Report on Otakon! =D

Aug 07, 2006 22:54

So! Got back from Otakon a while ago and have uploaded most of the pictures I took there onto the Internet! Holy wow, it was fun; it was great getting away from my now-stressful home life for a while, especially with such awesome people as Dalin and Julia and... and... I had a great time. ^^

On Thursday, I got dropped off at Dalin's house and, once we picked up Julia, we all headed off to Baltimore. The drive didn't take long at all, and it helped that we had Dalin's massive CD collection there to help us along. After we checked into our hotel and dropped our stuff off in our lovely hotel room, we headed out to register for our badges to get into the convention. Put simply, it took forever because the line was frickin' huge. (That picture is one I took from our room; it coiled in on itself over and over again, and what with the heat and humidity... urgh, what a pain to stand on.)



People on the line to register. Yes, that is a Thomas the tank engine cosplayer.



Line.



Line.



FEEL THE PAIN OF STANDING ON LINE! [/obnoxiousness]



This Byakuya cosplayer was about five spaces ahead of us online the entire time and was the first cosplayer I took a picture of (assuming that these people don't count). As I was on line, I kept looking up and going, "OMG BYAKUYA! Um... is it okay if I, like... just walk up and snap away?" And once I got over the initial shock that I would have to approach a stranger and take a picture of them and realized that it was actually fun to take approach and take pictures of random strangers, I got shutter happy. You'll all see what I mean in a bit. ^__^

So after about an hour of standing on line, we got to the front and got our badges. Mine was from This Beautiful Yet Ugly World, I think. Nothing else of note really happened that night, so I'll just say that I went to sleep and move on to...

FRIDAY!!!

I did cosplay. It was really spur of the moment, and I only chose to do it because Dalin's mom had brought the outfit along with us and it fit me fairly well. I was Random Nameless Character from Battle Royale and looked pretty good in costume. A few people took pictures of me. Sadly, I was not one of them. ^^;;;;;;;;

So anyways: we stood on line again to get into the convention center, and while there, I went insane asking random cosplayers for their pictures. When we got in after about a half hour, me and Julia were about to leave to get seats for the screening of Otaku no Video, but Dalin wanted to get tickets for the Nana Kitade/MUCC concert that would be playing later that night, so we stood online (!!!!!) for them. I took a picture of two cosplayers that were getting off the line, and by the time we got our tickets, we were a little late to the screening. As a result, our seats were all the way in the back, so it was really difficult to read the subtitles. I didn't think the anime was as hysterical as the pamphlet they gave us made it out to be (the pamphlet in itself was exceedingly hard and annoying to fold, so I don't think it was the most reliable source :P), so we left midway through the first episode. Hence, I got to wander around and take pictures of more cosplayers! *totally her favorite part of the con*



This Hinamori cosplayer was about forty-seven types of awesome. After taking her picture, I had the following chat with her:

Me: Omigod, I totally love you for cosplaying as Hinamori.
Her: I know! She gets so much hate in fandom.
Me: People always bash her and say that she hides behind Hitsugaya, and that's just not true.
Her: And they say that she's too fixated on Aizen, even though he's evil; I mean... he wasn't a bad guy before 169 you know.
Me: Yeah!
Her: Besides, they were totally banging.
Me: *cannot produce anything sane at this point so laughs hysterically to make up for it*

Ex dee, bitches.



Soi Fong especially is perfect, if only because she's got the height right. Also, let it be said that there were multiple Urahara cosplayers, but very few good ones. Mostly they were middle aged men with beer bellies that slapped on the hat and called it cosplay. It made me sad, particularly because Urahara is t3h smex one of my favorite characters.

Also, I've got pics of the Ouran gang, Envy from FMA, and the Magic Knights (whom Dalin recognized from last year). Then I had a nutritional meal and took many pictures most of you don't care about.



Me: Can I take your picture?
Miroku: Is that a person? No... it's a woman! *pose*
Me: ... *snaps photo, walks away*



Me: Yotsuba, can I take your picture?
Yotsuba: Omigod, you know who I am, I love you!
Me: ^^ *snap*



Me: THERE ARE EIGHTY BAJILLION SORA COSPLAYERS I HAVE TO TAKE A PICTURE OF AT LEAST TWO OF THEM!!!!!!1!!!1!111! *snap*

You all should know that there were also many Inu-Yasha, Ed Alric, and Sephiroph cosplayers, but I took hardly any pictures of them! ^^

So then, at this point, we headed to another screening room and caught the end of Densha Otoko, which was simply adorable from what I saw. We stayed there to watch an hour of AMVs, only a few of which were any good. There was one Saikano AMV to "My Heart Will Go On" that was just terrible and made the series look like a heap of fluff in comparison to what it really is. This one was pretty good, though.

After this, we left Julia at the AMV screening to watch all of the good, comedic music videos. Dalin went off to a Gundam panel with her mom, while I traipsed off to an Inu-Yasha panel by my lonesome. I will now spam you with more cosplay pictures and squeal about how frickin' perfect that last one is before moving onto the panel.



Sango cosplayer: Hello, my name is *name author of this post can't remember* but some of you might know me by my Internet alias, which is Urd-chan.
Me: O_________________________O!!!!!!!!!

So yep. That's Urd-chan. And the girl next to her is her daughter, who apparently knew Japanese but couldn't be bothered to keep her mother from pronouncing Kagome like it only had two syllables. There were two other panelists (I guess you could call them that) there, but Urd and her daughter did most of the talking. One of them, who had cosplayed as Inu-Yasha, kept playing with his wig, and the girl who was controlling the microphones fell asleep at one point. When woken up to make the volume of the mics louder, she went, "Oh... but... so many buttons..." And we all laughed at her expense. Bwahahaha.

The IY panel kind of sucked because half the people there either watched the dub or followed Viz's release of the manga, so we couldn't discuss spoilers. It was mostly about Urd going off on tangents... like when I asked her about how she thought Naraku was going to die and what would have to happen to bring about his death, she started rambling about how much Inu-Yasha and Kagome had advanced as a couple. But really? She doesn't seem like a terrible person. I just had to restrain myself from slapping my forehead when she called Sesshô-maru "Shesshy." Repeatedly. *sigh*

I actually have a clip from the panel, if anyone's interested in seeing it. I only ask that they don't spread it around without my permission (if only because I don't want something negative to get back to me about it; I try not to be too involved in fandom in that sense).

So once the panel ended, I met up with Julia an hour before the screening of the first four Nana episodes. We hung and I took pictures (frickin' stop me now...) and, a half an hour later, decided to check out the end of the anime that was being screened before Nana, DNA2. Simply put, it was softcore porn. I wanted to take a shower after watching it. It was just... creepy. And not that funny. Just... *shiver*

But since we were so early for Nana, we wound up being "seat ninjas" and getting really awesome seats up close. We could read the subtitles! =D

And Nana... omigod, I love it. It's so easy to get into the characters; I love them all, and love that there's actually backstory and scenes that really make you feel for the characters you're watching. I really like Hachi (though I get the feeling that I'm one of, like, four people that does) and the Black Stones are much my favorite group of people in the show. I'm a Yasu fangirl. ^^ And Ren... omigodheissohotilovehim.

So... Nana... ♥

^__^

I was going to stick around and watch Ouran in the same screening room, just to see the differences in watching it with other people, and I also really wanted to watch Mai-Hime (though it wound up airing at the same time as Nana; oh well...). Instead, me and Julia met up with Dalin and her mom and we skipped off to the dealers' room for two hours. I bought... so much crazy crap. I think it's obnoxious to list everything I bought, but I did get a few Bleach plushies (tiny ones of Renji and Urahra, and big ones of Rukia and Yoruichi, the latter of which I have started to bring to bed with me - I was going to buy a Hitsugaya one, but he looked like he was stoned XD), the third IY movie, a crapload of keychains and figurines from mystery prize boxsets, and five manga. It was a good haul.

Same goes for my pictures of the cosplayers though. (I swear, I took the most pictures of cosplayers on the first day, Saturday's photoshoot aside. I'll stop bombarding you all soon, I promise!)

Once we were done shopping, we dropped our stuff off at the hotel, changed, relaxed, then walked to a local club where the Nana Kitade/MUCC concert was playing. Simply put, I didn't love this part of the convention. We stood on line with people that annoyed me, and Nana's voice got on my nerves after a while. That, and I did so much walking at the convention center, I was too tired to find a good spot to watch the concert from, so I sat at the bar the whole evening. Nana was, in hindsight, okay, but I didn't like MUCC all that much. Julia got into them, and Dalin was dancing the whole time, but I just wasn't feeling it. And the concert went on for so long, like it wouldn't end at points.

But then we got pizza and, seeing as all I'd had to eat that day was pancakes and pocky, all was so, so right in the world.

And then we went to bed.

And then it was...

SATURDAY!!!!!

First... more cosplayers. *is shot* But isn't that little Hikaru so cuuuuuute? And the Hanatarou cosplayer was one of my very favorite ones at the whole convention! So true to character... ^__^

The line wasn't too long to get in, so we arrived and split up right away. Julia was extremely gung-ho about seeing a kids show called Mr. Stain on Junk Alley, so I followed her to that. That show... is on such crack. And I love it. xD It's a kids show, yes... but things die in every episode, and then they eat them. Mr. Stain looks like a Jamaican. And his cat sidekick scares me. o_O But... love. And the ending theme is catchy. Srsly. (That's a bear that Dalin bought in the dealers' room... she called him Mr. Gloomster. XD)

So once that was done, and once Julia and I stopped bragging about the awesomeness of Mr. Stain to everyone who would talk to us, we hung in the dealers' room for an hour or so (where I bought more crazy crap and took this picture, which I'm so proud of, for some reason... wish I'd gotten the one of Urahara behind the counter though) and then saw the tail end of Papuwa and the preview of Ergo Proxy, neither of which I loved but thought were okay. I had my nutritious delicious lunch of pocky, then ran downstairs for the start of the Bleach photoshoot.

This photoshoot? Made of awesome, let me say. Of the 390 pictures I took at the convention total, 214 of them came from the photoshoot. I think I'll make a separate post devoted solely to photoshoot, just because if I load all of my images here, it'll probably break a few hard drives. XD I'll link to it once I have it up and running, though. But man, that was amazing. x3

And I arrived right on time to watch up to episode eight of Nana with Julia, so I was a very happy camper by the end of the day. ^_^

We met up with Dalin and went back to the hotel, where we relaxed, and then we went back to the convention for the screening of Red Apple Productions' videos. For those of you who don't know, Red Apple takes J-pop and J-rock videos and subtitles them; it was really cool to understand what the singers were saying. I enjoyed it muchly. I found a few of the videos on youtube, though not all of them are necessarily what I would like; like this one is just... bizarre. Watch it and see; I swear, your life will change. o_O

After this, we decided to stick around in the screening room to watch the Saturday night fan parodies. We goofed off a bit before they came on, though let me say: the hour and half it took to watch both Evangelion Redeath Redux and Nescaflowne were well worth it. Makes me wish I was into Escaflowne. And the multiple Gendo cosplayers that stood up to dance whenever he appeared were priceless. One fan put it best: the Eva fan parody we saw is the only place in the world where Gendo is still cool. Well said, hm?



It's Gendo. *boogies down*

And... that's it for Saturday. Erm... so... now onto SUNDAY!!!!!!

When we got there, me and Julia watched a few AMVs, though none of them were really of any note. And... really, all we did was head to the dealers' room one last time for last minute buys (I bought Samurai X at 20% off; nice) and to go to the Tofu Records booth, though it was swarmed by Yoshiki fangirls and impossible to get to. So we left two hours early and, later, went to the Hard Rock Cafe for dinner. We chilled a lot, and drove home this morning. I got home at about noon-ish; probably earlier. *shrug*

So yep. I had a wonderful time. I really hope I get to go next year. ^___^

Oh, and I realized rather belatedly that I never wrote about my trip to Saratoga. Nothing really noteworthy happened there, now that I think about it. I did win my spending money for Otakon with my dad's help, and got pissed when I didn't bet an exacta box for My Apology courtesy of my dad (which really I just wanted to bet for the name; Bleach fans, think about this for a second, then bang your heads against your computer screens), but otherwise... nothing that shaking. All I have to do now it write about my trip to Europe and post pictures from the Bleach photoshoot!

...

*buries self under a mountain of .jpeg files*

That's a lot of megabytes...
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