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1. AFA09 Cosplay Picks
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For those of you who don’t follow me on twitter, and that means pretty much everyone, I recently went to Japan. Two of my days were spent in Akihabara. Below are some of my thoughts on what some have referred to as the Anime holy land.

1 – Gamers and Animate are nice stores and they are definitely worth visiting, but unless you can read Japanese there really isn’t all that much for a foreigner to get here. While these stores do have some character goods, there are other places that you can get them for much less. I’d recommend going to places not on Chuo-Dori, even though you will feel drawn to it like a moth to a flame. Stores like Kotobukiya and the Cospa Gee Store have a lot of good character goods for a lot of popular/current anime, including T-shirts, wall scrolls, mugs, CDs, etc.

2 – While it was difficult to not have an otakugasm while walking in the many stores I visited, the most interesting things to me was how all of these stores were able to constantly supply themselves and keep up to date.  Since I went on the weekend I suppose it was likely less of a spectacle than I made it out to be, as I am sure there are less hectic days. Still, it seemed like the workers were constantly restocking shelves of manga, or putting in new merchandise while customers crowded the stores. Even more amazing was the way the arcades operated. Though my next note dives into more detail regarding the arcades, the constant turnover of what prizes offered was fairly amazing. As an example, I went to one arcade late Saturday night and then again Sunday morning, and it seemed like 75 percent of the prizes were different. I suppose this makes sense, given that people likely don’t want to win, or even play for the same prizes on a constant basis, but it was still pretty interesting. You could probably apply some of these concepts to a lot of big cities around the world in some way or another, the rest of Tokyo included, it just wasn’t something I think about on a day to day basis.

3 – If you have ever been to a Casino then you would probably understand what it is like to play in an Akihabara arcade. I spent most of my time trying to win prizes on some of the lower floors of the numerous arcades, as I have nowhere the level of skill to compete with the people playing video games on higher floors. Most of the prize games, if not all of them require the use of the UFO drop, and further require multiple plays to win. After someone does win, an attendant comes by to reset the game by putting the prize in a predetermined spot, which makes it sufficiently difficult but also equally alluring. Iwon’t get into the specifics of all of the separate games, but suffice it to say there are some that you just won’t be able to do. If you ever play in these arcades, i’d focus on the games you know you can win at that have the most personally alluring prizes, rather than basing your game choice on what you want the most. Everything can be bought somewhere else, instead of won, and it will save you some money in the long run. As for myself, after a disastrous first attempt, I readjusted to the above strategy and was able to win 5 pretty cool items, though not the one thing I really wanted.

4 – There is a lot of porn. No one is really that shameless about it, which makes everything somewhat comfortable, but basic man law still applies. Weirdest thing to me was that I saw what looked like a Mom with what was maybe her 15 year old son in the same store, with the son in the doujinshi section, and the Mom elsewhere, until he needed her to foot the bill. Of course, that could also be a description for a different type of arrangement.

5 – Mandoka really says everything I need to say about cosplaying in the Akihabara, but, more generally, there weren’t as many cosplayers as I thought there would be, and I even went on Sunday. That’s not to say there weren’t any, but just not a lot, aside from all the maids. Two things that stood out to me was that it seemed like there was a unexpectedly high level of cross playing going on, but that might just have been due to the smallish sample size. Secondly, those who did cosplay, whatever it was, really seemed to embrace the concept of the Absolute Area, but really, it seems like a large percentage of Japanese women do.

6 – I spent way too much money for my own good. As a side effect of this turn of events, I have realized that my fascination with Tomoe Mami from MSMM has already passed the danger zone. Further, I am glad that I went during the last part of my trip, otherwise I would have spent even more.

7 – Put three English letters together, followed by a 48, and you will probably name a girl group in the area. Obviously, that’s an exaggeration, but there were at least three. Didn’t bother to see AKB48, and I don’t think I missed much either.

8 – While there are a bunch of reasons to call this the Anime holy land, the one thing I found most enjoyable, and was easy to kind of overlook after a while was that there was anime shows and music playing all the time in the stores. To actually go to a place where this isn’t that out of the ordinary is a little weird, but it was alos kind of relaxing in a way. I don’t really know how to describe it, but it was nice. Also, it was kind of weird, but it seemed like every arcade I went to was required by law to play music from Seitokai Yakuindomo. I enjoyed it, but it still seemed kind of random.

9 – Did not have the balls to go into a Maid Cafe, considering that I went by myself. Don’t know if I would have wanted to either, though I suppose I might have under the auspices of being ironic.

10 – If I have one complaint about Akihabara, and all of Japan really, is that it is impossible to find a trash can. I mean, you have all of these vending machines all over the place, but no trash cans. It gets annoying, as I spent a lot of time just looking for a trash can. It’s like all the trash cans are in secret locations that only Japanese could ever possibly know about. I understand that trash cans are a security threat, and considering Akihabara’s past it isn’t that big of a deal. A lot of other countries I have visited have this same “problem”, but what can you do. This is one reason I kind of miss America, the land of the easily found trash can.

11- Even though the new season is only three/four weeks old I found it amazing how much Yuru Yuri was getting plugged. I’ve only seen the first episode so far, as the only thing I’ve watched in Japan was Steins Gate (interesting side note on Steins Gate: I was in a cab in South Japan and there was a radio program talking about Steins Gate. The cabby was getting pretty emotional about what they were saying, to the point he was slamming his fist at one point. The guy looked like he was over 50. No clue what was said on the radio about Steins Gate, as I can’t really understand Japanese people talking when it isn’t programming for someone under 5), but back on point about Yuru Yuri, I thought the one episode I saw was pretty good. Still, it seems like it is all over. It kind of also seems like Idolmaster was the next most popular new series, merchandise wise, but it was hard to tell. Inexplicably, in my opinion, Infinite Stratos is all over the town. Its merchandise is everywhere. Once again, I assume this means it’s popular, but I suppose it could mean that the stores are overstocked with its merchandise. It’s hard to tell. Madoka and K-On are pretty popular as well.

12 – You can spend 9 hours walking around the area, which includes a whole bunch of stairs, and who knows how many miles that equates to, but you won’t feel tired in the least.

13. Homura seems infinitely more popular than Madoka. Example: You put a Madoka shirt in a UFO drop table. No one plays it for a long time. Put a Homura shirt in, its gone in 5 minutes.

14. Didn’t bother going to the Tokyo Anime Center. It looked kind of lame from the outside, and it seemed like a tourist trap, but then again I suppose the same could be said about the arcades.

15. Anaru jokes are universal.

I returned from Los Angeles and Anime Expo 2011 a few days ago and I have to say that the highlight of my trip, other than the soon to be regretted level of purchases I made in the dealer’s room, was anything dealing with Hatsune Miku. While the high point of all things Miku was obviously Mikunopolis, it was fun to learn a lot more about Miku over the course of the weekend through all of the panels. Before heading to Los Angeles, I was definitely a fan of the virtual idol, but going into the weekend I didn’t really know what to expect. After leaving, it struck me that being a fan of Miku was really a lot like believing in Santa for a few reasons.

First, like the meaning of Christmas, Miku can really be whoever you want her to be depending on what you like to do, and I’m not talking about her seemingly endless wardrobe for all the perverts out there. Well, I suppose that might be part of it. Still, fans can create new songs, animations, or character designs of and about Miku and send them out there for others to enjoy through the use of the internet. But just as Christmas isn’t just about candy canes and sleigh bells, Miku isn’t just about the music. One thing that became perfectly clear to me almost immediately this weekend is that Miku could very easily be a synonym for Commercialism, and in a lot of ways this is a good thing. It is because of this entrepreneurial spirit fan designs for Miku show up in games or on figures. It is because of this entrepreneurial spirit that allows companies to make money off of Miku’s products, even through the use of a decentralized business model. And in the truest of sense of all things commercialism, Miku is often depicted in pictures that are less than pure.

Continuing the Christmas analogy, it is often difficult for kids to understand the concept of Christmas during their early years. A 2 year old doesn’t necessarily understand what it means to get free presents, but within a few years it is the center of their kid universe. I kind of got this same feeling over the course of this weekend when it came to Miku. Obviously, many of the people who came to Anime Expo had some idea of who Miku was, but for many, this was their first large dose of all things Miku. While it seemed like the interest in the virtual idol slowly grew over the course of the weekend, I think most people really began to appreciate Miku during her concert. At first, it seemed like only select groups of people were cheering and fewer still were standing. However, as the concert progressed more people got into the groove of things, so to speak, and by the end of the night it seemed like almost every person in the Nokia Theatre was on their feet screaming their lungs out for Miku to return for an encore. So I guess like a lot of things in life, Santa Claus and Miku included, it takes a little time to understand what it going on, but once you do, it is something special.

Now, while I admire everything that the Japanese companies have done to increase the popularity of Miku, from implementing fan designs into concerts and figures to giving individual creators relative freedom to use Miku in their productions to this past weekend’s concert, I kind of got the sense that the Japanese feel that other nations need to follow their model for Miku to be a success, which I don’t think is the right approach. Just as people celebrate Christmas and Santa differently across the world, so should we Miku and the other Vocaloids. While having different language software available in the future is a step in the right direction, it is an obvious one. What is worrisome is that Miku won’t necessarily be available or well known to the wider audience of people in the U.S., or other western nations. Now I suppose it might be impossible for people outside of the normal anime, j-pop, etc. fan to ever really be a fan of Miku, but the creation and use of new sites in the United States, like niconico.com, seems like it will go about as well as the United States trying to introduce democracy into the Middle East.

So, assuming that Miku (and her handlers) truly do want to conquer the world, it would become absolutely necessary for them to conquer a wide range of the Otaku fan base, from Narutards to people willing to travel across the country to see Miku and everyone in-between ( as a sort of power base). From a few panels I attended during the Expo and people I’ve talked to in the past, it doesn’t seem like the anime industry has done a good job getting its online product well known. I remember several people during the con didn’t know that Crunchyroll offered free anime (and to be honest, it seems like a very small subset of people know you can get anime online via streams, legally or otherwise), so it is by no means a given thing that people will utilize niconico.com or the newly announced Mikubook on a regular basis, especially when there is the 500 pound gorilla in the room that goes by the name of YouTube.

If there is one thing I learned from my business consulting classes, it is that if you have the ability to work with a company who already has the resources needed to help you produce a product, it is better to work with that company, than to try and develop the capabilities yourself. The use of joint ventures is even more crucial when you are trying to introduce a product into a foreign country. Obviously, I have no idea if the Miku people have tried to create a joint venture of some sort with American based web companies, but if they haven’t, that would seem to be a blunder on their part. The time and money it will take to make the average fan of anime/j-pop become aware of niconico or Mikubook will more than likely not be worth it, and they can forget about ever drawing the attention of the average American consumer. Instead, Japanese companies should really think about doing special promotions for Miku on already popular American internet mediums, so that Miku will not just be searched for by those who already know of her.

That’s not to say that Miku is doomed to failure outside of Japan. The business model developed in Japan really does seem to be working and they have a great product to work with. As a person who would like to see Miku become more popular, I would like to see Japanese companies work more with American companies as a way to promote her, which they have done to some extent with the Toyota commercials in the U.S. Still, these things need to be more than gimmicks; they need to be real sustained attempts at letting people learn about Miku through already established video mediums, or eventually the costs of doing business will become too high, which force them to cut and run.

Well, this one was a bit of a misstep. It wasn’t bad, it was amusing enough, but the style of humor was very different from the norm, resulting in something decidedly more run of the mill and boring than usual.

The first half turned out to be more about wacky vending machine food than anything else. Which was certainly quirky, but not all that funny. It was just cute girls doing cute things, without any hook, and that has already been done to death in the anime world. It’s not fun anymore. The faraway and silhouette shots, which Shaft usually uses to good effect, were actually kind of ugly and only served to remind us of how much money they must be saving. And I don’t know what to make of Harue’s surprise appearance at the end of the segment, other than that maybe they wanted to get their money’s worth from Ryoko Shiraishi, as she had to be in the 2nd half of the episode.

And no sooner than I start drawing comparisons to The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya does Yet the Town Keeps Going bring out a concert-at-the-culture-festival episode. I appreciate that it didn’t go the Haruhi/K-On/Angel Beats route of having (what’s supposed to be) a normal, poppy rock song, but rather stuck with the old timey whimsical tune similar to the ED. The peculiar collection of instruments certainly fit well with the whole off-mainstream feel of the song.

But they could have milked this culture festival concert story a lot more. I don’t even mean stretching it out over more episodes or even to a full episode, though either would certainly work given that over a month passes through the course of the half episode. I mean using the story to show us more interesting interactions between the protagonists. They are what have made this show entertaining, after all. Instead, the sequence of events was surprisingly straightforward. Futaba wants to perform at the culture festival. She gets a time slot at the stage. She recruits Harue on drums (with some manipulation using table tennis), learns that Toshiko and Hotori play instruments, recruits them, then they perform. Not much else.

There were many chances for humor that were simply missed or glossed over. How about that whole month when the 4 had to learn the song and practice? When did they choose to go with the maids theme, and why? Who made Futaba’s stunning outfit? Then what about the days of the actual festival? How did they spend their time? What sorts of fun misadventures did our unique heroines run into? They’re not for us to find out.

I did like how the ED sequence ended up being genuine; just as Futaba had been revealed to play the bass a couple episodes back, Hotori does play the accordion – an instrument that fits her eccentric nature, taught to her by the head maid – Toshiko does play the violin, Harue does play the drums, and they all do perform together in maid outfits. But then again, this sort of gag had been done before, in Lucky Star, with the OP sequence. Except that Kyoto Animation is much better at animation than Shaft is. As cute as the concert was, the fact that the instruments didn’t exactly match up to the music was a huge distraction. That’s just one of those things that I’ve come to expect in this post-Haruhi anime world.

So this week’s episode was lackluster, especially after the both hilarious and powerful episode it was following. In fact, it was the worst since the bland first episode. The show bounced back strong after that initial misstep and kept going to this point, so I’m hopeful that it will start hitting its marks again next week and continue on to the end.

This past weekend was the New York Anime Festival, which was combined with New York Comic Convention. Being located about 4 hours away in Boston and hearing that The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya would be playing, I decided to make the trek down. Here is a chronicle of what I saw and experienced there. I originally intended to make one post, but the post on Friday alone was getting too long, so I’ll split this into two parts. Saturday and Sunday were much less eventful than Friday, so the second post may end up shorter than this one.

Table of Contents

• Getting There
• Minori Chihara Panel
• Anime in Academia Panel
• Minori Chihara Autograph
• Disappearance Screening
• The Evening Afterward

Getting There

First of all, getting to the place was pretty hectic. Not crazy, but I had to get up at 5:30 in order to get to the train station to catch a 7am bus from Boston to New York. The trip was supposed to last 4 hours 15 minutes, so with an arrival time of 11:15, but the actual arrival time was 12:10. Also, wifi on the bus wasn’t working, so I was limited to using 3G on my phone instead of wifi on my laptop. Here’s a tip: never use Megabus.

The bus dropped us off at West 28th and 7th, and with my hotel on West 39th and 9th, I hurried to get there. I ran with my suitcase rolling behind me on the New York City streets, to check in so that I could get to the con in time for opening at 1:00. Why did I want to get there so soon? Bandai was giving out tickets for autographs by Minori Chihara to the first 100 people to buy Haruhi related products at their booth, and I wanted to be one of them. I’m actually not a fan of Minori Chihara at all, but, what the hell, she’s the only actual Japanese voice actor to be at a convention I’m attending, so why not get her signature, right?

Once at the con, the line to get in was huge, but it moved very quickly, only taking maybe 20 minutes at most. I snapped a photo of my first cosplayer there, a great Rena Ryuugu who was a little in front of me. I also got to shake hands with Stan Lee as he passed by. I’m no US comic book fan, but it was Stan. Fucking. Lee.

The line led to the entrance to the show floor, and, wouldn’t you know it, Bandai’s booth was right at the entrance, and they still had tickets left! I bought the first season of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya collection on DVD – I actually didn’t own it before – and collected my ticket. The festival was off to a good start.

Let me make a note about the layout of the place. The Jacob K. Javits Center is a big place, and the entire 3rd floor was divided into 2 huge show floors. There was a section with vendors on the right side, and an area for smaller vendors, gaming, and artists on the left. These were all Comic Con related stuff, except for a small corner on the right where there was the Bandai booth, and another small corner on the left with a stage. At the beginning of the convention on Friday, there were girls dressed up as the K-On girls and playing those songs. One of them was Mio’s dub voice actor, I believe.

The actual anime festival part was at a small basement area on the lower left of the building. An escalator led straight down to the anime artists’ alley. To the right was a “maid cafe,” which was just a bunch of tables and chairs in front of a small stage where some singers performed. Past those were 4 rooms for panels including 1E09, which was 3 times as big as the others and used for the main events. This was the room in which the Minori Chihara panel and the Disappearance screening were held.

Minori Chihara Panel

The first actual event I went to was the Minori Chihara panel that went from 3:15 to 4:15. I’ve never been to a voice actor panel before, but I’m guessing this was a pretty standard one. A translator and a handler was up there along with Chihara, and no photos or video were allowed until the end. There were some brief comments by Chihara, mainly about the trip to New York, and then Q&A for the rest of the time.

(Occult Academy spoilers below)

Chihara herself did an amazing job selling herself. She was absolutely adorable, both in looks and in voice. She spoke in a way very similar to how she played Mikaze in Occult Academy, which is fitting, because that was all just an act as well, designed to lure in the audience with a false image. Speaking of which, one of the questions that I considered asking was on how she decided to play Mikaze, knowing that she would ultimately turn out to be a villain. I decided against asking it, because it contained spoilers for a show that had just finished airing, but someone else went ahead and asked it anyway. And although the cat was out of the bag at that point, the handler decided against answering the question because of the same reason I didn’t ask it.

(end of Occult Academy spoilers)

I also wanted to ask her if she was afraid of being typecast because soon after playing Yuki Nagato, she had played similarly monotone characters in both Lucky Star and Minami-ke, but we ran out of time before that.

Anime in Academia Panel

Next was the Anime in Academia panel, a discussion panel run by Alex Leavitt, and featuring 3 panelists, Casey Brienza, Mikhail Koulikov, and Jennifer Fu. You can read about who these people are on Alex Leavitt’s own blog, Department of Alchemy, on which he also posted the audio of the panel. I’ll note that I had actually met Jennifer Fu before as well, at the MIT anime club, which is open to students outside of MIT. I found most interesting the parts when they discussed how to actually find research material, as well as the ethical dilemma of using pirated material. The difficulties of getting published and the extremely high quality of writing expected in academic journals, well, I think anyone who’s done research in college must understand that. I was mainly a math/science student in college, and even in those fields, the quality of writing has to be top notch, so I can only imagine how stringent the quality must be in softer fields like sociology or Asian American studies.

Minori Chihara Autograph

Next was the actual Minori Chihara signing at the Bandai booth upstairs. That was at 6pm, and I was very paranoid about missing the 8pm screening of The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, because I assumed that people would line up for it around this time (turns out, my fears were unfounded, and I ended up getting a front row seat). Anyway, I was the last person in line, but Bandai did a great job moving the line quickly, each person only getting like 15 seconds with Chihara. I decided to get the cover of the DVD set I bought earlier signed.

So yeah, I then rushed back downstairs to room 1E09, only to find it mostly empty, and no one lined up. Across the hall was a Hatsune Miku panel, which featured guests from Crypton Future Media Inc, the actual company that created the Vocaloid software and characters. It was absolutely packed, and I could only stand at the doorway, but that worked for me, because I was keeping an eye out at room 1E09, in case too many people were going in. It was pretty cool to see the actual creators of Hatsune Miku and friends, and they mentioned that if 39,390 fans “like” their Facebook page, they would create an English speaking Vocaloid (3-9 is a pun on the name Mi-ku). Now, I’m sure they’re counting on the fact that there won’t be that many fans signing up, and at last count, it was only around 18,000, but what the hell, if you have a Facebook account, do it anyway and try putting them in a tough position.

And finally, to cap off the day at the convention was the screening of The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya.

Disappearance Screening

I was lucky enough to find a single seat at the very front of the room. The Miku panel was over at 7, so I waited for about an hour in the seat, and I met a couple of friendly guys from Maine who were into some of the same things as myself, namely, Type-Moon and Vocaloid. One of the two had even dabbled in making songs using Megurine Luka. Jay and Colin, if you’re reading this, you guys were a couple of the best single-serving friends ever!

When 8 o’clock rolled around, Minori Chihara appeared once again, along with her handlers and a representative from Bandai. There were just a few brief forgettable comments, and then the movie began.

It was a lot of fun watching the movie in a large room full of fans. Everyone laughed along at the in-jokes, cheered at the cute moments, and there were audible gasps at the truly OH SHI- moments. It was basically what I expected; a lot like watching a movie at a theater, just where everyone was a fan. There was a hitch in the reel switching midway into the movie – yes, this was shown from a full 35mm reel – but it caused us to miss only about 5 seconds, so it was no big deal.

As for the contents of the movie, well, you can read my full review of the movie. I will say that I went in extremely skeptical. I loved the first season to death, but I’ve hated everything else Kyoto Animation has done since, i.e. Kanon, Lucky Star, Clannad, K-On, and, yes, the second season of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. I had also already read the novel on which this movie was based, and I hadn’t thought too much of it. But everyone who had seen the movie had raved about it, which is why I was so dead set on watching it in the first place.

There was a dumb grin on my face all the way back to my trip back to the hotel. Day one of NYAF was over, and it alone had been worth the price of entry.

The Evening Afterward

The movie being 2 hours 40 minutes long, it was 11 by the time I got back to my hotel. I was pretty exhausted from the extra long day – even on workdays, I generally get up past 9 – but hey, I was in New York City, the city that never sleeps! I decided to take a walk outside, find a bar with some food, because I hadn’t had a proper meal all day (I did have a horrible convention center cheeseburger, but that was neither tasty nor satisfying). Unfortunately, even in New York, it seems bars close their kitchens for the evening, so I ended up walking a while before finding a nice Italian place called Mercato, on the corner of West 39th and 9th. I spent $47 on a lasagna and 2 mixed drinks. The first drink I had was called the Singapore Sling, and it was absolutely wonderful. And Mercato itself is great if you don’t mind paying the premium. Check it out sometime if you’re ever in the area.

A more interesting thing happened during my initial walkabout. I had my phone out, search on Google Maps for a place nearby that might be open, when a limo driver (he was standing next to an open limo) came up to me and asked me to use my phone. His phone battery was dead, you see. I’m usually very skeptical in situations like this, but I was feeling pretty good – probably a high from having just watched Disappearance and the sleep deprivation – so I offered to dial the number for him and to put him on speaker. There was a brief scuffle when he tried to grab the phone, but I held a firm grip and insisted that I’d be more comfortable holding it. Everything went smoothly, the dude made his call, and I walked away feeling a bit weird but good about myself, too.

It was about 1AM by the time I got back to my hotel room, and I probably fell asleep at around 1:30.

So that was the first day of New York Anime Festival for me. To be honest, I could’ve gone home happy at this point. But there were 2 more days, so stay tuned. And if you were also there, please leave a comment! Especially if you saw an Asian dude with glasses, a grey FLCL cap and a large camera bag slung over his shoulder.

If you’ve been following my Twitter feed at all, you know that I was at New York Anime Festival (combined with New York Comic Convention) this past weekend. I’m working on a proper writeup of the convention overall, but in the meanwhile, enjoy some photos of the great cosplayers I took over the weekend. You can find all the cosplay photos I took in my Picasa web albums: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3. The resolutions have been reduced from their original 12MP so that they don’t take up insane amounts of space, but if you’d like the full-res version of any of them, just ask. And to all the cosplayers during the convention, thank you!

Day 1

Friday was a short day, starting from 1PM. I also wanted to attend a lot of panels that day, so I didn’t manage to take a lot of pictures. Still, I got some good ones, including Alex Leavitt and his girlfriend as the pair from Toradora! – if you’ll recall, Leavitt is the guy who ran panels at both PAX East and Anime Boston earlier this year. He ran a discussion panel called “Anime in Academia” which I attended most of.

Day 2

Saturday was absolutely insane. I wish I had taken more, but most of the time, the area was so packed that a good photo just wasn’t possible. It was on this day that I noticed that Durarara!! seemed to be one of the more popular shows to cosplay. Makes sense, I guess, since it’s mostly pretty easy, there are some unique designs, and the guys are perfect yaoi material. Some good Shizuos that I unfortunately couldn’t get pictures of.

Also, there were a lot of Vocaloid cosplayers, just like at Anime Boston, somewhat expected because there was a Miku “concert” that day with a couple of the creators of Vocaloid, including the CEO of Crypton (the company that produces the software). Among those, Kagamine Rin seemed to be a close 2nd to Miku.

Day 3

Sunday might have been a short day just like Friday, but it was almost as busy as on Saturday. Again, not a lot of chances to snap pictures, but two really stood out to me. One was Tissue-hime, the Nico Nico Douga celebrity known for dressing up as Yuki Nagato, wearing a cough mask to cover his face, and playing the guitar. The other was a near-perfect replica of the Old Spice guy.

There was also a K-On cosplay event at the Bandai booth, to which I arrived too late to get any good pictures.

Well, those are some of the highlights. Again, plenty more in my Picasa albums, links to which I have at the top or as the headers for each section. I probably didn’t get even half the pictures I would’ve liked to just due to how crowded and busy it was, but, well, there’s always next year.

Like last week’s episode, this one was about one of the seven companions, the maid Otsu Tsuruyaga in this case. That’s about all it had it common with that episode, though, or with the rest of the series, for that matter. Without a clear fairytale analogy to latch onto, it was an episode that could’ve been a part of any other show. Unfortunately, when this show isn’t standing out thanks to its gimmick, it’s downright plain and… boring.

The premise was pretty ridiculous. So much so that it was funny, I’ll admit. If only it didn’t remind me of a bazillion other anime out there. It was just the classic “girl falls into main character’s lap” story rolled up into an episode instead of an entire series. Actually, it was lifted wholesale from some eroge if anything.

Then things continued to get more ridiculous, but not in a good way. It started with Otsu’s back story, which felt like it belonged in another type of show altogether. That it was out of place didn’t bother me as much as just how played out a story it was. The “pushed out of the way of an oncoming truck” plot element has been used to death, especially in anime, and it leaves me feeling nothing, if it ever did at one point. It’s uninteresting.

The last third of the episode was without humor. Even the narrator, who had saved some scenes earlier in the series didn’t feel all-there. She could’ve had a field day with the craziness of the set up, but she was restrained, doing only enough to remind us that she was still around. The way the story turned out was sappy and difficult to tolerate, especially during the big all-maids scene.

I did like getting to see Ryoushi’s home life. It’s an unusual set up, and Yukime was a fun character. I suppose her conversation with Ryouko and Ringo was part of developing the main romance story. And the gag involving Hansel and Gretel was amusing, if predictable. Though showing us that brother sister love reminded us again of how eroge based this episode’s plot was.

That’s all I have to say about this one. The show needs to get back in track with what made it so appealing in the first place, what made it stand out from other shows of the same vein. Because it depends on its unique elements to stand out from a sea of shows that is identical to this one. Instead of this moe fanservice, let’s see more fairy tale adaptations. Which one is Otsu based off of, anyway?

This was a fun little episode that went deeper into the past of a couple of the main characters, namely Otohime and Tarou. It’s told as a tortoise and the hare story, as Otohime and rival Mimi Usami – played fittingly by Rie Kugimiya – fought it out for Tarou’s heart. And though not emphasized as heavily, there was a touch of The Ugly Duckling in there as well.

Otohime’s story was pretty sweet, even if completely superficial. Plus, she wasn’t all that fat to begin with! Well, maybe by Japanese standards… But seeing Tarou be so nice to her in the past showed us why she’s so madly in love with him. And also that he isn’t such a bad guy, or at least not too superficial – as long as it’s a girl, it’s fine with him, no matter what the shape or size.

Of course, the heart of the episode was in watching Otohime and Mimi duke it out to win the contest. They laid the tortoise vs. hare metaphor pretty thick, especially with calling Mimi “Usa-chan,” an obvious pun on the Japanese word for rabbit, “usagi.” I was a bit surprised that the story ended up being so long term, starting all the way back from when they were all in elementary school. It was actually a much more direct metaphor than the Cinderella one in the first episode, with the beauty contest taking the place for the race, though it ended with a bit of a twist. As for the similarities to The Ugly Duckling, they didn’t play that up at all, but the metaphor is pretty obvious.

The comedy was strong for the most part. I especially enjoyed the cynicism of the main group deciding that sabotaging Mimi was the best way to win… and then finding out that Mimi had the exact same thought! And the reference to Zero’s Familiar – another J.C. Staff production – took me a few seconds to get, but it was a nice in-joke.

The narrator got her chance to shine in that scene as she bleeped out parts of the argument. I’ve heard animal noises used for that, but I’m not sure I’ve seen the narrator being used that way before. I also loved the constant references to how Ringo and Usami overlapped in their loli-ness, which got on Ringo’s nerves. Anyway, I’m repeating myself, but Satomi Arai continues to be a pleasure to listen to as the narrator.

I also liked how Liszt’s cross-dressing was handled. It was just there, and only Ryoushi seemed to make a big deal about it, just from the initial surprise.

It was a little surprising that they collectively got 1 vote, from Tarou, though I expected them not to rank. I liked seeing them be the losers like that. Really, after all that fighting, it was downright pathetic! How arrogant of them to assume that one of them would take the top prize!

One thing I didn’t like so much was Mimi’s character being so flat. No, not like that. She was just a mean narcissist, plain and simple. I guess those people aren’t actually uncommon, especially in high school, but they’re not very interesting to watch. I really felt no sympathy for her at the end.

So despite the narrator not taking control like in the last episode, this was a pretty fun one. I had written in the previous post that the show didn’t seem as entertaining when focusing on the main characters, but this one was a damned fun episode. Otohime and Tarou were pretty cute together. I’m looking forward to seeing the adaptations they’ll be doing in coming episodes, and how they’ll involve some of the 7 companions.

Anime St. Louis is really the impulse convention of the year for me.  I always decide to go at the absolute last-minute, and then somehow the arrangement just works.  This year, I have Heidi to thank for providing the little convincing needed to go.  Seriously, those puppy dog eyes are powerful stuff.  I also need to thank Alisa for providing lodging during the convention so I could attend all three days instead of just one.  Now, without further ado, the convention coverage!

First, the attendees and staff really had it together this year.  Gone were the crazy registration lines from last year.  The setup for this year avoided clogging an entire area of the convention.  When I got there, they opened a third line when only five people were waiting to get people through faster.  I still think the form asks for too much information, but I complain about that for every reg form.  Then with the lost and found this year, one of my friends lost her badge.  In the 10 minutes it took for us to realize it was missing, it was already turned in by someone and waiting for us.  I heard similar stories from others in passing.  We had a tornado warning during the convention as well, and everyone handled themselves very well despite the scare.  So, props to everyone who attended this year.

Now, I am not the panel attendee by any means.  I normally go to conventions to socialize and shoot group photoshoots.  I run panels because I enjoy doing it, and because it has some perks.  However, I don’t know nearly as many people in the central Midwest circuit as the eastern circuit, so I looked into it for this convention.  ASTL suffers from the same programming headaches as everyone else.  There were scheduling conflicts, a few blank spots on the list, and I felt the schedule overall was a little underwhelming.  Despite this, I feel the situation has still improved over last year.  I think I’ll try to get into the mix a bit next year.

The first panel on the talking block is Soul Eater, one of my favorite series.  I want to say this was the first time these girls ran the panel.  It was a little bare bones for my liking, but they were certainly enthusiastic about the subject material.  They also didn’t fall into the “tech trap” that occurs when you suddenly realize the projector will not work for you.  I’ve seen several panels in the past get totally derailed by tech failures, so my hat’s off to them for continuing with what they had available.  They have a lot of room for improvement, so if they get the slot next year, I expect some growth.

The only industry panel I went to this year was the “free-for-all” on Sunday.  Unfortunately, only three guests were still at the convention and available.  Voice actor Troy Baker, Internet personality Doug Walker, and musician Tadahisa Yoshida talked with us for about an hour.  I loved the former two and I regret missing their panels at the convention.  Fortunately, I have another opportunity to see Doug at Matsuricon this year.  Tada was a bit of a fish out of water at the panel, but I have to give him credit for showing up at a Sunday afternoon event.

Then I have the duo of Brad and Derek.  They ran the Code Geass panel with Kira on Friday, and the Naruto panel with Wyatt on Saturday.  These are truly fantastic panelists.  They know their material thoroughly, injecting both insight and humor.  They can also manage the freeform panel setup I enjoy so much more than dissertation style.  If you’re in this region and they have a panel on a series you’re interested in, go to it.  Seriously, if I ran programming at a convention, I’d offer them slots immediately.  I’ve run out of ways to suck up to them for now, but rest assured I have an R&D division working around the clock to develop new methods.

This year ASTL split up the Masquerade into two portions.  The first covered the walkons, and the second had all the skits.  It’s kind of odd when most conventions do both segments together, but I think it works out better.  You only have to attend the Masquerade for the aspects your interested in, which prevents people who just want to see walkons from blocking those who just want to see skits from having a seat.  From the attendance, many people just wanted to see the walkons.  A show of hands at the skits showed only a small portion of those people in attendance.  That’s a good thing because the skits pretty well filled the room.

The staff hosted two dances this year, and I went to both of them.  Friday was the 80s dance, which I liked simply because it was different.  I think song choice needs to improve for next year, but I still had fun in a setting different from the normal fare.  The rave techno dance was also a lot of fun.  The music had some nice variety and a good flow.  Nothing irks me more than a DJ who sticks to the same basic beat, or “safety zone”, for 15 minutes at a time.  I didn’t have that problem here.  I do have to say calling the rave a techno dance is about as effective a euphemism as calling H1N1 the flu, but whatever works for them is fine with me.

Finally, we have the Dealer’s Room, Artist’s Alley, and Game Room.  I’m not much of a shopper myself, and because I went to this convention on impulse I also had no money set aside for buying anything.  The Alley was somewhat small, and the Dealer’s was somewhat big.  The Dealer’s Room also felt like Colossalcon where they had a lot of stuff but it still felt underwhelming.  Maybe the likes of Acen and Otakon have spoiled me.  The Game Room, however, was more than satisfactory for a convention this size.  They had plenty of TVs and consoles setup, including a full Xbox 360 LAN.  They provided a DDR Extreme machine as well, but it fizzled out at some point on Friday.  I suppose you just can’t have everything.

TLDR: I thoroughly enjoyed Anime St. Louis.  In just two years, it has come from being a clustersuck to a solid performer in the region.  There are still faults but the staff has still improved year over year.  In 2011, I intend to plan my attendance instead of just showing up.

As expected, day 2 saw more cosplayers than day 1. Day 3 had fewer, of course, and had a more relaxed, muted atmosphere as well.

Again, I’ve uploaded the photos I took onto Picasa: Day 2 and Day 3.

Some that I found notable:

• A Bayonetta with a chainsaw she uses in one of her torture attacks.
• A Lucy and a Nyuu from Elfen Lied.
• The only Kino from Kino’s Travels I could find. That show’s quite obscure, so finding a cosplayer was satisfying.
• Princess Tutu, who actually stood on her toes for the photo.
• The only Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei cosplayer I could find, a very tall Itoshiki Nozomu doing the dance bit from the burebure opening.
• A girl as Pilaf from Dragon Ball. Talk about an obscure character from an ancient show. A show I grew up with.
• South Korea from Axis Powers Hetalia. There was a metric ****load of Hetalia cosplayers there, this was the only South Korea I could find. I didn’t even know South Korea was in Hetalia.
• The Jenova tube (that’s right, the actual tube) from which Sephiroth escaped in Final Fantasy 7.
• Windows7-tan. The best operating system out there right now, bar none. All you Mac users and Linux fanboys can suck it. (There was actually an Ubuntu booth at the dealer’s room – there’s apparently an on-going manga about Ubuntu that’s being published in Japan).
• I got a Lady cosplayer to hold her pistol in her mouth, like one of the cut scenes in Devil May Cry 3. She also had an excellent Kalina Ann.
• There were 2 Yokos from the My Stars music video based on Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. One as a bunnygirl, the other in the black suit with a guitar.
• Izaya and Shizuo from Durarara! It’s hard to find cosplayers of shows this recent, in my experience.

There were also a lot of Vocaloid cosplayers. Like, a lot. So many you wouldn’t believe. It was awesome.

I won’t go too deep into the panels. I attended 3 more by Alex Leavitt, one about anime pilgrimages which made me more interested in going on a cycling trip than on anime. He talked about how otaku in Japan were making so-called “pilgrimages” to actual locations that their favorite anime were using as backdrops. He used a shrine that was shown for about 5 seconds in the Lucky Star opening as an example. He provided a link to a site that attempts to catalog all the anime with real-life locations and provides links to photos/comparison shots. The list on the front page of that site is 453 long. Some people even went all the way to Spain, from where Sora no Woto’s backdrop was inspired!

I stood in line for a 2 hour Touhou panel that was absolutely packed. I was hoping to learn more about the fanbase and the entire sub-industry that this one series of games has inspired, but it was more about the games and official works themselves. They spent a little too much time on just playing the game on the big screen. I did learn about a boxer who cosplayed as Touhou characters during his entrance to the ring. Here’s one such entrance and here’s him KO’ing his opponent while his posse of (female) cosplayers celebrate.

I went to dinner on Saturday with founder and fans of Fakku, a site I won’t link to as it’s very very NSFW. Turns out the founder, Jacob, is a Massachusetts native, having grown up and still going to college in Worcester! Met some interesting people there, one of whom was kind enough to give me a ride back home at 2AM (Boston’s public transportation sucks, and part of the reason is that it shuts down around 1AM).

Other than photographing and attending panels, I spent a lot of time at the artists’ alley and the dealers’ room and spent a little too much money on the artists’ wares. At least the money’s going to support the artists directly. I bought 4 prints of Black Rock Shooter, 2 of Hatsune Miku, 1 of Hitagi (the only Bakemonogatari picture I could find there – the artist mentioned that he had the idea of painting a picture of her onto a stapler and selling it), and a couple bookmarks, including a Durarara!! one which goes nicely with the book I was already reading.

Anyway, I had a good time. Spent probably about $200-$225 for everything, including food, with a grand total of 12+15+7=34 hours spent at the convention center. Definitely a much more exciting atmosphere than PAX East, with more people just looking like they were having fun. Like me. Looking forward to it next year.

Well, Boston was blessed enough to have a gaming convention then an anime convention on back to back weekends, both at Hynes Convention Center, conveniently enough. Naturally I took the day off work to attend day 1.

First of all, there were a LOT more cosplayers in this con than at PAX East. You can see that in my Picasa Web Album. Expected, I guess, since PAX East is a more professional con with a lot of journalists and media, where as Anime Boston is more fan-oriented. I’d guess a good 75-80% were cosplayers. I was not one of them, though I did take photos of them.

Some of my favorites were:

• Master Roshi from Dragon Ball, who did 2 great poses.
• Lots and lots of Vocaloids. I’m probably a little behind, but I’m getting into Hatsune Miku, so I was happy to see that.
• A real gender-bending Senou Natsuru from Kampfer.
• A bare- and hairy-chested Sora from Kingdom Hearts Tidus from Final Fantasy X (thank you, Marx-Taich0u).
• The sole Bakemonogatari cosplayer that I could find, Hitagi Senjougahara. She had unfortunately forgotten her stapler, but she did have 2 pairs of scissors.
• Everyone posted on this very page.

There are plenty of other very good ones, so, again, just go to my Picasa Album.

I did go to some panels, but most of them were pretty uneventful. I did go to one run by Alex Leavitt, the MIT researcher who had the talk on memes at PAX East last weekend (he’s running a total of 8 at Anime Boston – check out his blog), on anime OPs and EDs, which was pretty fun. He did a good job summing up the various styles of OPs depending on the anime genre, showing off some interesting, more out-there ones (nothing by Shaft, I’m sorry to say), and some ones that the US really butchered.

But the rest were pretty meh. There was a talk titled “Vile Spectre of Moe,” which amounted to little more than one guy ranting against moe and calling its fans losers, without going into much detail as to why moe was so abhorrent or how the phenomenon had seeped into the otaku/anime culture. Half the talk was him talking about the glory days of the 60s-80s when anime was good.

The Life and Times of Akiyuki Shinbo was one that I had high hopes for, because Shinbo is one of my current favorite directors. If you don’t know him, he’s directed virtually everything by Shaft in the past few years, excepting the Ef series and the latest season of Hidamari Sketch. That means things like Pani Poni Dash!, all 3 seasons and various OVAs of Sayonara, Zetsubou Sensei, the still-unfinished Bakemonogatari, and, of course, the recently completed Dance in the Vampire Bund that I’m blogging.

This guy was an old-school fan, tracking his works all the way back to the 80s. And he did manage to show us a certain continuity of Shinbo’s style throughout his shows. And there were several clips of Bakemonogatari as well, which is always welcome. But the problem was that it was too evident that he was not film or art expert – a fact he admitted a couple times in the talk. He did little to show how Shinbo’s distinct artistic style contributed to his works further than being “interesting” (a word he used too much). He and I also seem to be fans of Shinbo in completely different ways, as I like the latter half of Dance in the Vampire Bund, whereas he thinks it went downhill after the first half. So a mixed bag.

I also went to a panel on yuri, which was not safe for this blog. I did get to see some awesome scenes from the Utena movie. I never had any interest in Utena before, but after seeing some of the downright psychedelic scenes from that, I might have to seek it out.

Besides that, I ended up waiting in line for the Video Game Orchestra once again, and I was rather disappointed. I figured that they would play some of the same pieces from last week, but they literally played ONLY the pieces from last week. Not worth the 1.5 hours in line I waited for that.

I’ll be attending tomorrow as well, when even more cosplayers should come out. And more interesting panels, including one on hentai manga by Alex Leavitt.

There was more talk and less action in this episode than I expected, but I found that to be alright, because the talk brought back that very important issue that had been ignored for the last many episodes: Akira’s continued amnesia. And it ties it together with Telomere; what Akira still doesn’t remember is what Telomere wants. And Telomere comes back in this episode to get it from him. With just 1 more episode left, all the loose story ends have come together, for one last Dance… in the Vampire Bund (sorry, hate me if you want to for that).

The plot thickens! It seems that the 1st assassin was with Telomere, which means that one of the 3 clans, or all of them, are in bed with Telomere. It did put her in an awkward position, as it was her job to kill Akira for her master, but she also needed to get information out of him before doing so (explains why she didn’t kill Akira outright when she ambushed him at the border to the Bund). It really saved Akira’s butt a few times, as he got repeatedly stabbed due to his inability to transform. That was a nice little plot point, as it showed how much he really loved and was in love with Mina, despite him being in denial about it.

Speaking of impossible love and saving Akira’s butt, Meiren was pretty phenomenal in this episode. I found it humorous that she came in with a shotgun, and it had predictably little effect on the 2nd Assassin, managing just to knock him away for a little bit. But she took care of him using melee in the end, which gave us a chance to see that she was a wolfman – or rather, wolfwoman – as well. Her confessing to Akira – for serious this time instead of her usual playful flirting – was very sweet. I wonder how much of her emotions were driven by the fact that she’s supposedly the last of her kind, though. She’ll have to come to terms with her feelings just like Yuki did halfway into the show.

I enjoyed most of the action, seeing the 1st assassin’s true powers, her ability to shapeshift to really insane proportions. She was really the star of the episode, and I liked how some of her personality shone through, through her speech, her facial expressions, and her choice of attacks, making her a more complete character than just another enemy. Which is kinda what the 2nd assassin ended up being. Given his awesome weapons from the previous episode (naginata and claws), I was hoping for some good fight scenes involving him, but he was taken out very quickly by Meiren. Pretty disappointing, though it did emphasize what a badass Meiren is.

Both of the 1st 2 assassins were dispatched in this episode, which leaves the 3rd as the only obstacle lying between Akira and a happy ending. I wonder if Meiren is indeed the 3rd assassin, as joker76 posited in his comment on my post on the previous episode. Would make for a very interesting fight, especially with Akira finally having regained the ability to transform due to his anger at seeing Mina’s image dirtied by the 1st assassin.

And Mina has put everything on the line now. It puts an even greater weight to the outcome of the finale, but at the same time, it pretty much puts the nail in the coffin of whatever doubt you might have had that Akira wouldn’t pull through. I mean, I think it was pretty clear from the previous episode, but they won’t really have Mina lose everything in one fell swoop at the end… will they?

As for the creepiness factor, they showed again the final scene of the previous episode, and also some short clips from the actual verification ceremony itself. We also learn that Mina knew Akira since his birth 17 years ago, which puts a whole new twist in the creepiness factor of their relationship. She’s the one who’s “robbing the cradle” – almost literally. It reminded me a lot of the very unhealthy relationship between Buster and Lucille 2 in Arrested Development (“She changed him as a baby!”).

I’m looking forward to seeing what Akira’s still hidden memory is, and why Telomere wants it so badly. There were some hints that he was starting to regain this memory towards the end, but I found the flashbacks to be confusing. They brought back imagery from the nightmare at the beginning of the previous episode, and the flashbacks did seem to imply that Mina might be dead or something. And what Alphonse said to Akira implies that this was a piece of information that could change Akira’s behavior drastically, to the point of making him an enemy. It would be great if Akira’s remembrance forces him to make a Sophie’s choice in the next episode. But at this point, I just have no idea, and my approach is just to let it come to me, let the director tell me the story without theorizing needlessly. And so it’s with great anticipation that I await the finale of this show. There’s a lot that has to happen, but this show’s pacing has proven to me that 23 minutes is more than enough.

An aside:

I went to Pax East today for the final day. There wasn’t much in terms of cosplay, but I’ve added what I took to the Picasa album. I attended a panel by members of OverClocked ReMix, a site in which people upload their own remixes of video game music. I was a big fan of the remix “Save Me,” a remix of the save-point theme from Ico (the only parts in the game that actually had background music), which is why I attended. But that whole community reminded me of the microcultures that were mentioned in the Memes talk yesterday.

Speaking of which, I also saw Alex Leavitt, the researcher from that Memes talk, cosplaying as Ash from Pokemon attending a panel on geeks. He also made a comment on my post from yesterday!

Besides the panels, I spent a lot of time on the show floor. I got to play The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile and talked with its sole developer. Turns out he was a big fan of DMC3 and Bayonetta, which I figured from playing his game. I also got to play some DeathSmiles for the XBox360, and that game just might get me into shmups like Touhou.

Well, Penny Arcade kicked off their first PAX East here in Boston at the Hynes Convention Center, so I had to attend. I didn’t make it in time on Friday because I had to stay late for work, but today, Saturday, I spent the whole day there, from 10am to 10:30pm.

Went to a few panels, missed a few due to overly long lines. My favorite panel by far was Memes, Microcultures, and 2D Chicks: Our Future in the Otaku Gamer by Alex Leavitt, a researcher from the Comparative Media Studies department at MIT. He broke down how memes start and propagate, what kind of “grammar” is within them. He showed and explained the Hitler meme.

He went in length about the different way niche cultures develop in Japan (he called it microculture). Touhou was a main example, where the gameplay doesn’t matter, but rather the characters, about whom very little is revealed within the original games. But fans took that and built a world of their own, using Nico Nico Douga, doujin comics, animations. He showed some of Bad Apple as a very high production example, but not the insane stop-motion one, which itself is a great example of the meme propagating.

He also compared it to the Vocaloid phenomenon, which really interested me, because I’m a huge fan of Supercell, which got its start uploading Vocaloid vids on Nico Nico Douga. The use of Vocaloid really blew up after the company added characters, because the works became not just about the music, but mainly about the character. Showed parts of some of Supercell’s vids but didn’t mention them by name. Could’ve been a great example, as they became professionals due to it, even getting a real anime produced based on one of their their videos (Black Rock Shooter, which was recently revealed to have Miyuki Sawashiro and Kana Hanzawa as main roles). And their fame and success came precisely because others on Nico Nico Douga took their music and did their own things with them (e.g. Nagi, also known as Gazelle, their current singer, got her start by posting videos onto Nico Nico Douga of her singing Supercell’s songs – most famously Melt – and to this day ppl continue to post themselves playing them, including their professional releases, with real instruments), thus extending the phenomenon seen in Touhou and Vocaloid. He showed bits of the PSP game Project Diva, a rhythm game starring Hatsune Miku. It made me want to get a PSP and import that game, as it seems to have at least a few of Supercell’s songs.

I was surprised he didn’t talk about 4chan too much, as that’s where so many memes, at least in the US, started. Did mention visual novels and particularly Katawa Shoujo, an American amateur production from the folks on 4chan. And like the other examples he mentioned, it had its genesis in fans taking someone’s work and applying their own twist on it.

Besides that talk, most notable for me was the concert. I stuck around for just the first part, featuring the Video Game Orchestra (VGO). I’m a big fan of classical music, so I had to see it. The highlights for me: a wonderful rendition of the Super Mario theme; the Chocobo theme from Final Fantasy, which had a great light mood with highlights from the saxophone and flute; a very embellished and metal-ish arrangement of the Final Fantasy VII battle theme; a surprise vocal appearance, as a singer from the local Berklee music school sang Snake Eater, which was sandwiched by a very dramatic performance of the MGS theme. Overall, they had a great mix of classical music with their orchestral instruments and more modern rock/metal music with electric guitar, keyboard, and drums.

I’ve got some videos from the concert that I’ll upload to YouTube, but tomorrow, as it’s way past my bedtime already, and I need to wake up early for the final day of PAX East tomorrow.

But what of the cosplay? That’s probably what you really care about. Well, I was a bit underwhelmed by the amount. I saw more video game cosplay in Anime Boston last year (which is being held next weekend, same place, Hynes Convention Center). Seriously, I saw 1 Snake, whereas at Anime Boston, there were at least a dozen. Still, there were enough to make a nice album – I’ve interspersed this post with some of them. But I don’t want to deal with WordPress’s slow file upload system, so I’m providing a link to my Picasa album of most the cosplay photos I took today. Some unexpected ones are Green Man (Charlie) from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and C.C. from Code Geass.

We all learned a lot this weekend. CJ learned how to BS improvise the first 25 minutes of a panel when the projector fails. Rakuen learned functioning on 3 hours of sleep is not easy. (We suspect he already knew that, but perhaps he’d forgotten?) Dave learned nothing, because he was busy working his butt off running the game rooms. And Jenni learned that 4 Russias and one Latvia makes for a very interesting photoshoot.

It was an educational weekend, but most importantly, it was fun (and more than a little wild.) Our writers presented 3 panels, including Anime Blogging 101 and the premiere of Anime Blogging 201. Though we had to battle a fair number of screw-ups and miscommunications, everything worked out in the end, and we made the most of the best Ohayocon yet.

CJ (Friday and Saturday)

Friday was madness. (Not Sparta.) Jen and I got there at 7 pm, leaving an hour to get our badges and find Panel Room 9 for the Soul Eater panel. Bad idea. She was still in the reg line when I finally got my panelist badge at around 7:40. Fortunately, I was able to get an extra panelist badge for her (without even asking!) and we went on our way. But due to a few staffers not even knowing where Panel 9 was, it took us nearly 20 minutes to find it. That put us right at 8 pm, when the hour-long panel was set to start. And then…

… the projector wasn’t working. We got black lines of death across the screen, which wasn’t the end of the world, but still very very bad for ADHD-tan. As the tech guys took over my laptop to attempt to search for a solution, I found myself facing a room of about 40 people… with no visuals. So I improvised for 20 or so minutes until my laptop magically fixed itself (@#%&ing Windows.) After that, things went very smoothly, complete with Excalibur spamming and emo distorted facial expressions. I managed to make people laugh a lot even during the projector-less, spazzy-CJ period. Thanks to everyone for coming out and sitting through the panel, despite our technical issues!

After that, I went to the rave, got hit on by a 20-something-year-old, and went back to my room by my 1 am curfew. (Jenni simply knitted in the room that whole time. Sigh.) The rave was really pretty epic, but it started an hour late, and the floor wasn’t exactly nice to sit on. Fortunately, there was a Belle cosplayer (from Beauty and the Beast) with some really awesome friends who all kept us entertained. They even sang the entire uncensored version of “I’m on a Boat” from memory. Yeah. I lol’d HARD.

Saturday started with a bright n’ early 11 am Phoenix Wright photoshoot! Aaron-oniichan took pictures of my Ema Skye cosplay premiere. (Rohfa from D.Gray-man only partially counts because I didn’t have the hair anywhere near done. Sigh.) I had a great time the 16-20 cosplayers there, but I also kinda didn’t really know what I was doing pose-wise, so I looked pretty dumb in some of the shots.  ^_^;; But now I’ve worked out a few more poses and will be ready to go when the really really complete version (I still need a pink watch and pseudo-stripper shoes) at… whatever cons I end up at in the fall. Hopefully Matsuricon, but it’s all gonna depend on what college I end up at.

After that, the last order of business for Jenni and I was the Anime Blogging panels and a little more dealer’s room madness. The panels went great, and we had the awesome guys from Ending B out again, as well as some new faces. The premiere of 201 went as well as could be expected, but we found a few bits to tweak before the next con. It also ended about 10 minutes early. ^_^; After a bit more shopping and D.Gray-man photoshoot peeping, Jen and I left around 5 pm.

Convention Score: 7.5 out of 10 California rolls

Aaron (Friday, Saturday and Sunday)

Last year’s Ohayocon really disappointed me, to the point that I wished it would either improve or just let itself die.  Thus this year, I really had no hopes for anything, which meant whatever they accomplished would be a positive.  I have to say, overall, I was surprised.

Security’s behavior improved greatly over previous years.  While I have heard of a few complaints, overall they were helpful, more noticeable, and much less overbearing.  The panel staff as well seemed to be on their game, at least on Saturday while I was there.  They came in to check on us, warned us promptly at the 5-minute mark, and actually knew how to fix the projector problem.  The expansion project on the hotel that occurred in the past year meant the game room was moved to a much more spacious and manageable location.  I had no dealings with Cosplay this year, so I have nothing to say on that.  Really, the only pure negative I saw was the rave, which will always be a problem until the convention can obtain a larger room.

As for my experience at the convention, I arrived at 9:30 AM on Saturday morning.  It’s far later than I wished to get there, but because of my own transportation problems, that’s the best I could do.  Getting my badge was quick and painless.  I shot the Phoenix Wright photoshoot for CJ, which I’d say was run fairly well.  Afterward I wandered around for a bit before our panels.  We had probably 20 people for 101 and 15 for 201, which is a decent crowd.  I know I enjoyed the experience; hopefully everyone else did as well.

After that, it was time for CJ and Jenni to head home.  I managed to finally eat something, and met up with my good friends Mataime, Nonobadpup, and Samtoenail (yes, we know they’re odd names).  That is how I spent the majority of my evening and most of Sunday.  I decided against the Masquerade, I didn’t really like it last year and I probably would have fallen asleep from exhaustion if I’d have gone.  On the other hand, I met an amazing artist Saturday night.  Del Borovic was working on commissions late at night, and we chilled with her and watched her work.  She’s going to start up a new webcomic in a few weeks as well, you should definitely show her some love.  Sunday was check out, eating lunch with friends, and a short YYH photo shoot before I went home.

Overall, I enjoyed my experience.  Ohayocon completely surprised me in their improvements over last year.  Where I once wished the convention would just be blown away, I’m actually looking forward to next year.  Keep up the improvements!

Convention Score: 7.5/10

Jenni (Friday and Saturday)

I have to say, everyone at Ohayocon was really super nice.  I was having vertigo issues Saturday morning and didn’t want to go to the Phoenix Wright photo shoot, so these Ed and Winry cosplayers (who I actually met two years ago) let me crash with them for about 45 minutes.  The whole weekend was like that.  I also got a lot of comments on my Rivendell sweater and my fire lizard.  Oh yeah, and the random people who ran by yelling “I JUST LOST THE GAME!!!” made my day.

And omigosh the Hetalia photoshoot. Three words: HOLY FREAKING CRAP.  Most photoshoots for major series had what, thirty, forty people show up?  Hetalia just got licensed two months ago, and probably over a hundred people were at the shoot.  It progressed from shots of the full cast to Allies/Axis/Neutral, to smaller groups like Baltics, Nordics, Asians, and FrUK family, to individual characters and pairings.  (There was ONE Latvia in the whole group – she was really sweet – and she ended up getting stuck in the middle of four Russias.

Awwwwww.)  I had a primo spot in the balcony overlooking the shoot and took a crapton of photos.  There were also some teriffic period costumes; France, Austria, and Prussia were some of the best.  And when I left 45 minutes after the shoot started to go to the panel, it was STILL GOING STRONG.

I had the English/grammar/mechanics portion of the panel, which went a lot better than I expected.  People actually seemed really interested (the crack about Twatlight got a few laughs), and at least no one walked out in the middle of my talk.  Always a good sign, right?

My swag included two dragon prints that look like they were painted by light (the artist also had a ton of koi pictures), an earring-chained-to-cuff set of hearts with Celtic knots inside, and another set with light purple Swarovski crystals to match my kimono-dress. ^_^

From my AFA08 experience, it seems that Singaporean attendees didn’t just like to take pictures of cosplayers but with them too. I certainly don’t recall that being prevalent when I attended ComiKet 72. I also dug out an old photo album of my visit to Otakon 2000 to see if attendees of that Baltimore, MA convention also had a ‘with’ predilection; ended up scanning a few to share with my readers. In the ancient year of 2000, SNK/CAPCOM game charas were all the rage. The biggest anime were Ranma 1/2, Sailor Moon…

… Final Fantasy VII. There were soooooo many Riona cosplayers. Throughout my visit between 4-6 August 2000, I saw only one Tifa cosplayer. Bless her and long live the profession of bar wenches!!

Record of Lodoss War with very cute Shiris cosplayer. No Pirotess though. And, in the fine tradition of Sailor Bubba - don’t take cosplay too seriously, k? - the Subversive Sailor Scouts ran around creating general mayhem and fun. I imagine most of them are respectable family/salarymen. It’s not just Facebook that brings back the unwanted memories but animu blogs too!

Revolutionary Girl Utena was also really popular with the female demographic of the anime fan population. And, oh, it does seem that there was always a healthy proportion of female fans. At least in the US.

I wonder what these cosplayers would have thought of Slayers Revolution?

At C72, cosplay that revealed a lot of skin did exist but was a relatively low proportion. But girls, often young teenagers, at Otakon were prepared to flaunt their figures includng a creative take on Pikachu and the standard outfit for Urusei Yatsura’s Lum.

So what are men to cosplay if we’re not the bishounen typu? There’s also monsters, cabbits and Ikari Gendou.

Speaking of Mr White Gloves, the Evangelion wave had well and truly hit US shores by 2000. The very spirited Asuka cosplayer spent a good afternoon terrorising any Shinji cosplayer she managed to find. LOL And Rei clones were almost a match for the Riona army.

Ruri Hoshino was also a popular choice but it’s interesting to see how the appeal of Evangelion has been kept alive and even continues to grow while most people nowadays have never even heard of Martian Successor Nadesico…

More Old Skool for the road. Saber Marionette, El Hazard: The Wanderers, Vision of Escaflowne, Serial Experiments Lain. Actually I haven’t even seen Saber Marionette meself… (-_-);;

I was also surprised to discover that US anime fans were upset with censorship of their animu… I can’t remember which specific anime it was about. Kite? Some guy representing ‘U.S. Censor’ was ceremonially beaten, sliced up, shot etc etc. Until a staff member came up to the little demonstration and said: ‘As a member of Otakon Security, I have to… join in and do my duty!’ *rains mock kicks on the ‘U.S. Censor’* LOL

No one was arrested. Even though there was a Natsumi Tsujimoto cosplayer present at the con.

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