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Phoenix Feathers is updated every Tuesday and Friday

MinamiCon was *fun*. We saw a lot of new things but there were a whole lot more we didn't get to check on. I'm not sure what the best new thing we saw was but I would have said the top two candidates have to be Mahoromatic and Read or Die. As well as these, we saw DiGiCharat, Inu Yasha, Angelic Layer, a bit of Noir, Risky/Safety, Mirage of Blaze, and a whole load of music videos which were used as filler material.

Mahoromatic is about an android (who is also a cute girl - funny, that) who is relieved of service with slightly more than a year to go before her system shuts down. She chooses to be a maid to a boy whose parents are both dead. There's history behind the choice and potential for more plot, but for the episodes we saw (1 - 6) it is a cute show that very much resembles Love Hina and Hand Maid May but is (in my opinion) better than both of them. It's made by Gainax, who also made Evangelion and Kare Kano.

On reflection, I think I like Read or Die better. Yomiko, the main character, is a part-time teacher and a special agent for the Royal British Library Special Operations Division (after seeing the 'Royal Protestant Knights' of Hellsing, I sometimes wonder what image the Japanese have of Britain!). She is a total bookworm. Her room resembles a library except that, as well as the bookshelves, she has waist-high piles of books on the floor. The book shops around her home have her picture on the wall with 'Very Important Customer - please smile and say hi to her' underneath them. Her 'battlecry' is 'please give me back my book'. The plot has a couple of holes in it but it's not hard to suspend disbelief and it's really, really good fun to watch.

What else happened? DiGi Charat happened. 5 minute-episodes and total insanity. We watched the lot and my brains escaped partway through the second showing. It's excessively cute. We watched a new dark shoujo-type anime that only aired in January (Mirage of Blaze). We - well, I - made a fool of myself in the karaoke. We watched the masquerade and I swore (again - I did this after AnimeCon UK) that next con I'd put a costume together. We now have the full set of NieA_7 episodes on DVD and a DVD of Utena (number 2 - once we have number one, we'll have the whole of the first story arc. I'm wondering how evil we can be about showing it to people and then leaving them after the first story arc knowing there's more - but we haven't got it. Nyehehe). Next on the list is Read or Die, and Yami no Matsuei, and Hellsing. I don't think any of these are actually available on DVD yet. I have tried - and failed - to persuade Moonshadow that we don't need the DiGi Charat DVD, so at some point I expect that'll turn up on our shelves.

And the whole thing was fun - being with other weird people with similar tastes, and scaring the hotel staff (this was the 8th MinamiCon there and they are probably used to anime fans by now :) Seeing friends there (and my sister, randomly, on the way home) and buying stuff. The atmosphere was wonderful. In the unlikely chance that anybody who was on the committee is reading this, thank you for all the work you did, because I thought it was a very successful and enjoyable con.

We're coming back next year - nyo ^.^

- Sun Kitten, 4.3.02

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