Bad news, people. I managed to lose the envelope with everyone's pre-reg money in it. If you could all re-send your checks....

Okay, bad idea for an April Fool's joke :) The group pre-reg was sent out on March 29th, so we're all set. If you didn't get in on the group pre-registration, you're on your own, but remember that the deadline for the $32 price is April 15th. After that, the price goes up to $35 for payment before the con. At the door, the three-day pass will be something like $40.

The Westin Has SOLD OUT! If you haven't reserved your A-kon hotel room yet, you'd better get on the ball and get that taken care of. To the best of my knowledge, almost all the Heretics who've gotten rooms already are going to be in the Westin, which will contain primarily panels and the Dealer's Room. I know of one group that's planning to host a private party (Heretics, and invitees only), with plans to have a keg there. If you do go, and plan to drink, please do so responsibly....having someone get sick takes all the fun out of a party. In my room, we plan to hold our Friday night showing, with a twist that we'll be showing anything people picked up at the con, not whatever happens to be on the schedule. After that showing, I think it'd be fun to go hunt down room parties as a group :)

Don't forget to get your Anime Heretics t-shirts in time for the con! You can pick them up at http://www.balorn.net/ah/store/ Let's show some group unity this year!

If you haven't already signed on the Anime Heretics mailing list, send a message to majordomo@lists.io.com with a message stating:

subscribe ah-l

...and send it off! You'll get a confirmation e-mail to reply to, and you're all set.

Well, that's about all I have to say this month....enjoy the articles!

A Look Back at Fifteen Years of Madness and Adventure

by Scott Frazier

"Two roads diverged in a wood, I took the one less traveled by, and that made all the difference." -- Frost

Last month, Scott went to Japan with an animation tour, suffered the culture-shock, and decided to apply to animation school and move to Japan. And now, the continuation....

Lemony Fresh

While I was waiting for the school to admit or deny me, I was still very active in anime fandom. I formed the infamous Lemon APA (based on a joke on the way home from the 1986 Dallas Fantasy Fair). It seemed to me that there were obviously fans of erotic animation and manga but everyone was so uptight about it, not wanting to say they were interested at all and hiding it that I wanted to do something out in the open. Something that would how that people who like such things don’t have to be sleazeballs and disgusting and that the views and interests of such people could be exchanged in a reasonable and intelligent manner.

Originally it was going to be a local APA but word got out and I got submissions from all over the place. I had even more people who wanted to buy copies but I was adamantly against that. I wanted people to contribute--to be a part of the thing.

YES!

Finally, I got a letter from the school stating that my application had been accepted and I could start school in April. I sent some more information and they sent some more and they got me the necessary visa and they sent me a photocopy of an apartment catalog with one highlighted and they wrote out how much it would cost to move in and all.

I raced around gathering things and money and finally on April 16th, 1987 I moved to Japan.

My New Life

My new life got off to a not-so-good start when I got to Narita airport and discovered that all my luggage had been lost. It took them two hours to figure this out. The friend I had waiting to pick me up at the airport thought I had died.

We took the slow train into town and she showed me on a map where to go and what train to take. I tried to remember it but I was dead tired.

I was finally in Japan though! Who cares about little details like that? It was a real rush. I went out on the streets of Shibuya and looked around for a few hours. It wasn’t quite the shock that it was before but it was still pretty strange. I was alone this time. No backup.

The next morning, after getting terribly lost and having to take a taxi, I finally got to the school and they told me where the apartment they had arranged for me was and that I should come back the next day. After a long and exasperating trip, I finally found the apartment house. It was called Tama Esty and was right on the bank of the Tama river where the Odakyu line crosses it, a very lovely area which I would like to move back to someday.

I went into the office and discovered that nobody there understood English. Uh oh!

I was extremely lucky that the one tenant who spoke English happened to come into the office right then. Turned out that the school had found the apartment in a catalogue and sent me the listing but never bothered to check on the availability of rooms there. Yet more luck happened my way and there was somebody who was just moving out the next day. I had checked out of the hotel in Shibuya, thinking that I was going to be in an apartment that night. (It was lucky that I didn’t have my luggage then!) The apartment manager introduced me to a ryokan (traditional Japanese style inn) next door to Tama Esty where I could stay for a few days. The old lady who ran the place was really nice but couldn’t understand English either.

They wrote down how much it would cost on a slip of paper and I nodded acknowledgement. She then fixed me up with a nice room and told me that I could come downstairs for dinner later, which I didn’t understand so I never did eat there.

I wandered around the area but there were no fast food shops or any restaurants with menus that I could understand so I ended up buying an unknown fried thing and a Coke from a little stall. I went and sat on the riverbank, ate the fried thing and thought,

WHAT have I done?

What Did You Say?

The next day I was brought to the Aoyama Japanese Language School (Aoyama Nihongo Gakuin) where I was to learn the Japanese language. My class was full of Chinese people, mostly from the mainland, and it was very interesting studying with them. They knew all the kanji (ideograph characters of Chinese origin) and every time we would have a writing test they would leave me in the dust because I wrote so slow.

From the beginning I didn’t really fit in with with rest of the class. My first complete non-textbook sentence was:

Neko ni noumiso o taberaremashita.
(lit. My brain was eaten by a cat.)

I thought that this would be different and they would somehow understand that it was supposed to be funny. The teachers thought that this was more than a little strange and discussed the weird American guy at length.

The Chinese students would often get into arguments with each other in class, which would cause problems for everyone. I couldn’t figure out what some of them were there for, other than to just be in Japan.

Progress was much slower than I would have liked but I didn’t know what I was doing anyway so I was not about to complain.

I would go to class from 9 A.M. to 1 P.M. and then wander around the city (usually looking for anime stuff). I would find shop advertisements in anime magazines and search them out. This proved to be very useful because I got to know the train system and the city layout much better than I would have if I had just stayed and hung out with the other students. I also got to see a lot more than just anime shops! I was very interested in this new city I was living in. It seemed so weird. (It still does.)

(to be continued....)

Dark Angel

(An Ode to a Xellos/Amelia Pairing)
by Neko-Chan

Your dark eyes speak to me
I search for something in them
Deep and endless
Your hypnotic smile teasing my heart
I can see you twisting the strings
Playing with us like puppets

But I wonder my dear
Do you realize the trap you fall into?
A tumultuous of emotions
Dark and pendulant
Light and joyful
Do you know these?

Smiling back, I watch you from hooded eyes
When you think no one's watching
Or perhaps you do know?
And that's why your face flickers with mirth

Is it funny my dear?
How I care and I'm nice to you when others aren't?

I wonder if they know
If I'm so transparent
You try and hide it but you can't
I see the good in you
You are everything that I'm not
Evil and cruel

You're everything I've been taught was wrong
I was so confused
It was wrong wasn't it?
But when you caught me in my fall
It didn't feel wrong
It felt so right...my dark angel

So now I'll catch you
With my arms of love
And cheerful acceptance
You are dark I am the light
I shall ignore everyone
For we are not so different

We are both angels
Caught up in the sweet trap of love
But I wonder if you realize it my love
How we are both the same
You the angel of darkness
And I your angel of light

A Mysterious Play on Words

by Throkda Jones & Qeorita, once again the hard way (with graph paper)

I got some good feedback on the Word Search last month, so Qeorita came up with most of a new word list, and I added a few, assembled the puzzle, and test-played it to eliminate typos. This month, we focus on another favorite -- Fushigi Yuugi! Interestingly enough, Konan is technically in here twice, due simply to random letter placement for the filler letters. To answer a question from last month, though, about duplicated words -- If a word is also part of another word (like cat and Cat-Fist, or Miboshi & Amiboshi), then they are both in there...don't just circle the Miboshi inside Amiboshi and think you've actually found Miboshi. Good Luck!

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Word List

AMIBOSHI	KAJIWARA	SEVEN
ANCIENT CHINA	KEISUKE	SHINZAHO
ASHITARE	KODOKU	SHOKA
AVATAR	KONAN	SIGN OF THE OGRE
BETRAYAL	KOURIN	SOI
BYAKKO	KUTOU	SPLASH MOUNTAIN AT NINETY DEGREES
CEREMONY	LIBRARY	SUBARU
CHICHIRI	MAGICIAN	SUBOSHI
CHIRIKO	MIAKA	SUZAKU
CLAM SHELL	MIBOSHI	SUZUNO
DREAM WORLD	MIKO	TAIITSUKUN
EMPEROR	MIRACLES	TAMAHOME
ENTRANCE EXAM	MIRRORS	TAMA-NEKO
FLUTE	MITSUKAKE	TASUKI
FOUR GODS SKY AND EARTH	MT. LEIKOKU	TATARA
FUSHIGI YUUGI	MUSIC BOX	TETSUYA
GENBU	NAKAGO	THREE WISHES
HIGH SCHOOL	...NO-DA!	TOKAKI
HOLY SWORD	NURIKO	TOKYO
HONGO	NYAN-NYAN	TOMO
HOTOHORI	OOSUGI	VIRGINITY
HOUKI	PROPHECY	WAR
ILLUSION	SACRIFICE	"WO AI NI..."
IMPORTANT DOCUMENTS REFERENCE ROOM	SAILO	XI FANG
INCANTATION	"SAY IT, IT'S FUN!"	YUI
JONAN	SCHOOL UNIFORMS	YUIREN
KAIJIN	SEIRYUU	YUUKI
KAIKA	SEISHI