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I was at AnimeIowa 2000. It was after the cosplay, and a bunch of folks were on the elevator to go elsewhere in the hotel.
These guys were on the elevator:
This is Zoltar and his main lackey from Gatchaman (otherwise known as G-Force here in the US). Zoltar was pretty freaky-looking in the anime, and that guy's costume captured it perfectly:
Don't remember if the guy actually wore lipstick. It doesn't matter; the getup itself was pretty ludicrous even without makeup.
Anyway--
So we went up one floor from the convention level, to the lobby, and the doors parted. Standing there was an airline pilot, close-cropped, uniformed, with his travel case behind him; and as his eyes fell on the guy in the costume you could see the gears turn in his head, figuring the wait time for another elevator versus the W...T...F!!! factor.
I felt sorry for him.
He only hesitated a moment, but then decided that we probably weren't dangerous or contagious and got on.
There's an unfinished story I wrote about an anime convention, a comedy, told from the viewpoints of several people--the Pro, the Computer Guru, the Con Organizer, the Cosplayer, etc, etc. One of the characters was a version of that airline pilot, who was going to be the source of a whole bunch of hilarious anti-fan diatribes. Heh.
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Oh, the original for the first one:
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I think there's probably a lesson there for all of us.
