William Chow's Personal Web Page
The year is 2007.

Below I have some of the photos of great times that were had. Feel free to click on the thumbnail to enlarge it.

Anime Evolution 2007

This year my participation in AE much like 2006. I have a dealer's table with a crap load of stuff from my own archives and from my old store Anime Jyanai. After the dealer's area closes, I have to rush over to do a panel and set up the Karaoke room for a night of singing. My karaoke server has been beefed up since last year with the aquisition of an official 400 disc set of Japanese Karaoke from a Japanese Karaoke box that closed down in Japan. So armed with almost 10000 songs in the database this year, I was ready.

This is my story.
Thursday, August 16
Today is moving day. At 8:00am in the morning, I got confirmation of our Penske five ton truck rental. I had to work this day so I am unable to begin loading it until 5:00pm but that was ok, since the dealer's area wasn't ready until 8:00pm.

I got the truck at about 6:00pm and we begin loading. Wow, some 60 boxes later, the entire bed of the truck was filled two box layers high, at least, and we still had to load up the Para Para Machine.

We made it up the hill around 8:00pm and began unloading the Para Para Machine. In the admist of all this was the masquerade ball dance up in convo mall. An interesting twist to this year's convention, as it gives people that one extra thing they can do. I am sure happy to have a heavy hand cart this year because even when we got about 10 boxes on the cart, it still took 6+ trips back and forth to unload the truck. Anyway, we got off the hill around 11:00pm for a bite to eat at Boston Pizza. I got home at 1:00am to go to bed.
Friday, August 17
First day of the con. The dealer's room is opened at 11:00am, but none of us were really ready for anything. DVDs were the best sellers as always, and the old VHS tapes were popular as people were able to grab classic animes like Kimba The White Lion for under a dollar.

I was also handing out for free, many of my VHS tapes. Some included my master subtitling tapes for the anime I fansubbed back in 90's; my linear editted AMVs collections, Japanese TV tapes from Iwase bookstore and Konbiniya, and stuff recorded off TV from the 80's. This was like getting something from a time capsule in history.
It was a busy busy day. I didn't have much to eat except two bottles of Coke and a Snickers bar. I am just running on sugar and andrenaline from 8:00am to 8:00pm. I will end up getting some weird bowl of chilli and rice at about 11:00pm but otherwise, zero nutrition.
Karaoke started 8:00pm right after the Zillionaire game show. Again, they didn't give me a full hour to set up but I made do with what I had and actually got everything working without a sound check. The room closed at 12:00 (midnight) as SFU A/V services had to shut the projector down for a cooling period. We also were a bit constrained due to the fact that there was some kinda final exam in progress till 10:00pm nearby. Oh well, the show goes on.
Saturday, August 18
Waking up at 9:00pm to go back up the hill for a 10:00am open. Another good day at the Dealer's Room. This time I actually got a Chicken Wrap Snack in for a lunch and more pop again.

I did a panel of the history of anime in Vancouver. It was very educational and well received.

It was 8:00pm and I just finished my panel and I had to rush over to begin assembling the karaoke. It was a rough start as I ran into a technical issue with the microphones. But we got started.
Our setup with a load of equipment, a spider web of wires and only 30 minutes to set it up. Oh fun! Our first contender, (victim), (sucker).

An audience favourite, Jesus, came out with a strong version of "That's Life". This person had the most accurate Japanese performance, as he did "Winter Fall" by L'arc-En-Ciel. Unfortunately, he didn't enter to win prizes.
An impressive sing-a-long version to a Gundam song. The only flaw was he chose a vocal version of the song. Our lord Jesus doing the karaoke favourite, Queen's "Boheimen Rhapsody".
The dancing troop of girls came up to do a completely unrehersed routine. A perfect example of how those horrible out of sync dancers look like on Japanese TV too. And just like in Japan, the audience loved it; however if this was "America's Got Talent", I would have X'ed them. The winner of the Best Male performance, Hector Ducay. He has a powerful multi-range voice. He was able to adlib and create his own versions of the songs like a true karaoke singer.
I award the best duet to this pair, for their version of "Crusin'" by Huey Lewis and Gwenth Paltrow. The woman pictured here would have also been my choice for Best Female singer, however, she didn't enter the contest. Here is my choice for the runner up for best female performance, with her version of "I'm Like A Bird" by Nelly Fertado.
This is my choice for the runner up for best male performance with "My Girl" from the Temptations. Hector is here doing his strut to liven up the crowd. Here is my choice for best performance of an anime song. He did the OP song for Saint Seiya and the ED song for His & Her Circumstances. He didn't enter the contest so he didn't win. His vocals weren't the strongest or even on key, but they were his voices, and he chose songs with no vocals.
Here is Troy bringing on some classic head banger metal with "Immigrant Song". Here is an all girl group doing Celine Dion's Titanic Song, "My Heart Will Go On".
The cross player who sang the Leon song last year returns again with a volley of Beattles songs. Not to exclude boy bands, these guys try their version of the Backstreet Boys.
A girls version of "What's Goin' On" A try at "Whole New World". Not too bad, but I think they forgot who was suppose to be the guy singer and the girl singer.
Summary
Well, it is a con after all. Still lots of running around, standing up all day in the dealers room, not much food, lots of sugared drinks, and running on adrenaline all day, and for 3 days! Thanks to my wife for the support, I actually got some food. For her to endure what an otaku goes through for these days is remarkable amount of commitment. The dealers room was a success for me. It made me enough to take care of a new bed, dishwasher, and a kitchen make over from IKEA.

There is still stuff for me to sell next year, and I will be finding new things to add. Likewise, I will be working all year to beef up the English song selection, and maybe even the Chinese side for the karaoke next year.