After a bit of sleep, a bit of rest and several hours of working trough
all the 293 photographs taken during the 3 days of AnimeFest, I must
finally write something about the last day.
The last day of the fest
(Sunday) was easily the best. The morning was a bit disapointing as the
planned special showing of Steamboy did not happen and the Korean
Hammerboy was quite boring for anyone over the age of 7. Many had a good
nap.
Everything went wild when the second part of Hellsing series was
supposed to start. Previous day the showing stopped on 6th episode, so
when after the intro we saw that the 10th episodes starts, all started
shouting so loud that even mechanics understood that something was wrong.
For about 5 minutes they seemed to wander aimlessly around the menu of the
DVD. The mechanics were in a sealed room, so they couldn't hear us and we
couldn't quite go to them either. I had a fun moment running up to the
screen and showing with my hand which button should the mechanic press on
the screen. I mimicked both pushing the button like it was a touchscreen
and a also ran around trying to "drag" the cursor across the screen. It
looked very fun to the audience. In the end it turned out that the DVD was
doublesided and had to be turned around, but it took almost ten times of
starting the 10th episode and around a half an hour of time. Thankfully
the rest of days schedule could be pressed a bit to compensate.
Hellsing
itself was just wonderfull, I hope they will decide to make a sequel soon
and that they'll make it well.
Next up was Millennium Actress. I did
not expect much realism from the creators of Prefect Blue, but I was so
wrong. The movie is simply great - it is fun, has great story and
ingenious way to tell that story. Simply a marvel.
The final ceremony
of the festival started with a concert of a local group of two Latvian
girls singing Japanese pop songs - "Tokio Dolls". Nice voices, very good
choreography and reasonable lights - all in all a good show. In the
conclusion there was Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence. This is my second
time trying to get it. I loved the first film. I liked the first season of
series. But this film and the second season of series is just ... too
smart? The first movie was a good combination of action, elegance,
politics and wisdom. In the second part only distilled wisdom remains -
typical scene is three people standing in a room for 20 minutes speaking
loosely related citations of philosophers to each other. After a sleepless
night of debugging gphoto, I slept well there.
All in all this
festival was a wonderful event - lots of good friends came, lots of
cosplays were seen, lots of anime was watched, a bit of go was played, a
bit of buffed weapon fighting was done, a lot of good photos taken. I look
forward to next animefest sometime next year. In the meanwhile I will try
to sort out the few best pictures and post them to my flickr album during
the week.