After the mecha panel, Mike & I rushed back to the line for the Masquerade. Brian, Tyson & Randy were all there, and Jeff was on stage making a fool of himself as usual. Tyson filled us in on which team to cheer for. We yelled and waved our arms for Jeff's team bad haiku. Jeff ended won a few DVDs and some Pocky for participating, as well as near-front row seats for the Masquerade. While up there, Jeff yelled, "Initial D rocks!" which got a stir, and he proceeded to sing the Mazinger Z theme on microphone. I jumped up and down and sung it with him. I thought too late to get up on stage with him and sing a duet. I don't think anybody but him and me got it. Tyson commented on how Jeff just lived his life's dream through his little mini-concert. We were shuffled into the theatre room for the Masquerade after the better seating stage events. Cameramen once again panned around the room to keep us entertained. Jeff threw me the Pocky and Mike an Ayashi no Ceres DVD he got for nothing. The two other DVDs (both Ranma ?) he threw out to the audience, to high-reaching flailing arms greedily trying to grasp a free DVD. Hey, everybody likes free stuff. I would have taken the Ranma discs, but Ranma is Brian's obsession, not mine, and he already owns the DVDs. Tyson drew up a few pictures (one he entitled, "Great Teacher Largo") that got onscreen, and Jeff wrote "Super Robots Rule!" in kanakata, and I wrote "I blew $500 on plastic robots" and held it up.

As for the Masquerade show itself, I thought it too was better than last year's, and that Mecha Ghidra singing "Bohemian Rhapsody" while fans waved their hands and lit lighters back and forth had to be the funniest thing I've seen in a long time, and certainly one highlight of my Otakon 2002 trip. And thank God retro is still being remember in the form of the Speed Racer skit, complete with wooden cars racing back and forth and being run off the 'road' into a stack of cardboard oil containers for a giant explosion. Overall, it was great fun to watch otaku getting onstage and perform for the crowd; I think I'll have to participate one year.

Oh, I just remembered. I blew a few hundred more in the dealer's room. This time around was more of a 'buy whatever catches my eye', so I got some cool stuff that I think will look great sitting on a shelf somewhere in my room. Here's a quick list: a black repaint of Shin Getter 1, over 12 inches tall; Katoki's take on Wing Gundam in 1/144th scale; a Gunbuster action figure because Gunbuster is by far the most sickeningly powerful mecha of all time (except maybe Ideon); a Jin-Roh Panzer Trooper because they are bad-ass; and I needed a model to build in my free time so I picked up a HGUC Ex-S Gundam from the same guy I got both SOCs from. That left me with $12 and change. I saved it. I figured it would give me something to do tomorrow; tracking down that elusive rare item worth 12 bucks. Also, I noticed that the 5 foot Zaku was gone, and somebody said it was bought! I thought of who could possibly afford such a luxury, and even then, how they would transport such a huge item back home. Otaku are indeed insane. I'm not one to talk, I would have bought it had I a spare $10,000 to throw around.

Outside the convention, Jeff & I played anime dodgeball. It's just like regular dodgeball, only with anime otaku playing. Jeff ended up walking off (no endurance, must be all that Burger King he ate), but I grabbed the ball, gave a battle cry as I ran up the field and took out the biggest guy I could find. You know, the one who would be most dangerous once the game thinned out a little. I stayed away from the group, because inevitably, the guy with the ball was going to go for the group for a better chance of whacking someone. Somebody picked up the ball and came after me with it. I'm not the running away type; so I charged him, wanting to rip the ball away and tag him out instead (is that legal? I didn't really care). He threw it low and I jumped, but it caught my shin and I was out. Oh well, gave me some exercise. We went back to the room with two other guys we had met. They stayed for a while and we burned some copies of CDs for them. Brian got Randy playing Romance of the Three Kingdoms VII on his PS2, and I think he really got into it. Too bad he doesn't own a PS2, so he's stuck either buying the game and system for it or not playing the game at all. I almost considered doing the same thing for Super Robot Wars Impact, but spending that much cash for an import system and a single game isn't justifiable for me. Thus, I'm still playing Super Robot Wars 4 on a SNES emulator. And I've beaten it over a dozen times so far. Maybe if I collect enough mecha I can design a tabletop version of SRW. More sleepies.

Read Otakon 2002: The Otaku Strike Back - Part V coming soon.