A-Kon Report
As promised, a full report of the weekend-long wonderfully fun anime convention, resplendant with commentary and obligatory photographs.
As mentioned before, I made my own costume for this shindig. (Guess fashion school is good for something eh?) I went as Rina from Mermaid Melody.
This was my reference picture:
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And this is how it turned out:
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I'm pretty pleased with my work, I admit.
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Saturday Morning! Mom snaps a picture of me and my boyfriend Jonathen before we go. Because my mom's like that. Gotta have a picture of everything.
We join up with friends and ride to a handily convenient station of the local public transport and take the train all the way into downtown, getting off at a stop only a short walk from the hotel where A-Kon was taking place.
Quick snapshot of one of the main rooms we were in.
I take a picture of our friend Monique in her "gothic fairy" costume. With boots that had five-inch heels, about which she complained periodically throughout the day.
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The FIRST thing I gravitated to was the artwork. Naturally.
Found this absolutely adorable picture of the Gaang, which I had to squee over. (Whist pointedly ignoring several Zutara pictures.)
Some girl with a great big synth. Don't know what she's from.
About this point we made our way to the lower level to pick up our tickets and passes. We'd ordered online so they had them all ready for us, along with a goodie bag full of stuff.
Snapped a picture of the girl handing out our stuff for her pretty kimono.
And another one of Monique just for the heck of it.
THIS was cute. Some guy brought in a fully-mechanized robotic R2-D2 that responded to remote control and beeped and moved and danced to the cantina theme. Drew an almost immediate audience of geeks trying to snap a good picture.
(Picture of geeks snapping pictures of R2-D2 provided.)
This action pose of Jack Skellington and Sora in Halloweentown clothing also drew a sizable crowd. Pardon the blurriness.
Being the costume nerd I am, I obviously take several pictures of various costumes.
HARLEY!
FANTASIA MUSHROOMS! OMG!
Once we were done in the lower room we moved up to the dealership, where there was much selling of manga, anime DVDs, clothing... and weapons, as you can see from Josh's picture there. Fascinating place to be, though I did choose to ignore/avoid... certain sections. (Such as the Yaoi corner, the hentai collection, that one booth with furry porn...)
Kimonos were gorgeous, though.
About this point I ran out of memory on the stick in the camera and had to take it out and switch to a new one. (Which was a task in itself with those gloves of mine on.) Ironically my mother had been worried about me running out of battery first.
Hightlight of the morning: finding a booth where they sold Teen Titans artwork and posters, from which I purchased two lovely pieces (an adorable Rob/Star picture and a rocking one of my favorite New Zealand Honorary Titan Argent), and chatting with the aimable dealer who not only had an account on TitansGo.net but was familiar with the TV Tropes Wiki.
It was like reuniting with a long lost friend.
...
Which, amazingly enough, ALSO happened a few hours later during lunch, when I ran into one of my friends from high school orchestra. (Or as they say in TVTropeSpeak, a member of my cherished Nakama.)
HAFAWATI!
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We had lunch and about that point the beading on one of my gloves broke so I just decided to take 'em both off, scoop up the loose beads and put 'em in my bag for the rest of the day. Jonathen and friends occupied themselves with Yu Gi Oh cardgames for part of the afternoon.
^^ I has absolutely no idea how this works. ^^
The rest of the afternoon was taken up mostly in the video lounge where we saw fan and proffesional amvs, including but not limited to: A jingle about the convention (highlight of the song lampshading the broken escalators in the hotel), a Death Note parody, an Avatar amv to "Four Minutes to Save the World" (SQUEE!), and "Dragonball Z: The silent movie" which was HILARIOUS EVEN THOUGH I AM COMPLETELY UNFAMILIAR WITH THE ANIME.
And then there was much wandering, panicking when I realized I'd left the camera in the video lounge, relief as I recovered it no harm done from the exact spot I left it, more wandering, and proliferous gushing oohing and aahing over costumes and artwork and stuff.
Highlights:
RAVEN!
(Apparently there was a Starfire there too, but I didn't see her. : ( )
And...
FINDING ANOTHER RINA! *spazz*
Who actually had a green wig and microphone to complete the look but I'm not complaining. She was also there with an adorable Coco.
Alas I did not get a picture for here my battery died, and I was camera-less for the rest of the day.
Second day pretty much the same as the fist, only with no costume. Accquired two lovely mermaid-art bookmarks. Very pretty.
And that's about it.
DEFINITELY going back next year.