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.

That's them. Leavitt is a tall dude, but there's still not enough of a height differential.

The only Working!! cosplayers I saw all weekend.

I like the reflection in this one. Don't know what song they're from, but I'm pretty sure they're Miku and Luka.

Some Haruhi cosplayers before the screening of The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya. The one in the middle is wearing the costume from the movie.

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.

These were actually official cosplayers at Bandai's booth.

The Kagamine twins or couple, depending on your interpretation. They were in line for the Miku "concert," which was filled very quickly. It prompted an "encore performance" later that evening so that everyone who missed out could go.

The only Bakemonogatari cosplayers I - or they - saw in the con. I tried to get them to re-enact the scene from the end of the Suruga Monkey arc, but they didn't remember it. Notice Suruga's shoes - great attention to detail there.

The Laughing Man. Simple, easy, clever.

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.

Now, was this a crossplayer like Tissue-hime, or actually a woman? If the latter, would that make HER a crossplayer? I didn't ask.

One of many blind shots I took from overhead, behind the crowd of people who got here before me. I believe the Mio on the way right might be one of the dub VAs as well.

A large portion of the cast of Durarara!! I like that Shizuo's brother is there, too.

In retrospect, I should've asked her to hold the gun sideways. It really was a thing of beauty.

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.

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.

That's dedication!

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.

Spoilers!

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.

A real beauty, I'd say

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.

For today’s Shameless Shipping, I’m going to take on a more controversial post.  This shipping debate has raged for well over a decade, ever since Squaresoft released Final Fantasy VII in 1997.  I’m sure a lot of you can recite the evidence for either side by heart, from Cloud buying a flower from Aerith at the beginning of the game, to the Gold Saucer date formulas.  Today, I will make my attempt to put this debate to rest, and I suppose you can all judge how well I do and flame the living hell out of me after I have presented my case.

Most of the case I will make rests on Advent Children Complete.  This Director’s Cut edition of the movie has numerous improvements, most notably including actual plot elements.  In particular, the story makes much more sense of Denzel, especially in light of the novella releases in the years between the original and the rerelease.  It also elaborates more on points brought up by the other additions to the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII.  Even a cursory observation of the material will tell you that both Tifa and Aerith like the guy.  I realized in the process of writing this that just about everything in the debate relies in Cloud and his actions, or lack thereof, so much of this post focuses on him.  In that vein, the movie’s main premise is Cloud’s acceptance of reality as it stands, in three distinct facets.

First, Cloud has to accept the past.  He spends much of the movie obsessing over Aerith, but that obsession doesn’t have a romantic context attached to it.  Cloud took on the job of being her bodyguard, and yet when the time came, he let Sephiroth manipulate him into trying to kill her.  When that failed, all he could do was watch as Sephiroth impaled the girl on his sword.  He feels guilt, and even in two years time he never got over his greatest failure.  It even gets to the point that he’s been caring for the church to gain some sort of redemption.  Aerith comes to assure him that she doesn’t blame him for what happened in the City of the Ancients.  She then spends the rest of the movie aiding him as much as a force of nature can to drive that point home.  This culminates at the end of the movie, where she kicks him out of limbo and back into the world of the living.  We’ll put this on hold for a minute to examine the next two points.

Second, Cloud has to accept himself.  Cloud lost his best friend and ally, Zach, to an attack by Shinra.  The mental strain snapped his mind, and he buried most of his memories to take on the persona of Zach.  He even placed himself in Zach’s position in his memories.  Only one person managed to see through his façade, Tifa.  She kept quiet about it for a long time, and when Cloud was disabled, she stayed behind to watch over him.  Then, when the disaster hit Mideel, she managed to pull him back together and drag him out of there by his spiky head.  Despite that, and Tifa’s assurance that he’s a good person, he never got over his failures.  Yet in the final battle with Sephiroth, Zach appears behind Cloud, and gives him the assurance that he has strength of his own.  It didn’t matter that he never got into Soldier, because he always had it in his heart.  A noticeable change comes over him as he finds his resolve to fight.  Bolstered by this, Cloud charges forth and finishes his antagonist.  Yet we need one more point to tie this all together.

Third, Cloud has to accept his family.  Like it or not, Cloud has lived with Tifa over the past two years.  Together, they’ve raised Marlene while Barret has gallivanted about doing whatever rugged, machine gun armed men do.  In addition, Cloud took in the orphan Denzel, with the intention to raise him as some sort of atonement for his sins.  Yet, despite all that, Tifa comments that he’s never around and impossible to contact.  This holds true in both the movie, and the On the Way to a Smile story before the events.  He is too busy running around, doing jobs and brooding over his past (and presumably looking for a cure).  As he tells Marlene, he felt like he couldn’t care for himself, so he didn’t deserve to care for anyone else.  Fortunately, the trip to save the children from Kadaj and his group reminds him of what he already has and that he needs to protect them.  Despite his behavior, Tifa, Denzel, and Marlene were always there for him, and now he realizes he needs to support them.  He assures all three that he’ll come back home to them, and from the ending to the movie, we all know that happens.

All three of these factors unify at the ending.  The last two lines before the credits are as follows:

Aerith: “You see?  Everything’s alright.”

Cloud: “I know.  I’m not alone.  Not anymore.”

Cloud has finally managed to work through his problems.  He doesn’t feel guilt over letting Aerith die.  He’s gotten over losing Zach and the psychological damage it caused him.  Now he’s ready to support his friends and family around him.  After the credits, we see two short scenes.  Cloud planted Aerith’s flowers at Zach’s grave, and he placed Zach’s sword within the cathedral.  He’s left the dead behind, holding on to his memories and pressing on toward the future.

Cloud and Tifa grew up together in Nibelheim as best friends.  The boy pledged to get into SOLDIER to impress his companion.  Yet even when he failed to do so, Tifa didn’t care, she just wanted him.  She followed him to hell and back, even when she knew he was lying about his past.  She cared for him while at his absolute worst, broken physically, mentally, and emotionally.  While he ran around the city and countryside doing who knows what, she worried incessantly, but always provided a place to come home.  With the Geostigma cleared, they can live in relative peace, raising their adopted son Denzel.  Quit making Cloud into some emotionally bankrupt character that pines after a girl who died in his past.  He’s a healthy character that has gone thorough a self-evolution and can now live happily with his family.  That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

If you would like a more comprehensive look of the debate, examining the game, movie, and other source material in full, please read this article.  While the author does occasionally repeat points, he also exhausts all evidence on both sides.