Anime Boston 2010 Wrap 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.
Maybe this will help him get over his depression
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.
Arcade Bumstead from Tsukihime, if you don't know.
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.
"My spoon is too big!"
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).
Jacob's the one with the FAKKU shirt in the middle
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.
I regret nothing
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.
