***Wizards and war machines and weirdoes, oh my***

As stated in the previous blog, we attended the annual Anime Expo in Anaheim, California.

‘Anime’ is, simply, Japanese animation (or cartoons). Don’t let the “big eyes, small mouths” (a legacy from American occupation of Japan after World War II) or their oddly portioned bodies of the characters fool you: unlike most American cartoons, anime shows a broad range of topics from the familiar cutesy furry animals to rated XXX (to put it mildly.) And these topics are from the Japanese perspective and culture. It’s not usual, for example, for the father, mother, and their children sharing the same bathtub or for high school same-sex crushes to be shown (platonically).

The expo opened Thursday night. We purchased our tickets Friday evening. Unfortunately, that’s all we did: R. had been on-call Thursday and couldn’t back into Orange County fast enough due to all the traffic.

Saturday we arrived around noon. There, we split up; I headed for the food court while The Spouse started to check out the booths for purchases.

I have to admit that, overall, I was bored. The booths held little interest for me, selling similar goods. The costumes were interesting but there’s only so many times you can see another Naruto or Vash. And I’ll be blunt: hasn’t anyone heard of deodorant or Acutane?

I know that part of my boredom was caused by the fact we haven’t watched any anime since the contractors redid the family room and we cleared out the furniture and disconnected the HDTV. Yes, we can hook everything back but the room’s not finished. And, unlike R., I haven’t picked up a manga (comics) for months.

I did make a couple of purchases mostly for R., though. And I found some interesting shirts. But, overall, the two days (Saturday and Sunday) at the expo were dull.

(To be continued….)