Night Island

So, I'm finally writing about Sakura-con! ^_^

I flew out to Seattle the Thursday before the con with my mom and the flight was rather uneventful. Well, we did have to catch a connecting flight in San Fransico, but that all went smoothly. My aunt (who drove us to the airport) was kinda freaking me out by telling stories about almost missing one once. >_< I had hoped to get to the hotel that night in time for pre-registration, but that didn't happen. I hadn't eaten much that day so we DID get there in time to order ridiculously overpriced room service pizza... fun! Did I also mention I had my hair cut earlier that day? No? Why is that important, you ask? I have no idea.

Despite not being able to get our badges on Thursday, we were able to be there bright and early on Friday to get them. Well, not sooo early, but it did work out! ^^;; I kept worrying about missing opening ceremonies... turns out that they weren't that great. They were just different from what I'm used to at say... Anime Expo. They also had a Shinto blessing thing at opening ceremonies and that kinda freaked my mom out, I think... not exactly her idea of how to spend Good Friday.

After that it was off to Monica Rial's Panel, but apparently it was moved or rescheduled or something. I don't know if/when it actually happened and I've loved Monica Rial even before I really knew who Vic was so I was pretty sad about missing it. But I still had Vic's panel to look forward to, right? WRONG! It was also rescheduled--to an earlier time! I don't know why it was changed, but I don't think panels should ever be moved to earlier times instead of moving them to later times. I did catch the end of the panel, but I had to stand in the crowded doorway of the room and I could barely hear at times. I know I've seen Vic a couple times before and maybe it shouldn't have upset me so much, but I had just missed the two voice actors I had come to Sakura-con to see so it put me in a bad mood for awhile. I was getting worried the rest of the weekend would be exactly the same.

Fortunately, someone recorded the panel and I was able to watch it on YouTube when I got home. ( Here are the links to the videos.... )

I decided to stick around the room that Vic's panel was in, because the Tsubasa premiere was supposed to be in the room next door. I didn't know if that would be changed, either. I did get to see Edo again and she noticed that I had changed my hair! ^-^ Anyway, I was lucky and the Tsubasa premiere DID take place in the room it was supposed to. Seeing that really brightened my spirits and things were (for the most part) better from that time on. Okay, now I'm going take some time to ramble about the Tsubasa premiere like I did over at the Ranger forum! ~.^

( Tsubasa dub ramblings ahead... )

Overall, it seemed like a pretty good dub! ^_^ I'll have more to say once I get my hands on the first DVD, but this is everything for now. If you haven't seen the Tsubasa trailer on FUNimation's Myspace, go~ check it out now!

They were originally supposed to show episodes 1-4, but there were some problems with the DVD so we didn't get to see a chunk of episode 2 and had no time for episode 4 at all. We did get some nice and amusing Q & A with the voice actors. It was really awesome and I wish I had a recording of it. Vic Mignogna, Colleen Clinkenbeard, Monica Rial and Carrie Savage were all there, but I can't remember if Jason Liebrecht ever showed up. At the end everyone who was there was given nice Tsubasa posters that had that date on them and said "Tsubasa North American Premiere". Since the main Tsubasa voice actors (except for Chris Sabat) were gathered at Sakura-con I was really happy to get it, because then I had something for all of them to sign. ^_^

I don't know what happened after that... dinner, perhaps? I wanted to go to the guest reception dinner, but with the amount my mom had already spent on the trip I just couldn't ask for more. We ended up eating at the restuarant in our hotel. I think that also may have been the night we went to watch the karaoke contest, but that wasn't too memorable. I think this was the night I had some trouble sleeping, because there were some, uh... "interesting" noises coming from the hotel room next to ours. I'm not sure if it was what I think it was or if it was just my mind playing tricks on me.... o_O

That was Friday... lots of good parts and bad parts. In the end I was happy so I don't have too much to complain about. ^^;;