Otakon 2010 - Saturday

Day two of Otakon 2010 was a good time. It consisted mostly with trips around the dealer's room and artist's alley, and one long trip outside. Suri and I went around watching cosplayers until we met up with my friend Amber. She gave me things to give to Downtown Otaku, and gave me a cat-earred hat that she made for me (complete with a hole in the back for my ponytail!) and a pink collar with a green bell that she got for me at another convention.

Once we separated from Amber, we planned to go to the AMV Contest. Of course, that was when fire alarms started going off and everyone was told to leave the building. 30,000 nerds were suddenly sent out onto the streets of Baltimore, not knowing what to do. The area around the convention center probably sent the regular residents into a panic. We were out there for maybe an hour before they let us back in.



While we were out there I found a Prof. Birch and asked if I could take a picture with him. He let me and then offered Suri and I pokemon cards of Mudkip, Torchik, and Treeko. I laughed and picked mudkip, and Suri picked torchik.

Once regularity had resumed, Suri and I went back in and took a spin around the artist's alley. I picked up a few things for Cass. I also got a cute poster of Kamina, Simon, and Nia, a Raichu postcard, and my friend Kyle bought me a bookmark with Italy from "Axis Powers Hetalia" on it. I also hung out with the dudes from Studio Painted Blade for a while. They are really cool dudes, so you should totally check them out. I think they have a webcomic going, and they just generally have fantastic work from what I have seen.



When we were done there we went back down to the dealer's room. There wasn't much for me there. I bought a few more of those Bleach cookies, a DBZ blind box for Downtown Otaku, and a little Hetalia figure since I'm apparently going to be watching that due to my love of ridiculous accents. We then went with Kyle to the Dr. Who photoshoot, and while they were busy with that I found a trio of unexpected Magic Knight Rayearth cosplayers...



I found Lantis, Alcyone, and Caldina. I spotted Caldina's cape and then noticed Alcyone next to her and needed a photo. Alcyone is, and has always been, one of my favorite Magic Knight Rayearth characters and I have never seen anyone cosplay her before. I expressed my excitement to the woman cosplaying and then we went back to the Dr. Who shoot.



After that, Cass came and picked us up. Dinner consisted of nachos and ice cream, and we watched some of our favorite episodes of "Avatar: The Last Airbender". I have no plans to go back Sunday. I'm out of money and there are no panels I want to go see.

As I said yesterday, all of the pictures from this weekend are up in their own album on Photobucket, and there were some absolutely stellar ones, so you should definitely check it out. This was a fantastic convention, and I'm so glad I got the chance to go for another year.

Thanks so much to all of the attendees for being such great company, and an extra special thanks to the con staff for putting on such a great event and for handling a small emergency like total champions. It was a great year and I cannot wait for Otakon 2011!

Otakon 2010 - Thursday/Friday

So we didn't do anything Otakon related on Thursday, but it was a good day, so I'm going to shove it in with Friday's activities.

So Cass picked me up around 1, we grabbed Suri, and headed down to Baltimore. We stopped at a rest stop for lunch, and then headed down to UMBC, where we're staying in Cass's apartment on campus. We got ourselves settled in, and then headed over to the local Safeway to pick up some food/snacks for the weekend.

I made steak sautéed in olive oil (I am the most Italian), a box of white cheddar & broccoli Pasta-Roni, and a bag of frozen broccoli for dinner. Cass made a box of cupcakes for dessert. It was the most delicious. For those of you who didn't know, I absolutely love to cook. So getting to cook dinner for my friends (while wearing an awesome blue apron!) was great.

Suri played some Twilight Princess, I played some Cate West: The Velvet Keys, and we made a lot of jokes about mangos being 100 cents, Death Note's "Take this potato chip... AND EAT IT!!!", and various other things we all found funny over the course of the day. Just being out of the house is nice, and I enjoyed hanging around and just being kind of nerdy and awesome with two of the most important people in my life.

Friday rolled around and Cass dropped Suri and I off at the convention center. We picked up our badges and began heading around the convention. We met up with friends and took pictures of cosplayers until it was around time for a Q&A panel with Jerry Jewel, who voices Vino/Claire from "Baccano!".



The previous Q&A for Todd Haberkorn was still going on, so we sat in in the end of it and figured out that he voiced Firo from "Baccano!", which was pretty cool also. They are hilarious men, and will also be voicing Italy and Russia (respectively) in the dub of "Axis Powers Hetalia" with crazy accents. I've never been too into Hetalia, but I do love crazy accents so I may watch it just for that.

After that, Suri and I made a few round in the dealer's room and artist's alley to scout out things we might want to buy and what booths had the best prices. While doing that, we also found some of my favorite cosplayers of the day.



Once we'd made a few rounds, we went back and started buying things. I didn't figure there would be much I wanted, but I managed to find a good handful of Nia figures to buy, plus a few other little Bleach things that I couldn't resist.



The "cookies" are actually zipper-pulls/keychains. They are really really cute. The "decorated" cookies are of Abarai Renji and Hitsugaya Toshiro, the two square cookies are of Kuchiki Byakuya and Hirako Shinji, and the chocolate cookies is just squares. I don't really know what it is. If I can find the booth again, I may buy a few more tomorrow and see what else I can get.



I also found this poster in the artist's alley. While making my rounds, there wasn't really a whole lot that I wanted. There were things at the tables of friends that I'd planned to pick up (and will go back for tomorrow since I didn't get to today), but there wasn't much I wanted to buy. Then I saw this Bakuman poster by Rikyo (of Studio Painted Blade), and just stopped dead in my tracks. He asked if I saw anything I liked, I pointed at it, and said "That." I paid the $10 for the poster and we had a brief conversation about how great Bakuman is.

After that we caught up with Cass and headed back to the apartment. I made chicken, corn, and chicken-flavored rice-a-roni for dinner, and now we're all hanging around unwinding after a full, very eventful day. Tomorrow we plan to take another spin around the dealer's room and the artist's alley and then see what happens.

All of our pictures from this weekend can be found in this album on Photobucket. It is full of fantastic cosplayers, so do go take a look!

Brb. Time for Otakon!

So, in about an hour, my wonderful best friend Cass will be picking me up for the trip down to Baltimore for Otakon 2010. I'll be down there until Sunday, getting my nerd on. If you're going to be there, just look for Professor Araragi (Pokemon Black/White) and Amamiya Yuuhi (The Lucifer And The Biscuit Hammer) walking around together. That'll be Suri and I.



It's gonna be a hell of a time, and I'm looking forward to getting to have some real downtime. Hopefully I'll have the energy to draft posts Friday and Saturday so that I can post them once I'm back and up in NYC at Downtown Otaku's place.

Short Post: State Of Affairs

So, apparently the Adiane figure in my last post, the one I am still so desperate to own, is a garage kit and is fairly hard to find. I'm certainly having a time of it via the internet. I'm going to try a few other means and see if I can't get my hands on it somehow.

In other news, Otakon 2010 is next weekend. Suri and I will both be wandering around. I'll be dressed as Professor Araragi from Pokemon B/W, and he'll be cosplaying Yuuhi from The Lucifer And the Biscuit Hammer. If you're going to be around, feel free to look for us and say hi!

I know I've got things to catch up on. It's just been way too hot lately, and things have been kind of hectic for me. I've barely been able to think straight. But I promise I will get back to proper blogging soon enough. I've got a whole lost of things to write about.

Otakon 2009

Last weekend Suri and I, along with several other friends, made the long trip down from central New Jersey to Balimore, Maryland for Otakon 2009. It's our one big convention of the year and we're usually pretty psyched to rock it out. It was great this year, as always.

General reports for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday can be found via their respective entries in my LiveJournal.

But overall, it was a great con. This was my second year cosplaying Simon form Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, and this year I got to be accompanied by Suri and my best friend Cass as my Kamina and Nia. We all hit up the Saturday photoshoot which was a lot of fun. Cosplay is about 50% of the reason I do Otakon, and it was really great to get to see other cosplayers and join in on photos and things.

We are the bitch-sassiest pair of Simons ever.

In an amusing twist, a friend of mine form high school who writes for Japanator ended up writing a short entry about when the Gurren Lagann shoot and the Super Smash Bros. shoot decided to wage war against each other. I ended up in a few of the photos he posted and we had a laugh a little later about what a small internet it is.

The better part of the weekend was spent in the Artist's Alley and the Dealer's Room, which is the other 50% I do Otakon. I got to see a lot of good friends in the Alley. These are people that I only really get to see once or twice a year at Otakon and NYAF, so it was really great to see them and catch up for a while. I also bought a few posters and prints, and a comic from the amazingly talented Hilary Florido, who is maybe one of the coolest people I know.

The Dealer's Room was fantastic this year. I bought two figures (Urahara Kisuke and Kuchikir Rukia) and an old Magic Knight Rayearth doll (Hikaru. I already have Fuu. Now I'm on the hunt for Umi.), and a really fantastic Sailor Moon pencil case.

I also got myself a few doujinshi, though I was only really satisfied with one of them -- an Ukitake/Unohana bleach doujinshi that looks like it's really cute. I may have to eventually try to translate it. I somehow ended up with another Ukitake/Kyoraku doujinshi, but while sitting outside of one of the panels we were waiting to go to, I decided to narrate it with hilarious dialog for my friend Jess and it turned out to be the best purchase ever.

"Blah blah blah I have cancer."

"No you don't. You have lupus."

"Well shit..."

I really don't have the slightest idea what was going on through the whole thing other than that Ukitake and Kyoraku kept fighting and bitch-slapping each other, but it made for an amusing little tale. I also got another Bleach doujin about Kon and some members of the female cast, and a FullMetal Alchemist Roy/Havoc doujin that also includes Riza somehow. Again, I need to learn to read Japanese so I can know what the hell is going on.

But the real prize for the weekend was buying a replica of Sode no Shirayuki, Kuchiki Rukia's sword, for $25. Anyone who knows me as a member of the Bleach fandom knows the crush I have on Shirayuki. So when I found it, I was sure it was really expensive and made Suri lead me away. But then he kept suggesting going back to ask how much it was, so we went and found out it was cheap enough for me to buy!

The unfortunate part is that she'll probably remain in her box until the spring when I either move back down to central NJ for good, or move in with my good friend Boomer over at Downtown Otaku. Then she will be proudly displayed on my wall where I can admire her.

So over all, it was a great con. I may switch up my cosplay next year, or I may not, but either way I'm looking forward to it.