Masquerade! Paper Faces on Parade!
Well folks, I've returned from the land of the lost. I'll just cut now because I suspect this will be wrong as I lay out everything that happened in the most random way I possibly could. With pictures of course (though they are limited, but still!)
So, Friday morning was the trip down and it was about what you might suspect. Littered with light-hearted jests an the theme to Transformers: The Movie (Not the new one that sucks. The old one that rocks.)
I think I mentioned my credit card problems. Basically that they sent me a new card and deactivated my old one (my only link to my account here) for a short time. Even though I worked it out I was a bit worried we'd lose our hotel room somehow! It turned out to be no big deal though. And more than that, we got a complimentary straight-from-the-oven cookie for checking in! MMMM!
Well, we checked in, got our stuff up to the room and embarked to the pre-reg table to claim our badges for the weekend. In quite the appauling twist, Casey's sister who had no pre-registered stood in a line of about 10 people to get her badge. Whereas we had to stand in a twisting line of about 200. It went kind of fast, but not nearly fast enough to appease my anger about this! Also some douche with a set of wooden swords was TOTALLY trying to cut. Eventually he must have succeeded because I realized later that he was like, 8 people in front of me. What a dummy.
We took a quick peek at the dealer's room before heading off to nerds of a different nature.
Yes, you can probably guess which one I am. Yeah I'm too cool to wear a costume at an anime convention. No I'm not too cool to totally mark like a little girl about two wrestlers who have been probably my favorites ever since I learned that japanese pro wrestling was awesome as hell.
And yes I brought BOTH masks. Deal with it! I didn't get into the first row unfortunately, but second row isn't too bad right!? I'll post some pictures next!
This is Ultimo when they came out at the beginning of the night to intro the Toryumon and UWA representitives. There is nothing classier to me than a suit with a formal stylish mask.
All the wrestlers (sans-Lyger) posing before the show begins.
There weren't a lot of pictures sadly, since Wes' camera was constantly showing signs of low battery life. But anyway, Passion Hasegawa (w/ best entrance music ever) vs. Sweet n' Sour Larry Sweeney
I must admit that I didn't know Larry Sweeney before this, but I really love his gimmick. Passion hit a move and started to strut, so he challenged him to a strut-off to the song "More More More (How do you like it)" which is his theme music as well.
Passion countered! And then when Sweeney tried to sneak attack, rolled him up.
Passion ended up winning with a really neat rolling senton off the second rope. I was impressed with both guys.
Brian Lee about to hit a 450. I thought it was pretty nice.
Claudio Castagnoli doing a Super Punch Out (I believe Super Macho Man) pose to indicate his finishing 'European Uppercut'. He has a really awesome shirt that I think I may buy at some point. Dude is gigantic too.
But let's be realistic here, I came here for only two reasons. And nothing mattered but...
And yes, I was wearing my Lyger mask when he came out. And yes, he did notice.
He pointed at me! LYGER-KUN! (I'm not the photographer, that would be Wes. I'm off to his left :-)
Lyger and Puma beat Ultimo and Okuda when Lyger hit a running Lyger Bomb on Okuda. It really didn't matter what happened even though it was a very good match. It was just awesome to be there! Of course, you don't think I'd let it rest with JUST pictures from the second row?
Here I am with Passion Hasegawa and Daisuke Hanaoka. I should point out it was about 45 degrees Celsius in this arena. Also, I'm gigantic. They were jokingly jumping up to get up to my height. :-)
Wes with Daisuke Hanaoka
Ultimo is #1!
Wes tried to trump me by implying he's #0!
I present my crown jewel.
I cannot express enough how awesome this was. Lyger is a hell of a guy too, he waded through about 200 people for autographs, snapping pictures and signing enthusiastically. Every photo he was yelling at people to 'get angry' and growling and people were loving it.
Here he is right after he signed my mask.
and with Wes!
Overall, I am ecstatic. I got a Ultimo Dragon Gym t-shirt, and came away with BOTH of my masks signed by the men themselves. And the wrestling was good too!
Ok ok, but believe it or not we actually came up for the anime, not the wrestling! :-)
I'll edit this post later with more pictures, or maybe post them in a new one, but I only have the pics from one camera at the moment.
Firstly, the convention was great. The size didn't change but the dealer's room was slightly larger and where we spent most of our time. The artist's alley was kind of lacking this time. I dunno...maybe I felt that way because I wasn't looking for a custom Final Fantasy XI picture this time.
Saturday there was wrestling (again) at the center, but by that time everyone was kind of wrestling'd out. We did catch the Flash vs. Captain America, but it wasn't exactly of the same caliber as Lyger and Ultimo....
I did see Christopher Daniels sitting lonely at the autograph table. I feel bad for the wrestlers coming here because a lot of them are really depending on merchandise moving to make any real money at the venture. It's a tough job. I got an autographed picture and a picture with him.
He's a pretty good guy. A lot bigger than I thought judging from TV. He seemed about as enthusiastic as a guy could when confused about what the hell they're doing there.
We kind of split up for most of the day, I watched a bit of anime here and there at the various rooms. Well, here are some pics to interest this up. I imagine telling you what animes I watched and what I looked at is kind of lame :-)
Teen Titans, go!
I would be more impressed if they could manage to get 5 lines up or so, but still cool.
Time-skip Uchiha Sasuke from Naruto. I was shocked at the un-originality with the Naruto cosplay this year. First of all, there were virtually no time-skip characters outside of really badly thought through Naruto's (you know, guy has black hair, weigh's 400 pounds and thinks that wearing orange and black makes this a good Naruto cosplay?). The Sasuke's were almost all the blue outfits. These people MUST read the manga....show some originality!
Oh, and the same is true with Bleach. Everybody was half-assing the Bleach this year. There were a few good arrancar but for whatever reason even Wes was indifferent to taking pictures of them. There was a really good Yachiru (I think I got that right, pink hair...Kenpachi's vice-captain) but that was mainly because someone dressed their poor 5 year old sister that way :-)
Back on track, a pretty good Pyramid Head
Some Kingdom Hearts
Dynasty Warriors 5. These were awesome costumes. They ended up winning Best in Show at the Masquerade, and I believe rightfully so, they were pretty well done. Of course, they picked all of the effeminate characters. Where's Guan Yu? Zhang Fei? Dian Wei? Xiahou Dun? Although, that is a pretty solid Lu Bu. Yes, good work, though!
Some Street Fighter-ing
Dante from Devil May Cry. Please notice the furry table behind him. It was a constant source of entertainment and horror for me. At one point one of the guys was wearing a prosthetic turtle mouth painted green. And it actually moved when he talked. ewwww
Wes got his picture taken with the GIGANTIC maker of dinosaur comics. (www.qwantz.com) Wes is pretty much just as tall as I am. An look at how much bigger he is! Wes made away with a Professor Science t-shirt, but not until he acted like the biggest nerd in the world. No worse than me with Ultimo and Lyger, but still.
Ok, here is what cosplaying is all about. This man knew what he was doing. So many people like to think they can cosplay as whatever they want. But a good cosplay is utilizing what you have! And effort! Look at that beard! And the mohawk! And for the love of pete, the chest hair! He even shaved his chest hair! This guy had a gameplan and he stuck to it. He had everything right down to the puckering of the mouth for the victory pose. Also, he had many victory poses. AND! We later saw him in the hotel library doing the spinning clothesline on his tippy-toes for pictures. And for the Masquerade, he 360 piledrove someone, I'm told. This man is my hero.
That was Anime North, friends. On Sunday, after having watched some Anime Music Videos and such, I went downtown and had some wonderful pizza at the Magic Oven with a friend. I also had my first Frappucino from Starbucks. I am officially addicted to those things. soooooo good. And watched Pirates of the Carribean (which would have been better if I knew the backstory a bit, but was still surprisingly very good). I was very pleased with my Sunday night. Had a great time.
Unfortunately, when I got back to the hotel room at 2:30 AM everybody was nice enough to not leave me any pillows.
So when I inevitably woke up before all of them from my bed on the floor, feeling like crap, I decided to take pictures of stuff. There's Wes sleeping.
And Casey on the fold-out.
And finally, the remnants of Anime North Monday morning/afternoon. The event schedule, Wes' wallet, my Barq's root beer from the night before, an empty bag of Doritos, leftover day old cajun pasta from Kelseys, my $2.00 bag of Ruffles that I hadn't eaten from the day before, and an almost finished 2 litre of Crush Cream Soda. That's symbolism for you.
Suffice to say I had a terrific time. The ride back was fairly short and lots of fun. I don't even want to kill any of them. Oh, what was bought! Wes got a Yoruichi Bleach plush and a Mario Bros. 1 UP plush for his gal, a fully poseable Akuma from Street Fighter figure which is very nice, Maximum Carnage and Mortal Kombat for the Sega Genesis, and a Vorg Zangief figure from Hajime No Ippo (Thanks to my keen eye!). Casey, as I recall, got some artwork from Bleach (which was autographed by Johnny Jong Bosch the voice of Ichigo in the US, as well as the voice of Vash the Stampede and of course, he was the black ranger). He also got a Gundam model, and a Kamen Rider Den-O belt (he's becoming a Kamen Rider freak). His sister got some DVD's (Evangelion I know for sure), some artwork, and a pair of rather large sai's. Myself...I got a Ken Masters fully poseable figure which is pretty nice, and a wall hanging of Guan Yu which is actually very nice. Not really an anime thing at all as it's drawn in the style of the Romance of the Three Kingdom books and on very nice paper. Unfortunately I have no place for it. But at the new house, it will take a place of honour on the wall.
Overall, I think the trip cost me about 550 dollars American. For all the food and everything. A hell of a deal as far as I'm concerned. I hope you enjoyed my recap of the festivities. Wish I had even more pictures. If someone wants to buy me a digital camera before next year, I promise to do it up right :-)
Ok, I am off to get some food. I'm going to a Judo tournament this Sunday. Maybe I'll actually have two interesting posts in the span of a week! YOWZA!
Bye
So, Friday morning was the trip down and it was about what you might suspect. Littered with light-hearted jests an the theme to Transformers: The Movie (Not the new one that sucks. The old one that rocks.)
I think I mentioned my credit card problems. Basically that they sent me a new card and deactivated my old one (my only link to my account here) for a short time. Even though I worked it out I was a bit worried we'd lose our hotel room somehow! It turned out to be no big deal though. And more than that, we got a complimentary straight-from-the-oven cookie for checking in! MMMM!
Well, we checked in, got our stuff up to the room and embarked to the pre-reg table to claim our badges for the weekend. In quite the appauling twist, Casey's sister who had no pre-registered stood in a line of about 10 people to get her badge. Whereas we had to stand in a twisting line of about 200. It went kind of fast, but not nearly fast enough to appease my anger about this! Also some douche with a set of wooden swords was TOTALLY trying to cut. Eventually he must have succeeded because I realized later that he was like, 8 people in front of me. What a dummy.
We took a quick peek at the dealer's room before heading off to nerds of a different nature.
Yes, you can probably guess which one I am. Yeah I'm too cool to wear a costume at an anime convention. No I'm not too cool to totally mark like a little girl about two wrestlers who have been probably my favorites ever since I learned that japanese pro wrestling was awesome as hell.
And yes I brought BOTH masks. Deal with it! I didn't get into the first row unfortunately, but second row isn't too bad right!? I'll post some pictures next!
This is Ultimo when they came out at the beginning of the night to intro the Toryumon and UWA representitives. There is nothing classier to me than a suit with a formal stylish mask.
All the wrestlers (sans-Lyger) posing before the show begins.
There weren't a lot of pictures sadly, since Wes' camera was constantly showing signs of low battery life. But anyway, Passion Hasegawa (w/ best entrance music ever) vs. Sweet n' Sour Larry Sweeney
I must admit that I didn't know Larry Sweeney before this, but I really love his gimmick. Passion hit a move and started to strut, so he challenged him to a strut-off to the song "More More More (How do you like it)" which is his theme music as well.
Passion countered! And then when Sweeney tried to sneak attack, rolled him up.
Passion ended up winning with a really neat rolling senton off the second rope. I was impressed with both guys.
Brian Lee about to hit a 450. I thought it was pretty nice.
Claudio Castagnoli doing a Super Punch Out (I believe Super Macho Man) pose to indicate his finishing 'European Uppercut'. He has a really awesome shirt that I think I may buy at some point. Dude is gigantic too.
But let's be realistic here, I came here for only two reasons. And nothing mattered but...
And yes, I was wearing my Lyger mask when he came out. And yes, he did notice.
He pointed at me! LYGER-KUN! (I'm not the photographer, that would be Wes. I'm off to his left :-)
Lyger and Puma beat Ultimo and Okuda when Lyger hit a running Lyger Bomb on Okuda. It really didn't matter what happened even though it was a very good match. It was just awesome to be there! Of course, you don't think I'd let it rest with JUST pictures from the second row?
Here I am with Passion Hasegawa and Daisuke Hanaoka. I should point out it was about 45 degrees Celsius in this arena. Also, I'm gigantic. They were jokingly jumping up to get up to my height. :-)
Wes with Daisuke Hanaoka
Ultimo is #1!
Wes tried to trump me by implying he's #0!
I present my crown jewel.
I cannot express enough how awesome this was. Lyger is a hell of a guy too, he waded through about 200 people for autographs, snapping pictures and signing enthusiastically. Every photo he was yelling at people to 'get angry' and growling and people were loving it.
Here he is right after he signed my mask.
and with Wes!
Overall, I am ecstatic. I got a Ultimo Dragon Gym t-shirt, and came away with BOTH of my masks signed by the men themselves. And the wrestling was good too!
Ok ok, but believe it or not we actually came up for the anime, not the wrestling! :-)
I'll edit this post later with more pictures, or maybe post them in a new one, but I only have the pics from one camera at the moment.
Firstly, the convention was great. The size didn't change but the dealer's room was slightly larger and where we spent most of our time. The artist's alley was kind of lacking this time. I dunno...maybe I felt that way because I wasn't looking for a custom Final Fantasy XI picture this time.
Saturday there was wrestling (again) at the center, but by that time everyone was kind of wrestling'd out. We did catch the Flash vs. Captain America, but it wasn't exactly of the same caliber as Lyger and Ultimo....
I did see Christopher Daniels sitting lonely at the autograph table. I feel bad for the wrestlers coming here because a lot of them are really depending on merchandise moving to make any real money at the venture. It's a tough job. I got an autographed picture and a picture with him.
He's a pretty good guy. A lot bigger than I thought judging from TV. He seemed about as enthusiastic as a guy could when confused about what the hell they're doing there.
We kind of split up for most of the day, I watched a bit of anime here and there at the various rooms. Well, here are some pics to interest this up. I imagine telling you what animes I watched and what I looked at is kind of lame :-)
Teen Titans, go!
I would be more impressed if they could manage to get 5 lines up or so, but still cool.
Time-skip Uchiha Sasuke from Naruto. I was shocked at the un-originality with the Naruto cosplay this year. First of all, there were virtually no time-skip characters outside of really badly thought through Naruto's (you know, guy has black hair, weigh's 400 pounds and thinks that wearing orange and black makes this a good Naruto cosplay?). The Sasuke's were almost all the blue outfits. These people MUST read the manga....show some originality!
Oh, and the same is true with Bleach. Everybody was half-assing the Bleach this year. There were a few good arrancar but for whatever reason even Wes was indifferent to taking pictures of them. There was a really good Yachiru (I think I got that right, pink hair...Kenpachi's vice-captain) but that was mainly because someone dressed their poor 5 year old sister that way :-)
Back on track, a pretty good Pyramid Head
Some Kingdom Hearts
Dynasty Warriors 5. These were awesome costumes. They ended up winning Best in Show at the Masquerade, and I believe rightfully so, they were pretty well done. Of course, they picked all of the effeminate characters. Where's Guan Yu? Zhang Fei? Dian Wei? Xiahou Dun? Although, that is a pretty solid Lu Bu. Yes, good work, though!
Some Street Fighter-ing
Dante from Devil May Cry. Please notice the furry table behind him. It was a constant source of entertainment and horror for me. At one point one of the guys was wearing a prosthetic turtle mouth painted green. And it actually moved when he talked. ewwww
Wes got his picture taken with the GIGANTIC maker of dinosaur comics. (www.qwantz.com) Wes is pretty much just as tall as I am. An look at how much bigger he is! Wes made away with a Professor Science t-shirt, but not until he acted like the biggest nerd in the world. No worse than me with Ultimo and Lyger, but still.
Ok, here is what cosplaying is all about. This man knew what he was doing. So many people like to think they can cosplay as whatever they want. But a good cosplay is utilizing what you have! And effort! Look at that beard! And the mohawk! And for the love of pete, the chest hair! He even shaved his chest hair! This guy had a gameplan and he stuck to it. He had everything right down to the puckering of the mouth for the victory pose. Also, he had many victory poses. AND! We later saw him in the hotel library doing the spinning clothesline on his tippy-toes for pictures. And for the Masquerade, he 360 piledrove someone, I'm told. This man is my hero.
That was Anime North, friends. On Sunday, after having watched some Anime Music Videos and such, I went downtown and had some wonderful pizza at the Magic Oven with a friend. I also had my first Frappucino from Starbucks. I am officially addicted to those things. soooooo good. And watched Pirates of the Carribean (which would have been better if I knew the backstory a bit, but was still surprisingly very good). I was very pleased with my Sunday night. Had a great time.
Unfortunately, when I got back to the hotel room at 2:30 AM everybody was nice enough to not leave me any pillows.
So when I inevitably woke up before all of them from my bed on the floor, feeling like crap, I decided to take pictures of stuff. There's Wes sleeping.
And Casey on the fold-out.
And finally, the remnants of Anime North Monday morning/afternoon. The event schedule, Wes' wallet, my Barq's root beer from the night before, an empty bag of Doritos, leftover day old cajun pasta from Kelseys, my $2.00 bag of Ruffles that I hadn't eaten from the day before, and an almost finished 2 litre of Crush Cream Soda. That's symbolism for you.
Suffice to say I had a terrific time. The ride back was fairly short and lots of fun. I don't even want to kill any of them. Oh, what was bought! Wes got a Yoruichi Bleach plush and a Mario Bros. 1 UP plush for his gal, a fully poseable Akuma from Street Fighter figure which is very nice, Maximum Carnage and Mortal Kombat for the Sega Genesis, and a Vorg Zangief figure from Hajime No Ippo (Thanks to my keen eye!). Casey, as I recall, got some artwork from Bleach (which was autographed by Johnny Jong Bosch the voice of Ichigo in the US, as well as the voice of Vash the Stampede and of course, he was the black ranger). He also got a Gundam model, and a Kamen Rider Den-O belt (he's becoming a Kamen Rider freak). His sister got some DVD's (Evangelion I know for sure), some artwork, and a pair of rather large sai's. Myself...I got a Ken Masters fully poseable figure which is pretty nice, and a wall hanging of Guan Yu which is actually very nice. Not really an anime thing at all as it's drawn in the style of the Romance of the Three Kingdom books and on very nice paper. Unfortunately I have no place for it. But at the new house, it will take a place of honour on the wall.
Overall, I think the trip cost me about 550 dollars American. For all the food and everything. A hell of a deal as far as I'm concerned. I hope you enjoyed my recap of the festivities. Wish I had even more pictures. If someone wants to buy me a digital camera before next year, I promise to do it up right :-)
Ok, I am off to get some food. I'm going to a Judo tournament this Sunday. Maybe I'll actually have two interesting posts in the span of a week! YOWZA!
Bye