After the disappointment of "Flower Power" in 2022, I decided to skip 2023. On the one hand, good, because it happened in the middle of a heatwave; on the other hand, bad, because not one but three films were shown, and they were titles I would have liked to see.
So when the ticket booth opened for 2024, I bought con and locker tickets; even if I skipped most of the con, I would at least be financially supporting it. This con also showed three films, none of which I was keen to see, and again challenged me to do something else besides watch anime. The con and hotel, both paid for more than six months before the event, showed how well they deal with scatterbrains like me by graciously sending reminders shortly before the day of. The lockers were particularly well organized this year: having learned from previous cons, the locker providers mailed the necessary info beforehand, and emphasized that customers would not have to wait in line.
The Anime Con was held at its new favourite location: De Broodfabriek in Rijswijk. Each journey is a chance to see how the outside world has changed since the last time I ventured out, and this year I was struck by the many rows of metal windmills and roofs covered in solar panels. In that respect, the Netherlands itself is more in line with the con theme than the anime shown. Masks were, as in 2022, practically unseen; with the con visitors cosplaying characters from every anime under the sun, I decided to cosplay an immunocompromised person.
An unusual bit of preparation this year was the locating of the nearest shopping centre (surprisingly close, just a tram stop away) to buy a replacement for my wobbly, ankle-twisting shoes. Scapino, a cheap shoe shop chain, had a 50% discount on shoes for diabetics, and while I am not diabetic (yet), they promised to make the "my shoes are killing me" feeling a thing of the past.
In addition to the promised three films, the Goanime company would preview episodes of anime series they subtitled, the titles listed being Dragon Ball Z Kai, Hunter x Hunter, Naruto and Naruto Shippuden. I cannot express how uninterested I am in anything to do with Naruto, whose fans are unaffectionately known as "Narutards", and the Dragon Ball franchise just can't seem to die, but Hunter x Hunter is from the same hand as Yu Yu Hakusho, which, after an initial disappointment, I found amusing and engaging. The previews would start shortly after the con opened, and fill up time until the first film.
Last time at De Broodfabriek, I'd arrived an hour early to beat the line, only to hang around with the only other early bird for most of that hour. So this time I left the hotel closer to the opening time, and behold, there was a Line, and it was Long. After an hour of waiting in line and a mad dash for the locker room to stash my bag, the Goanime preview setup was still not finished. If there's one thing I promised myself I would not do at this con, it's drifting around the con grounds like a mournful ghost just to kill time. Still, I ended up doing just that, not to pass time but to find the locker room again and retrieve my hotel room key, because the con layout hugely confounded my virtually nonexistent sense of direction. The search took me past the Game Room and the arcade games area, which included a futuristic-looking machine with a huge wide funnel on the front, the sides of which you have to tap following instructions shown in the centre. There were race car simulators and shooters and the booths with drums and drumsticks, all of which I would have liked to try, but not in public where people can see me fail pathetically. Besides, my walking stick would get in the way, as most of them require two free hands. Anyway, it was now three o'clock, the first chance to watch anime was a bust and there was nothing for me to do until the film at half past nine, so I returned to the hotel to read the con program in peace. Wahey, another film had been added to the roster: City Hunter: Angel Dust on Saturday evening. As in 2022, the program was in newspaper format; no more colourful booklets with extra manga content by Dutch artists.
Friday evening featured The First Slam Dunk, which has won several awards, but so have other anime films that turned out to be a colossal waste of time. (A "slam dunk", as basketball enthusiasts know, is when a player jumps up and slaps the ball over the side of the hoop and into the net. It is also the title of a manga about basketball players.) The film begins with a succession of grimly determined young men in sportswear coming into focus, followed by gorgeous backgrounds of a seaside town in Okinawa. At a small playground with a basketball hoop, a young boy faces his older brother, a well-known basketball player in whose footsteps he hopes to follow. The older brother promises to train him rigorously, but their session is interrupted by the brother's friends reminding him of their planned fishing trip. The older brother leaves; the younger, feeling betrayed and deserted, shouts after him: "I hope you never come back!" Guess what happens.
Their mother (a good Japanese housewife, ie. emotionally unavailable domestic robot) who had already lost her husband years ago, reacts to the eldest's disappearance at sea by moving the surviving son, and his bratty younger brother and sister, to a concrete jungle suburb where he can't play ball without being yelled at. In the school basketball team, he doesn't do so well; following in his brother's footsteps seems an impossible dream, and to make things worse, his unsympathetic mother, who is too caught up in her own feelings of loss to care about her children, wants to toss out his brother's sports memorabilia.
And yet, here he is in the present, all grown up, in a basketball team playing against champions. And his team is losing.
The narrative jumps between flashbacks and the present match. Most members of this team hate each other, but they have one thing in common; a burning desire to win. Due to some highly unprofessional behaviour on both sides, and the team maverick throwing out his back, they do snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, but this isn't about the destination: it's about the journey.
At the end of the film, the newly turned basketball champion returns to his old seaside town, where he finds his siblings and mother, and has an exchange with her that cements my hatred of Asian parents. Seriously, Asian parents are monsters. There are online communities of survivors of Asian parents. Anyway, true to her nature, she remains silent and unresponsive as her child soliloquizes aloud that even though she hates basketball - because her deceased child being a basketball player is valid reason to hate the whole sport - she never forbade him to play it. Sure, she took him from familiar surroundings and dumped him in a slum where he couldn't practice his hobby, she played the part of frosty spectator while he embarrassed himself at school competitions, she did nothing when he was bullied, she tried to erase an important part of his past - but she never actually told him No! Count your blessings, Asian child! She also never told him that she loved him, supported him or even understood his dream; she just acts as if his mere existence is a painful burden to her. Which is probably how she feels.
On Saturday morning, I was greeted by another long line, as everyone had to queue up, even weekend visitors whose ticket had already been scanned the day before. Surprisingly, I was allowed to cut to the front of the line because my walking stick qualified me as disabled. I literally am disabled, just not dramatically so, and it never occurred to me that I would deserve such a privilege. I was glad, though, because the heat outside was already making people hug the shadows; the sooner I could be out of the sun, the better.
Goanime had sorted out its technical issues and was playing Hunter x Hunter: on a branch of a tall tree overhanging a lake in which dwells a fish with crab legs, a boy called Gon catches said fish to earn the right to become a Hunter, just like his father twenty years ago. His caretaker, aunt Mito, disapproves, but decides to allow him to embark on the ship headed for the Hunter Academy in Zaban. The rough journey on the ship, where Gon rescues a sailor and is generally kind and helpful, acts as an admission exam, passed with flying colours by Gon, Kirapiku, a fantasy warrior type out for revenge, and Leorio, a businessman type who initially presents himself as a greedy sleazebag. As a reward for saving the sailor, Gon is told to go to a certain tree rather than taking the bus to Zaban. The trio traverses a ghost town, winning a quiz by understanding that the proposed moral dilemma is a trick question, and rescue a hermit mentor family from werebeasts by discovering the werebeasts are members of said family; this is all part of the Hunter Exam.
The comics hero Superman was put on a rocket and sent off as a baby by his parents when his planet was about to be destroyed. In Dragon Ball Z Kai, a reboot of the old Dragon Ball Z, the parents of Goku do the same because they have a bad feeling about Frieza, who does indeed blow up their planet Vegeta moments later. Goku was born Saiyan, a breed of tailed superhumans who kill all life on planets so they can sell these planets for a lot of money, so he's not Superman material; however, since he lost his tail at a young age, he became a good child, and later a good father to his son Gohan, who, after a quick historical recap including Piccolo's progenitor spitting out an egg before dying, he is looking for, because it's dinnertime. Little Gohan, meanwhile, is drifting on a log towards a waterfall. Goku pulls a Saiyan move to save his toddler, while a space pod lands in a farmer's field. After dinner, the family visits "grandpa"; he, Goku and Gohan all have the same screechy little boy voice, and I feel sorry for the voice actors when the person from the pod, Goku's brother Raditz, who calls him by his birth name ("Kakarot"), abducts Gohan who instantly starts crying (in a very cyclic, automated way, like an animated Crying Toddler billboard) and the three erupt in a screechfest.
To pass time and out of curiosity, I attended a lecture about 3D printing. I could barely understand the lecturers and wasn't interested in the lecture's real subject, which was how to make cosplay props, so I ventured out to the shopping centre for snacks, to charge my OV-Chipcard and prevent unpleasant surprises on the bus trip home, and to buy the diabetic shoes, which are large and thick-soled like running shoes, but much more comfortable than the wobbly shoes I'd come in on, for which the saleslady helpfully pointed me at the old shoe bin to dump them in.
Saturday's film, the Dragon Ball Movie, was a title I could swear I'd seen at an early con, but it played out very differently to what I remembered. As a baby, Kakarot/Goku was in the same nursery as Broly, whose power level far exceeded that of the other Saiyans, and yet Broly was crying. The Saiyan king ordered the superbaby exiled, along with his father Paragus. As an adult, Goku meets the exiles on their planet, Broly looking a bit daft with metal bits attached to his head and neck; this is a limiter that prevents him from using his full potential. Once he ditches it, he destroys the planet of a tiny alien just for fun, and then tries to demolish prince Vegeta, who gives up when he can't defeat Broly even in Super Saiyan mode, and Goku, who has to fuse his body with green insectoid frenemy Piccolo to overcome the enemy. This was Broly: The Legendary Super Saiyan (1993).
What I saw was the rebooted version, Dragon Ball Super, Movie 1: Broly (2018). Baby Broly now shares a nursery with little prince Vegeta. King Vegeta orders Broly exiled to planet Vampa, because his extreme power level would make him insane. Paragus deserts his military post to pursue his son, vowing revenge, and finds the baby feasting on giant insects that it must have killed while in its feral form; the Saiyans' tails allow them to undergo a werewolf-type transformation. Thus, Paragus survives the destruction of planet Vegeta by the small, spiteful, lizard-like prince Frieza, who has taken over from his father, king Cold.
Back to the present: brilliant scientist Bulma is relaxing at some exotic resort with a space diva and an Anubis clone, watching prince Vegeta sparring with Goku. She made a machine to locate the wish-granting Dragon Balls, and has found almost all of them; her wish is to look younger, but only five years younger, else people will start gossiping that she's had cosmetic surgery. The Dragon Balls are being stolen from her lab by members of Frieza's army, the Frieza Force, because he wishes to be taller. Only five centimetres taller, so that everyone will believe he is still growing.
Frieza recruits mainly from the desperate; at least one member of the Frieza Force is wanted for a crime. But when she finds Paragus with a now adult Broly, and sees how the father uses a shock collar to control the son, she pickpockets the remote control and crushes it underfoot. Showing genuine interest and concern for the sullen young man who wears a dirty triangle of green fur around his waist, she is told the story of how he came by it: on Vampa, his father trained his reflexes by having him evade the snapping jaws of a green monster. In time, he became friends with the monster, who only snapped at him playfully. Paragus, thinking that this friendship would weaken his son, shot at the monster, tearing its ear off, after which it became savage again, attacking in earnest; Broly kept the ear in remembrance of their friendship. Clearly, this Broly is much more sympathetic than the old one.
Bulma&friends confront Frieza, who has Broly brought over for a fight so cringeworthy that my eyes glazed over, until king Vegeta's prediction comes true: Broly uses so much power that he loses his mind, and oops, Paragus dies, making his son go absolutely ballistic (Broly beats up Frieza, ha). To overcome Broly, Goku has to combine bodies with Piccolo through a ridiculous little dance that is the humorous highlight of the film, and takes several tries to succeed. Broly's new friend and her amphibian-looking companion find the last Dragon Balls and use them to wish Broly back to Vampa, then fly there to keep him company. To show his good intentions, Goku drops by some time later with a rucksack full of goods.
Wasn't that exciting. Exhausting, even. Off for a nap at the hotel.
With hours to go before the City Hunter film, and a whole con full of fun stuff that wasn't for me, I began to feel really sorry for myself. The Game Room? Every keyboard and arcade machine would be covered in sticky, possibly contagious fingerprints by now. Scooping for goldfish or lining up for a massage? Both would involve getting breathed on by people. Maybe I would sign up for woolfelting this time? The list was probably already full. What about the kumihimo (string-braiding) workshop held in the MangaKissa ("manga library") corner? It was already too late to sign up for that today, although there would be another chance on Sunday. I could go scope out the room where it was held, and maybe leaf through some manga, although they were bound to be in Japanese, which, unlike any self-respecting weeaboo, I can neither speak nor read.
I was in luck. The MangaKissa corner, greeting the visitor with its usual poster in pastel pinks and blues, and offering works from an actual manga library, contains translated (in English) books, with footnotes for jokes that get lost in translation. This gloriously quiet and comfy reading corner had been a staple of the con since forever; why had I never gone there before? Oh well, learned a new thing today.
The procedure, as explained in the con leaflet, is to take a book from the shelf, check it out by scanning a barcode (so the creators can get royalties when their books are read, the librarian explained) and, after finishing it, to hand it in at the library desk. Seating consisted of a number of tables at which congoers were busily braiding strings, a row of chairs, and beanbags. Having missed Hayate, the Combat Butler at a previous con due to technical problems, I was pleased to see the manga here. Hayate is only sixteen, but has years and years of work experience from the odd jobs he has to do for a living because his parents are layabouts and gambling addicts. Santa Claus himself tells the boy at Christmas that there's nothing in the bag for him. Despite his excellent work ethic, his latest boss fires him for not having told the company that he's underage. Maybe crime would pay better? He decides to kidnap a rich kid for a large ransom and tries to lure in what looks like a twelve-year-old, who mistakes his pleas to "run away together" for romantic advances. So he reconsiders his plan, only to be caught up in a rescue operation when she's abducted for the same purpose by genuine criminals. Surprise: she and her staff, which will soon include him, are actually crimefighters. Meanwhile, his parents, who have no compunction about crime, have decided to sell him to the mafia for organ harvest, so he ends up rescued himself, and has double reason to ingratiate himself with this rich girl and her grumpy head of staff.
Oh, and she owns a talking tiger.
Western funny comics can be hard to animate, because static and moving images have different comedic timing. This doesn't seem to apply to funny manga, judging from Hayate, the Combat Butler, and another manga series where the teacher of the school's most underachieving class is an octopoid alien who will destroy the world next year if not killed, and whose pupils are all assassins who he coaches in the art of killing while also trying to raise their marks; both read like goofy animation storyboards. I got more enjoyment, and genuine chortles of amusement, out of the three-volume horror manga Uzumaki, about a village under the evil spell of spirals, where people die of being spiralized or lured into deadly situations through spirals, or turn into giant snails (because snail shells are spirals) that are eaten when famine breaks out, although there's also some mosquito-caused placenta gobbling on the side. Heartily recommended.
Thusly, I whiled away the hours until City Hunter: Angel Dust. The anime/manga series City Hunter is known for its smooth, professional detective and general muscle-for-hire Ryo Saeba, who goes absolutely gaga over any glimpse of female flesh, and his possibly jealous partner Kaori who whaps him with a giant hammer whenever he does so. It's a tired cliche and just not funny anymore, but this film offers insight on how this idiot came by his professionalism.
Three women of the Charlie's Angels type are trying to recover a cassette stolen by a masked figure, but their attempt is sabotaged by the idiotic antics of Ryo Saeba who attracts the attention of security. And there's two gangsters, one a right creep, at an airport, using... drugs?
After this botch job, the Ryo/Kaori duo are lucky to be contacted by a client - a female blogger calling herself Angie, so Kaori immediately worries Ryo will harrass her - asking them to find her cat. Saying she wants to learn to cook Japanese food for her father, the "blogger" moves in with the two. Ryo notices that her missing cat picture depicts a popular 3D cat mascot, and after being attacked by two strangers - the men from the airport? - Angie admits that the cat was a lie, someone is trying to kill her. She also confides in Kaori that she wants to kill Ryo. Kaori seems unbothered, and takes her to a cafe for pancakes.
One of the Charlie's Angels trio runs that cafe, and is furious with Ryo, saying the cassette contained "angel dust mod". Angie has that cassette, and gives it to Ryo. She reveals - here it comes - that ADM is a substance that augments abilities, it is the work of a military official called Mayall who adopted Angie after killing her family, he tested ADM on soldiers and the only surviving guinea pig was Ryo, and Angie wants to kill Ryo to prove to Mayall that she's better than an artificially-enhanced human, and that ADM is unnecessary. But that's not what happens: Mayall instead shoots her with an ADM dart, transforming her into a fighting machine with no control over herself, and as she viciously lays into Ryo, she begs and screams at him to kill her. Kaori agrees that this is the right thing to do, but still calls "Angie! Angie!" in an agonized voice until the fight is over.
Somewhere during the film, it is revealed that some police colleague of Ryo's asked him to take care of Kaori after his death, so that explains their partnership. Post-fight, Mayall wants to put flowers on Angie's grave; Ryo tells him he'd better not dare. The End.
At which point I returned to the hotel to sleep like a rock until Sunday morning, when I left very early to queue up so I wouldn't be cutting in line again. Today's plan: attend kumihimo workshop, then wait until more Goanime eps are shown, then kill time until Promare (seen at AnimeCon Classic 2022) at the end of the day.
For the kumihimo workshop in MangaKissa corner, I was offered the choice of a sturdy large (polystyrene? silicon?) or small cardboard braiding wheel. Buying the bigger and better option entitled me to two lobster claw clasp and ring sets, and two times four lengths of string in any colour. For the first bracelet, I chose shell pink, baby blue and mauve - MangaKissa's colours, as someone commented - and, following instructions, threaded the strings through the bracelet ring and then lodged them in the notches on the wheel's side to keep them taut. I then kept crossing the lengths of string over each other, turning the wheel as I worked, until a colourful thin rope end started forming on the ring. While braiding, I overheard that the real manga library in Utrecht had closed due to COVID and problems renting and staffing the building, but the librarian hoped to reopen it at some time in the future. After finishing the pastel bracelet and starting on a second one in bolder colours, I read the rest of Uzumaki followed by the first volume of Saint Young Men where Buddha and Jesus are young men on vacation in Japan, making the locals stare as the former keeps manifesting mystic phenomena, while the latter's crown of thorns sprouts roses. So many untranslatable jokes. So many footnotes.
Determined to score at least one Japanese meal, I went outside to where a stall served large okonomiyaki with layers of toppings and shavings near the "events" pop-up tents and rows of invitingly empty picnic benches. The benches may have been empty due to a stiff wind that blew away most of the shavings on top of my okonomiyaki as soon as I sat down to eat it. I may have said FUCK.
Close to the time when Goanime series would start airing, on a small stage in the main hall, I watched "Idol Overdose", which was both a one-woman dancing show (she sang once, slightly out of tune) and a workshop on how to chant and wave light batons at an idol concert, because in a regimented society like Japan's, even enjoying oneself at concerts is subject to rules. When it was time, I saw nothing, even after waiting an hour, because I had misread the timetable and was in the wrong room. Angry at myself, I stomped back to the hotel room to consult the timetable before marching back to the right room. It was only because of this that I caught sight, near the entrance, of a perfect (Baldur's Gate 3) Halsin cosplay, complete with staff and oakleaf epaulettes. I was elated. (Later, I read online that this was the work of a cosplayer named "dishycrafts".)
Still, I had missed an hour of Goanime airings, walking in on the end of a Naruto ep where the eponymous hero returns after two years of training with his companions, one of whom boasts having mastered a slightly obscene technique, and is greeted by a pink-haired girl who gets mad at the clueless dolt for not noticing how much more "feminine" she has become in that time. See, this is why I don't watch Naruto. The same two Dragon Ball Z Kai eps were shown again, in reverse order, looking very watery as the video room was one of the pop-up tents, and let in too much light.
MangaKissa Corner was closed by now, food stalls were starting to pack up and as I drifted idly through the con grounds for a third time, my self-pity returned; there had been precious little anime, and what there was had been watched by precious few con visitors. Why did the con organizers even bother with anime anymore, and, horror of horrors, what if they stopped bothering?
Promare, which started an hour late because of a mini-stage that had to be dismantled first, and therefore continued playing for an hour after the con closed, was exactly the same film I remembered from the AnimeCon Classic 2022, with the added observation that the villain who wants to save the world, but only on his terms, reminds me of Elon Musk.
