Katsucon 07!

Another Katsucon has come and gone in a whirlwind of hotels, broken luggage, crazy shopping marathons, and anime viewing. Seriously, I feel like I never got the chance to catch my breath before it was time to pack up and head home, which kinda sucked because I'd been looking forward to the convention for so long now.

While the anime I did catch was enjoyable, there was the usual schedule blunders and oddly absent shows. The first four episodes of Disgea, based of the video games, was supposed to be shown, but for some reason something else entirely was shown in its place with no signs or anything on the door announcing the change. I can only assume that as about 98% of the audience got up and walked out within thirty seconds of the replacement anime's horrible dub track's start that the rest of the crowd was as uninformed as we were. Another anime that was not scheduled, but was advertised heavily, was Speed Grapher. I've only heard the bare minimum about this show, but Funimation must really want to push it on us, except not by actually showing us the anime. Both pages of the schedule had art from Speed Grapher on them, and the con badges were also adorned with Speed Grapher. However it wasn't actually shown at the convention. Weird! In fact, the schedule itself seemed a bit strange to myself and Ghibli_Geek, as there seemed to be very little that we actually were interested in watching. Oh, except for the shows we *did* want to watch, for some reason were all airing at ungodly times. Wanna check out the Urusei Yatsura movie? Well, it's at 3 in the morning, so I guess not!

I was pleased to finally see Gainax's famous Gunbuster OVA series, which I quite enjoyed and am now grappling with the choice to buy the newly remastered but expensive DVD box set. Brave Story was something neither of us had heard of before, but being that there was some slim pickings, we decided to check it out nonetheless. Turns out it's a really good movie, and anyone looking for a fantasy-themed anime with weird creatures and companions on a quest to save the world might want to check this out. I'm curious if it was originally based off of a game, as the premise sounded very video gamey (go to different areas and collect the gem there kinda thing). The Cased Closed movie was really fun with some very funny dialogue and clever plot. I never much got into the series when it was airing on Adult Swim, but the movie certainly caught my interest, think I'll have to go back and check out what I missed!

Of course, one of the big events at any convention is the merchant's room, and this one is no different. This time I tried to keep a more collected head about me rather than spending on every cool thing that I come across (there's always lots of cool things, so you tend to lose money very quickly that way). Since I've been extremely interested in import video games since getting my toes wet the past year with games like Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan!, Daigaso Band Bros. and DaiBiJin, I started listing all the games I'd be interested in finding with this newest trip. I've returned several dollars poorer but with lots new games to keep me occupied!

My biggest find is probably Neon Genesis Evangelion for the Nintendo 64, complete in box! It even has the trading cards unopened that were included with the game. This was one of the first big Eva games to come out, with quite a few new ones popping up in the past few years on the PS2, but of all the games this one is still the most import-friendly. I remember reading about this game ten years ago and hoping it would see a US release, but of course that never happened. I'm about halfway through the game and will post a full review when I complete it, though I will say that it's the most import-friendly because it's also one of the simplest of the Eva games out there. But this is not to say that it isn't fun.

For the GBA, my very own Rhythm Tengoku! This has become a pretty famous import game, like Ouendan. It's even been featured on the 1Up show, which is where the game first caught my eye. It's from the makers of the Wario Ware games, only now you have mini games, about a minute and a half each, all revolving around keeping in time with the rhythm of the music. It's a really fun game and also very import friendly.

Since music based games are for the most part easy for an English speaker to pick up on, I bought yet another music title, this one for the DS called....Pinky Street Kira Kira Music Hour! This one is based of the Pinky Street line of figures, and the better you get at the music-based levels, the more money you earn to buy new outfits and things to customize your idol. The music selection is good and the challenge can get pretty high, so I'm enjoying this game so far.

This next title I was surprised to find at the convention, and quickly snatched up upon viewing. Konami's Akumajo Special: Boku Dracula-kun is kind of a cartoony spin-off of the Castlevania series in which you play as Dracula's son and you're out to stop the evil invading the town. A lot of the backgrounds are reminiscent of Castlevania games, and some of the music is actually remixes of other Castlevania tunes! Unfortunately, it's been much more difficult to find a Famicom to NES converter than I expected, and as such I haven't played this title yet. Oh well, I'll get one eventually! Maybe if I buy just a few more copies of Gyromite...

So some good anime was viewed, and I've been given lots of new crazy Japanese games to play, all of which I plan on completing and reviewing in a short while. I leave you now with a few choice cosplay shots from my trip. You can view some more of them over at my Flickr account.