was seeing all of these films for the first time!) There was a stretch during the wee hours of the morning, somewhere between Thor and Captain America, where I began to question how I was going to make it through another day after this, but when I stepped outside during the break to find that the sun had returned, simply knowing that it was time to wake up and start the day was good enough to keep me going.

Eating nothing but packaged snacks and concession stand food for two days has a way of making you reevaluate any aversion you ever had to vegetables. When everything available is fried, salty, sweet, or some combination thereof, you need to be a tactical genius to eat well enough to stay awake and feel good about it. On the plus side, I have now tried everything on the concession stand menu that ever piqued my interest, except (regrettably) the Oreo churros, so I need never gamble on untested movie food again. Spicy chicken is delicious.

As a side note, if you ever do a marathon like this one, plan your budget like you're spending the day at an amusement park.

In addition to food and drink, the concession stand was selling Marvel figurines; the largest drink cups had a lid with a divot on top where the figurine base would plug right in. As we waited in line, people were trading figurines like they were pogs on a playground. Iron Man, Thor, and Ultron were common sights, with the occasional Cap and Hulk, but there were rumors of the elusive Black Widow. The figurine packages were unmarked, but it wasn't long before people started realizing they could tell which figurine they had in their hands by pressing against the bag to determine the shape of the figurine inside. Those poor cashiers spent the next couple hours being asked to feel their packages.

I was less discriminating and took the first figurine I was given...which turned out to be none other than Black Widow. Very cool. Plugging her into my drink lid was a mistake; her glowy blue nightsticks almost poked my eye out every time I leaned in to take a sip from the straw.

There are plenty more stories to tell from the marathon, but two things I took away from the event were a greater appreciation of Tony Stark's character arc, and a sense of wonder at how so many movies from so many different directors and writers and actors could not only have such seamless continuity, but also maintain a consistently high standard of quality. Each and every one of those movies is at least a 3 out of 5 in my book, with even the weakest entries being no worse than "merely average." Eh, I suppose The Incredible Hulk is really more of a 2.5, but still. The MCU is a vast, rich place with some superbly developed characters and an ever-complexening (is that a word?) history. I was psyched to come back for more.

Then there was Ant-Man. Like practically everyone else who said, "...Ant-Man?", I was not terribly excited (and besides, if we're talking shrinky people, I prefer The Atom). I've read a bit of the earliest Avengers comics, so I had an idea of what I was in for...but I didn't expect to like it so much. A few story flaws, sure, but overall a very funny and exciting addition to the MCU.

Daredevil was a bit of a departure from...well, everything else in the MCU, not to mention everything I normally watch. Dark, both visually and tonally. Violent. Normal. In a world of superheroes, it's a show about lawyers and thugs and corruption. Well done? Most definitely. My wife and I are only five or six episodes in, but so far it's an intriguing and engrossing show. It's also emotionally exhausting to watch. And this is where I see my dedication to the MCU beginning to waver.

I watched a trailer for Jessica Jones. It looks great. It looks like something I won't enjoy. I think back to The Dark Knight, what an incredible piece of cinema it is, what great performances and cinematography it has, and how I really don't like it. I can recognize when something of good quality is not my style, and as the MCU continues to diversify, I'm going to see more and more films and TV shows I wouldn't choose to watch under normal circumstances. And considering it's taken more than a year to get through those few episodes of Daredevil, I predict it's the TV tie-ins that are going to be my downfall. I can sit through two hours of another Thor movie, but I don't know if I can commit to 17 more hours of AoS if it's anything like the second season (which, based on the trailer I saw, seems all too likely).

Beyond that, the MCU has competition. Star Wars is back in full swing with the first installment in a new trilogy, two spinoff movies in the works, and countless more to come—and my wife and I are barely through the first season of The Clone Wars and haven't even started on Rebels. Star Trek has a new movie and TV series coming out next year; my expectations are low, but if the latter ends up being any good, it'll likely take priority over anything else I'm watching. At least I've given up on staying current with the DC Comics film and television universe, which strikes me as disorganized and unattached to the source material.

Still, I'm excited for what will be in theaters during Phase 3 of the MCU. Even if I can't keep up with the universe at home on the small screen, any excuse to get out to the big screen is usually a good one. And who knows? Maybe I'll have trained my body to go without sleep for three days straight the next time an Ultimate Marvel Marathon rolls around.

I attended a wedding recently, and there I got to catch up with some friends I haven't seen since Otakon last year. You might recall my ill-fated attempt to write about the big anime convention, which never ended up being the lengthy post I'd originally intended thanks to how much the negative obscured the positive. Talking with these friends got me to thinking about the convention again, particularly about how I'd do things differently if I ever went back. The foundations of a blog post began to coalesce inside my head.

I often skim back through my old posts when they're relevant to a new post I'm preparing to write, and I surprised myself when I reread my joint recap of New York Comic-Con / Anime Festival 2011 and came across this statement about conventioning:

"Show up and have fun" only works when you have no idea what you're getting into.

Remind me to start taking my own advice. Many factors impacted my enjoyment of Otakon last year—and I'll reiterate that I did enjoy parts of it—but I was neither deliberate enough to avoid nor relaxed enough to deal with the headaches and setbacks I faced. I had certain expectations for the convention, but I left their fulfillment up to chance and to other people whose expectations didn't necessarily mirror my own. No wonder I got so grouchy.

Next time I go to a convention, I think I'm going to play by these rules:

1. Plan each day from start to finish. Know the bus schedule, have a place picked out for lunch, map out the most efficient routes to get around the convention center, prepare to arrive early enough to see the things you most want to see. Logistics alone can derail an otherwise wonderful convention; if you've got the power to control them, do it.
   
   
2. Communicate with others. If you're going with a group or even one other person, let them know your expectations for the convention. Tell them your plans, and understand theirs. If you want to spend time with other people, make sure it's on their schedule as well as yours.
   
   
3. Always have a fallback plan. Have a list of alternate panels, screenings, and other events to attend if your first pick falls through. Have a fail-safe backup plan if those fall through, too—something you can do that doesn't hinge on you showing up at a particular time and getting in before everyone else. Dealers Rooms, Game Rooms, and simply going back to the hotel to recharge are great options.
   
   
4. Make time to bring back memories. Stop to take photographs. Talk with cosplayers and vendors. Don't rush the shopping. Plan something big with the people in your group. Keep a journal. One thing I started to do at Comic-Con, which I hope to make a tradition of, was going around Artist Alley with a blank notebook and asking one artist after another for a quick sketch or doodle of whatever they felt like drawing. This makes for a great fallback plan, too.
   
   
5. If you're going in costume, be committed to the costume. Don't dress up out of compulsion; dress up because you love the character, love the costume, and would rather suffocate under layers of foam and cotton in the middle of summer than walk around the convention like a normal person, or whatever passes for a normal person outside the walls of the convention center.
   
   
6. Go back and reread this post before leaving for the convention. With any luck, I'll follow my own advice this time.

Two weeks ago I arrived home from a tour through Austria and the Czech Republic with the current members and numerous alumni of my college chapel choir. What I want to tell you is that I had a thoroughly amazing time and loved every minute of it. Honestly, sincerely, I want that to be the truth, and I've thrown out two different drafts of this post because my feelings about the trip are so mixed that I can't provide a truthful assessment without explaining the entire story, which is something better suited to speaking with me in person. The concise version is this: while I'm glad to have met so many great people, sung in so many memorable venues, and traveled to a few new places—and the last few days truly were as amazing as I'd hoped they'd be—it took me far too long to get my head in the right place for the trip.

Initial preparations for the trip began months and months ago, and as is typical of me, I couldn't start getting excited about the trip until every piece was in place...which didn't happen until a few hours before the flight, thanks to some cashier's failure to remove the big honkin' anti-theft tag on the back of my tuxedo jacket, which had somehow gone noticed until I was packing my bag the day before I left. Up until I got on the plane, it was gotta pay for the trip, gotta get a tuxedo, gotta get time off from work, gotta find a way to and from the airport, gotta pack, gotta budget for meals and souvenirs, gotta brush up on the local languages, gotta...etc. Once I got on the plane, it was don't die on the plane, don't die on the plane. Once we landed, it was ugh, I need a nap, I need a shower, I should've packed differently for this stifling heat wave. Once I had time to rest and freshen up, it was holy cow, I only know, like, eight people on this trip, and there's almost a hundred of us; I want to get to know everyone and swap stories and find the right people to hang out with, but I've got to do the "Hello, my name is..." speech a few dozen times first, and I'm already starting to feel a bit of social overload.

It wasn't until I'd met the majority of the group and started to build a rapport with most of them that the trip really took off for me. Most of the places we visited (primarily Salzburg, Vienna, and Prague) were places I'd been before (which means I'm officially an experienced world traveler somehow), so that initial "ooh, aah" factor was often absent. I'm also extremely self-sufficient after my college semester abroad in Spain, so returning to a tour group mentality—especially a tour group so huge that we cause comical traffic jams in tiny European villages when we cross the street together—felt more restrictive than it would've otherwise. Together, these factors resulted in the quality of the company and the structure of our itinerary—along with the music, of course—being the driving factors in my enjoyment of the trip.

The neat thing, though, is that everybody got along—we all had the university and the choir in common, but there's a certain level of friendliness and respect that nearly all of the members I've ever sung with have shared. We had participants from as far back as the class of 1948 if I heard correctly, yet there was never any sense of an age barrier or any other kind of divide between us. Sure, we frequently broke off into the social groups we knew, but I spent just as much time with my peer group as I did with the young'uns and the retirement crowd. It took a while to feel out which people were similarly minded when it came to going sightseeing or finding a place to eat, but I never had a problem getting along with anyone.

Sightseeing, shopping, and socializing weren't the real draw of the trip, however; getting to sing one last time with my college conductor before his retirement was. Attending this concert tour was never a question; I was resolved to be a part of this from the first time he talked about it, back when I was still in college. This is the kind of man who could invite you to sing at the edge of an active volcano, and your first question would be, "full concert dress, or those silver fire proximity suits?" Singing in the choir under his direction was a remarkable joy and privilege, and it remains one of the most meaningful parts of my college career. I wouldn't miss this for the world.

Again, there were hurdles to my enjoyment: a number of seemingly avoidable logistical issues impacted the length and timing of our rehearsals; I developed a sinus infection halfway through; and one of the masses we sang was brand-new to me, and despite my best efforts to practice at home (aided only by YouTube videos and my wife's electronic keyboard), performing the 30-minute work was extremely strenuous for someone who was still kinda figuring it out as he went. All I wanted to do was show up, run around a foreign country with fun people, and make amazing music. The trip continued to improve as I got to know people better and started putting the "Do Something About It" policy into full effect, and I was genuinely loving tour by the end of it. Being there for our director's emotional final concert in a church with gorgeous acoustics, and spending time with him and half the other participants at the hotel's patio lounge afterwards (with a lovely view of the city of Prague), made the trip for me. The rest was just gravy.

I mean that literally and figuratively. Almost all of our group dinners consisted of meat with sauce. Beef in gravy, pork in gravy, etc. It got to the point where I started calling the first country we visited "Meat With Saucetria." Even our airplane food was in on the joke, both ways.

When I returned from the trip, I had four straight days of unadulterated vacation time. No work, no obligations, no plans of any kind. Even my wife was out of the equation, for she wouldn't be returning from her trip until early the following week. Do you know how rare that is? Since I moved a few years back, most of my time off from work has been spent traveling to see the people I miss. Since my wife left her old job and started an Etsy shop, I've had someone else with me in the apartment at all times—and while it's the woman I love, I'm also more of an introvert than I let on. I get "Me Time," but I seldom get alone time. To use a geeky and awkwardly wordy analogy, being in a different room from my wife is to having the house to myself as calling your mother in EarthBound to cure homesickness is to actually returning home and seeing her in person. For the first time since, I think, 2010, I had an honest-to-goodness vacation—which, to me, means not leaving the house for anything or engaging in any kind of social activity unless I really want to. I returned to work that Monday feeling more relaxed and energized than I had in years.

All things in moderation, however. Despite my enthusiasm for an empty home and an open schedule, that's not how I want to live the rest of my life. I got married for a reason. I go on all these road trips to see friends and family for a reason. It's just that my social time and quiet time are completely out of balance. I always think of The Sims, where my Social meter—the one for me that'd fill up the fastest and deplete the slowest—would be almost constantly maxed out. Fortunately, it's never at the expense of my Hygiene meter, but the time spent keeping Social topped off has to come from somewhere.

This drastic break from my routine—these reminders of what it was like to be in college, to travel the world, to be single—was refreshing and invigorating. It helped me to appreciate again the things I've started taking for granted, and to recognize what's been missing from my life. Spending time with people younger, my age, and older than me renewed my perspective on where I've been, where I am, and where I'm going. Being away from my wife so long drove home just how deeply we care about each other. Singing with a choir again reinforced the growing sentiment that I need to sing—music is an integral part of who I am, though you don't often see me writing about it. When my wife and I moved, we thought of it as only a temporary arrangement; no sense in putting down roots by finding a church, joining a choir, making friends, etc. if we were going to pack up and go in a couple of months. That was three years ago. I'm joining a choir.

As our guide on the trip said, travel changes people. Whatever else the tour and my vacation time at home may have been, I can say unquestionably that they have changed me for the better.

I have a difficult time accepting that someone is open-minded if their words about politics and religion are as uncompromising as what you'd hear from the people they call closed-minded. My wife and I recently went out to see a live performance by comedian Eddie Izzard—a British transvestite with a rambling, ridiculous stream-of-consciousness performance style—who has been one of our favorites for years. Despite his fondness for lipstick and occasionally inappropriate routines, I've seen him appeal to my most conservative and traditional friends as much as my most liberal friends. Izzard's ability to find the absurd amidst the mundane has always kept everyone laughing too hard to get hung up on any cultural or ideological differences; for the duration of the show, all of us are open-minded to good comedy.

Something changed for his Force Majeure tour, or perhaps I've become more sensitive to criticism of religion since making an honest effort to resume my faith journey last year. Religion has long been a part of Izzard's routines, but his bits about the Bible needing an editor and the Holy Ghost running around with a sheet over his head—sacrilegious as they may be—are (arguably) still funny to a person of faith because the humor isn't presented as an affront. Through silly scrutiny, Izzard invites the audience to see the world the way he does, and they don't have to agree with him to enjoy riding those trains of thought. Suddenly, he's peppering his jokes with "...because there is no God," as though the audience should already have boarded that train of thought. Without any real lead-in, he fires off a few clever zingers at the oft-derided Tea Party, takes a few unkind jabs at conservatives in general, and continues jabbing unapologetically off and on for the duration of the show, almost like he's got a chip on his shoulder. I can understand tailoring your performance to better suit your audience, but this felt less like playing to the crowd and more like letting frustrations from his personal life spill over into his act.

That's not to say the show wasn't funny. The performance was more consistently entertaining than a couple of the ones I've seen, I had some wonderful belly laughs, and my wife and I brought home some new favorite Eddie Izzard quotes. But that uncharacteristic emphasis on criticizing religion and politics—not simply making light of certain aspects of the subjects—had the same effect on the show that raspberry sauce has on a chocolate lava cake: some people might like it, but for me, it spoils the enjoyment and seeps into the heart of the experience even after you've scraped it off.

What bothers me most is how he seemed to associate intelligence and open-mindedness with atheism and liberalism. He expressed that we were clearly an educated, unbiased audience to have paid money to hear a foreign cross-dresser crack wise about such erudite subjects as Buddhist monks and European history. Then he proceeded to rag on conservatives and belief in the divine, even during the bits that had nothing to do with them, because he saw it got a reaction from the audience. So the implication was that we, the audience, appreciated liberal, atheist speech because we were intelligent and open-minded. Maybe I'm reading too far into this, but that's definitely how it came across to me.

I'll reiterate that I'm a political moderate (though largely apolitical) and a Christian who's had plenty of exposure to a wide variety of belief systems. Ignorance and pigheadedness are neither exclusive nor inherent to conservatives and believers. Rejecting conservatism doesn't make you open-minded; it makes you liberal. Rejecting faith doesn't make you intelligent; it makes you an atheist. It's how you go about reaching your conclusions that determines whether you're open-minded and intelligent. Can you be open-minded, intelligent, and openly opinionated? Sure. But it's hard to listen to you if your opinions come across as facts that need no support, especially if those opinions hurt or disappoint the intelligent, open-minded people who came to listen to you despite their differences.

Over the last several days I've been working on a post about Otakon 2013, the 20th annual anime, manga, and general Japanese culture festival that once again saw Baltimore's Inner Harbor overrun with tens of thousands of otaku, many of them in costume. To hear me tell about the highlights, you'd think it was a great convention—an off-the-wall Lupin III movie, a panel on the evolution of anime throughout the past century, a tasty bacon cheeseburger and handmade vanilla Coke at Johnny Rockets, a new Mega Man X4 keychain for myself, plenty of time spent with friends I haven't seen in fiveever (that's like forever, plus one)... To hear me spin the complete yarn, however, you'd be depressed and possibly bored by the end of it—public transportation fiascos, mood-wrecking delays and setbacks, frequent surprises unsuitable to the squeamish, anxiety and annoyance about situations involving other people... It was cathartic to get my thoughts and feelings out on virtual paper, but especially after having my wife read through a near-final draft, I came to realize that this post was really only meant for me. I had tried to write it for an audience, but it wasn't meant for one.

I notice I haven't written anything here for over two weeks. I've barely done anything for GameCola in the last month. My attention's been elsewhere: after more than a year of unexpected delays and technical headaches, I've finally had the time, ability, and motivation to work on my Mega Man 7 playthrough videos for YouTube. I've been recording every few nights for the last few months, and the first proper installment in the series went live last week. It's been a joy to read the comments on the new video. Even with a scant bit of criticism, the overwhelming consensus is that this video was worth the wait. It has met, if not exceeded, everyone's expectations. At the time I'm writing this, the video has 3,322 views, 247 Likes, and 0 Dislikes.

That is very, very cool.

Now the pressure is on to make the next video just as good, if not better. Normally this is not a concern—as long as I'm having fun making a video, that's all that matters. Whether it's recording or writing, I try to generate the kind of content I'd want to see, and it's usually the case that other people like to see the same things I do. That's why I ultimately scrapped my Otakon post—it was necessary to write it, but I didn't want to read it.

As I'm recording the next video, I need to remind myself that this isn't a competition. I don't need to outdo myself. And I don't need to "give the fans what they want," as though I can read minds or trust my more vocal viewers to always speak for everyone. What matters is a finished product I'm happy with. Something I'd be excited to show others if it weren't my own. After all, that's what got me into blogging and recording in the first place—the desire to share the things I'm excited about with others. I think I might've misplaced my enthusiasm in the last few days—I've been more interested in the act of sharing than the thing I'm sharing.

Did I enjoy Otakon? Yeah, parts of it. It ended on a high note, for sure. Maybe I'll tell you about the good stuff someday. Maybe I've learned some lessons about conventioning that'll help me from ever reaching the same low points again. Maybe this is all you'll get out of me about Otakon unless you ask me in person. It's hard to say for sure. For now, I'm content to be writing again—writing what I feel like writing, instead of what I feel I should be writing. It makes a world of difference.