More Anime Expo

[avram]

I got up around noon, ate, shaved my head (might be my last chance to do so conveniently for a few days, depending on what horrible things are going to be done to my bathroom), went to the gym. Still takes for-fucking-ever. It was 4:30 before I was back home, and I wasn’t sure it was even worth the trouble of going back to the Anime Expo.

Turns out it was. I got there around 5:45, got to spend twenty minutes in the dealers room (no line this time), picked up an absolutely gorgeous book of Clamp artwork (North Side), learned that the Cowboy Bebop t-shirts in my size were long gone, and that imported Japanese soundtrack CDs generally cost much more than I want to spend. Also got freebies — the preview issue of the English translation of Shonen Jump, two copies of an issue of NewType USA. Yay, pelf!

Then I wandered. While yesterday I was unable to hook up with anyone I knew, today I ran into four separate groups/individuals in pretty short order. There was Fred in the “Dubs That Time Forgot” video panel, then Tintin (who I mentioned yesterday, the woman I met at MoCCA) on line for the masquerade, and then Q at a different point on the masquerade line, and then ladymondegreen and friends in the masquerade audience.

I hadn’t originally been planning to see the masq. You needed tickets to get in, for one thing. Free (with expo membership), but you had to have gone and got them, and I hadn’t, because masquerades aren’t really my thing. I told Q I didn’t have a ticket, and was going to wander off to the videos, and she pulled a pair of tickets out of her pocket, tore one off, handed it to me, and said “You have one now. Sit down!” And I’m grateful to her, because the show was amazing. Not only were the costumes really good (and Q explained the many references I didn’t get), but during the judging they showed some anime music videos, and they seriously rocked. The two best both used Cowboy Bebop footage. One used Kylie Minogue’s “Can’t Get You Out of My Mind” to make Faye appear to be singing a torch song to Spike, and the lipsinking and choices of footage were really good. The other used “Tonight”, the climactic medley from West Side Story, giving the various parts to Jet (of course), Vicious, Faye, Spike, and Julia, and it was hi-fucking-larious.

It’s a bit odd how fans seem to have projected into the series a romantic attachment between Faye and Spike that isn’t there; some of the masquerade skits were based on that premise, as well as the first video. No odder than slash fiction, I guess.

Comments

Otakugeekery from BSD (Hideous Bebop Spoilers!)

[(Anonymous)]

I missed AXNY for my sister's Bat Mitvah:

On Cowboy Bebop:

That's correct, there's no actual attachment there. There is, however, the point towards the end where Faye reaches out towards Spike (right before he rides off to Julia & Vicious), and he turns away from it, with the implication that perhaps if it weren't for Julia...

I think one of the issues the show's creators are giving us is this: In some sense, Faye and Spike are meant to be together (in the destined romance across time sense...), but because Fay is unable to find a single state in which she can be happy (having transformed herself into a sort of Romani in spirit if not blood), and Spike is caught living in the past which he will not walk away from, there's no hope for them at all. They get occassional moments of connection, and one of them always breaks it off. The one really obvious moment, of course, is the start of the end, in which Faye has just recently uncovered her past (resolving her issues, in a sense), and is able to actually reach out to him, only to have him turn away because his past is still alive, kicking, and calling for him at just that moment.

(The show is all about pasts: Spike is stuck on his, Jet has turned his back completely on his, Faye can't remember hers, and Ed & Ein don't have pasts (Ed has conflicting narratives, Ein has a few weeks in a lab). At the end of the show, Ed & Ein have left (towards Ed's past that has the most outside corroboration), Faye's found her past, Jet's fully made peace with the people and things he left behind, and Spike, well, Spike puts and end to his past rather firmly.)