Anime North 04
Jun. 1st, 2004 11:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akeyoftimeCon pictures here.
Con report behind
Con weekend began with a minor disaster on Thursday night that almost led to no cosplay at all for myself. With a lot help, a back-up costume was thrown together – Noriko from episode eleven, rather than the concert outfit. This process also ate up Friday morning, but was well worth it. (Thank goodness for boyfriends and parental units!)
Michael, cosplaying concert Tohma, and I got to the airport strip a bit later than intended to meet up with Liz – the poor soul had not only been on time, but had been early. While getting our passes at the TCC, I was much amused to see a fangirl (albeit a polite one) approach us and get a hug from “Tohma”. We also ran into Pris at the registration desk, in full costume as Priss from Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040. No time for talk though, as she was hard at work ;)
A short while later we were back over at the Park Plaza to pick up the third member of our cosplay group – thecleric007, also known as Vicki, cosplaying Ryuichi. She’d sewn the most adorable Kumagoro, who now belongs to ME – but I’m straying off-topic. The three of us were recognised right away and had a picture taken by a fun-looking digimon tamers duo, whom I was to later find out included Pan-chan of lelola.net. I’ve spent so much time at her site that this tickles me pink.
Somewhere in all of this we met up with Pris again and sat down to plan what we wanted to do that day – at my urging. I’m a pain sometimes ;) Liz really wanted to get some shopping in, and seeing as how she was only going to be at AN that day, we all trooped over the slightly long line up for the Dealer’s Room. Saw a bunch of awesome costumes while in line – including a plant Prétear – and kicked myself repeatedly for not having a camera. We also spotted an amusing shirt with the words “Seme – It’s lonely at the top” printed on it. Awesomeness.
The line moved faster than we’d feared it would and then it turned into total chaos in the Dealer’s Room. I didn’t end up buying anything on the Friday, which is part regrettable. It was the only day I saw some of the manga I was looking for.
Next up was the Renaissance Hotel for panels and such, with a detour to the J-Pop/J-Rock room to meet Chris.... who stood me up. Thankfully I had company, in the form of Michael, with me and would likely have waited a bit longer if we hadn’t had several other people waiting for us. Michael and I found the others at the “When Bad Things Happen (to Good Anime)” Panel which was, quite frankly, a little scary. There were many valid points made, but some were just nit-picking. We didn’t make it through the entire session.
We caught Prétear next, which was far funnier with a room full of people with me. I hadn’t quite realised how much innuendo was in that show either, accidental or not. In short, it was quite a lot of fun :) We next attempted to go to see some Live Action Sailor Moon, mostly for Liz but for myself too, but the room was beyond packed by the time we got there, so we ended up at the Trigun Doughnut Contest instead. Very simple concept: decorate a doughnut, explain why you decorated it the way you did and the judge picks a winner. There were some cool ones – like the gummi bear on a pile of pecans as the classic anime sacrifice and then there were some gross ones... like the guy who piled as much as he could humanly put on that thing and then ate it as quickly as he could.
The night ended with Liz, Michael and I wasting away just over an hour until my dad came to pick us up. We lounged, were amused by a guy with a sign that said “I want to be glomped” (Which would turn into “I need to be glomped” as the weekend went on) and other various cosplays.
Saturday kicked off with meeting Cler at noon to catch “Magical Shopping Arcade”, which we’d all agreed to see simply because there was nothing else we were set on doing, and the name was too bizzare to ignore. It turned out to be quite a cute series, which I’ll be attempting to download, I suspect. She had just come from the fanfiction awards – it turns out her story, Kaa-sama, had won the award for best use of setting! Congrats to Cler :)
She was also in a new costume today – Hitomi from the Vision of Escaflowne. Very pretty :) We ran into Priscilla somewhere during all of this, and ended up at the Park Plaza hanging around while Chris got his own cosplay stuff put together. He was cosplaying Priscilla’s character’s love interest, so it worked out for a good pair, even if they ended up spending little time together over the weekend. We ended up back at the Renaissance for Hello Kitty Bingo, but the room was more or less full by the time we go there, so instead we opted for a quiet corner and some lunch. I got a few good cosplay pics during all of this, including an Alucard and an adorable Tsuzuki (and a guy no less!).
We caught the better part of Beat the Otakus (patterned after Beat the Geeks), which wasn’t bad for something in it’s first year, but still had a few kinks to be worked out. The host was quite amusing though, so she made up for the fact that most of the otakus lost their medals ^^*
From here on it was a stop in the dealer’s room, and then a three hour wait until the masquerade in which we discovered the TCC is NOT vegetarian friendly, line-ups form at the most inconvenient times, there don’t seem to be many animes starting the letter Q and that Andrew and I have a freaky knack for running into each other randomly at Anime North. Sadly, I’d missed seeing him in his costume – one of the many Naruto cosplayers out there – but we still had a good chat with he and his friends. Found a fellow Gravitation/shounen-ai fan, so we sat down to some gold of fashioned shop talk.
Michael and I met up with Pris and Vicki again once we made it inside the Main Stage area – we’d been cut off from them while on an expedition to find food. They were gracious enough to save us some seats :) (And a juice box, which, combined with a granola bar, constituted poor Michael’s dinner.)
The evening’s excitement wasn’t so much the masq itself as the power outage :P Three girls in the junior division had just come running onstage to perform their Hamtaro dance when the power cut out. It was an adventure! Electrical storms in the area had taken out power for much of the city, apparently, if only for a short while. The rest of the masquerade, what we were there for, was fun, though I rather did enjoy Pimp Daddy Miroku and the Shrek skit was cute.
I reverted to French, in my exhaustion, at some point during the wait for the masquerade to start – boy that was interesting. Pris was the most able French speaker and she left first ^^* It basically ended up with me saying it in French, and then translating. Good thing it’s gotten easier to force myself to use English than it used to be. Brain injuries are bizzare things.
By the time we made it home that night we were both exhausted and starving – and I’d had dinner earlier. My mother looked charming in my Noriko wig and I discovered that I still have that good old death glare ;) It just takes a little help along nowadays. I also started and finished Mars 1, which I’d bought earlier in the afternoon. A very, very cute manga, is all I have to say.
Sunday morning came all too soon ^^* Pris even showed up early to pick us up (a nice break for my dad I hope), which I should have known was going to happen, but regardless I was totally unprepared. We stopped by the TCC for one final go at the dealer’s room, where I picked up Mars 2 and Sailor Stars 3 (the final one of the season, as it were). Sadly, I couldn’t really find the rest of what I was looking for, but it was my fault for not buying it sooner in the weekend.
The rest of the day was spent wandering in a half-stupor from panel to panel. The first we hit was about the fandom in Canada, and I got some questions in about the french side of things (and got very little useful feedback) and one or two about running an anime club. It’s far more competitive than I would have thought!
The next panel, about adaptation from manga to anime, was missing it’s panelists, so we picked up the slack and has a good, solid discussion anyway. I rather enjoyed it, and I surprised myself by realising just how much manga I’d read. I wasn’t really surprised that I had so much to say :P The next panel was in the same room, all about Japanese film. I have a certain morbid fascination with seeing one of them now, but probably won’t on the simple basis that it reminds me too much of Lord of the Flies, only more violent, as the students are SUPPOSED to kill each other.
The next panel was so much fun! It was anime improv, and I swear I haven’t laughed that hard in a while. Scenes from a hat: Things you’ll never hear at an anime convention – I had a bath. When anime characters get lost in their own backyards – Yuuuuuuuuuuukkkkkkkkkkkiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!!!!!!!!!!! (and: Tamahome! (Miaka!), and: Hello, my name is Ryouga). That was an hour well spent!
By this time we were all dead tired, but Pris, Michael and I walked Vicki to the bus stop, where she actually caught the bus :) I’m sure many amusing things were said and done, because there were four giddy people in the same place, but I can’t really remember now ^^* We stopped in at Tim Horton’s for a snack on our way back (mmm... doughnut...) where we promptly nearly got caught in the rain as we waited for Pris parent’s to pick us back up again. The drive home was in almost blinding rain, so I consider us lucky to have made it back in one piece. And so ended AN04. I’m a bit foolishly anticipating Toronto Trek and CNAnime now :P Con season is underway.
. It's quite long. Be warned. I rambled profusely ^^*
Aren't you all shocked I actually got this done? I certainly am.
I was going to write more, but I'm tired, so we'll leave it at I had an excellent day, despite the lack of Egyptian artifacts. Half of the point of that was to get together with Myriam. Which will simply be done at a later date.
Now I'm going to write a bit and then collapse in exhaustion. I like this plan.
Con report behind
Con weekend began with a minor disaster on Thursday night that almost led to no cosplay at all for myself. With a lot help, a back-up costume was thrown together – Noriko from episode eleven, rather than the concert outfit. This process also ate up Friday morning, but was well worth it. (Thank goodness for boyfriends and parental units!)
Michael, cosplaying concert Tohma, and I got to the airport strip a bit later than intended to meet up with Liz – the poor soul had not only been on time, but had been early. While getting our passes at the TCC, I was much amused to see a fangirl (albeit a polite one) approach us and get a hug from “Tohma”. We also ran into Pris at the registration desk, in full costume as Priss from Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040. No time for talk though, as she was hard at work ;)
A short while later we were back over at the Park Plaza to pick up the third member of our cosplay group – thecleric007, also known as Vicki, cosplaying Ryuichi. She’d sewn the most adorable Kumagoro, who now belongs to ME – but I’m straying off-topic. The three of us were recognised right away and had a picture taken by a fun-looking digimon tamers duo, whom I was to later find out included Pan-chan of lelola.net. I’ve spent so much time at her site that this tickles me pink.
Somewhere in all of this we met up with Pris again and sat down to plan what we wanted to do that day – at my urging. I’m a pain sometimes ;) Liz really wanted to get some shopping in, and seeing as how she was only going to be at AN that day, we all trooped over the slightly long line up for the Dealer’s Room. Saw a bunch of awesome costumes while in line – including a plant Prétear – and kicked myself repeatedly for not having a camera. We also spotted an amusing shirt with the words “Seme – It’s lonely at the top” printed on it. Awesomeness.
The line moved faster than we’d feared it would and then it turned into total chaos in the Dealer’s Room. I didn’t end up buying anything on the Friday, which is part regrettable. It was the only day I saw some of the manga I was looking for.
Next up was the Renaissance Hotel for panels and such, with a detour to the J-Pop/J-Rock room to meet Chris.... who stood me up. Thankfully I had company, in the form of Michael, with me and would likely have waited a bit longer if we hadn’t had several other people waiting for us. Michael and I found the others at the “When Bad Things Happen (to Good Anime)” Panel which was, quite frankly, a little scary. There were many valid points made, but some were just nit-picking. We didn’t make it through the entire session.
We caught Prétear next, which was far funnier with a room full of people with me. I hadn’t quite realised how much innuendo was in that show either, accidental or not. In short, it was quite a lot of fun :) We next attempted to go to see some Live Action Sailor Moon, mostly for Liz but for myself too, but the room was beyond packed by the time we got there, so we ended up at the Trigun Doughnut Contest instead. Very simple concept: decorate a doughnut, explain why you decorated it the way you did and the judge picks a winner. There were some cool ones – like the gummi bear on a pile of pecans as the classic anime sacrifice and then there were some gross ones... like the guy who piled as much as he could humanly put on that thing and then ate it as quickly as he could.
The night ended with Liz, Michael and I wasting away just over an hour until my dad came to pick us up. We lounged, were amused by a guy with a sign that said “I want to be glomped” (Which would turn into “I need to be glomped” as the weekend went on) and other various cosplays.
Saturday kicked off with meeting Cler at noon to catch “Magical Shopping Arcade”, which we’d all agreed to see simply because there was nothing else we were set on doing, and the name was too bizzare to ignore. It turned out to be quite a cute series, which I’ll be attempting to download, I suspect. She had just come from the fanfiction awards – it turns out her story, Kaa-sama, had won the award for best use of setting! Congrats to Cler :)
She was also in a new costume today – Hitomi from the Vision of Escaflowne. Very pretty :) We ran into Priscilla somewhere during all of this, and ended up at the Park Plaza hanging around while Chris got his own cosplay stuff put together. He was cosplaying Priscilla’s character’s love interest, so it worked out for a good pair, even if they ended up spending little time together over the weekend. We ended up back at the Renaissance for Hello Kitty Bingo, but the room was more or less full by the time we go there, so instead we opted for a quiet corner and some lunch. I got a few good cosplay pics during all of this, including an Alucard and an adorable Tsuzuki (and a guy no less!).
We caught the better part of Beat the Otakus (patterned after Beat the Geeks), which wasn’t bad for something in it’s first year, but still had a few kinks to be worked out. The host was quite amusing though, so she made up for the fact that most of the otakus lost their medals ^^*
From here on it was a stop in the dealer’s room, and then a three hour wait until the masquerade in which we discovered the TCC is NOT vegetarian friendly, line-ups form at the most inconvenient times, there don’t seem to be many animes starting the letter Q and that Andrew and I have a freaky knack for running into each other randomly at Anime North. Sadly, I’d missed seeing him in his costume – one of the many Naruto cosplayers out there – but we still had a good chat with he and his friends. Found a fellow Gravitation/shounen-ai fan, so we sat down to some gold of fashioned shop talk.
Michael and I met up with Pris and Vicki again once we made it inside the Main Stage area – we’d been cut off from them while on an expedition to find food. They were gracious enough to save us some seats :) (And a juice box, which, combined with a granola bar, constituted poor Michael’s dinner.)
The evening’s excitement wasn’t so much the masq itself as the power outage :P Three girls in the junior division had just come running onstage to perform their Hamtaro dance when the power cut out. It was an adventure! Electrical storms in the area had taken out power for much of the city, apparently, if only for a short while. The rest of the masquerade, what we were there for, was fun, though I rather did enjoy Pimp Daddy Miroku and the Shrek skit was cute.
I reverted to French, in my exhaustion, at some point during the wait for the masquerade to start – boy that was interesting. Pris was the most able French speaker and she left first ^^* It basically ended up with me saying it in French, and then translating. Good thing it’s gotten easier to force myself to use English than it used to be. Brain injuries are bizzare things.
By the time we made it home that night we were both exhausted and starving – and I’d had dinner earlier. My mother looked charming in my Noriko wig and I discovered that I still have that good old death glare ;) It just takes a little help along nowadays. I also started and finished Mars 1, which I’d bought earlier in the afternoon. A very, very cute manga, is all I have to say.
Sunday morning came all too soon ^^* Pris even showed up early to pick us up (a nice break for my dad I hope), which I should have known was going to happen, but regardless I was totally unprepared. We stopped by the TCC for one final go at the dealer’s room, where I picked up Mars 2 and Sailor Stars 3 (the final one of the season, as it were). Sadly, I couldn’t really find the rest of what I was looking for, but it was my fault for not buying it sooner in the weekend.
The rest of the day was spent wandering in a half-stupor from panel to panel. The first we hit was about the fandom in Canada, and I got some questions in about the french side of things (and got very little useful feedback) and one or two about running an anime club. It’s far more competitive than I would have thought!
The next panel, about adaptation from manga to anime, was missing it’s panelists, so we picked up the slack and has a good, solid discussion anyway. I rather enjoyed it, and I surprised myself by realising just how much manga I’d read. I wasn’t really surprised that I had so much to say :P The next panel was in the same room, all about Japanese film. I have a certain morbid fascination with seeing one of them now, but probably won’t on the simple basis that it reminds me too much of Lord of the Flies, only more violent, as the students are SUPPOSED to kill each other.
The next panel was so much fun! It was anime improv, and I swear I haven’t laughed that hard in a while. Scenes from a hat: Things you’ll never hear at an anime convention – I had a bath. When anime characters get lost in their own backyards – Yuuuuuuuuuuukkkkkkkkkkkiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!!!!!!!!!!! (and: Tamahome! (Miaka!), and: Hello, my name is Ryouga). That was an hour well spent!
By this time we were all dead tired, but Pris, Michael and I walked Vicki to the bus stop, where she actually caught the bus :) I’m sure many amusing things were said and done, because there were four giddy people in the same place, but I can’t really remember now ^^* We stopped in at Tim Horton’s for a snack on our way back (mmm... doughnut...) where we promptly nearly got caught in the rain as we waited for Pris parent’s to pick us back up again. The drive home was in almost blinding rain, so I consider us lucky to have made it back in one piece. And so ended AN04. I’m a bit foolishly anticipating Toronto Trek and CNAnime now :P Con season is underway.
. It's quite long. Be warned. I rambled profusely ^^*
Aren't you all shocked I actually got this done? I certainly am.
I was going to write more, but I'm tired, so we'll leave it at I had an excellent day, despite the lack of Egyptian artifacts. Half of the point of that was to get together with Myriam. Which will simply be done at a later date.
Now I'm going to write a bit and then collapse in exhaustion. I like this plan.
