Chibi Pa 2014

Dagon presenting me with my staff shirt.

Dagon handing Crazed his staff shirt as well.

You tend not to think about the frequency with which you stumble across restaurants when you’ve been in a specific section of your country for a while, with McDonalds and Starbucks at every corner. In the southern half of the US, there’s a cult that becomes neigh unavoidable to join while driving down I-95. And that cult is Waffle House. Making it through the state of Georgia without hitting at least 20 of them is an impossible task. They practically railroad you directly into them. If we were to stop at every Waffle House from the tip of Florida to North Carolina, there is a possibility we would have gotten close to the Mason-Dixon line somewhere around 2083. Unfortunately for them, I am a French Toast kinda guy. And thus, we pushed on.

Florida, it seems, has very little in the way of shame. As we cruised I-95 doing 80+ MPH, colorful billboards lined the streets as frequently as wavering palm trees. Many advertised harmless local businesses, TV networks and restaurant chains promising cheap, greasy meals. Most eye-catching of all were the billboards which screamed “Welcome to Florida”. Those not being related to the Kennedy Space Center, Disneyland or the Ron Jon surf shop. Rather, one consisted of the word “VASECTOMY” and a phone number. Vivid imagery of an erupting volcano ruptured to life on an animated board, displaying the flashing words “SYPHILIS EXPLOSION”. Closer to our destination, a billboard advertised a prominent meeting for Marijuana advocates around the state. Fast Forward to friday night, wherein our waitress at TGI fridays, stunned at our lack of belief that K-mart was a liquor store, said, “All we do down here is drink.” The state of florida’s motto should hereby be officially recognized as, “We give no fucks at this point.”

Not even the weather gives a fuck.

Our arrival was one of little action, as was most of the following morning. We did get to talk to a fellow Tenchi fan, Michael, while we were waiting in line. He had a backpack full of Tenchi stuff we checked out. Without warning, Petrea Burchard had arrived on the ground floor, came up from behind Dagon and gave him a hug. There was a small freakout in the line as everyone realized who had just joined us. We had a short conversation, though Crazed and I were in too much of a shock to introduce ourselves at that time, before she headed off to be ready for the guest Q&A panel. Later on, after Pii had arrived from the airport and we had all fetched our badges, we attended the guest Q&A. We were thrown a shoutout by Matt & Petrea as certain questions threw them for a loop. We’ll have footage of this opening panel up very soon. Longtime fan, artist, and aspiring Mangaka, Jessica, was there to give Petrea an original lineart she had drawn, framed in pieces of the manga. We stood and talked with her and her husband Ryan about Tenchi things, them being big fans of the Hakubi clan, until a man asked us if we were there for the documentary panel.

We shuffled out into the hotel grounds, those of us who were present rolled over to the dealer’s room. There, we found all manner of trinkets, stuffed plushies, imported games, manga, DVD/BRs, custom art vendors, t-shirts, wall scrolls, candy-colored figures, weaponry that is surely illegal in at least half of the contiguous states (but not in Florida, because who gives a fuck down there), and other… unsavory artifacts. Surprisingly little in the way of Tenchi merch, considering the theme of the con was Tenchi. We did find an Ayeka figure, which was claimed by evilpii, as well as the Tenchi Movie Blu-Ray sets, which were generously given to me by Crazed and Dagon after I had retreated to the room to grab something. I cannot express enough how much it meant to me, even if I still feel guilty that I won’t be able to pay off such a thing. Especially considering the astronomical price hikes.

Speaking with Matt & Petrea at the signing was great. They loved interacting with the fans and seeing their reactions to some of the vintage Tenchi merch was fun to watch. We spent almost as much time talking to people who were in line as we did to the two stars of the show themselves. Each of us had a few things that required signing as well, before we backed out to allow them some time to talk to other fans as the line began to grow. Luckily, as we were unloading our newly minted signed merch in the hotel room, we got wind that Who was finally en-route from the airport. We met him in the lobby, kinda soaked in the moment that our entire con crew was finally assembled, and took Who to see Matt & Petrea. Once she saw him enter the room, Petrea instantly rose from the desk and walked up to give Who a big hug. It was a warm moment between two of the sweetest people on the planet, and I consider myself lucky to have gotten the moment on camera.

(Pii, Chuck, Matt Miller, Dagon, Who, Nil, Petrea, Crazed)

After shaking of hands and posting for some pictures, we offered to grab them a bite to eat as we were heading out for dinner ourselves. They’d both said they were starving but still had an hour of signing to go. We took their orders, headed out, and returned in as quick of a time as possible. While I wasn’t in the room at the time the others dropped off Matt & Petrea’s food, I am told that a man sitting near them shrugged his shoulders and said “I’m Darrel.” We’re still not sure who this Darrel guy is, but he seemed to be a fan of TGI Fridays.

The remainder of that night was spent enjoying food, sharing a bottle of Yamazaki 12 Whiskey between us, and enjoying the finer points of Golden Boy. We capped the night off with the first two episodes of Evangelion, a perfect segue into sleepytime. Later that night, hotel guests claim they heard exclamations of “Fuck, SHIT, FUCK,” coming from the general vicinity of our bathroom. I hear the rumor spread through the hotel so quickly that Ghost Hunters have booked the room for their next episode.

Saturday morning started off with a very bacon-heavy breakfast, courtesy of the Sheraton. Petrea had met us at our table to wish us a good morning, and we all headed off to take care of things before the panels we had to respectively attend to. At noon, we attended Matt’s panel. He talked about his experience working with Tenchi, other voice acting jobs, his post-Tenchi career, and his work in theater. The latter of which he’s particularly proud of. We’ll have footage of this panel up eventually. We spent a few hours idling around the dealer’s room and the hotel rooms, meeting Tenchi fans who had seen we were wearing our blue staff shirts that day. It was quite an experience to have people walk up to you and shake your hand, thanking you for what you’ve done. We got to meet Rachael then as well, a longtime fan of Tenchiforum who was very excited to be able to meet us at last. She was wearing Ryoko cosplay, while her husband was dressed up as the ever-lovable Space Dandy.

Before we knew it, 5 PM rolled around. Pii, Who and I attended Petrea’s writing panel. She had talked about her tips for building your story, asked people to describe their story in 3 specific sentences, illustrated her bridge model for tackling story problems, and did an excellent job of incorporating the audience members’ thoughts and plots into examples she had. Footage of this panel will also be uploaded, either onto our channel or Petrea’s. After her panel, we took to the front of the room and began to set up for our own.

It has been many a year since I’ve been on a stage, and I’ll admit to feeling a little nervous about the whole thing while we were driving down, but I felt at home sitting up there with Who and Dagon. We showed off Ai Tenchi, talked about some facts of the franchise, and then moved on to discussing Hasegawa’s novels. Matt & Petrea had agreed to do a reading from the novels, their first time reprising the roles of their characters in a decade, and the first time they’d performed together since 1992. I wanted to read the narration bits, but we only had time for them to read the dialog of the scene, which had hilarious results. Crazed and I cannot possibly put to words how elated we were to have our work read aloud for everyone. After much cheering by the audience, we showed off bits from the translated Tokyo special, gave some closing thoughts and then opened the room up to questions. We got many very interesting questions, and it was a joy to be in a room full of people so passionate about Tenchi. Before we vacated the room, we presented Matt & Petrea with gifts of our own – special wood burnings of their characters. As thanks for all that they’ve done for us and the fans over the years.

Shortly after the panel (which, yes Virginia, will be available to watch soon), we wandered down to the dealer’s room. We had joked about the idea of asking Matt & Petrea to join us for dinner before, but little did we know that they would be fairly receptive to the idea when we brought it up with them. Darrel, whoever that guy is, and the awesome people from the Akira Project, expressed some interest as well. We went up to the hotel room and tried to find a nice sushi place, since the original destination we chose, Hayashi’s, turned out to be an hour’s drive out. Chuck found one, I hastily wrote the address out on six slips of paper, called in a reservation, and we headed back to the dealer’s room. Darrel, the two from the Akira Project, and Matt had decided that they didn’t want to travel too far out, and offered to meet us for drinks in the hotel’s lounge. Petrea, however, was still down with the idea of going to the sushi place. When we mentioned she’d most likely have to hail a cab, she said to us, “I’m sure your van can hold one more person.”

So that happened. As per Yoku’s suggestion, Dagon’s van is now named Ryo-ohki.

We made good time and arrived at the sushi place, waiting on our table we had reserved earlier. Just as we had been seated, Nguyen-Anh and Nova from the Akira Project, zipped into some seats at our table. They decided they wanted to get out of the hotel after all, and used the service Uber to catch a ride to the restaurant. We all ordered, a majority of us deciding to split a large bottle of sake and a dish called “Boat 4”. When the food arrived, it came on a giant wooden boat covered in sushi, sashimi, ginger and wasabi. We all chatted while we ate, discussing Nova and Anh’s love for cyberpunk anime, the story of how evilpii got his name, and Petrea even asking me about my writing. Out of all of the moments one could pick, like film from a reel, of the events of the weekend, that was one of the most nerve-wrecking. What if what I tell her sounds dumb? It probably is. Should I go into detail, or spare her those so I don’t bore her? She was fully engaged though, much to my surprise. We talked about the difficulties of being discovered, promotion, and her decision to create her own publishing company to work under.

Though, perhaps the most intense moment came shortly after. We’d all sort of settled into various discussions around the table, when Petrea spoke out during a lull where everyone sat munching on their expensive Asian dishes. It was only but two words, but we all felt the immediate gravity of the question.

“Why Tenchi?”

We all took a moment, gathering our thoughts and presenting our cases. We’d brought up the powerful imagery, the way the women of the show were different from the popular anime icons of the time, and still to this day haven’t been matched in some ways. By the way some could relate to Tenchi as a young boy with certain problems and interests. The love of the musical choice. The beautiful art and designs. The way the various episodes went. Some liked the comedy more, others preferred the drama that the characters and situations could lend themselves extremely well to. When it finally got around to Dagon, he put it simply. Tenchi, as a whole, is very special. It is the combination of many extremely talented people working together to create a product, and in many ways there were simply intangible elements that those individuals brought which elevated it above all other shows for us.

The rest of the night was spent bouncing ideas and conversation back and forth, before we split the bill and headed back to the hotel. It was a pleasure to hang with Anh and Nova, we were all glad they decided to join us at the last minute. When we got back to the hotel, we retired for the night and relaxed by checking out the con footage we shot and basking in the glow of the fact that we just had sushi and sake with the voice of Ryoko. We all went to bed that night feeling as though we were still dreaming, and that we’d wake up and it’d be Saturday again. Honestly, I think I could deal with Groundhog’s Day if it were on that day in particular. Sunday was a day of cleanup, packing the bags into the van so we could check out, and then checking out the Toonami panel while we waited for the panel we all really came for – Matt & Petrea’s tag-team panel. The footage of this panel is already available in Dagon’s post above. I’d highly recommend checking it out, as the two of them had a great time and there were some great questions posed by the attendees.

After that, we all got a hug from Petrea as a parting farewell, shook hands with Matt and about a dozen fans whom we’d met that weekend, and piled into the van for the long drive up. We said our farewells to Who and Pii, who were headed to the airport for their flights home several hours later. The two gentlemen we met at the gas station were shocked that we were driving from down there all the way up to Maryland/Ohio, prompting them to break out into a song and dance in recognition of the misery we were surely headed straight into. We stopped at Jacksonville for dinner, and powered up through the lower states.

Before we get back to our story proper, I will say this: Fuck the Redskins.

Anyways, there’s a rather threatening element to Georgia and South Carolina, with dozens of abandoned cars lining the sides of I-95. One that sort of makes you realize you’re pretty far from home and there are hundreds of horror stories that start with similar setups. Things got even more terrifying when we stopped at a convenience store to let Crazed use the bathroom. Turning off of the exit, everything seemed rather normal. But once we got off the ramp, the entire place looked like time had forgotten it existed. There was no one visibly in the convenience store, yet all the lights were on and buzzing away. Cheap lighting and a stale scent gave the place a spooky ambiance. We couldn’t get out of there fast enough. A few hours later, we’d fill up at another spooky, empty gas station. Just as Crazed had finished screwing the gas cap on, an automated machine belted out, “PLEASE, COME INSIDE…” which freaked us all out. There is no greater terror than being exposed to an automated, dead America on the side of the highway with nothing but your wits, some $20 bills, and a bag full of signed Tenchi memorabilia.

Once we reached Crazed’s house in North Carolina, Dagon, Chuck and I made a crazy call. We decided it would be best if we B-lined it to Chuck’s in Virginia, that way we’d be all much closer to home and there’d be less traffic due to it being 2:00AM. Crazed’s dad objected, but eventually made us coffee and had us on our way. Big thanks to them for letting us stay over on Wednesday night though. And may Crazed remain blissfully unaware that I totally stole those two hardcover art books before we left.

Fast forward using some Rocket Launcher Space Magic, and by some miracle we made it to Williamsburg around 7:30 in the morning. Our eyes burned, our heads were weary, bodies feeling the full effect of a maddening 18 hour drive. We passed out with little issue. Once Dagon and I awoke, we got back into the van and reached our respective homes.

It was tough to say goodbye to everyone, even if it didn’t seem like it on the outside. I’ve grown to love these guys over the past (less than) year I’ve been here, and finally getting to hang out with them all in meatspace just felt right. There was no awkwardness, no reaching for push-to-talk buttons, just the same camaraderie I come to expect from every normal night. To Who, the sweetest man on the planet. To Pii, the energetic and knowledgeable keeper of information. To Crazed, my partner in crime for the translation work. To Chuck, our Space Battleship Yamato Relations Expert and sociable drinking buddy. To Dagon, our leader and good friend, whom without this would not have been possible. Especially for me, as he pulled out all the stops to make sure I would be able to make this trip.