Issue 9 - Yipe!

series based on the “Leijiverse”(of Leiji Matsumoto) werepopular: big, sweeping spaceepics with romantic andchivalrous ideals, populatedby women with ridiculouslylong hair and tall, thin men.At the time, my friends and Ibore physical and personalityresemblances to some of thecharacters, which helpedin our costumed portrayals.Through our shoppingexpeditions to Los Angeles,we discovered other animeseries set in the Leijiverse thatwe hadn’t seen yet: CAPTAINHARLOCK, QUEENEMERALDAS, GALAXYEXPRESS 999. We boughteverything we could lay ourhands on, and were neverdisappointed by the music orthe visual imagery. Terry feltan immediate affinity with thebrooding Captain Harlock,and I with Emeraldas.By spring of 1980, thosecostumes were part of ourrepertoire, and so were all theaccessories: guns, swords, andpirate flags, all scratch-built.In spring of 1980, SanDiego based CAPTAINHARLOCK and STARBLAZERS groups descendedupon the masquerade of theS.F. Weekend convention inLos Angeles, and both wonmajor awards. Both groupswere aided enormously by thesound technician, who wasan anime fan and happenedto have both theme songson tape. These were stillthe days where sound wasan optional luxury at mostconvention masquerades,and entries recording theirown soundtracks was evenrarer. The visuals and themusic together were verypowerful, and won overaudiences and judges alike.By Memorial Day of1980, there was a fullCAPTAIN HARLOCKcrew put together for anothermasquerade competition,including the Mimaycharacter, who has longblue hair, large pupillessgolden eyes, and no mouth.We searched high and lowthrough costume shops inSouthern California andfinally found a suitable bluewig. Nathalia Quirk, whoportrayed the character,consented to have hermouth sealed shut with alatex prosthetic and her eyescovered with yellow sunglasslenses glued directly to herface. Even though the lenseshad been pre-drilled withairholes, they steamed upimmediately, and she spentseveral hours being bothspeechless and blind. Talkabout suffering for your art!We brought color Xeroxes tothe masquerade to show to thejudges, as we knew they wouldprobably be unfamiliar withthe anime. The masqueradedirector refused to pass thematerial along, so I tucked itinto my belt, and as we wereleaving the stage, I looked theend judge in the eye, handedhim the folded up papers, andsaid, “Here. You need this.”The judge opened it up, sawwhat it was, and said, “Yes.Yes, we do. THANK YOU.”I think we got some kind ofaward for accuracy to sourcethat evening.At the same convention, wegot in trouble with the hotel(the infamous AmbassadorHotel in Los Angeles, whereRobert F. Kennedy wasassassinated by Sirhan Sirhan)for flying our Harlock andEmeraldas pirate flags outthe window of our hotelroom. They were afraidpassers-by on the street wouldthink terrorists had taken overthe hotel.By summer of 1980, therewere over a dozen STARBLAZERS uniforms (andCaptain Avatar, and Starsha),and we descended on theSan Diego Comic-Conmasquerade en masse. Wewon a much-coveted Best inShow that year.The next anime groupwe did was based on theGALAXY EXPRESS 999movie. Captain Harlock andEmeraldas required minimalmodifications, but costumeshad to be made for 5 newcharacters. It was originallyintended for Galacticon in fallof 1980, but the conventionfolded two weeks before itwas supposed to be held.While we were sad not tohave anything to do thatweekend, we were happy tohave additional time to workon the costumes. Kelly Turner,who was portraying CountMecha, had to do a lifecastof his face, sculpt the CountMecha robot face in clay onthe lifecast, and then take amold of the robot face and useit to produce a fiberglass resin