Day 3

Not a lot of interesting panels; all the ones of British SF collide at 10:00, so I go for the one on the British Landscape in SF — and it turns into a vague rambling about fantasy, rather than SF, to the extent that one question trying to drag the talk back on topic got the answer “Did you know that Conan was a Scot?”, like a politician's preapred answer with nothing to do with what was asked. Back to anime with Black Magic M-66 which is harmless, even if quiet unlike the manga.

Lunch and some bheer. Then a so-so talk about the history of anime in the 70s and 80s (up to the advent of the home VCR). Scout the dealers' room, and don't find much (ten years ago I would have bought When the dark star passes, or Venus Equilateral, but not now), then a panel on manga with Hioraki Inoue, quondam Gainax founder, the guy who did the anime talk and an editor from Del Rey, whose answer to most questions was “Buy Tsubasa, it's great!”.

Inoue-san gave the most interesting snippets, indicating that some of the manga strips aimed at older readers acted like soap opera, with characters ageing in real-time; and the honest response to “What do you get out of manga?”, of “A job.”

Decide to skip the masquerade in favour of the Real-Ale bar. Drink lots, go take pictures

Environs

Back to bar, where the masqueraders are coming through from the changing room, so I get to see most of the costumes, if not the skits, close-up. And get enticed into conversation with a couple of lasses, including the one whose question was so roundly ignored in the panel earlier, which gets us a mini-gripe session. I pontificate a lot. And at one point Xena walks up and peers at my name badge.

I was too taken aback to react. Was I being mistaken for some celebrity? Might I nearly have gotten lucky? I'll never know.