Convention-wise, 2020 was going to be a year to remember. At the end of each con, the next one is announced, and in 2019 we were promised not one, but two cons: in June, one in the classic anime-binging style, titled “Roaring Twenties”, to be held at its old haunt, Theaterhotel Almelo, and, later in the year, a larger one at another location. (Not in Rotterdam. I heard that Ahoy refused to host another con because the surrounding bars and restaurants did not get the extra customers they hoped for.) The AnimeCon mailing list notified me that ticket sales would start on 31 January, and on that date I was up at 00:00, constantly refreshing the browser until the ticket booth opened. While waiting, I checked out the rooms at theaterhotel.nl, and found out that “Nishicon” would be held there a month earlier. Nishicon is a Japanese culture appreciation con (ie. less anime, more workshops and activities) going back to 2011. So I bought a ticket for that too. Three cons to look forward to in the coming year! Wheeeee!
And then COVID-19 struck.
All conventions were postponed one year, then another. In the meantime, the following happened:
So once the three cons rolled around in 2022, at different dates than originally planned - the main AnimeCon happening in June, the Classic one in September, and Nishicon inbetween - I wondered if I should still go. Especially since I had been checking and rechecking the AnimeCon’s online program, and while it filled up with cosplay and other events, there was nothing about what anime would be shown. I decided to chance it anyway, ordering extra cloth masks for the occasion and taking along some COVID tests in case the virus snuck past.
Anime Convention 2022, “Flower Power”, was held in De Broodfabriek, a one-storey complex in Rijswijk, near The Hague. I knew its location and that of the nearest Bastion Hotel, because I’d stayed at that hotel in a previous year, after booking a non-refundable room and then hearing the con would be postponed again. The journey from Groningen to Rijswijk served to break in the new masks, which had iron bits to clamp down on the nose and reduce the fogging up of glasses. Disappointingly, as opposed to my regular mask, they were single-layered, my breath turning them soggy and useless after a few hours, so I was glad I brought a whole box, since I had to change them at least twice a day. The Dutch, it seems, are “so over” the pandemic that I saw very few masks worn on both public transport and the con grounds. I did see and hear bus and train passengers conversing in a Slavic language; Ukrainian refugees, courtesy of the Russian despot who felt that our times weren’t interesting enough.
Having booked a day before the con started, I checked in on Thursday, took a first COVID test for a scratchy throat on Friday morning - negative - and constantly checked the mail, because the regular lockers, which I’d reserved along with the Weekend ticket, had been replaced by e-lockers whose locker codes would be mailed to us before the con. I also checked the con website what to do about my walking stick; the site advised getting a Bag Permit for it.
At 13:00 on Friday I stood in line at the gate of the fenced-in Broodfabriek, thinking that previous venues at least had the space to lounge outside, whereas this place, hemmed in by roads and housing, just had a paved “garden” surrounding the entrance, and a strip of grass down the middle of the nearest road. Food stands were set up in this garden and the entrance hall, but who knows where it would be safe to take the mask off and eat? More than an hour later I was given a flimsy pink Weekend Visitor wristband (which I had to ease off over my hand each night to take a shower) and a program in newspaper form, instead of a booklet. Still no locker code mail, not even in the spambox. I asked for a Bag Permit for my walking stick; none needed. I checked the con program: plenty of activities but just ONE anime title, shown once per day. I watched anime shorts - the same 10 Episodes per Hour that were shown in 2019 - being projected on a screen in the entrance hall, catching the entire run of Skull-face Bookseller Honda from the introduction to the Customer Training From Hell episode, then, tiring of the tennis court anime bimbettes that followed, went to the info and registration desk to inquire about the lockers, because I’d brought a small laptop that I would have kept at the hotel, but I couldn’t get the hotel safe’s door to close. Apparently there had been many complaints about the new lockers, and the locker codes had not been mailed until today, so I was advised to keep checking my email. Also, I would be given a different locker every day, so at the end of each day I would have to clear out the locker and take its contents back to the hotel room.
I walked back to the hotel so I could read the program - which also announced the Classic Anime con, to be held in September - using my reading glasses (yes, I brought along both pairs), and re-checked the mail. Hooray, the locker codes had arrived. I hurried to the con with my valuables, only to find that the lockers were about half the size I expected them to be, and Friday’s code, to be used with Friday’s locker number, DID NOT WORK. (The Saturday and Sunday codes did work, so the money spent on lockers was not completely wasted.) So I rushed to the hotel to leave the valuables by the bed and hope for the best, then back to catch the first showing of the con’s one and only anime: the movie One Piece Stampede.
To anyone who doesn’t know of One Piece - and until this moment, that included me - it’s a series about pirates, but considering all the battlecries and transformations and secret powers and outrageous costumes and vying for world domination, it’s Dragonball Z meets carnival meets Settlers of Catan meets pirates. The main character, Monkey D. Luffy, is a very young and extroverted pirate captain with an ugly grin, an uglier scowl, insanely wide eyes and a puffy hat that looks like an octopus with trimmed tentacles sitting on his head; his nickname is Straw Hat, and his crew are called the Straw Hat Pirates. Like most characters, he has an alternate form, where his arms swell and - to describe what I saw as vividly as possible - turn into giant metallic bubblegum mallets, stretching out from his body to deliver megaton punches.
The movie opens with a flashback to the gap-toothed pirate Gol D. Roger hiding the treasure that would start the Age of Pirates, then switches to another flashback of prisoners fighting their way out of a high-security prison, except for one: Douglas Bullet, former member of Gol D. Roger’s crew. A last flashback shows missing-presumed-dead pirate Festa Buena who wants to revive the Pirate Festival, which is like an anime con but for pirates, fun and food stands included. The only rule of the Pirate Festival is to never reveal its location, Delta Island, to the Marines. To lure visitors, the main draw of the festival is a competition to find Gol D. Roger’s hidden treasure.
The start of the festival sees Luffy and crew strutting around and stuffing their faces. Once all the attendees are fed and merry, the announcer tells them that the treasure hunt will begin. Pirate ships start racing each other, using cannons and other dirty tricks to push ahead, and introducing the viewer to all the other crazy crews. A column of water rises up to an island in a bubble; the ships spiral up this column to the island. Meanwhile! An intruder at the festival, whose woolly white cap has the same “squat octopus on head” esthetic as Luffy’s hat, escapes the clown pirate chasing him to materialize on Luffy’s boat, where he says that something fishy is going on. Half the crew, including a skeleton and a chibi animal (a reindeer, according to an online synopsis), accompany the whitecap back down to suss it out, while little gummy-arms himself, having landed on the island and spotted the treasure chest, dukes it out with the equally grotesque-looking competition.
Two other intruders, a grim man and a ditzy woman, are secret agents, and also aware of this fishy business and the importance of the treasure being fought over. They get involved with the investigating half of the crew and split up, communicating through snails who transfer not only their voices, but also their facial expressions. (Amid the battlemania, this is supposed to add a comic element. Oh, ha ha ha.) Both pirates and secret agents sneak into Festa Buena’s hidden lair and overhear him breaking the cardinal rule of the festival by calling the Marines to attack Delta Island.
Back on the island-bubble atop the water column, fighting comes to an end when someone throws a... bomb...? that shatters column and island, making everyone and everything tumble back into the lake from where the water rose. Time to mention Usopp, a spindly, cowardly, worm-lipped, Pinocchio-nosed member of the Straw Hat crew, who nevertheless deserves his place there as its sharpshooter. Usopp gets his hands on the treasure chest, but is grabbed and crushed by a giant pirate who snatches the prize, then reveals the real nature of the contest: he is Douglas Bullet, who (tragic backstory alert) was always betrayed by those he trusted and never got over the defeat he suffered at the hands of former Pirate King Gol D. Roger, but now he is invincible and will prove it by battling and killing all pirates who entered this competition, thereby becoming the new Pirate King.
Follows: combat, combat, combat. Between Bullet and the pirate captains; between Bullet and the newly arrived Marines; between the clown pirate and the secret agents he chases. Bullet squashes Luffy, summons his ship, turns it into giant body armour, and while inside this body armour, assimilates all matter on the island - including naval ships - and not only grows his armour, but raises a wall around the island to stop anyone escaping. Then Luffy’s brother, the top-hat-wearing government agent Sabo, shows up to join the fray. A wounded Usopp, having shot bullets at Bullet (hur hur see what I did there) that are actually seeds, is dragging away an even more wounded Luffy, who will need only the most superficial of medical care to bounce back into fight mode! Everyone, headed by Luffy, joins forces against Bullet, the lone wolf who declared that friendship only makes you weak! The heat of the fight makes the seeds germinate (Usopp, you have saved the day!) and grow into plants which help to tear the body armour apart. Without his armour, Bullet is defeated by Luffy’s giant rubber fists. Festa Buena reveals that he wanted Bullet to start a new Pirate Age, and that he should have used Luffy instead, to which Sabo counters that Luffy would never have agreed to work with him. And that is the end of Festa Buena and Douglas Bullet.
What remains is the “treasure”: an Eternal Pose (a fancy compass) pointing the way to the island where the real treasure lies. Sabo, the secret agents, and the pirate captains are about to start fighting over it again, so Luffy destroys it. But, oh no, now the Marines are turning on the pirates! Luffy’s brother creates two literal firewalls to let the pirates escape. The end, and that’s 101 minutes of my life I’ll never get back.
And then I went home. Haha, no; I didn’t come all this way just to leave after the first disappointment. I did, after buying some takoyaki and crawling into an deserted corner to eat it, return to the hotel, tired enough to be tottering even with the walking stick; ordered some rather meh chicken korma and unexpectedly delicious vegetable momo from Little Nepal, a nearby Indian restaurant, typed up some first impressions, and went to bed.
Saturday morning, having gotten the anime part out of the way, I did something unprecedented: walk around to see what else the con had to offer. Specifically, the game room, which at this early hour was still pleasantly empty, and if they were wiped down after last night, the game controllers would still be clean, too. COVID-19 spreads chiefly through droplets in the air, but dirty surfaces can play a part; I’m not usually a germ-phobe, but, y’know, "the new normal" and all that. Anyway, the controllers and monitors were lined up on their tables, and what should I spot but the opening screen of Skyrim, a game from 2011 that I’ve bought but not played, because I refused to get the necessary Steam account. Because I’ve literally never played with a controller before, I had to start the game twice, not even getting past the tutorial because I couldn’t find the L3 button on the controller that’s needed to sneak past the bear, and ended up following Hadvar both times, even though on the second attempt, I’d planned to join Rolof and the Stormcloaks.
So, after playing a few hours while the room filled up, I began to feel ill (yesterday’s curry?), retired to the hotel for a nap (noticing for the first time the bottle of hand sanitizer in the lobby, which from then on I gratefully made use of) and returned to the con in the afternoon to join the line in a now hot and stuffy Exp Plaza for what I thought was Shiatsu massage but was, in the program, titled “Mugen massage”. This massage is carried out while leaning forwards in a chair and resting one’s face on a horseshoe shape of padded material, and depending on amount paid, takes between five and twenty minutes. Going for five as a courtesy to those waiting behind me, I felt neither sore nor dramatically affected by the gentle treatment, which was followed by some dietary advice, in my case to eat red beans, tomatoes, dark chocolate and bone broth. As it happens, I’m crazy for tomatoes, and most of the snacks I ate at the con had a red bean paste filling.
The screen in the entrance hall was still showing anime shorts. I re-watched Japari Park in the Future with its anthropomorphized felines and their hostile blue copies, the Cellians, followed by a series about a quiet, slow-witted schoolgirl and her talkative friend; thought of buying a taiyaki (filled fish-shaped waffle) but feared the long line at the taiyaki stand would make me miss a scheduled piano recital; went to the room where the recital would be held, found it was refreshingly cool inside, but the recital had been delayed; popped back out to the screen which now showed Naked Wolves, a crude animation of a globe-trotting sumo wrestler who sees everything - lumberjack work, dance competitions - as a form of training; returned to the piano room and listened to renditions of anime tunes, none of which I recognized (the quiet parts were nice, the loud parts sounded distorted, one key was out of tune, and people in the audience kept talking!) then finally bought a fish waffle and returned to the hotel for a half-hour rest.
Dinnertime! A Japanese curry stand sold the wittily named flavours Mary Curry, Tim Curry and Stephen Curry, along with daroyaki (small pancakes with filling). I chose the first flavour and received my portion in a little paper vat with a wooden spoon and a clear plastic lid that was crinkling from the steam rising off its contents. This curry contained soybeans, sweet potatoes and mushrooms, all of which are designated "bad" by the FODMAP diet, which I was loosely following to make life easier for my irate gut; and the red bean paste in the accompanying daroyaki didn’t help either. I still ate it all, knowing I could handle legumes if consumed in moderation.
Then I sauntered to the games room, through the corridor lined with arcade games that either required an understanding of Japanese or, as with the one where two players have to beat the drums to notes floating past on the screen, two free hands and a partner. I was alone and needed one hand for the walking stick. In the games room itself were lines of tables bearing monitors that showed mostly fighting games, often with two controllers to a computer, varying from ultramodern to 16-colour blocky-pixel-art ancient, an area sectioned off for virtual reality, which, judging from the monitor at its entrance, amounted to ducking two endless streams of red and blue ice cubes, and a rows of seats before a big screen to watch tournaments. My slow reflexes and lack of experience handling controllers made me more suited to the role of audience, and while I didn’t know the name of the slick and very familiar-looking tournament game, or care about its fighting moves, I was impressed by the high quality of the graphics, the characters’ hair, cloaks and trenchcoats rippling and falling in a lifelike manner. Apart from that, the only thing I learned from the tournament is that reach is more important than strength or size; a sure winner was the slim reaper character with the extendable scythe. I watched until tired, then went to the hotel room, even though it was only 8 pm and the con would last until 2:30. A good night’s rest would hopefully let me enjoy an uninterrupted Sunday.
Three hours later, I was still tossing and turning with a slight case of what I'll call anime convention colic.
On Sunday, after checking out from the hotel, I had to wait in the ticket line despite my pink wristband (on Saturday, I’d been lucky enough to just cut into line) and then at the line for the Cloak and Bag Room, since the medium-sized locker I’d hired was about half the size I expected, so big enough for the rucksack and valuables, but not for the bag of clothes and sundries. On handing in the latter, I received a round sticker and was advised to put it on the mobile phone that I didn’t have (many visitors were scrolling on bestickered Samsungs), so I stuck it on my wristband instead. How to fill that last day? Asking to be signed up for the wool felting workshop, I was told it was already booked solid. I had no interest in scooping goldfish or Jan-Ken-Pon or Go or Cards against Humanity, or even the D&D sessions that have somehow become part of the con’s standard program. The screen in the entrance hall was re-running eps from Friday. The game room was still empty enough for a very short line to have formed to the virtual reality area, and since I am interested in VR - just not in the gaming sense - I joined, out of curiosity.
I got the impression that someone jumped ahead of me simply from assuming I wasn’t waiting to play, and once my turn came, the person in charge of fitting the helmet and batons was amazed that I would want to try something like this at my age; his grandparents wouldn’t have touched this stuff. Sorry? I may be old, but my generation grew up with laptops and internet; technology hardly terrifies me. Maybe it was the ageing effect of using a walking stick? Anyway! I asked if I could play sitting on a chair to have both hands free, and after some adjustment, the VR helmet was placed over my glasses, and two controller sticks, that showed up as grey and blue laser-blade rapiers in helmet vision, were put in my hands, and their wristbands were slid around my wrists. (In retrospect, this may have been the moment I lost my bag sticker.) Nothing was explained to me, so I pointed a laser at a random song title from a wall of options before me, and swung at the two streams of not-red-but-grey and blue cubes rushing at me to the beat of the song, correctly assuming that I had to slash them. Oops, the game was stopped because I had to cut the cubes with the right colour laser, and an earlier player had switched the colours. Back to playing, and probably doing it all wrong, but still enjoying myself with this unexpectedly addictive game. The song finished, I chose another song, then had to make way for the next in line.
(After the con, I googled something like “VR cutting cubes”, found I’d been playing Beat Saber - a smash hit when it was first released, and still popular, with its own modding community - and enjoyed watching Youtube videos parodying the different types of player.)
The tournament had switched to a different game with flat, boring 2D animations, so, unable to find the Skyrim monitor (probably because that computer now showed a different game), I tried Yakuza for its detailed graphics, down to the the pores in NPC’s skins; its cutscenes were like watching anime, but NPC interactions always boiled down to "let’s solve this with a fight" so, after trying in vain to hail a taxi that the character desperately needed, I left to buy okonomiyaki (pancakes with sliced cabbage) and mochi at the stand called Kotobuki. I’ve eaten small round okonomiyaki before, but these were large squares. I watched them being prepared: first the cabbage strewn on the batter, then the soy sauce poured on, thin lines of piped mayonnaise, a tuft of julienned red something and sweet scrapings on top. As before, I ducked into a secluded corner to take the mask off and eat. The mochi - soft floury pounded ice dumpling with filling, which was red bean paste again - had such a sweet centre that it almost made me nauseous, while the jelly-like rice dough defied my attempts to chew it. (Don't get me wrong, I love mochi. My teeth do not.) I returned to the game room one last time to play some more Yakuza and try a shooting game to cure teenage schoolgirls of demonic possession by... aiming for their crotch, tits or belly - shyeah, no. Okay, nothing more to do, time to collect my bags and leave, although it was only 1 pm - and would you believe it, I’d lost the bag sticker!
Fortunately, the Cloak and Bag Room had a separate line for visitors who lost their stickers. Since I could both remember the sticker number and accurately describe the bag and its contents, it was soon retrieved, and I was homeward bound, tired, slightly queasy from that last meal, and relieved to be away from the con grounds where I feel more out of place with each passing year. What a bust this outing had been.
Except for the VR experience. Lasers slashing cubes to the beat of the music. Ooh yeah.
