May Wrap-Up

Books I read:

Erased - Kei Sanbe

 This book was sooo good! Erased is a manga series about a man named Satoru Fujinuma who has gained the ability he calls "Revival." Essentially, whenever something unfortunate happens near him, he will be teleported back a minute and he has to try and figure out what is out of place. Once he stops the tragedy from happening, he can continue with his life. If he fails, he has to do it over again. After his mom is killed by an unknown man, he is sent back 18 years to save a classmate of his that was killed when they were just kids.

5/5

Farewell to Manzanar - James D. Houston and Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston

This book is considered a classic, and like most classics, it wasn't anything grand. It's based on a true story. A Japanese family that is sent to a Japanese internment camp after Pearl Harbor. The one interesting part of the book, was that every time the book reached a part in the story that the author wasn't sure about, such as their dad's childhood, it switched to third-person.

2/5

Movies I watched:

"What If"

It was weird to see Daniel Radcliffe in a comedic role, but I really enjoyed it. It was a Romcom with a very simple plot, but stupid Americans didn't want it to end the way it did, so they added extra scenes to the end.

3/5

"Lion King"

 Since Kate and I got cast in Lion King we decided to watch it, since it's been a while. I forgot how funny the movie was, and it got me very excited to do the play.

4/5

Other things on my mind:

Lion King Auditions

Kate and I auditioned for Lion King Jr. It was pretty stressful to stand in front of a bunch of kids and sing a song, but we both got through it. She got cast as Banzai and I got cast as Zazu, so it all worked out.

Peter Pan

 Kate and I were in a production of Peter Pan Jr. And it's an understatement to say that it did well. The cast, directors, and crew were all amazing. The sets were phenomenal, and the production quality was great. Kate played Capetian Hook and I played Mr. Darling and a pirate.

Zenkaikon

You can read all about it here.

Zenkaikon 2018

This year my dad and I went to Zenkaicon again, you can see my post from last year here.

-Saturday

I got up pretty early to go, I decided not to cosplay this day. The first panel we decided to go to was all about Anime from the 1990s. It was honestly pretty funny to see what kind of crazy shows they had back then, and it wasn't even that long ago! The dubs were awful, and they didn't even get good voice actors.

After that, we headed over to our next panel. Last year we went to some panels featuring Charles Dunbar. He's this really entertaining guy who talks about all things Japanese. This panel was about the Anime trope of "Magical Girls." Basically, it's your "Sailor Moon" type of character. It showed the effect it has in Anime and Japanese culture.

We headed over to the shopping area after that. We both got some pins, then ate lunch. Nothing special, just a burger and fries.

Next up was a panel about Cosplaying and how it helped this woman with her depression. She brought along her cosplay buddy, which just so happened to be a corgi. It was an interesting panel with a good moral, but it was also fun to watch the corgi sitting on the table.
 
We then went to this really great panel about Rankin and Bass and their impact on the Anime world. In case you don't know, Rank and Bass created such films as "Rudolph", "Santa Claus is Coming to Town", and all those animated "Lord of the Rings" movies.

We headed over to another Charles Dunbar panel all about Yokai. Yokai are those weird ghosts and spirits in all of those legends and stories you hear about, in Japan. Something I found interesting, was that there is a story about a girl that died in a bathroom, and now she haunts it as a lonely ghost. The bathroom stall and floor were the exact same as the ones from Harry Potter, meaning J.K. Rowling based Moaning Myrtle on this Japanese Yokai tale.

We headed home after that.

-Sunday

We woke up a lot earlier on this day. I cosplayed as Blake from RWBY, which was my Halloween costume this past year, and my dad went as a Military man from Fullmetal Alchemist.

The first panel we went to was about rage quitting in games, and how developers have to create a system that works around quitting. He used lots of examples from competitive Overwatch games, which is pretty fitting. I know first hand how it can be.


The final thing we went to was autographs with two voice actresses from the Anime "Dragon Maid." I really enjoy their characters in the show, so it was really great to meet them in real life!

This day was a lot shorter, so there wasn't as much to do; but we still had fun.