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Sign Up Wars: The Online Registration Menace

Out of 35 total spots for this year’s Fanime Karaoke Contest, 25 were made available for online pre-registration about 3 weeks before the convention. The word around town was that pre-registration for the Karaoke Contest grows more and more competitive each year. This year, looking at how the online sign-up system closed about 20 minutes after going live, I’d say “competitive” could be an understatement. On the evening of Sunday, May 3rd, 2009, hordes of eager contestants sat at their computers with their eyes glued to the Fanime Forums and the Karaoke Twitter page, waiting to sign up at the first sign of a registration form. How do I know this? Well I was one of those people! I believe that I only managed to obtain the last spot available because two other registrants before me didn’t fill out their forms correctly. Here’s hoping that everyone who missed out on the online sign-ups still managed to get a spot on the day of the contest. I knew that I had caught a lucky break that night. I was happy! But whenever I catch such a glimpse of good fortune, fate somehow never fails to come back and bite me in the toes with its twisted sense of humor.

Termination vs. Salvation: Preparing for Judgment Day

The Fanime Karaoke Contest requires that you choose one song for the preliminary round and an additional song for the finals. Contestants are free to sing any song they wish as long it’s categorized under J-pop, J-rock, or an anime theme song. Official vocaloid songs were also a new and welcome addition to the contest this year. I wasn’t anticipating making it to the finals, but I still pushed myself to spend the two weeks prior to the event attempting to phonetically memorize two J-pop songs: “Hitomi Wo Tojite” by Ken Hirai, and “Blurry Eyes” by Larc en Ciel. I’ll say now that I only got to sing one of them at the contest. All in all, my pre-karaoke preparations were going well… until that dreadful morning just two days before Fanime, when I woke up coughing and wheezing from a sore throat.

As fate would have it, I had come down with a case of viral laryngitis caused by allergies and fatigue from pulling several all-nighters at the office. I was relieved when my doctor told me that my condition wasn’t contagious, but my morale for attending Fanime and the Karaoke Contest had taken a gigantic blow. My biggest problem was that I had lost my voice! As I croaked and crackled like a toad with my face stuffed under a pillow trying to sing the songs I’d memorized for the contest, all I could picture were the two words, “EPIC FAIL!!” plastered on my forehead as I squealed on stage in front of a booing audience. Thus the night before Fanime, I was lying in bed contemplating if I should just listen to my doctor’s recommendations and use the coming weekend to rest up and maybe just catch a movie instead of risking full-on embarrassment at the convention. I even came pretty close to convincing myself that the director of the “Charlie’s Angels” movies might actually pull off a decent “Terminator” flick. Luckily I came to my senses after a full night’s rest. The next day, I packed up my gear and headed straight for Fanime. After all, we all know that whatever the circumstances, going through total humiliation still trumps over being a total flake…

…right?

Karaoke Stars Trek: Sing Song and Prosper!

I don’t have any experience with previous Fanime Karaoke Contests, but I’m going to go out on a limb here and declare that this year’s contest had the most talented roster of singers, EVER! The Karaoke staff and host did a great job keeping the contest moving along at an energetic and comfortable pace, and I was thoroughly impressed at the diversity of singers, song choices, and performances. A new feature of this year’s karaoke contest was that people on stage were given the option to have their song lyrics projected on a screen and toggle through them with a Wii remote as they performed. This was a vast improvement and looked way cooler than having singers read off of paper print-outs. Since it was a “karaoke” contest, performers were not marked down for using written lyrics or note cards. Still, many contestants had their songs memorized in order to completely focus their attention on the audience.

Some performances were cute; others were sexy, funny, sweet, exhilarating. While not every singer may have had the greatest voice or the strongest stage presence, all of them were entertaining and a pleasure to watch and listen to. One of my favorite acts of the contest included a young lady and her glow-stick cheer squad. Not only did the singer have an adorable voice, but her off-stage cheering friends brought a lot of energy to the room especially as the contest was winding down. Overall, there were many great performances that drove the audience ecstatic that night. With my trusty camcorder in hand, I managed to take a little footage of every contestant who came on stage.

One thing this video doesn’t really show is the spectacle that all performers on stage got to see. I knew I had to capture this somehow, and this led to my favorite photo of all of Fanime!

I took this shot as soon as I hit the stage during my turn to sing at the contest. The fine people you see in the photo are the best audience any performer could hope for. The enthusiasm and positive vibes from the crowd even helped me forget about the pain in my throat for a moment. I may have gotten a little too pumped, however. A couple of guys were shouting “YEAH~!!” from the far end of the room, probably because I was the first male performer to come on stage that night, or maybe they just thought I was cute. Who knows? In any case, I got caught up in the moment and shouted “YEAH~!!” back to the crowd, which resulted in me receiving a warning from the Karaoke Contest host for yelling straight into the microphone. Future contestants, please note that yelling loudly into the mic is a big no-no at the contest. My singing itself went just like I imagined it would. My voice was raspy, hoarse, and my throat started to shred when I tried to hit the high notes. However, instead of booing me off stage the crowd cheered me on! I also received a warm round of applause at the end. In fact, everyone on stage that night received grand ovations after their performances. If anything, the atmosphere of the room was more of party and a celebration rather than that of a singing contest.

With one contestant gone missing, 34 contestants performed in the preliminaries that night. Thinking back, perhaps one of the biggest crowd reactions came during the break period before the finalists were announced. The Karaoke Contest Staff put on some random music for the room. One of these songs was “Simple and Clean” by Utada Hikaru. A good portion of the audience sang along with the staff. It was a nice, “simple and clean” moment! After it ended, our trusty host came back on stage and said something to likes of, “That was great, but we officially announce that this will be the last time Simple and Clean will be allowed in this and future Karaoke contests!” The crowd went wild roaring in laughter and approval.

As much as I wanted to stay to watch the top ten finalists perform, by around 9:30pm exhaustion was kicking in and my throat was literally killing me. Also I wasn’t exactly sure where I’d be sleeping that night, so after weighing the options I reluctantly left the premises to get some rest for the upcoming day. I have yet to find out who ended up winning the contest. I’m sure I’ll know in due time, but my congratulations go out to everyone who performed that night. As one of the participants put it, “It takes a lot of guts to get up on stage and perform in front of an audience!” I totally agree with this statement, but somehow I feel that just “guts” and even “courage” doesn’t fully describe the essence behind each and every performer. I’m here thinking of a word that exudes a little more optimism, a little more cheerfulness, and just a tad more corniness. Have you guessed it, yet? Here’s a hint, but just read the word in red.

On a closing note, I do remember seeing 4 working microphones on stage that night. Let’s hope that next year there will be more group performances at the contest!

Fanime Impressions: Table of Contents

Part 1: Prologue – Do It Because You Can
Part 2: Singing in the Karaoke Contest: An Epic Fail minus the Fail
Part 3: Notes from BayAnime’s “Local Bay Area Anime Fans” Panel (Coming Soon)
Part 4: Hanging with BAAU at the Artists Alley + 5 awesome people (Coming Soon)
Part 5: Ditching the Masquerade (among other things) for the Comedy Club (Coming Soon)
Part 6: The Maid Café: The Good, The Bad, and The Charming (Coming Soon)
Part 7: Ballroom Dance Lessons: Up close and just personal enough (Coming Soon)
Part 8: The BEST panel at Fanime = Speed Comic Jams! (Coming Soon)
Part 9: From Stage Zero the Free Hugs Alley, and everything else (Coming Soon)
Part 10: Epilogue – Why we need Fanime and Why Fanime needs us (Coming Soon)