Final Day of Anime Weekend Atlanta!

This is going to be a short entry for a few reasons. Firstly, today is the last day of the con, and it ends at 5 PM. Secondly, the only event I was interested in today ended at 3:30 PM, so I came home early. C, no...Three: I didn't buy anything or take any pictures of cosplayers because nothing jumped out to me for the short time I was there.

The event I went to see was a screening of From Up on Poppy Hill, a recent Studio Ghibli film directed by Gorou Miyazaki, Hayao Miyazaki's son. I got there early, however, and sat in on an episode of an anime called "Another". From what I can gather, it's a horror anime revolving around the protagonist meeting a girl with an eyepatch over her left eye. It turns out, though, that that girl supposedly died in a hospital recently. The episode I saw didn't reveal the answer to the mystery, though.

As for From Up on Poppy Hill, it was pretty good. It had humor, pleasant atmosphere, and heartwarming feels. This slice-of-life movie stars a high school girl named Umi whose mother is studying in America and whose father was a ship captain who died when his ship sank in the Korean War (the movie takes place in 1964). Ever since here father died, she's raised flags every day, signaling for him to come home. Since her mother is away, Umi has taken over all the normal housework at her grandmother's home. She cooks and cleans for her family and the various boarders who live there. At school, it is revealed that the club building is under consideration for demolition in order to build a new club building. Rightfully so, too, looking at the run-down state of the building. However, the students who spend their time there all love the place and are against the demolition. Umi makes the suggestion one day that if they clean up the shabby old building, maybe the board would reconsider its demolition. Along the way, Umi finds herself slowly falling in love with a fellow student, but can it work...?

The audience at this screening had a good sense of humor, but telling you what they said would reveal a big spoiler in the movie. If you've seen it/don't care, I'll post it in spoiler tags.

Spoiler: From Up on Poppy Hill spoilers

When it was revealed that Umi was actually the sister of the boy she fell for (his name is Shun), someone in the audience said "don't let that stop you!" The whole audience, myself included, cracked up at this. Later on, after struggling with this revelation, Umi decided that even though they couldn't go any further since they were siblings, she still wanted him to know how she felt. So, so told him she loved him, and he told her he loved her too. At this point, I said softly "now kiss!" to the laughter of people around me. It's later revealed that they aren't siblings after all. When this was revealed, I said softly again "free game!" to some more chuckles. All in all, it was all the more amusing for the people in the crowd.

And that about does it for my coverage of this convention. I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I did writing.