Ah anime conventions, the congregation of nerds with similar interests allowing for interaction the likes their social retardation would have otherwise not permitted. As condescending as that may sound, given that I just finished attending one of said conventions, my affair with anime cons in the past has been mostly from the sidelines. I got in, bought copious amounts of manga, and got out, careful to avert my eyes to any Bleach and Naruto cosplayers in the vicinity in fear of my eyes jumping from my face and trying to cleanse themselves in a vat of acid.

However, this year proved to be a little different, giving me my first small glimpse into the true essence of an anime convention and the mindset of the people participating in it, specifically, those who I had previously loathed, cosplayers.

The ratio of win:fail cosplay is so pathetically low that most people just lump the entire art into the “fail” pile, since most of the time it’s an accurate assumption. I used to subscribe to this school of thought, but I realized that shutting myself off to cosplay entirely, while shielding me from massive amounts of fail, hides the massive win that comes few and far between. Also, I’m dating a cosplayer. FUCK YEAH! BIAS!

Anyways, with the preamble out of the way, let’s get to it…

Friday

After a week of slaving over a sewing machine, pulling all nighters filled with rampant swearing and urges to set fire to her costume, my girlfriend still wasn’t finished the costumes she and her friend planned on wearing, Princess Tutu and Mytho, respectively. The con started at 5:00 p.m., but it was approaching 8:00 p.m. by the time we got there. After she checked in to her hotel room we set out with some of her friends, eventually making our way to the dealer’s room…

…which happened to be closing just as we got there, so we resigned ourselves to wandering around the artist’s alley for a while, but soon that closed up too. My girlfriend and I had dinner at a nearby restaurant, after which we headed over to the Doubletree hotel to lounge around in the gaming area amidst a makeshift Magic tournament and faggots running around screaming “YOU JUST LOST THE GAME!” until I had to leave and she had to head back to her hotel in what would be a futile attempt to finish her cosplay.

Saturday

I arrived back at the con around 10:30 a.m. to the bad news that the Princess Tutu and Mytho cosplays had been abandoned, the two deciding that rather than wearing half assed costumes they’d rather spend more time on them to do the characters justice for use in a later con.

Amidst the crowd I managed to find some friends from university who were also there, and together we began our crusade to whittle down the list of manga that I had brought with me.

A couple hours later we emerged relatively victorious, and I managed to acquire all but one volume of the manga I had listed.

Genshiken: 1-9
Welcome to the NHK!: 5-6 + novel
Hayate no Gotoku: 5-7
Negima: 16+17
Claymore: 10+11
ARIA: 1+2
AQUA: 2
Ichimashi: 4
Yotsuba&!: 5
Gunslinger Girl: 6
Voices of a Distant Star

Twenty-five volumes/novels in total, costing me a total of around $200, saving me approximately 20% compared to what I would have spent had I bought at a retailer. I didn’t spend nearly as much as I did last year, which saw some 40odd volumes/novels purchased, but I really couldn’t find many series that I found worthy of my not so hard earned cash.

I couldn’t find AQUA volume 1 anywhere and even worse, after the con I noticed that the versions of ARIA I had were from different publishers. My volume 1 was the one put out by ADV and my volume 2 was the one put out by Tokyopop. Shitsux because the completionist in me will force me to go out and find ADV’s volume 2 and Tokyopop’s volume one before collecting any more.

Anyways, continuing on, after we were finished in the dealer’s room, my friends and I spent a couple hours sprawled out on the front lawn of the Toronto Congress Centre eating lunch and pointing out the various win/fail cosplays as they passed by. Afterwards, I got a call from my girlfriend and I went over to meet with her at her hotel, ate a second lunch and headed back to kill some more time with my uni friends.

Shortly afterwards we decided to see if we could get tickets to the upcoming masquerade, but found that only one entry band remained by the time we got there, fail. Conceding defeat, we headed back to the front lawn of the Congress Centre where we critiqued cosplays, played Mario Party DS and watched a large caramelldansen group have at it. After my uni friends headed off to do their own thing, some leaving the con wastefully early.

After a while my girlfriend and I figured we’d try to get into the masquerade anyways, despite our lack of tickets, which proved to be as simple as walking in, we even scored some seats after standing/sitting on the floor for a while. The masquerade is an event that is at the heart of every anime con, and it was the first time I had witnessed it. It basically consists of various cosplayers putting on skits varying from walk ons simply to show off their costumes, sitcoms, and the occasional dance. It was a wide range of fail to win, but generally fun, and the commentary from the MC was pretty funny, if not a little repetitive and self demeaning.

The rest of the night consisted of copious alcohol consumption, a j-pop dance that didn’t last nearly as long as advertised and projectile vomiting. It had less to do with the con and more to do with my personal life, so I’ll spare you the details.

Sunday

I was too hung over and tired to go on Sunday. So I didn’t.

So again, Anime North ended up as little more than a shopping spree for me. I didn’t take any pictures of cosplayers since, yet again, there weren’t a lot of memorable worthwhile ones that I wanted to save. That’s not to say that there weren’t some win cosplays, but there are enough examples of good Haruhi, Naruto, Bleach, etc. in the world, what good would another drop in the sea do.

Learning from past year’s experiences, I didn’t attend any panels or screenings, the latter being plain useless and the former trying too hard to be SERIOUS BUSINESS and ending up pretty boring in the process. The masquerade was one event that I did enjoy going to though, the room was in fun spirits and it was great seeing cosplayers doing what they love to the roar of a crowd, some of the skits were pretty entertaining as well.

And that’s about it for this year’s Anime North. My experience with the convention seems to grow every year, this time I walk away with a new respect for those who give their all to cosplaying and enough manga to fill another one of my shelves at home. I look forward to seeing how my experiences and perceptions will evolve in years to come.

Actually, I do have one picture…

Mai waifu got a picture with pedobear and his coveted “Pedobear Seal of Approval”. Her loli status is a hoax though. She is, in fact, legal.

~ Shirukii ~

Post Script: Soul Eater combo post and I’m finally caught up ;_; what a week.