July 18, 2001 : Wednesday

This year, I was going to fly down to San Deigo to see if was going to be any better that way. It was an early early morning as I got a ride to the airport bright and early in the morning. Boarding was also very routine and the the air flight was kinda uneventful. I suppose the biggest bum job of the whole thing were no stewardESSes. Oh, and what could be said for the airline food? Nothing... Figured as much...

We landed in San Deigo around 9:15am which is still way way too early for anything. I slowly got my baggage from the check which by the way was literally on the other side of the airport! I decided to wait in the hotel shuttle bus area for a bit but realized that this was getting me no where. I am sure the hotel probably does a free shuttle but it is probably one or two times in the whole hour. So, I decided to screw that and go for a cab. I get a cabbie who use to be computer database tech guy who quit his job because he thought he boss was anal. He apparently has spent some time in Vancouver and loved it. So alas, he is working as a cabbie till the next thing comes along. At this point, I can't help to think of Mikal and Daisuke and probably Warren and Vic to a degree in this category.

We arrive at the hotel, the fare was $9.10. Last time I remember doing this stint, it only costed me $6.00. Oh well, what can you do...

I went inside the Embassy Suites Hotel to do my booking but of course, Ed and his two friends David and Kieth were still in Los Angeles and will be detained in traffic till 3:00pm. So I checked my baggage in with the bell hop and decided to go do some wandering.

San Diego is on a whole is a clean city. I don't see much in the way of litter on the street. I only ran across two pan handlers, that is not to say I didn't run into more bums and other rejects but these ones keep to themselves. Other than that, there was this weird wet molding salty smell to the air today. I noticed that there were 3 classes of business down here. Now, if we had to compare, we have our Canada Place Convention Centre in Vancouver, and San Deigo has one too much bigger though... Vancouver has basically Gastown and Granville Street as the main draws for traffic which is basically touristy shops, and malls and corporate stores and restaurants. In San Deigo around the Convention Centre lacks a Granville Street persay.. There is Horton Plaza Mall which has more the Gastown type of stores in it with the addictions of such big stores like Nordstorms and Macy's. But aside from that the districts around the convention centre is warehouses, auto repair shops, mom & pop style resturants/convience stores. Moving towards the big tall buildings, I thought I might hit more bigger and name brand stores but instead I get big huge office buildings for banks, stock companies, government offices but even at around noon, there was little to no traffic walking around. It is like those buildings just off of Granville Street but with even less walking traffic.

Anyway, I did manage to get over to Horton Plaza to have a look around. Just before I headed into the HP, I did notice a small used CD shop across the road. It did have quite a few CDs but the starting price for most of them was $8.99US each. Holy crap, at that rate, it is better waiting for the flea market! I stepped into Sammy Goodie which is kinda like a HMV and Suncoast Video. Prices down here for new stuff is totally out to lunch. For example, Future Shop sells the X-Files DVD box set 2 for $149 canadian (on sale for $119 when it was first released which is when I bought it), Suncoast Video sells it for $169 US. Another example, Hidden Lion Crouching Tiger, sells for $24.99 cdn at Superstore while it sells for $27.99 US at Sammy Goodie. See what I mean? The US, great place to get work, but shitty place to live....

Alright at this point in time, it is around 2:00pm. I figured it would be best that I circuit through Ralph's (a 24hr Safeway thing) and head back to the hotel and see if Ed has checked in. Ok, after wandering around this place, again, the US is a great place to get a paycheck from but holy crap, wouldn't want to live here. I decided to grab a rotisserie chicken, $4.39 US. not bad deal, Safeway probably would have been $5.99. I bought a dozen airline buns for $2.39 US because the loose ones where 43 cents each. Holy man, Safeway and Stupidstore sell them bulk for 20 cents canadian! OK, moving on, I decided to grab some pop, A&W six packs were $1.99 and the Fresca was $2.39 and Sunkist Orange was $1.99 (all with your Ralph card, ahh, a hint I should get one). I already know not to get the Coke or Pepsi, and if I want I suppose I get the Mountian Dew with the caffiene. I picked up a 12 pack of weiners for $1.99 and a mix pack of luncheon meat for $2.69. When I got to the checkout, some old lady in front of me needed to get a Ralph's card, so I said, I would like to apply and get one too. So I filled that out and sumitted it. They are pretty much just like the Safeway Club card.

After a painful walk back to the hotel, because the stupid con shuttle were not working in full swing yet. Those guys still haven't checked in so, I decided to go up to mezzane of the hotel and sit down and eat my chicken. Sure enough, around 2:30pm, Kevin comes upstairs and recognizes me. We got a room on the 12th floor of a 12 floor building....

Well, first thing for me was to crash and get some rest. Ed and gang decided to go out and get something to eat.

Alright, 5:30pm rolls on by. It is time to head down for the Sneak Preview night so get dressed and head down to the con centre. There was no lineup for pre-registration but there was a bit of a line for the con. The line was always moving so that was not too bad.

In addition to the bag of goddies the con gives you I when to the free ad table and grabbed a few more free Pokemon training videos and a few ads for cons happening for my wall of ads. Besides, I need cover materials for customs anyways. heh Heh!

I get into the con floor and I am quickly taken by the immense size of how it has grown. The area usually used for auctions and line ups is now all used up for more booths. If you can imagine this.

Take a typical con isle at let's say Sakura Con. It is basically a bunch of guys with 6 or 8 foot tables along a wall. Now, imagine a wall with 10 or 13 of such dealer tables along it selling stuff. Now lets call this isle 1 like you would at a grocery store. Now imagine something like BC Place or Canada Place filled with 35 of these isles. Ok, that is how big this room is. Well, of course, I headed off for one corner and then started the zig zag through it. I started at 3500 and worked downwards.

Now today I was more concentrating on the things which were hard to get and might not last a few days so I will only mention things I though were of interest today. I will fill in the booth contents Friday or Saturday.

First booth I got to had a whole pile of artbooks. What caught my eye was a Kou Karazarawa (Breast Man's Assistant) artbook. So I picked that up along with some other smutty titles. I left like 3 of them there since they were more of the CG smut game variety so I didn't really care as much for them.

Moving along, I found Steven's booth at Anime Pavillion doing his parade of Cons selling CDs and stuff. I picked up an old AG-40 from him. I also found a both selling number X-files plates for a buck. Sure why not.

I came across Peter Payne's J-list, selling his smut games and smut books. His dojins were kinda lame but he had some Fujimi mangas which were great and I was happy to find a sequel to a teacher smut I read earlier. Click graphic at your own risk....

I came across a both selling some real Japanese CDs for $20 each. He had lots of 3x3 Eyes, Silent Mobius, Sorceror Hunters, Slayers EX and stuff. I did pick up a Cool Devices CD from him. I noticed that Wedge was here with his old art books and some dojinshi. Again, nothing too interesting in dojins and the only book that really caught my eye was a Marriage Book but he had it over priced. The Laser Preception guys were here. I will check their booth later.

I bought the I Want To Be An Angel tape from a new unknown company, Sync Point. I figured they might take a while to come through my distributor in Montreal so I better get it now. Likewise, I will need to go to ADV to pick up shit as well. Looks like they have a full set of Sailor Moon on tape and a full set of Astroboy and a full set of Kimba. Damn.... USMC was probably the best company table since they were blowning tapes out like nuts. They had stuff price way below retail. I will probably pick up some live smut form them since it is below cost.

I also found from media blasters all their smut, but no great discount so no incentive for me to pick it up now. I will just wait for it to come down the regular pipe line.

I picked up 3 wall scrolls at $15 each to help cover my ceiling, Tenchi, Orange Road and .

I found a Pokemon DVD 16 or $7.99 so I picked it up. The losers had the nerve to charge me tax so I paid the 60 cents in pennies.

Other booth that I remember from last year had over priced artbooks and over priced SM CDs had some pencil boards. I saw a steel angel Kuremi one which looks to be drawn by Ryo Ramia for $5.00.

Other than that, the general price for a SM CD was $12-15 US each which is a joke since most places around vancouver sell them for $13.99 cd. The Ever Anime CDs were $10-$15 which is a joke since we have places that gives out 3 for $15 cdn and 3 for $25 cdn including the GST. So no point buying that stuff from US con especially if it stuff that is still orderable... Hong Kong/Taiwan knock off DVDs are showing up in varous booths now too. Same stuff as I already have. The losers here are charging on average, $18 to $25 US per DVD disc as opposed to various places in vancouver which are $15cdn to $20cdn per DVDs.

I also noticed lots of bootleg tape booths. However, upon closer inspection of the titles, they are carrying less and less fan sub stuff and more of the obsure TV and movie and Sci-fi Stuff. I guess the anime community is starting become smart against these kinda of losers. Also, with all the Chinese knock offs coming out, who wants to pay $20 for a crappy tape of 4 fansubbed episodes when that same $20 will buy you a DVD of 7 or 10 subbed episodes? Ahh!!! goes to show that the Americans don't know jack about bootlegging.

Anyway, that about sums up Wednesday's events. I will continue this later as it is about 3:00am in the lobby with only 13 minutes left on the battery. I figure I will go to bed and let this charge. I should have 2 hrs again in time for the free breakfast hehehehe

July 19, 2001 : Thursday

This was going to be a big starting day. I got up at 5:30am, since couldn't sleep, so i went downstairs to sit and type out more of my music cds and type in a bit of this log. The free breakfast wasn't open yet but juice machine worked, and the had set put the donuts and croissants. The other side had all the fruits like pink grapefruit, oranges, bananas, watermelon and cereal. However the 2 choices of cereal was sugar pops and frosted flakes. I sat down with the pops and some apple juice to start.

Went, back to sleep at 6:30am. Slept till 9:00am when the others woke up to get breakfast. I stayed and showered and got ready to go. I got there at 11:00am and all the line ups were all gone. I resumed shopping for things where I had left off yesterday. Again same strategy, run through the rest and buy the good stuff. I can go back and grab other stuff later.

So what good stuff did I get?

I found some guy selling 7 tapes of Kimba for $15 each. I told him that ADV was selling them for $10. so he lowered his price. He also a copy of the Brainpowered 4 I needed. I also doubled back to the USMC booth for the $15 live stuff. So I picked up 3 movies from Kei Mizutani. I also mananged to fined the Dojin 2000 booth selling their usual Sailor Moon and 7 Ballz as well as smut dojins.

I found a Gwar booth so I grabbed a poster for Jude and the artist and voice guy was also there so I got him to sign the poster. I am sure he will like that. Stan Sakai of Usagi Yojimbo had his own booth so, I decided to buy the newest issue that Warren needed and had Stan sign it. Aren't I such a nice guy?!!

I wandered around and found the Image booth with the Tenth comic. Nice cover artwork from this one artist named Lashley. They also did that thing were they put out like 3 or 4 stupid covers for the same stinking issue. So I just bought 1,2,3 with covers from Lashley. I had the guy sign it, who I believe was Park. I think he was a bit pissed off that I didn't buy and of his covers. I might have pissed him off even more if I said, I don't care about the inside, it is only the cover I care about.. or that the other alternate covers sucked. har har.

I also decided to check out the Laser Perception booth. They had a 30% off sale on their old CDs. They had a couple volume 2's that I didn't know about like the El Hazard Alternate 2, and the Devilman lady 2 and the BGC 2040 vol 2. They also had Cashann volume 1 and 2. I will just take 2 for now and see how sthings shape up tomorrow when I hit the ATM.

I finished early and was having no success in finding out where the heck I saw Kia Ayasmiya signing. So I went upstairs to see the autograph session.

I saw the black guy (Herb Jefferson) from Battlestar Galactica, but more importantly, I saw Erin Gray. I got a picture signed by her. She still looks good for someone pushing 50. There were a bunch of girls wearing not much of anything promoting a thing called Babe Force.

Other than that, theere was some Buffy guys and some Babylon 5 guys and some Penthouse pet.

After not getting anywhere with the autographs upstairs, I headed back downstairs. Good thing I did, I found that Christmas Capcom set of 5 figures which Yashika-san at J-Hobby had but he wouldn't sell it. It was only $30 complete.. What a deal!

After a bit more searcing I found that Kia was at the Toy Booth just hanging around. They had a great display of the upcoming Rurouni Kenshin figures and the Berserk figures. They were selling the Kia's Dark Angel figure of Leem but since I had one, I had to pass. Then the guy said, if you buy one, I could get it signed. Ohhh!!! Hey, I will buy a figure if Kia would sign my art book as well as the figure. He said ok, so yay!! Now, I will have an extra leem figure to sell. Oh, well. That is life.

I ran into Derek who was wearing a Professional badge. He said he with his buddies booth, which was somewhere in the 4th (Isle 400) Isle. I tried to find his isle but didn't really see anything special. Either that or I totally missed it.

In summary, I would have to say Toys, Dolls, Sulptures, Petwer and Figurines and Action Figures have really been a dominating thing. It seems just about all major booths are selling these things. If I leave with an impression of what was cool, I would have to say those new statues for King Of Fighters 2000, thos new Berserk Figures, those new Silent Mobius figures and the new Dirty Pair figures. There was also a really nice school girl with gun outfit from Image that looked really good. These were all very nice looking. Of course that is not to say there some crappy ones like those sucky Dead or Alive action figures.

It was 4:00pm and I was in the room sorting all the junk into the suitcase. Making sure I can still carry this crap back and concealing it right. I will head down for the happy hour and grab some rum and Coke and some dry snacks. If the hotel is having all you can drink, gotta take advantage of that.

This evening I was able to get the stuff packed up and organized that I couldn't do yesterday. After packing up 2 comic boxes of stuff, I am starting to realize that I bought too much. This might be fun trying to bring all THIS back on the plane. I better find a real efficent way to squish everything down. I know I can only do 2 check in and 1 carry on.

July 20, 2001 : Friday

Today, I will finish doing my write up for the con floor. I will take me all of today and most of Saturday to finish the floor since it was so large this year.

I will start from one end of the con floor and work to the end, isle to isle. I will pick the top end 3200 going down since the 100's and 200's are artists isles so they don't really count. 3200 is located on the farthest you can go, it is located in Hall C of C. Future expansion renovations to this complex will increase the number of halls to D,E,F,G and H. God, I can't wait to see this place when that happens!!

Isle 3200

Most of this isle is taken up by an Artist Alley, where artists just sit and show off the stuff they have done. Some of it is where the artist auction area. The rest of it is the following notable booths. Yea, a place were Mr. Blah, can show off the fact that he drew some pages for Comic X, but now he is a nobody peddling his sketchbook. Please give me a job. Yea... Pathethic...

Unotainbum - is a place that has lots of cool full sized wearable astronaut suits.

Rhino Booth is in this isle, they sell Card Captor Sakura and Transformers Movies. Plans on making the Battle Of the Planet DVDs. Wow, talk about retro... But it should sell well.

Red Sun has a lot of raw Japanese smut bootlegged on to tapes. Pretty impressive selection! Has the new Pink Pineapple, Green Bunny and etc. I saw the new Kite (Mezzo Forte) thing, More Inju series (lots of Tentacles) and other H game titles.

Hubrock Dusks had some SM CDs in his booth but nothing major.

Isle 3100

This is an isle of more normal dealer tables. These are the ones of particular interest.

Time Soldiers - Lots of Star Wars Figures and display cases for them.

Guilstein - Some sort of anime gore Biohazard like movie with some CG in it. Clips look real cool.

Gremlin Trouble - This is a glorified artist table. They do the weird animal smut. They did have a special issue last year with an anime drawn bunny girl, although time around they didn't have any new alternate anime covers.

Tempered Steel - One of the biggest and first of the many many booths selling metal weapons at the con. I see daggers, swords, rapiers, bokans, sais, axes, and even batlefs.

Jaxion.com - They sell a weird lot of figurines and model kits. I picked up their last Faye Valentine (Cowboy Bebop) and I picked up a set of the Christmas Capcom girls collection, which was at J-Hobby but the guy would not sell it to me. Oh well, his loss and someone elses gain.

Tsuburaya Productions - These guys do the Ultraman stuff series. They even had the woman Hiroko here. So I figured I would buy an Ultraman picture and get here to sign it for Daisuke since he is such a Tiga Fan. I will also point out that she tried to spell your name in Japanese and screwed up the first photograph so she wrote it in English on your second one.

Isle 3000

There was a promo booth for Special Unit 2. Unfortunately, no actors were around to get autographs.

Lord Of The Rings had a promo for the movie and was pushing their card game. They were also handing out flyers for the Spiderman Movie.

There are some light sabre guys again this year. They were doing the interchangeable blades no with different colours. Of course, expensive as hell.

Isle 2900

Tokyo Pop - They were playing some kiddie's version of Bingo using anime characters.

Time Machine - Right in the centre of the floor is a honking huge gold metal thingie. It was the Time Machine prop from the movie.

Upper Deck - They were pushing their Survivor CCG (they were even suppose to have Elizabeth show up for autographs) and their Card Captor Sakura CCG. Hmm.. strange that you would figure Magic The Gathering would be big focus, but it wasn't. It is a dying game anyway.

Emerald Wasp - This is really a Vince and Richard shop. They sell reciplca hand guns and shot guns and rifles with gas, or pellets or BB's. Yup, really promotes another type of NRA.

Laser Perceptions - Right at the end of this isle in a closet like space, they have their original Japanese CDs. Good stuff here, I picked up a few CDs I have a feeling won't be coming out on the SM set

Dr Who Store - just as the store name implies, sells just about everything for Dr. Who.

Isle 2800

Top Cow's booth really is the big booth which starts in this isle. They were quite disorganized internally staff wise. But yes they have some pretty cool covers on some of their comics. My favourite of course is Lady Pendragon

ImagineAsian - is a company putting out calendars and posters of smutty looking asians.

At the end of the Top Cow Booth is where they had a set of 5 posters. Mostly things like Fathom, Tomb Raider and all those other things., I did find the Fathom quite nice so I picked that up for $2.00

If I bought all 5, you get a free mug. Big whoop!

Isle 2700

This is the other side of the Top Cow Booth.

Isle 2600

At the end of this isle is the Gwar booth. Since I knew Jude likes this movie, I bought him a poster from here. The artist was behind the booth at the time so I got that signed. I suppose I could have bought him some of the videos but he probably has them all.

Rubie's Collectables is a kinda neat booth for props and busts. They had lots of plastic and molded busts of guys like WWF Rock, Captain Picard, and Arnie's Terminator. They also had a slightly larger than scale statue of Superman.

Silversword and Stone - This place as the name implies carries more metal bladed weapons. Mostly the medival type. They also seem to carry a lot of the Creative Anachronism supplies.

Isle 2500

Collectors Paradise is at the head of this isle. They have a huge huge display of comic boxes. They had 3 rows of tables. Each row contained 6 of the 8 foot tapes each, plus of course the couple at the ends, so lots and lots of boxes of comics to look through!

Comic Cellar - This place sells Anime artbooks, and they had a pretty good selection of smut ones. I picked up the ones which I really needed earlier. Good thing, because by the time I came back today to scan the floor, most of those good smuts are gone.

Dragon Claw - is yet another booth of blades. This one has more the ornate type of blades. Lots of curves and extras around the hilt. Also carried things like Katanas, rapiers, sabres, and daggers.

In this isle is a booth selling figures. I remember the girl from our hotel. An asian chick, first day was cosplaying as Evangelion's Misato, but today she was Nadesico's Ruri, even with the purple hair wig. She had the G-taste Statues and the Dead Or Alive's Tina statue for $70 each. Memory serves me right, that is the suggested Retail on them from Previews. The G-Taste girls was the Nurse and the Race Girl. They look nice, but I remember seeing them in other booth and I think they are going to solicit them again in Previews so I can order it with my discount. As for the Tina figure, it was her standard silver tattered edge jacket on black outfit. I didn't like the costume or the pose.

Isle 2400

It is the guy they call Storm. He is an old timer just like me to anime. He has a good selection of those really old Roman Album and This Is Animations and Rapport Deluxe Specials for that old crap, like Gatachaman. He has a much larger selection of Dojins this time. Lots of Utena and Sailor Moon smut!

Julio's Collectables had big display of card sets. So if you are looking for cards, these guys had sets and unopened boxes. Of the quick cuff, I did spot cards for Akira, USMC, Slayers, Sailor Moon, Card Captor Sakura and others but I won't get too far.

In this isle is a buy 40 comics for $20 booth. Which is good deal, but in this time and age, nobody really has time to sit there and sift through all the crap to get comics.

Isle 2300

At the front of this isle is the guys who publish the How To Draw Manga books. They also have added art supplies including things like air brush tips to their inventory. So that would be important if I really gave a crap or two, if I had such talent.. In which case, I wouldn't be writing this article or building this web page, I would be too busy drawing the smut you need.

Manadrake - The big Japanese anime chain that does a lot of Old artbooks, Dojins, cells and stuff. They also sold art supplies. Seems to be a big deal this year, art supplies. The most notable thing I saw was the book for Urusei Yatsura TV vol 1. I haven't seen such a book anywhere before. Expensive too, $60, but then again, it is Lum.

The next booth down, I will just nick name the Dollar booth. Why not, they have Dollar stores, why not a booth selling stuff for a dollar. Quite literally, this is what these guys did. A very nice X files numbered and embossed print for buck. Star Wars 3-D mounted and surface framed pictures for $1.00. Ten South Park Stickers for a buck. Whole Boxes of gaming cards for a buck. A 10 pack of comics for a buck. That new Superman with the 4 alternate types of covers, 10 for buck. Pokemon figures and card packs, all a buck.

Cool Things.com - Another weapon monger's paradise. Replicas, air guns and etc. They had a cool, electric full automatic air gun. They even air demo them too.

In this isle, is Storm's buddy. He sells a lot of figures new and old but he is one of the only guys who carries lots of loose anime cards. He had loose, Yuna, Devilman lady, Inu Yasha, Tenchi, Langrissa, You're Under Arrest, Rurouni Kenshin and Silent Mobius cards. At 75 cents each it is a good place to buy those few bunch of cards to complete your sets or if you are like me who would give a flying fuck about the complete set concept, just buy the cards that look nice,.

Isle 2200

Banzai Anime - These guys has some cool cheap stuff. They had the cheap wall scrolls, the sell the HK knockoff DVDs. Which I noticed in their latest shipment had Macross and Gundam Char's Counterattack, so I imagine I will probably have copies of those waiting for me as soon as I get home. Their artbook selection sucks this year and their tapes are still a bit high in price but they had the missing Eatman tape I needed to fix the gap that I had, so I picked it up.

There is a guy selling original anime fan art. Some of the prints were really good. Great jobs on paintings, airbrush work and even sketches. Some artists have talent. Again, if I had that, I wouldn't be wasting my time typing, when I could be drawing smut.

Also in this isle is a private collector building literally a Transformers Army. His table was just covered with transformed toys. Colin would probably go nuts if he met this guy. Unfortunately he has no store and no web page.

Moving along, there was a booth promoing babes, in general. They sold posters, Maxim, Playboy and Penthouse magazines. Unfortunately, no models when I passed by the booth.

Isle 2100

Tony Raiola Books - They guy has an extensive selection of English smut art books.

Media Blasters is in this isle. Nice booth of stuff but they don't offer much of a discount on their tapes.

Tare Bones - another gun shop.

Isle 2000

Harcase Metal Works - sells swords and stuff, but they also sell throwing stars, axes and even a Batlaiff.

Nippon Book Co - which is think is the company that Sophia orders their books from, has a booth here selling artbooks. Pretty nice, and pretty new Japanese art books.

Isle 1900

Body wear Tech - This is probably the cool but stupid fad thing this year. It is small pieces of jewelry like earrings and plugs and pendants and pins that a blinking pattern or light sequence to them. The earrings and plugs are small so they just blink. The more larger and complex stuff has concentric rings which like up in sequence. Oooooooohhh, tacky..

Toynami has a product booth here with all the toys they are coming out with. Some pretty cool stuff here. They have the Nurse Nanako action figures. As well these guys are making Super Deformed Robotech figures. I can't wait till they get into the Tenchi and KOF figures.

Isle 1800

This isle has Animepavillion - this is Steven Lin's booth of SM and EverAnime CDs. He probably has the most complete and best selection of the knock off CD's here at the con. He also has some boards, some wall scrolls and some original posters. But since I saw most of this stuff at Sakura Con so I am not worring about it so much.

At this point I took a break since I bought too much. Hahahaha. But It took me about 3 hours to get this far. I returned from dropping this junk off at the hotel, back at 3:30pm.

Isle 1700

Comic Busters Booth, had a mess load of Graphic Novels.

Endless World Cards had a big booth full of collector cards and stuff. Good if you want to get full set of stuff.

Sun Pacific has lots of Japanese figures and stuff like that. Had both Minmei figures in bathing suit and in singing outfit but he wanted $100 for each. Yea.. Gouge us man.

JHC has lots of the knockoff HK kits. Pretty much the same selection I have seen by online and china town guys.

Nibunichi Anime Club has some of Japanese figures, a couple of toys and a whole wack of cells.

Isle 1600

At the foot of this row is Pete Payne and his J-List booth. Lots of smut games and smut dojins and smut idol books and smut manga. Yup, that about sums it up for these guys. I have been dealing with Pete since the beginning when he was stationed in Japan and shipping back his smut through his mother in San Deigo. I did find quite a few good mangas from him this year. Click the thumbnail with at your own risk....

House of Anime - is a booth that sells the standard fare of SM CDs, slightly over priced tapes (cause who pays suggested retail at a con?) and wall scrolls ($10!)

There is a bootleg tape guy right across the House of Anime guys. He had real anime CDs for $20 however they were lot of Slayers and 3x3 Eyes CDs.

Kinokuyinkiyna Bookstore is in this isle. Sure promoting the Love Hina English Manga and of course their very own Five Star Stories English Version. They actually had a not a bad thing for looking at posters but their booth is really really crowded.

There is another comic booth here that had some idol posters and stuff. They had a thing for Suzuki Ami, Hikaru Utada, ELT, and Ryoko Hirosu.

Bud Plant was at the head of this isle with all there graphic novels.

Isle 1500

Fusion guys were here doing their anime smut. They had fur head pieces and fur suit ups for cosplay stuff. Wouldn't want to where those things cause all the fur would be hot hot hot as hell.

Phil Foligio was here doing a display of his works like Xxenophiles.

TokyoPop had a selection of original manga, books, CDs, DVDs and book and artbooks cheap. DVDs where like $10. LDs went for $10 each, and if you buy one, the second one was free. Newtypes and Animedas, AX magazine for $1.99 each. They had original Japanese music CDs for like half price. Cool booth but they do charge tax those losers. I bought a Pokemon DVD for $7.99 but they charged me 60 cents tax so I paid that in all pennies. Hahahhahaa.

Urban Vision was really pushing their new release of the Vampire Hunter D Blood. Their demos are drawing big crowds.

Isle 1400

GM sales is Mom and Pop store that does comic supplies. I bought my bags and backer boards from here.

Anime Link has some cool poster and cells. They had a few Dojins including the one that I was looking for, the Macross 7 Smut called Voice but he sold it by the time I got there. Damn! But then again, he was chargin $100 for a Macross Poster, and $40 for the Ah My Goddess Movie. This was the place I bought my breast man posters last year.

Animetrix is kinda a weird booth of Dragonball Z merchandise and figures and Gundam merchandise.

Omacha Box sells art supplies, Digi-Carat random character boxes. The Raben Rose looks really nice but I am not gonna gamble for it. They also the guys that licensed the I Want to Be An Angel video.

Heavy Metal the magazine has their own booth at the can this year. Lots of really nice looking posters and of course lots of those collection books and back issues of the magazines.

Radiocomix is here but they didn't have any other good smut manga covers. These guys also do some of that animal smut stuff.

US Manga Corps is probably the best of the all the commerical booths in terms of price and stock. Just about every title in their inventory all dirt cheap. They had tapes for $5, $10, and $15. They had DVDs for $15, and $20. They even had their artbooks but only some of them.

Isle 1300

Suncoast Video and AD Vison has the front of this isle. They had some discount but nothing as big as USMC or even some of the other guys on the floor. Inventory was good though. ADV must have given them a lot of stock at discounted rate just for the con. They were sure flogging that Robotech though. They had some Right Stuff videos but no City Hunter TV and no Nadia TV. What is up with that? Also gives me a reminder to order the Sailor Moon DIC videos of the first TV series. My discount was better than what Suncoast was giving me. Oh, it was nice they also adjusted the price so that sales tax was included in the price.

Comics One - These are the guys who do the Maico 2010 and the Sarai comics. Since I didn't remember which ones I had, I will just reorder these things out of Previews whenever. Besides, they were selling them at SRP. So passe..

Viz had a display only booth here which just showcased their stuff but were not selling anything, kinda stupid. They have a second booth which I haven't talked about yet, but again, they don't sell anything. DUMB ASSes. I wanted to touch up all the holes in my Ranma. Oh well, I never said they were smart.

Antarctic Press is a nice place to go. Ben Dunn was at the booth doing various sketches. I would have to say he looks pretty stressed. They had a nice display of the Manga EX and Hentai covers of stuff.

Blue Box had some real cool King of Fighters 2000 figures.

Isle 1200

This is the centre isle, so lots of space to move in this isle.

Artbox display has lots of Sailor Moon and Power Puff girl stuff.

Del Ray books is here again giving away free books and free pencils. The only main difference is that you need to not only do you have to give them your email address so they can send you junk mail, but they also hole punch your SDCC badge. I guess that is a small sacrifice for a free Star Wars book.

Dark Horse has a nice large booth this year. They had a nice display of some of the models. They had a prototype Adam Warren version of the Dirty Pair. They also had at the end of their display a place to sell some graphic novels but a lot of the larger and expensive statues like the Ghost In The Shell.

DC of course has their huge booth too. But of course, I will ignore them.

Diamond Comics or better known as the Previews booth, has a really nice big wing with a large display case full of the figures. Yes, the Berserk figures are very nice. The Rurouni Kenshin figures are ok but they really don't have any of the characters I care about. Gunsmith Cats action figures look as sucky as they were pictured, however, there is a statue of Rally and Minnie standing on a piece of pavement pointing guns at you (May010096). Now that looked nice! They also just added a Virtual Call figure which they are guessing will have an SRP of $170.00. Bastard figures are very nice looking, of course, I am only refering to the 3rd one of the set Mikal (May010096).

Isle 1100

This isle is all Diamond Comics and Dark Horse.

Isle 1000

ArtFX is has figures for Final Fantasy X and Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust.

Yahoo Auctions.com had a small booth but small by comparison to the Ebay.com booth.

Manga Entertainment table was in this isle. They were pushing Blood the Last Vampire.

Isle 900

Bandai had a rather sparse display of products. They didn't really have anything on display or come to think of it, they didn't have anything to give out either. They did have a Gundam 0079 like shooting game. I didn't ask which system they had it for but it was probably arcade.

Crossgen was in this isle doing Mystic, Scion and Wizard.

Decipher is about only card game booth with their Star Wars games.

Isle 800

Viz has their marketting booth here. Again, they have no merchandise but they do have lots of flyers.

The other big booth here is Marvel booth but like the DC booth, I will ignore them.

Isle 700

Has the other halves of the Marvel booth and Dechiper booth.

Isle 600

Moore Creations was doing all the display for all their statues. Very nice and very expensive.

On a nice note, they did have some small pewter figures of Vamperellia and Maglodonna, relatively cheap, $12.00 to $15.00. The figure that caught my eye is the Aphrodite X figure from Image. Very nice skirt butt shot with a heafty $170 SRP.

Inkworks had a karaoke contest in order to get prizes from their booth. The people who I have watched were ok while another pair was really bad.

Paradise toys is here in this isle pushing their new action figures. They had a lot of Final Fantasy Movie dolls and they had the mock up of what the new anime looking version of He-man looks like. Oh joy.

Isle 500

Spawn.com has a lot of weird monsters. That is the boring part of their booth. It was all the rock stars figures that looked cool. They had the Ozzy Osburne, Metallica, Doors and Alice Cooper.

Derek's booth was in this isle. It was Studio XD which incidently was a bunch of his roommates doing an Image comic, called Last Shot. I got it a poster signed and the comic signed. I was about pay for it but he gave it to me. Thanks Derek. I might add that Dave Ng gave me more info on them and there are more pictures on Derek's Web page at www.syste.ms. I like the one artist, who has the technical aspects of perspectives down pat. The woman also has great skill at drawing pictures using photoshop layering.

Stargate SG-1 booth was here. I was too early for the michael guy here but it was pretty nice looking display.

Isle 400

Dragonball Z collectors cards, Yuna Cards, Devilman Lady cards, and Sailor Moon, and Card Captor Sakura. He use to have a good selection of smut art books but he says that storm is better for that stuff.

The Hyperworks booth is in this isle but of course, since they really didn't do anything with Deity in the last year their booth was not very interesting. They only added 3 more issues of Saint Angel but they did not add any extra covers done by Kia Ayasimia.

Isle 300

There was an X-Box set up beside a huge Sobe booth. I suppose that is ok, but they really needed a better booth to display the system.

The Toy.com both is the booth for all their various figures. In their display case they had Rurouni Kenshin figures, which I didn't like any of the characters but they look alright. They also had the Berserk figures which look very nice. I was thinking of buying the Caska but the face and the pose looks screwed up on her. I noticed that Kia Ayasima sitting behind the counter but this was like 3:30pm and way passed the 1:00pm that he was suppose to be signing. But I hung around the booth and stirred up converstion. I was talking to the guy about the Dark Angel figures. He wanted to charge me $15 US plus tax. I told him it was only $19.95 Cdn at the Virgin Records Megastore.. Then his buddy goes, if I bought a figure now, he would get Kia Ayasmia to sign it. Ah! Opportunity strikes. I said I would buy one and get him to sign it, if he would do my artbook at the same time. He had to ask through the translator but yup! So I got that taken care of and I didn't have to wait through any lines. Of course, now I have an extra Leem figure but I can always sell that.

Animation Master is a computer software that is used to make animations. Pretty cheap at $299 and had some pretty powerful looking abilities.

Giant Robot, this is a giant robot magazine. They do not only the Japanese big robot shows but some English ones too. They were selling a lot of their back issues.

Isle 200

This really only two good booths. The rest of this isle faced the artist alley and had artist booths.

Eros/Fantagraphics was in this isle. Hehehhe. Time to catch up on the smut. I noticed they started a second series of Super Taboo and started new series like Were slut and Slut Girl. What original titles, someone needs to work on their vocabulary.

The second booth of interest is the MMG booth which does the Sailor Moon and the 7 Balls video. They were not selling too many tapes or too many VCDs but they had a hell of a lot of people asking for DVD. They also started carrying a line of smut dojinshis that they translated for $4.99. Pretty cheap photocopies with a standard red cover page. The way to tell the difference between them is the photograph on the front cover. I also noticed they have like 50 issues but there was no real way to tell what number you have on over half the issues. I finally realized there is a picture catalog and list inside the magazine, so I decided to try to buy one of each and sort it out later.

The guy gave me a deal 5 books for $15 deal, I ended up with 35 of them. They also sold some real dojinshis (probably the ones they photocopied) and smut mangas. I had to pick up some of those. These ended up being two very expensive booths for me to walk into. Hohohoho!!   Click these 2 thumbnails at your own risk.

Isle 100

This is more the artist alley stuff here. Lots of miscellanous artists here selling their comics, trying to sell their comics, try to be artists, or just trying..

Trust me, some guys are really good and some guys are... hmmmm..... Lets say, they need help.

July 22, 2001 : Sunday

I was not going to be a fun morning. My flight leaves 6:30am in the morning so I was up and out of the hotel at 4:00am. I was up till midnight packing everything up. Sheesh! However, which much work, I did manage to get 2 very very packed luggages of my stuff, heavy as hell and I am sure over the "limit" but I am glad those had wheels. I managed to break everything else down into one carry on tote bag, including stuffing my laptop into that bag.

There was not very much point getting to the airport so early. I used a cab again to get there, and there was no traffic on the roads and almost nobody in the terminal. The booking agents weren't even open till 5:00am anyway.

Other than the usual number of questions, I got on the plane without too much. The flight was uneventful again. Breakfast sucked, was that any surprise? I arrived in Vancouver around 10:00pm and breezed through customs. Fortunately, Vic was here to pick me up from the airport. That made everything a lot easier with the multiple pieces of luggage.

Well, that about concludes this year at the San Deigo Con. Definitely, want to come back here when they make it even bigger!