Extreme Allnighter

From witty rapartee to obscene rant, from hard facts to complete fiction, this is how the Extreme AllNighter came to be.

At 16:32 on a dull Wednesday afternoon in the middle of Easter the Minister of Propaganda of the Anime and Manga regime was sitting in her commanding tall chair emitting a glow of dissapointment to anybody that would be unfortunate enough to fall under her gaze. Already it was the time specified but nobody has turned up for their quarterly review yet; the Chief of Internal Affairs sent her an electronic message the night before giving her the correct time and place and she was certain this was it. Maybe the Chief of Internal Affairs, Ministers of Media and Communication Control, Reformer of Finances and the Secretary General have had a horrible accident on their way here, she muses to herself. Yes, a nice, horrible and heart wrenching accident, any other excuse wouldn’t suffice.

Then the cogs and gears of her mind started to turn, to play around with this very thought and just as she was about to store this deliciously evil contemplation for later, there, by unhappy chance a civilian came through the door. The fact that the wrong person came through the door was itself unsuprising, seeing as another lesser society was holding a conference in the circle of chairs next to her, but what did struck our minister’s eye was a picture of a yellow creature with pointy ears and looking all too snug on the side of this civilian’s bag. Barely containing her outrage at this heresy she grips the arm rests of her chair to stop her hands reaching for her ‘Sweet-Lips’ knuckle duster she always keeps in her side pocket of her officer fatigues.

Patience, she tells herself. Be patient, she reiterates, one snip of a leaf won’t kill the tree. We’ll have to stop this abomination at it’s source if I am to get my satisfaction. But how? She ponders this in silence and, just as before, there’s another disturbance at the door. She looks up and, behold, the CIA, MMCC, RF and the SG have turned up looking only slightly wary after the long night of conducting mind control operations on the masses the night before.

With the presence of the very people she mused were suffering on the side of a road with a pool of blood to bathe in for being late and with the abomination that needed to be rooted out a plan started to evolve in her mind.

That day during their review of the past quarter and their plans for the next, she, the Minister of Propoganda, put forward the idea of re-educating the masses in the way of the darkness, of all that is uncute. The idea was well recieved yet too unclear in the methods to go about this task, and after to-and-froing and many cigars and empty liquor bottles they settled on what would become the greatest brain-child of all: The Extreme AllNighter.

It would have made history that very year but for one thing. It was such that time was the only enemy and the Anime and Manga regime would have to wait untill next year for their opportune moment. With the coming months planned out the meeting was adjourned and they left a smokey room where other lesser societies were gasping for air and steadying themselves from the shear smell of liquor.

Patience, she tells herself, I will get my satisfaction, with a sly crooked smile she can almost taste it.

But much work would be needed to be done and so in the time between that fateful afternoon and next year they put forth their underlings to collect, review and shortlist all the anime that would be sufficient to probe and prong the innocent minds of the Y-Generation.

eXtreme allnighter

One cool November day when I was but yet an innocent first yeat student of 2004-2005 I was accosted by an old friend, RobM, to come and watch some extreme anime one night.

‘Extreme, you say?’. ‘Extreme’, he said, ‘we’re [the mighty anime soc] doing an allnighter full of the grimmest stuff that we can find and it’s just ain’t the same without you.’

Intrigued by this I set out to satisfy my curiosity to learn more of this upcoming event.

The costs were a mere 50 pence for a showing from 21:00 till the next morning. The money ended up going to towards snacks, which included Mini Dunkin Doughnuts, Hula Hoops, bottles of Coke and so forth. It took place in Lib1, very cleverly named as it is adjacent to the library and I was forwarned to be armed with a pillow and a blanket. I managed to better that and took a hot thermosflask of tea with me and with that I was prepared for anything.

And so it came to be known, on the Friday the 19th of November, 2004, with a store of 20 hours of potential anime, there was a range from yaoi angst to tentacle rape, from psychotic murderous managers to masturbating sadistic killers; two exec members, Cat Rawlinson (alias: Minister of Propoganda) and Rob (alias: Secretary General) were to host the first allnighter and were prepared to initialise the re-educating process.

What ended up being shown was:

Ebichu, episodes 1-2,
Perfect Blue (movie),
Blood, The Last Vampire,
Urotsukidoji, episodes 1-2,
Elfen Lied, episode 1,
Fist of the North Star (movie),
Miyuki-chan in wonderland/mirrorland,
Golden Boy, episodes 3&5,
and a well timed and a good piece to finish off with: Ichi the Killer.

It is said that on the same night there was a LAN party hosted by the CompSoc so it was unfortunate our CompSoc brethren were not there with us. In addition to this, a few people stole away in the middle of the night and only a handful of people (I believe there were 8, including me, Rob, Cat, Seb, Anne and Matty) braved it until the end.

On a cold colourless Saturday morning I ventured from the depth of Lib1 to be blinded by the hidden sun, and with several excellent one liners on the tip of my tongue as well as a slightly more evil grin, I ventured back to my room where I slept the day away.

eX_Xtreme allnighter

Two of the 8 people that lasted the whole eXtreme allnighter were to enlist themselves on the exec, they were SebR and TerryF who became Treasurer and Librarian, respectively, for the year 2005-2006. TerryF became particularly inspired (I know, because I am TerryF ;)) and so has pledged to continue the annual extreme allnighter. It was no easy task trying to find anime that would better the last one but after scouring the web and it’s numerous forums, including asking our very own one what they had to add in way of of suggestions, as well as draw inspiration from several AMVs that were introduced to me by Rob, I’ve managed to obtain a few hours worth. The mission is far from complete however, as still the genre of hentai and anime-related feature films (maybe even a one or two nonanime-related too, the controversy!) hasn’t been explored yet.

I’m also in the process of designing an A4 poster to put up all over campus next term to inform the average joe and I’ll be asking a member of the society to draw/edit it seeing as my art skills are pretty much non-existent.

I believe this coming allnighter (should be midway in the first term) will further expectations and I look forward to your revolted reactions when the time comes.

With a date and place set: Friday the 4th of November from 9 till 8 at our very own L4, I’ve spent the past two weeks of my free time coming up with the poster which you will see before your very eyes. I had help from my brother who made the zombie border which I think looks cool. I must stress that the first draft looked much more graphic but after hearing disgusted complaints from a house mate who happens to be on the Society Commission (or something like that) I had to get my brother to tone it down. Nevertheless I’m pretty proud of the final product. It will be distributed in colour around Uni on Monday the 31st of October.

So the appointed date has passed and the line-up featured ADHD tempo, shameless graphic sex, gore infested violence, lolicon 12 year-olds, socially rotten flash as well as anime that were just plain cool. These were the bad boys (or girls/hermaphrodites for the politically correct):

Jin Roh,
Dead Leaves,
Rurouni Kenshin: Seishounen,
Monkey Dust 1&2,
Bokusatsu Tenshi Dokuro-chan 1-6,
Blood+ 1&2,
Bible Black,
Ichi the Killer.

However it didn’t turn out all too peachy. The event was plagued with technical difficulties throughout. We had to go through the DVD player, 2 laptops as well as scrounge for an audio cable! It was a shocker. Seriously.

To add insult to injury the live-action film, Ichi the Killer, switched off its subtitles 30 minutes in the film...

It was largely due to these failings, which were my full responsibility, that the event did not full its potential as an entertaining night.

For the fans of the allnighter I can only promise that next year will be a whole lot better with completely new material. Look forward to the coming e:XXX:treme allnighter (and no that doesn’t mean there’ll be outright porn)!

3rd extreme allnighter

This year on the fortuitous day of the 11th of November 2006, we went for something different. Instead of showing anime we branched out and showed live action movies not all necessarily Japanese. This time round we were Lib2, a better room, in my view, to have an allnighter in. Also the technical difficulties of yesteryear were not pravalent and we, but which I mean I, were much better prepared.

I thought the choice in what we showed was pretty good with a nice variety ranging from the classics to the slashers and from the psychological thrillers to the post modern reality (ok so the last one was a stab at Visitor Q).

So in the end we showed....

A Tale of Two Sisters - Ji-woon Kim, 2003
Rashomon - Akira Kurosawa, 1950
Versus - Ryuhei Kitamura, 2000
Visitor Q - Takashi Miike, 2000
Azumi - Ryuhei Kitamura, 2006
Old Boy - Chan-wook Park, 2004

Sweet.

The Other 3rd eXtreme allnighter

With term 2 of the year came the time for elections and a change in régime for the society. While the concensus amongst the new Lords and Masters of the society was that while the last all-nighter was enjoyable and most definitely Extreme, it lacked something; Anime. So, on Friday the 2nd of March 2007 came the Other 3rd eXtreme allnighter. Once again, the exec played around with a few ideas for the event and came up with the following argument:”Why does it have to be extremely depraved? Why not extremely fun, or extremely awesome or even extremely cute?” The decision was made to show anime from all areas of the Extremosphere. After much deliberation the schedule was as such:

Blame (most extreme DVD menus)
Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni - First Arc (Extremely disturbed)
Binchou-tan (Extremely cute)
Excel Saga - Ep 26 (Extremely going to far)
Ground Defense Force Mao (Not particularly extreme, but appropriate due to the game of Mao going on during the showing)
Elfen Lied - First few episodes (Extremely Bloodbath-y)
Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children (Extremely Awesome)
Puni Puni Poemi (Extremely Extreme)

Things proceeded smoothly for most of the night, including a midnight trip to Tesco and an all-consuming game of Mao that lasted for a good 5 hours. All in all a good night.

And so, we look ahead to the coming year of 07-08 and wonder what the 4th all-nighter will bring...

The Continuation of Allnighters

After this allnighters became alot less "extreme", mainly due to any anime being able to be described as "extrme" in some way (ie. good, cute, normal, etc.). They also became much more regular and less of a big event, with 2 being held every term.