This past weekend was July 4, and the annual Anime Expo four days of fun. This year was different from the past several in that I wasn’t staffing the event full time; I only had one workshop presentation, and I was only at the event for two of the four days. I did continue my work with the AX Model contest, making sure the event was set up as well as judging the event. This year I took a much needed break from being a full time staffer. I think this is one of those things that volunteers should consider, especially if they are in the managerial positions of the show; but more about that later. This year I participated in the Gunpla Builder’s World Cup event.

I had dropped by the event on day 0 to grab mine and Angel’s badges. I chatted with a few folks but was there for about 45 minutes before I left and went home. I was working Friday so I didn’t go to the event at all. The Friday’s are usually a good day to check things out as there are less people and you get first crack at some of the things being sold at the event.

Saturday rolls around and I lazily get up. Angel and Yuki are coming along to AX, and since I had a panel scheduled for 10:00PM that night, there was no way we were going to be at the convention before noon. We got there around 1PM or so and started to run into everyone. Dan, Brandon, Jeff, and several others from the build gatherings. We had a pretty good group of people wandering the halls. Angel and I set up our kits into the display case for the Gunpla Builders World Cup(GBWC) preliminary competition. Dan had brought several of his kits but didn’t enter anything as he was taking the lead for the judging at this particular event this year. We bounced between the art show and the bluefin booth to check out the various entries in both the AX Model Contest and the GBWC. Here are the entries at the AX Art Show. The table is a bit lacking as all the Gundam kits that qualify for the GBWC were placed into the Bluefin booth.

Dan creepily sneaks up on Vin’s resin figure entered into the AX Model Contest

The GBWC kits:

These next set of kits were not in the contest. The first two were brought over by a person from the artist alley, the guy was selling the kits and had sanded and snapped versions of the base kits as an example for what kind of work went into the kits. From further discussions with the artist, the actual builder of the kits was the artist’s friend living in Japan, and he was just selling the kit via proxy. So this automatically disqualified the very well built kits out of the GBWC. I had finished building my little SD Nightingale Friday night so I brought the thing along and put it into the display case. The little inside joke was to wonder how long it would take for the Bandai folks to figure that little gem out. Dan wasn’t entering, but had finished his ANA Themed Gundam for AX, and had it on display.

After chatting with folks for a little bit, we ran the halls of the convention taking pictures here and there. This is the first time in years that I’ve been able to enjoy the con more as an attendee than a staffer. It was a nice change of pace and I got to put my stalker lens into play. Such an amazing zoom on the damn thing. Brandon and I were snapping pictures here and there. One of the cosplay groups brought a live corgi to play the part of Ein in their Cowboy Bebop cosplay. The little corgi actually looked very similar to Ein, in terms of coloring.

We went and watched the Escaflowne movie and afterward, headed to the Gundam 00 movie. The Gundam 00 movie started late as the Bandai panel had run late, so the scheduling was shifted an hour. I ended up leaving the movie early so that I could head to and set up my workshop. Arriving at the room, it’s nice to see that there was a line for my idiotic workshop around the corner. In my haste, I forgot to bring little give away kits; but next time, or I’ll just save them for the SCGMC event in November.

Talking with the workshop staff, I was informed that my workshop got the late 10pm slot because of my history of being a little rough with the language and humor. So to avoid too many complaints, the workshop was scheduled for the 18+ crowd. I had an absolutely large room and it was good that I actually filled at least a third of the room. Maybe. But it was late and there were still folks at the Gundam 00 panel, at the Miku concert, etc. It was a nice turn out. Most of the folks form the build gathering were there and building kits. They were also helping out with answering questions to the workshop attendees. The group of us split after the workshop ended as it was already midnight. Angel, Yuki, and I decided to go have dinner as we were all starving. Hitting up Face Cafe in Alhambra, I recognized the manager, Sunny. The last time I saw Sunny was about 14 years ago, when we worked together at another restaurant. It took him a little bit, but he remember me and we chatted a bit. It was kinda surreal.

Angel was dropped off and Yuki and I ended up getting home around 2am. We ended up crashing out at 3. The next day, Dan was meeting at my place so we can go and pick up Angel before all heading back to AX. Yuki decided to come along as well. The first thing we did was snap a few pictures that I had taken yesterday with crappy camera settings so that they were blurry. I have Yuki next to the Unicorn kit that Angel, Dan, and I worked on the couple of weeks leading up to AX. As well as a picture next to the 1/12 Gundam. Sharon is definitely shorter than it and Yuki just slightly taller. But the thing is utterly dwarfed by the Unicorn. We also ran into Jeremy, whom I was surprised that I hadn’t seen yet as I know he’s always at AX every year. And dressed up in his old Army uniform, this year, he added giant bunny ears, which made the costume an instant Cat Shit One cosplay. I guess it’s better than your standard Army figure from .

My entire day was spent at the Bluefin booth and the AX Model Contest. I did nothing but whore out the SCGMC event to folks buying gunpla and everyone who showed a bit of interest in the contest entries. A few folks that attended the workshop had some questions. I hung around there until the judging for the GBWC competition started. One interesting conversation I had was with one of the leads from the Bandai Hobby Division. The woman from their group is part of the Master Grade R&D section and pointed at my SD Nightingale as well as the Gouf Custom and commenting on it to her boss. I chatted with the lead and he said that the Nightingale is a pirated kit, and when he asked me if I knew who built it, I told him it was me. He responded with a nervous chuckle. Then we had an interesting conversation about the gunpla aftermarket world. He ended up telling me to take the Nightingale out of the display, but left the Gouf Custom alone. Which was interesting. He knew that the conversion kit is from Korea, and that it’s resin. But I guess they have a real problem with the MC/TT Hong Li company so the SD Nightingale is a real sore spot – for which I completely understand. This as well as various other small things that were overheard just lead me more towards the idea against corporate sponsorship of the SCGMC event. We made comments about various other works on display before the judging times came; and I headed off to pick up the prizes for the AX Model Contest and the trophies.

*Sigh* The past two years, they’ve gone from supplying nice acrylic trophies to ribbons. This year was worse, they had one ribbon for the best of show, and the rest were certificates printed on nice paper. Yeah, I’ve given up on the AX model contest. Not completely, but my heart to help it thrive is no longer there. I’ve acquiesced to the fact that the AX Model Contest does as well as the effort put into making the contest happen. The promotion, the prizing, the trophies. Without any heart, the contest is just a sad shell. My efforts and goals are now focused to a stand alone event, the SCGMC event. At the very least, I was able to use the AX contest and the AX event itself as one of many means for promoting the upcoming event. But I digress; I judged 75% of the contest, the figures, the others, the non bandai mecha; then went back to the GBWC judging.

It had been an hour and the four judges were still in deliberations. Dan(Funaka), Xavier(Derringer), and two folks from the Bandai Hobby division. One of the Bandai judges did the judging at the New York Comic Con/Anime Festival last year in October. The other judge was from the R&D department for Master Grade development and is the reason there has been a string of Master Grade Wing kits released recent and upcoming. So basically, these were the real grunts, not business people that are just talking head reps from Bandai and have never seen the contents of a model kit box. The judging was over and they had a bit of a discussion over the 1/100 Hi Nu that was on display. Dan pointed out a seam line along the rifle that the judges missed. Later when I talked to Vin about his Hi Nu, he mentioned that he had left the seam there so that the part can be exposed for the internals. For which I suggested that for contest displays, he should have taken that part off to show that the seam was left there for the specific reason to show off the gun internals. Oh well; hard lesson to learn.

The judging concluded, and instead of first, second, third, they had only one winner per category. The 1/100 category went to Angel’s The O kit; the 1/144 category went to John’s RG Zaku; and I got the Best of Show for my HGUC Sazabi. In passing, the Bandai Hobby Lead said that the competition out here on the west coast is at a higher level than what he saw last year at NYCC/AF. I only wished that we could have had the entire build gathering guys show with their kits. Again., I’m hoping that the SCGMC will be successful enough that it catches the attention of Bandai, to let them know that there is a large market for gunpla in the United States. Most folks just can’t justify going to AX, for the purpose of only entering a contest. We snapped some pictures of the group, and called it a day.

Angel and I got MG Epyons and John got a RG Aile Strike, and the boxes were signed by the Bandai MG R&D representative. Kinda cool, except Angel already has an MG Epyon and I’ve just never been a Wing fan. But, I now have something cool to donate to the raffle at the SCGMC in November.

Back to the discussion about AX in general. It was good to be a fan again. Good to just not have any responsibilities and to enjoy the convention. I know how stressful it is to manage a department and deal with things. So I think it’s healthy for managers to take a year off, and try not to do anything for the con. It works as a reminder to why you first volunteered. We tend to get jaded working year after year, repeating the same issues year after year. I got to get a different perspective, a perspective that I had long forgotten existed. I chatted with some of the vendors as I passed through the halls and got a generally positive response with relations to the move in and set up. They’ve worked out the kinks and what really failed miserably the previous year. I think they will get more pre-registration than they did last year. There were a number of booths that I saw last year, that didn’t return this year, which is a damn shame; but the con circuit community is fairly close knit, and I’m sure word of success or failure in any areas will spread very quickly. The other thing I saw the the sad attempt at ass kissing by the AX upper management. They actually set up a Exhibitor Reception at the end of Day 2. Food and drinks were served. I wonder if they will be doing this every year. I also wonder how much budget pinching from various departments went to fund the cost of this ass kissing session.

The con from my point of view is that it is definitely still suffering from money issues. It’ll be interesting to see how the final numbers tally up. I hope to see if things that were taken away because of budgetary constraints make a return if and when such budgetary constraints are no longer necessary. I agree with the budget cuts made, but hope that the convention is successful enough that some sort of a balance is brought back. At this point, I’m not sure if I want to return as a staffer in any sort of capacity. I do enjoy the perks, but the perks have been shrinking to abysmal proportions. I guess I’ll wait to see how the SCGMC event goes before making any decisions on how I allocate my efforts next year. But everything I’ve seen this past weekend makes me just want to double the efforts into promoting the shit out of SCGMC.

The next con event is Comic Con, followed by Otakon; for which I will be attending both. Fun times to be had! The rest of the pictures I took at AX can be found here: http://gamerabaenre.com/?page_id=1989

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.