I AM DETECTIVE CONAN

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More of that right place/right time bullshit

"Well you're art, you fell into this part."

I yawned silently as the five screens in the studio blipped down from three to two to one, and the sketched stills played chronologically while a group of asians screamed over-dramatically into tall microphones for the voice-over of the finale of the new hit anime, Shangri-La.

I guess I should start from the beginning.

A few weeks ago, I decided to help Diana go pick out a cosplay costume for our trip to Comiket, the world's largest anime convention, to take place the following weekend. Since Atsushi has the hots for her and was taking us to Comiket anyway, it only seemed fair that he should come. And since Yohei is Atsushi's BFF and they are GAYFOREACHOTHERattached at the hip, it seemed only natural that he should come, too. I was under the impression that all my bitterness had since dissolved away, leaving a clean slate and the basis for our previous happy, platonic relationship with each other to develop and grow. Of course I was more than wrong, and upon seeing him at the station gate I immediately began fuming, shoved my headphones into my ears, and didn't say a word for 5 hours. Yohei was more than confused at this response, and confusion turned to frustration, which turned to anger. What was previously a lively friendship had turned to angry, blatant disregard, and the awkwardness radiated throughout the shopping center in Nakano in which we were searching for cosplay costumes...which ended up being a total bust anyway. At one point we both made aggravated noises and walked in opposite directions, during which time I was tapped on the shoulder by a short, stout woman with a messy bun and glasses brandishing a clipboard and an enthusiastic smile.

"Speak English??" she asked. 

"Uh...yeah, totally."

"Can help with survey??" She shoved the clipboard in my face. I looked behind me to see Yohei sauntering off into some action figure store.

"Sure, you bet!" I grabbed the pen and started filling it out. It seemed pretty standard at first; "name", "sex", "age", etc.. I figured it was a foreigner survey to see how many signs they need to translate into English or something. Then I got to questions like "favorite anime" and "favorite characters to cosplay". She tried desperately to speak to me in Japanese, but considering I have the speaking skills and comprehension of a 4 year old, I was having a seriously hard time understanding what she was saying. Diana and Atsushi came over to help me. It turns out that she was from Gonzo animation studios, which is working on putting out an English language guide for foreigners. The survey was to poll overexcited tourists like ourselves about what we would want to know the most--where to find rare action figures, where the manga museums are, what releases we'd like to see in English, etc.. She stayed and talked to the three of us for a long time--at which point I was sort of dying, because my super-sexy high heels which were totally doing their job had also cut off the blood flow in my body--and got so excited about finding foreigners interested in anime that she gave us business cards and we exchanged information.

The rest of the day was melancholy and retarded. Although excited about meeting our portly proprietor, I was still pissed off at Yohei because...well, because. After I raped his ice cream cone with my spoon things mellowed out a little, and by the end of the day--aka when I made Diana leave early with me--things were almost back to normal. As much as I want to fucking hate his guts, I find it hard considering all the help he's given me. The links to auditions, producers' business cards, the fact that he stayed up all night talking to me and translated my entire biography. Also, I hate to admit that I'm one of those people, but that fact that he's an asshole sort of makes him more attractive to me. And by sort of, I mean it does. I'm doomed to a life of misery and spousal abuse.

Anyway, on a lighter note, the next day--or a few days later, I can't remember which--Diana, Atsushi and I met up with this woman (I can't FOR THE LIFE OF ME remember her name, although I have her business card somewhere--I'll just call her Gonzo-san) at some obscure station off of some weird underground metro line. She took us through these weird, winding back roads to an unmarked building, chatting with us in Japanese the entire way. I could only understand 20% of what she was saying at best, so I mostly just worked on trying to pop the blister on my middle finger. Gonzo-san led us into the studio and introduced us to Yamamoto-san--was it Yamamoto-san? Well, it is now--a short, shy-looking dude with hair in his face who didn't seem very enthusiastic about leading foreigners around his workspace. But he did anyway. He had some kind of important job because his desk faced all of the others. He took us around cubicles and cubicles full of towering stacks of disheveled papers, jars of pens and pencils, references, rulers, and half-eaten pizza crusts. A handful of artists sat at their desks, feverishly sipping diet cokes and sketching like mad, tracing and re-tracing lines like you'd see in the "behind the scenes" portion of a Disney cartoon DVD. I couldn't really understand what this guy was saying, either, but apparently he is sort of a project overseer, and double checks all of the animation that goes through production for the DVD release. Which is really hard, and really badass. We were too in shock and he was too quiet and twitchy to really say much after the tour, so he just popped in a DVD of Shangri-La--Gonzo Studios' current production--and we watched the raw version of the show, some in color, some in rough black and blue sketched lines. I had never heard of Gonzo Studios in particular before, but I think anime is wicked, so it definitely blew my mind. 

After that, Gonzo-san led us out of the building and we went back to the train station, taking some obscure train to some other obscure place and waiting in a burger joint in the station until receiving a call from the other person we were supposed to meet up with. All of these descriptions are very vague because I am not fluent in Japanese, and during 98% of this situation, I had absolutely no idea what was going on. Gonzo-san kept trying to communicate with me, asking what my goals and interests were, and Diana definitely helped as a translator, but overall it didn't really work out that well. So we met with Oizaki Fumitoshi, another shortish dude with scraggly facial hair and a nervous smile, and he led us to some underground super-Japanese style restaurant where you take off your shoes and sit on the floor and they shut you in your dining area with sliding doors. I was really tired, the lights were really dim, and when people got to talking in an excited manner, I couldn't understand jack shit. As fascinated as I am with anime, and the Japanese language, you really just get to a point where you are so mentally exhausted from trying to figure out what's going on all the time that you just sort of shut off. So I shut off, everyone continued babbling as cocktails and food arrived, and I entertained myself with jacking a fancy chopstick holder. 

What I gathered from the insanely rapid babbling coming from all directions around me is that this guy also worked for the studio, and he was an overseer from another, more important division. I also think he went to Istanbul at one point. But fuck if I know. I was as interested as one possibly can be while staring at Telemundo on channel 7, squinting into the television trying desperately to figure out what's going on on ¡Sabado Gigante! because it looks like so much fun. It was more or less a lost cause, however, and I was ultimately just satisfied with being in the same room as someone important. 

He paid for our dinner, which must have been exorbitantly expensive, and Diana and I asked for his autograph. He laughed nervously, and sketched a perfect little frog onto the piece of cardboard we gave him. He scribbled stuff down in Japanese, signed and dated it, and I was very happy. Just about dead from all the exercise my mind had had, I stumbled out of the restaurant with everyone. As they were talking, I looked up and noticed, in a daze, that the little frog Oizaki-san had drawn on our board was represented on a huge scale in full color on a massive billboard facing the main street. I blinked, and we all walked back to the station.

I didn't realize the gravity of the situation as it happened, of course. But afterward, it was too late. Not that I would have changed my actions in any way had I known that Gonzo studios produced my two favorite series' of all time, Hellsing and Gurren Lagann. I love anime very much, but I'm not a super hardcore freak about the mechanics of it all. I love my anime, and I want to watch it and get meaning out of it. If I get to go behind the scenes and see how it's all put together--that's cool, too.

Suddenly, Comiket!! The world's largest anime convention. And this is no exaggeration. Upon arriving in Odaiba at around 10:30am, we waited for three hours in a seemingly endless line with a sea of literally 50,000 other people waiting to enter the convention. Which was mostly outside, considering there is really nowhere big enough in Japan to shelter 50,000 overenthusiastic anime nerds. Diana was dressed in red lolita, and I was dressed....well, normally. But I guess on the street you'd consider it goth or EGA. Plus, it gave me a (very warm) excuse to wear my black jacket with tails. Of all the world's events I might expect to be a disappointment, I never would have thought Comiket would be on that list. But it kind of was. Not in the sense of scale--good lord, there were so many amazing cosplayers and I have NEVER in my life seen so many people in one place. But there were no concerts, no raves, no panels, no viewings, no guest speakers, and worst of all, no real dealer's room. Diana and I couldn't figure out why there wasn't a dealer's room until we realized....fucking duh. There isn't a dealer's room because in America their purpose is to sell you things you can only find in Japan. But this is Japan. Same for the lack of Japanese rock artists. The only merchandise there was were goods sold directly from anime distribution companies, who each had their own booth, and doujinshi. Endless, endless doujinshi. For those of you unfamiliar with that term, what it basically is is a comic book drawn by fans of an anime that's sort of a "what if this happened" indulgence that can go anywhere from raging all-character-inclusive-orgies to creating new characters and killing off the old ones. They are essentially fanfiction, and although amusing, I don't take much interest in them. So we spent the majority of the day taking pictures of cosplayers, as well as unexpectedly getting our pictures taken. After we posed once, there was a huge line of people with cameras waiting to take pictures of the wacky gaijin dressed up in silly costumes. 

We met up with Gonzo-san again, who recruited us as her lackeys to go off and solicit English speakers with the very survey we had been reeled in with. The three of us ran around for hours, meeting dedicated cosplayers who had come from America to dress up in Hetalia and Final Fantasy garb, to a group of long-haired Irishmen who just sort of accidentally wandered in. We gathered about 30 or so surveys, and at the end of the day Gonzo-san patted us on the head, told us that we did a good job, and told us to meet her the following Monday.

That Monday--today--I dragged my ass out of bed to meet with Diana and Atushi at Yotsuya Sanchome (what?) at 10:30 so we could get to the studio by 11. I had no idea what to expect--Gonzo-san tells Atsushi where we're going and what we're doing, and Atsushi only tells Diana and I where we're going, and sometimes I only know when we're meeting, so every day is a mystery. 

Yamamoto-san greeted us at the door and led us down into the basement. My eyes lit up as I recognized the environment immediately--a beautiful dim, sleek, recording studio. I was under the impression that we would be watching a screening or getting DVD coupons or something. I held a weird contorted face of silent confusion and joy as they led us to a row of seats in the sound booth in front of the tech equipment, a pane of glass the only thing separating us from the voice actors and their career in motion. I had marathoned as much of Shangri-La as I could (illegally on the internet) the previous night to become more familiar with the characters, and I'm glad I did. They slowly filed into the room before us, sitting down and cracking open water bottles and unwrapping lemon lozenges. It was a trip trying to figure out who voiced who--who voiced the the little girl, who voiced the transvestite, the serpent, the lackey, the evil villainess. Eventually, their work started, and the countdown on five big screens in front of five microphones led into rough sketches of Shangri-La's final episode. The voice actors and actresses followed along on their scripts, cued by a tiny blip on the screen with their character's name and a vague idea of what would be happening by the sketched stills. It was absolutely amazing to hear these people belt out the most wrenching lines with ridiculous effort to a linear series of sketches. The amount of talent in that room was beyond unbelievable. Because it was the last episode and every character was involved, almost every member of the voice acting cast--30 or more people--silently rotated around the microphones as they worked. One character would scream a line into a mic, then move quickly away to turn the page as another character moved in to take their place for their own line. It was like clockwork. Every one of these people went to school for years and years to develop and hone their voice acting talent for something like this, and it was incredible. Among the cast of characters was a tall, extremely good-looking man voicing Medusa, named Tetsuya Kakihara--

the voice actor for the main character, Simon, in my favorite anime,

Gurren Lagann.

I gushed blood from my nose and ears and eyes and watched in tired awe for the short five hours or so it took to record the episode. 

I was very obviously spoilered to hell as far as the ending goes, but it was worth it. Being in the studio on the other side of the glass with the live actors right in front of me was like watching a really bizarre play....where the actors are all over-dramatic, don't move, and you can only see the backs of their heads.

I still can't really believe that I got to watch a piece of history that will be made and taken to heart and cosplayed, something that will go on to affect so many people the way that Gurren Lagann affected me. What a fucking trip, man.