Bring me closer! I want to poke him in the eye.

After months of anticipation and preparation, some cosplayers combing meticulously over their costumes to ensure the utmost degree of accuracy and workmanship, and others throwing together shitty closet costumes (yes, you, L “cosplayers”) Anime North has come and gone, signaling the beginning of con season.

Packed in a car with my waifu, her brother, two of her friends, all of our luggage for the weekend and a sizable amount of alcohol, our journey to the con was underway. A damn long journey it was too, traffic around the con was absolute ass, but we passed the time by picking fun at the thickening crowd of cosplayers as we inched closer. We got to the hotel around 5, checked in, tossed our stuff in the room and hung around for a while. We eventually made our way down to the dealer’s room, which was closing soon, I bought this t-shirt I’ve been after for the better part of a year and that did it for con activities for the day.

After some so-so take out sushi from a nearby restaurant, me and the waifu got some much needed sleep, after two days of running on 2-3 hours of sleep.

Inazuma Kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiick!

First of all, to anyone who doesn’t recognize this character, watch Gunbuster. Yes, it’s from the 80s, yes, the animation is kinda dated, no, there’s no moe, but it’s a damn good series, better than almost everything that succeeded it, and it’s a crying shame how little people have watched it.

I woke up on Saturday and spent a couple hours watching crappy daytime television (John and Kate Plus 8) while the waifu put on her costume and make up.

This is where the weekend began to veer off what thin guise of a schedule we had devised. On Friday before we went to sleep, we planned out what we were going to do on Saturday:

- Grab passes to the masquerade
- Watch a screening of Sword of the Stranger
- Go to some Best/Worst Moments in Anime panel, just to see how well/badly the list was put together
- Masquerade
- The 404s comedy skit show

How much of that did we end up doing? Absolutely none of it! But for all the day’s insubstantiality, it was really fun. The day was instead spent messing around with friends and taking in the sights, ie. creepy old guys and the delicate mix of fail and win cosplays whilst trekking back and forth between the dealer’s room and the Doubletree.

At night we went to the one and only con organized activity we attended over the whole con, the J-Pop dance. A couple words to the Anime North staff is in order on the subject of the J-Pop dance, YOU IDIOTS. For some reason, the Anime North staff decided to separate the line into the J-Pop dance based on gender, that is, girls in one line, boys in another. The best guess I have at why they did this was to funnel more girls into the dance so it wasn’t a sausage fest. But what it actually achieved was splitting up mixed gender groups of friends, creating a cloud of people hanging around the entrance waiting for their buddies to clear the security check. The security check itself was necessary, so I don’t fault them for that, even though it slowed the line to a crawl. Last year’s J-Pop dance was ended prematurely due to some drugs or something, so tighter security was definitely necessary.

Ears ringing, feet aching and stomachs full of nothing but alcohol, popcorn and chips, we went to sleep.

When you see it… =O

Sunday began with another couple hours of waiting for the waifu and her friend to put on make up. As soon as we hit the crowd, it became apparent that it was going to be a hassle getting anywhere with the two in their ridiculously cute Plusle/Minun gijinka cosplays. Our group was advancing at a rate of 3-5 strides between photo requests. Those of us not cosplaying got so bored that we began sabotage their photos by posing in the background doing stupid stuff like holding up a box of donuts or pointing at nothing.

With the con winding down, Sunday was a rather uneventful day. It was, however, free burger day at Harvey’s, the line was massive and it was hot outside, so we opted to use the drive through to procure our free food, during which I was tasked with reciting the burger toppings of the five people in the car, fun times…

Some more perusing of the dealer’s room and the artist alley brought the con to a close, and not soon enough, as something in my leg gave out and I ended up having to limp my way back to the car. I drove my waifu’s friend home, headed to her house, collapsed on the couch and fell asleep.

And now for the pictures! You’d think that with all that free time at the con I’d have taken a ton of pics myself, but I barely took any. Credits for most of these photos go to Tiffany Trinidad and her bitchin’ d300.

Cosplay: The Good

Kweh

So awesome

I’m still not finished watching CCS D:

Cosplay: The Bad

The harpoons. Man them.

I can only hope they’re not Caramelldansen

Cosplay: The Scary

Ah, ah, ah.

I think it might be time to retire

In addition to this, there were like…4 Misty crossplays, bizarre

Cosplay: The Waifu <3

Garmoe

Less than half the boobs, more than twice the win!

And finally my pathetic excuse for loot this year…

Is that a gorilla high fiving a shark?! Why yes, yes it is.

And that does it for this year’s AN! No tirade on the stupidity of anime fans when they gather this time, all that vitriol was spent last year. Now to start preparing for CNAnime in August, where I’ll hopefully be cosplaying for the first time!

~ Shirukii ~

Post Script: I’d also like to take this opportunity to apologize for the lack of K-ON blogging, it’s an awesome show and I have tons to say about it, but in all honesty…I’m lazy D: