Just had the best weekend of my life. The Australian comic/sci-fi/anime convention SupaNova came to Brisbane over the weekend (13th and 14th September) and it went off with an enourmous roar. I think the organisers were a little stunned at the amount of people who turned up for it. Madman and a few other companies like EA made an appearence, and I'm pretty sure they made an absolute KILLING on their merchandise.
They had a few special guests too, including Chris Sabat (voice of Vegeta and Piccolo from Dragonball Z/GT and also the voice director for those series) who is undeniably one of the coolest funniest most kick-ass guys who has ever walked the face of the planet, David Prowse (the guy who was in the Darth Vader costume; a total of 3 actors played Darth. You had Dave in the suit, James Earl Jones as his voice and Sebastian some one or other as Vader with no helmet) and the cheap bastard was charging 25 bucks to sign items, even ones that people had brought along with them. Not cool at all. Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca) was there too, and he did the same deal as Prowse. Whats with the tightarse Star Wars bunch? Bruce Hopkins made an appearence as well (he plays Gamling in LOTR) and he proved to be pretty cool, pretty laid back, not stressed and rude like Mayhew and Prowse....
To fill the two days they had a MadMan theatre downstairs where they screened several anime like DBGT, Escaflowne and .hack//SIGN , and held competitions like Anime Karaoke (I went in that on Sunday but I lost my voice halfway through my first song and commited murder most foul on the poor song [thats what you get for cheering at the top of your lungs in the Cosplay contest, but we'll get to that later] but me and a friend of mine Monique sang DNA [theme song from the Cowboy BeBop movie] and did the song so much justice that people were complimenting us for the rest of the day), Anime Trivia (I was helping out on Saturday, so i couldn't get to do it. But thats a small price to pay when instead you get loads of free stuff and get to rub shoulders with some famous people), and the much awaited Cosplay contest. Chris Sabat also held a talk session so people could ask him questions. That proved to be an incredibly entertaining hour, when he did all sorts of things, including sharing the phone habits of his co-voice actor Sean Schemmel (Goku) (apparently he finds excuses to ring Chris up. These are some examples Chris used - "Hey, Chris!! I'm about to buy a pair of shoes and..." Hey Chris!! I'm about to get on the bus and.....") and even attempted to settle the question as to how old Piccolo is (to which he responded (in piccolos voice) "uhm...uh...carry the one and....don't call me at this number anymore."). The question that got the best response to his answer was my question of "When you're in the booth, and voicing Vegeta or Piccolo powering up, how do you sustain that kind of effort?", and after he answered I said "Could you give us a demo?" which he did, and got a standing ovation for about a minute.
The Cosplay contest was absolutely outstanding; the effort that went into some of the costumes was beyond mortal belief. There were a total of two (2) Vash The Stampedes, but only one was worth any kind of attention. The other guy didn't even go to the trouble of wearing gloves, or cutting and bleaching his hair. Somehow the image of a long brown haired Vash was wrong. He teamed up with my friend Katrina, who came along as Milly Thompson from Trigun, in a costume that, bar the lack of stungun and the fact that she couldn't get her fringe to defy gravity, was almost detail-perfect, and a guy dressed as Nicholas D Wolfwood, also with a cross he had made, and got hundreds of photos taken of them (I'll post them on my website when they get developed tomorrow). Of course there was a great Saiyaman, who had memorised that characters whole speech (WITH poses included, I might add) much to the delight of the crowd and Chris Sabat, who sat in on that I think... There was a Gendo Ikari present too, Neo from The Matrix, Androids 17 and 18 (i didn't get any pics of them; the girl looked pissed off, but not in 18s humorously pissed off way [you know, like "Ha ha ha, I'm gonna snap and pummel the fuck out of you in a second, and it's gonna be so fucking funny"] she was more like "Why am I here? I hate it here, I could be at home painting my nails etc etc etc")
Alltogether, it was an excellent weekend. I'm currently completely hoarse as a result of the Kamehameha competition that Chris Sabat was the chief judge for (he was awestruck; i don't think he expected the Aussies to be as enthusiastic as we were) but happy. I scored a shitload of free stuff (NTSC versions of DBZ movie 8, and the DBGT DVDs Incubation, Creation and Proliferation from the Baby saga), had a good conversation with both Bruce Hopkins and Chris (Sabat), got signatures, got Chris on video (we got him to do a "Tickle Me Vegeta" doll. And I got the whole thing on video
I'll post it up on my site as soon as I capture it to my comp)I'll also upload my photos to my site as soon as they get back from the photo lab and I scan them in. I have one photo that I know Fyrtenheimer will absolutely love.
God-damn that was a fucking excellent weekend.
