Nicole Oyama

Happy 2023 a few months late! The Last of Us series is coming to an end soon and I was thinking of things in 2003 and where I was during that time frame. I thought about the few concerts I had gone to wouldn’t have happened in the universe! I hadn’t played the game, but weirdly knew a lot about the game story. I liked the series so far, there will be season 2 (Yay but oh no) and at least The Mandalorian will be more of Pedro Pascal but in space and Grogu! Yay!

I forgot when the concerts happened but I remembered it went something like this:

2003 – Taproot. Good Charlotte.

2004 – Sugarcult? My Chemical Romance?

2005 – Taste of Chaos tour: The Used and My Chemical Romance. Sugarcult again? Warped Tour?

2006 – Warped Tour. The final concert I went to: We Are Scientists!

I feel like I’m missing a few or which order it was exactly. I feel like I went to Warped Tour twice or not, I can’t remember. All I remember is the last concert I went to was We Are Scientists!

If we’re still thinking about The Last of Us universe, then I never would have gone to Comic Con later in the 00’s:

2009 – SDCC – no costume

2010 – SDCC – no costume

2011 – SDCC – Faye Valentine – Cowboy Bebop

2012 – SDCC – Tifa Lockhart – FFVII

2013 – SDCC – no costume

2014 – SDCC – Punk Rock Sailor Mars

2015 – SDCC – Red Card Katarina – League of Legends

2016 – Wondercon – Punk Rock Sailor Mars Redo

2016 – SDCC – Rey – Star Wars Ep VII

2017 – SDCC – Spike Spiegel – Cowboy Bebop

Missed 2018, 2019, got tickets in 2020 whoops, 2021 was missed as well

2022 – SDCC – Tina Belcher – Bob’s Burgers

What was interesting to me reading reddit posts about The Last of Us is people wondering how malls were back in 2003? I remember

I thought Thor: Love and Thunder was okay movie! Thor: Ragnarok was probably more fun and bright since that was the first exposure to Taika Waititi. Kind of wild looking back at me walking by the Thor: The Dark World signing at the San Diego Comic Con 2013!!!

Speaking of Comic Con, it was supposed to happen in 2020. But we all know what happened then! It got postponed until this year. This post will probably go up after I went. I’m in awe of remembering I had gone to Comic Con since 2009, bought my ticket for the first few years and then did Volunteering for a few of them.

The last year I did Volunteering, I felt like it was too much. But it was interesting being a line counter for a small panel, and getting to understand how that worked. If everything had gone to plan and I went in 2018 and 2019 then it would have been 10 years consecutively instead of overall 10 years! Crazy! A lot has changed since then, and they give you a Volunteering assignment ahead of time. The first time I went to Comic Con, the badges were paper ones and it showed your location for some reason? So it would say “Yuta Nakamoto, Japan” on it.

I found an old freebie from the Avengers cartoon booth dated “Watch the new show Fall 2010!” How crazy is that??? Things have drastically changed over the years. Maybe in the future I’d try an off-site activation but we’ll see what happens.

I remember trying to watch Iron Man 2 in 2010, however it was sold out for that particular time. Instead I had gone to see How to Train Your Dragon in 3D (closed captioned theater). A CGI movie in 3D for the entire hour of the movie with subtitles floating around was rough. Since then, no more 3D movies and some Marvel movies in theaters since then.

Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness’ original premise was “horror” and it was interesting back at SDCC 2019 announcement. I was surprised to read some people didn’t like the movie. But I base things on how much my own attention span is toward the movie and I thought it was great.

I’m still hoping for the better Fantastic Four movie and the future X-Men and giving my favorite X-Men Jubilee a proper big screen portrayal.