ANIMAZEMENT 2011
OH BOY I just got back from Animazement 2011 in downtown Raleigh.
WHAT A CRAZY WEEKEND
CRAZY BUT AWESOME. Well mostly awesome.
I'll be posting pictures in this entry at modified sizes, so if you wanna see the original photo plus extras I didn't post here go check out the Photobucket album!
I can't say for sure but I think this year had the biggest attendance record because OH GOD WAS IT CROWDED. More crowded than ever, at least to me it seemed.
But anyway, since this year I was going with a friend who could drive, we decided to drive over there on Thursday night to pick up our passes early.
BAD IDEA IF YOU'RE PRE-REGISTERED
If you're just buying the pass at the door, like my friend was, it's no problem; the line is totally miniscule. But the line to pick up pre-bought passes was AROUND THE FLIPPIN' BUILDING. I ended up waiting almost 2 hours in line but at least my friends waited with me to keep me company. We ended up in line behind this incredibly convincing black drag queen in a French maid outfit, no joke. I didn't figure out he was a guy for quite a while. But I've learned from previous con experiences, crossdressers are EVERYWHERE, and sometimes it's really hard to figure out who is actually what gender. It's kind of surreal.
After that though we were pretty much exhausted and didn't feel like going to any of the Thursday night events (which were all practically over by the time we got our passes), so we just went home to get some extra sleep for Friday.
Most of the events on Friday didn't start til about Noon, but Bryan (the friend I went with) and I got there about 11 so we could get a decent parking space. We spent that extra hour just kinda walking around the convention center seeing where everything was, since they'd moved some stuff around; they even added an extra game room and some anime screening rooms into the Marriott hotel across the street. They expanded the Artist's Alley this year to not only the top floor balcony (where it was previous years) but also to the bottom floor where there's a mini food court, so there were A LOT of Artist's Alley booths. I saw a couple of artists I see there every year, but this time I also met KittyHawk, the person who does the webcomic Sparkling Generation Valkyrie Yuuki, which is a hilarious magical girl parody. I also met the girl who did the TF2 fan comic Cuanta Vida, which was interesting. When I found out it was her I basically said to her "Oh god, you created a monster! D8" since CV used to caused SO much drama in the TF2 fandom. She replied with "8( I know, I'm sorry. I didn't mean for everyone to get so insanely worked up about it as they did.", so she was a good sport who really didn't want all the drama that ended up stemming from the comic. Her artwork's gotten way better too! So she was really nice and a lot cooler than I ever thought she'd be. XD
ALSO IN THE ARTIST'S ALLEY I BOUGHT THESE:
AWW YEAH
(Yes, my bedsheets have flying pigs on them. It's awesome)
AND THIS
YEEEEEEEEAH
Gonna get this laminated and made into a mini-poster thing.
After wandering around we got some lunch right before waiting for the Dealer's Room to open. Once it did we went down to the basement where it was and they improved it SO MUCH. They added this awesome Japanese snack bar where you could get Ramune (fruit soda which I LOVE), Pocky, Mochi, and all kinds of other Japanese candies and snack foods. There was also a regular snack bar with popcorn, pretzels, danishes, regular sodas, etc, and thankfully LOTS of tables and chairs to sit and relax if you needed a break while shopping. Such a good idea.
SO YES, SCHWAG TIME~ (I didn't buy all these on Friday but I thought I'd just put all the stuff I bought in one place XD)
Brigade Chief armband from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya! The kanji says "dan naga" which means... "brigade chief" XD Yep. I can't believe I got it for only 5$~
Wall scroll of Nozomu Itoshiki from Sayonara Zetusubou-sensei. It took me FOREVER to find this thing, and it was sadly the only SZS related thing they had, I seriously would've loved more. I'll take a better picture when it's actually up on my wall.
INSANELY GOREGOUS Dark Magician Girl figurine from Yu-Gi-Oh!. She's been my favorite Duel Monster since I was like, 11, so I've always wanted a figurine of her and I GOT MY WISH. She's just... amazing looking too, rediculously high quality. She was way more expensive then I'd like to admit but she's so worth it, especially when they had another one at another booth that doubled in price the next day! So I actually got her for the lower price.
Nendoroid (Chibi) figurine of Kirino Kousaka from the series Ore no Imouto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai... WHICH IS A REALLY LONG TITLE so most people called it Oreimo for short. But it means "My Little Sister Can't Be This Cute". It's a really funny series about a guy who finds out his preppy sister is secretly a super hardcore otaku, definitely check it out if you can. Kirino's the titular sister and again this was the only Oreimo-related thing they had, so I pretty much had to get since it was my 2nd favorite anime series that came out last year.
Oshawott plushie I actually got for my girlfriend, Lynn. <3 She bought me a plushie of Honekoneko from Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt (the zombie cat Stocking carries around) at Otafest, so I needed to return the favor~
(yes, those are my pajama pants, they have flying pigs on them too 8D)
AND LAST BUT SO NOT LEAST
LIFE SIZE COMPANION CUBE
I actually won this in a raffle on Sunday... by default. |D Nobody else showed up for it. THE CUBE WAS MEANT TO BE MINE which fit so well since I was cosplaying as Chell. BY THE WAY the pictures of me in my cosplay were taken by Bryan since he's a photographer with a really nice camera, so I'll post those up when he sends me them! I had SO many other people ask me for pictures too so I won't be surprised if I see some floating around the internet soon. I'll keep an eye out~
And here's a picture of the Dealer's Room from the karaoke room right above it!
Anyway the rest of Friday was pretty chill. After shopping we went to the Anime Music Video Contest. The AMVs were mostly pretty good, there was this one Kingdom Hearts video that had some totally killer editing. I wish there'd been more with series I knew though. After that we had dinner and went to the karaoke room. The karaoke room is kind of my home base at the con, I always go there when I need to kill some time between panels. They didn't have as many songs as last year though, but at least I know why; there was some kind of problem with the karaoke program and they almost didn't have a karaoke room at all. A bunch of people who helped out last minute luckily got it fixed and going again, so I'm really glad they had it at all. It did have some good songs though.
There was supposed to be a Mikupa 2011 Vocaloid concert at 10, but it ended up not happening. I guess the guy didn't show up or something? Either way we just ended up up leaving and getting back home by about 11. It's probably good we got the extra sleep.
Saturday we got there WAY earlier, like 9 am, and met up with my pal Jess, aka SweetTeaholic. We went to an early panel about Must-See AMVs, which was really good, some great videos there. After that we tried to get into a panel called "How To Avoid Rabid Fangirls" which sounded really funny, but it was cancelled. The guy didn't show up.
After that we just decided to eat early and hang out in the karaoke room again and get food until noon when there was a Visual Novels panels. That was pretty good except for the guy doing it had some computer problems, but that wasn't exactly his fault. Nothing I didn't already know though, I could probably do a VN panel with a ton more info, now that I think about it... haha.
After that Jess wanted to go to Dealer's Room and Artist's Alley, so we joined her for that for a bit. While I was sitting down I called my friend who was going to be running a panel later that day. Turns out he was at home, VERY sick, so he couldn't make it to the panel or the con in general. So his panel was cancelled which was disappointing, I'm sad he got sick during the con too.
Then decided to head over to the car and drop some stuff off. While I was in the parking lot though I was... hit by a white sedan.
Fortunately I was okay, whoever it was just clipped me on the side and wasn't going very fast, so I wasn't really hurt aside from "OWWWWW AJSJJFKDSKFFFFFFFFF D8"
I didn't get his license plate number or anything though... I really should've, but I guess since I wasn't hurt it's not a big deal. Accidents happen, but the jerk didn't even stop and get out to ask if I was okay, he just kept on driving. Some people, seriously...
After that there was Cosplay Chess!
Some people in cosplay chess were Sackboy from LittleBigPlanet, Haruko from FLCL, Scott Pilgrim, Noface from Spirited Away, Black Rock Shooter, and Solid Snake from Metal Gear Solid. We didn't stay to see who won though since we were hungry and wanted some dinner at a pizza place across the street from the convention center.
After that I went to the Phoenix Wright: Turnabout Musical panel!
There were some awesome cosplayers, artists, singer,s and music writers there making an actual Phoenix Wright musical! They've already finished their highlights CD, 15 out of their 30 original songs for the musical, and have started working on animating the musical in Flash. They showed us the animation for the opening number, and then performed a song live IN-COSPLAY IN-CHARACTER. It was SO AWESOME~<3
(by the way, if anyone could tell me who the blonde character in white under Apollo Justice is, that'd be great 'cause I don't know who is he XD)
After that Bryan and I TRIED to get into the upstairs ballrooms to watch the Cosplay Contest... but we couldn't even get in to see. Which was annoying as hell considering it was INCREDIBL Y easy to get in last year, but they changed the system for this year so that it was impossible. We were both really mad we missed it. 8<
But things turned around afterward when we went back to the karaoke room to sing a duet and went to the Mystery Science Theater 3000 panel where we found...
IRON CHEF TOM SERVO AND DR. FORRESTER
And then we watched a whole bunch of MST3K, including Godzilla Vs. The Sea Monster, which was hilarious. Great way to end a day with otherwise a lot of misfortunes.
THEN SUNDAY. Saturday was ridiculously crowded so it nice there wasn't nearly as many people on Sunday. Some really good panels, including "Anime Guilty Pleasures (Anime You Like Everyone Else Hates & Anime You Hate Everyone Else Likes)", "Fanfiction 101" (surprisingly a REALLY good panel, the hosts were professional published writers who wrote fanfiction as a hobby in their spare time. I was expecting it to be a total hilarious, pathetic joke of a panel because last year's fanfiction panel was, but they actually had some great advice and info!), "The Vocaloid Phenomenon" (an amazingly good panel about Vocaloid, the characters, how to use the program, etc), and "Lolita Fashion on a Budget" (I wrote down some good sites to buy cheap loli stuff~ I need to go join northcarolitas XD; ). We had a great time on Sunday, it was an awesome end to the con!
And now it's time for FAVORITE COSPLAYER PICTURES~
IT'S THE APERTURE SPICE PERSONALITY CORE GIRLS!
FACT SPICE CORE!
SPACE SPICE CORE!
ADVENTURE SPICE CORE!
Seriously I loved these chicks. 8D
DANANANANANA RATTMANN <3<3<3
BEST STOCKING
EPIC Black Rock Shooter with one BIG ASS CANNON GUN THING
You shouldn't have done that, Ben~
RUUUURRRRRUUUUS~
This Chell out-Chell'd me. XD THAT PORTAL GUN WAS SO HEAVY THOUGH oh god I could barely hold it, I don't know how she did
FRIENDSHIP IS MAGIC, BITCH
WHAT TIME IS IT?!
THERE WERE SO MANY HOMESTUCK COSPLAYERS OH MY GOD and most of them were REALLY good which was awesome~ <3 My favorites were one of the blue robe Johns with the really big, colorful hammer who was really short, cute and adorkable, Snowman complete with whip, and Wayward Vagabond.
Panty, Stocking, Panty Panty Stocking Ooh~!
MYSTERION!!! :D
I see you~
Are you still there?
Madotsuki and Poniko ( with Uboa) from Yume Nikki! I cosplayed as Madotsuki last year, I wish I'd run into some fellow Yume Nikki castmates then. XD There was supposedly a Masada-sensei around but I never found him. 8'(
I've got a whole TONS more cosplay photos and stuff on the Photobucket album I linked up top, so make sure to check that out! And I'll have EVEN MORE in a few days after Bryan sends me the photos he took, including the ones of my cosplay and me with a bunch of the other Portal cosplayers~! 8D
Great con, great stuff, great costumes, I really hope I'm in NC for it next year too~
WHAT A CRAZY WEEKEND
CRAZY BUT AWESOME. Well mostly awesome.
I'll be posting pictures in this entry at modified sizes, so if you wanna see the original photo plus extras I didn't post here go check out the Photobucket album!
I can't say for sure but I think this year had the biggest attendance record because OH GOD WAS IT CROWDED. More crowded than ever, at least to me it seemed.
But anyway, since this year I was going with a friend who could drive, we decided to drive over there on Thursday night to pick up our passes early.
BAD IDEA IF YOU'RE PRE-REGISTERED
If you're just buying the pass at the door, like my friend was, it's no problem; the line is totally miniscule. But the line to pick up pre-bought passes was AROUND THE FLIPPIN' BUILDING. I ended up waiting almost 2 hours in line but at least my friends waited with me to keep me company. We ended up in line behind this incredibly convincing black drag queen in a French maid outfit, no joke. I didn't figure out he was a guy for quite a while. But I've learned from previous con experiences, crossdressers are EVERYWHERE, and sometimes it's really hard to figure out who is actually what gender. It's kind of surreal.
After that though we were pretty much exhausted and didn't feel like going to any of the Thursday night events (which were all practically over by the time we got our passes), so we just went home to get some extra sleep for Friday.
Most of the events on Friday didn't start til about Noon, but Bryan (the friend I went with) and I got there about 11 so we could get a decent parking space. We spent that extra hour just kinda walking around the convention center seeing where everything was, since they'd moved some stuff around; they even added an extra game room and some anime screening rooms into the Marriott hotel across the street. They expanded the Artist's Alley this year to not only the top floor balcony (where it was previous years) but also to the bottom floor where there's a mini food court, so there were A LOT of Artist's Alley booths. I saw a couple of artists I see there every year, but this time I also met KittyHawk, the person who does the webcomic Sparkling Generation Valkyrie Yuuki, which is a hilarious magical girl parody. I also met the girl who did the TF2 fan comic Cuanta Vida, which was interesting. When I found out it was her I basically said to her "Oh god, you created a monster! D8" since CV used to caused SO much drama in the TF2 fandom. She replied with "8( I know, I'm sorry. I didn't mean for everyone to get so insanely worked up about it as they did.", so she was a good sport who really didn't want all the drama that ended up stemming from the comic. Her artwork's gotten way better too! So she was really nice and a lot cooler than I ever thought she'd be. XD
ALSO IN THE ARTIST'S ALLEY I BOUGHT THESE:
AWW YEAH
(Yes, my bedsheets have flying pigs on them. It's awesome)
AND THIS
YEEEEEEEEAH
Gonna get this laminated and made into a mini-poster thing.
After wandering around we got some lunch right before waiting for the Dealer's Room to open. Once it did we went down to the basement where it was and they improved it SO MUCH. They added this awesome Japanese snack bar where you could get Ramune (fruit soda which I LOVE), Pocky, Mochi, and all kinds of other Japanese candies and snack foods. There was also a regular snack bar with popcorn, pretzels, danishes, regular sodas, etc, and thankfully LOTS of tables and chairs to sit and relax if you needed a break while shopping. Such a good idea.
SO YES, SCHWAG TIME~ (I didn't buy all these on Friday but I thought I'd just put all the stuff I bought in one place XD)
Brigade Chief armband from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya! The kanji says "dan naga" which means... "brigade chief" XD Yep. I can't believe I got it for only 5$~
Wall scroll of Nozomu Itoshiki from Sayonara Zetusubou-sensei. It took me FOREVER to find this thing, and it was sadly the only SZS related thing they had, I seriously would've loved more. I'll take a better picture when it's actually up on my wall.
INSANELY GOREGOUS Dark Magician Girl figurine from Yu-Gi-Oh!. She's been my favorite Duel Monster since I was like, 11, so I've always wanted a figurine of her and I GOT MY WISH. She's just... amazing looking too, rediculously high quality. She was way more expensive then I'd like to admit but she's so worth it, especially when they had another one at another booth that doubled in price the next day! So I actually got her for the lower price.
Nendoroid (Chibi) figurine of Kirino Kousaka from the series Ore no Imouto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai... WHICH IS A REALLY LONG TITLE so most people called it Oreimo for short. But it means "My Little Sister Can't Be This Cute". It's a really funny series about a guy who finds out his preppy sister is secretly a super hardcore otaku, definitely check it out if you can. Kirino's the titular sister and again this was the only Oreimo-related thing they had, so I pretty much had to get since it was my 2nd favorite anime series that came out last year.
Oshawott plushie I actually got for my girlfriend, Lynn. <3 She bought me a plushie of Honekoneko from Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt (the zombie cat Stocking carries around) at Otafest, so I needed to return the favor~
(yes, those are my pajama pants, they have flying pigs on them too 8D)
AND LAST BUT SO NOT LEAST
LIFE SIZE COMPANION CUBE
I actually won this in a raffle on Sunday... by default. |D Nobody else showed up for it. THE CUBE WAS MEANT TO BE MINE which fit so well since I was cosplaying as Chell. BY THE WAY the pictures of me in my cosplay were taken by Bryan since he's a photographer with a really nice camera, so I'll post those up when he sends me them! I had SO many other people ask me for pictures too so I won't be surprised if I see some floating around the internet soon. I'll keep an eye out~
And here's a picture of the Dealer's Room from the karaoke room right above it!
Anyway the rest of Friday was pretty chill. After shopping we went to the Anime Music Video Contest. The AMVs were mostly pretty good, there was this one Kingdom Hearts video that had some totally killer editing. I wish there'd been more with series I knew though. After that we had dinner and went to the karaoke room. The karaoke room is kind of my home base at the con, I always go there when I need to kill some time between panels. They didn't have as many songs as last year though, but at least I know why; there was some kind of problem with the karaoke program and they almost didn't have a karaoke room at all. A bunch of people who helped out last minute luckily got it fixed and going again, so I'm really glad they had it at all. It did have some good songs though.
There was supposed to be a Mikupa 2011 Vocaloid concert at 10, but it ended up not happening. I guess the guy didn't show up or something? Either way we just ended up up leaving and getting back home by about 11. It's probably good we got the extra sleep.
Saturday we got there WAY earlier, like 9 am, and met up with my pal Jess, aka SweetTeaholic. We went to an early panel about Must-See AMVs, which was really good, some great videos there. After that we tried to get into a panel called "How To Avoid Rabid Fangirls" which sounded really funny, but it was cancelled. The guy didn't show up.
After that we just decided to eat early and hang out in the karaoke room again and get food until noon when there was a Visual Novels panels. That was pretty good except for the guy doing it had some computer problems, but that wasn't exactly his fault. Nothing I didn't already know though, I could probably do a VN panel with a ton more info, now that I think about it... haha.
After that Jess wanted to go to Dealer's Room and Artist's Alley, so we joined her for that for a bit. While I was sitting down I called my friend who was going to be running a panel later that day. Turns out he was at home, VERY sick, so he couldn't make it to the panel or the con in general. So his panel was cancelled which was disappointing, I'm sad he got sick during the con too.
Then decided to head over to the car and drop some stuff off. While I was in the parking lot though I was... hit by a white sedan.
Fortunately I was okay, whoever it was just clipped me on the side and wasn't going very fast, so I wasn't really hurt aside from "OWWWWW AJSJJFKDSKFFFFFFFFF D8"
I didn't get his license plate number or anything though... I really should've, but I guess since I wasn't hurt it's not a big deal. Accidents happen, but the jerk didn't even stop and get out to ask if I was okay, he just kept on driving. Some people, seriously...
After that there was Cosplay Chess!
Some people in cosplay chess were Sackboy from LittleBigPlanet, Haruko from FLCL, Scott Pilgrim, Noface from Spirited Away, Black Rock Shooter, and Solid Snake from Metal Gear Solid. We didn't stay to see who won though since we were hungry and wanted some dinner at a pizza place across the street from the convention center.
After that I went to the Phoenix Wright: Turnabout Musical panel!
There were some awesome cosplayers, artists, singer,s and music writers there making an actual Phoenix Wright musical! They've already finished their highlights CD, 15 out of their 30 original songs for the musical, and have started working on animating the musical in Flash. They showed us the animation for the opening number, and then performed a song live IN-COSPLAY IN-CHARACTER. It was SO AWESOME~<3
(by the way, if anyone could tell me who the blonde character in white under Apollo Justice is, that'd be great 'cause I don't know who is he XD)
After that Bryan and I TRIED to get into the upstairs ballrooms to watch the Cosplay Contest... but we couldn't even get in to see. Which was annoying as hell considering it was INCREDIBL Y easy to get in last year, but they changed the system for this year so that it was impossible. We were both really mad we missed it. 8<
But things turned around afterward when we went back to the karaoke room to sing a duet and went to the Mystery Science Theater 3000 panel where we found...
IRON CHEF TOM SERVO AND DR. FORRESTER
And then we watched a whole bunch of MST3K, including Godzilla Vs. The Sea Monster, which was hilarious. Great way to end a day with otherwise a lot of misfortunes.
THEN SUNDAY. Saturday was ridiculously crowded so it nice there wasn't nearly as many people on Sunday. Some really good panels, including "Anime Guilty Pleasures (Anime You Like Everyone Else Hates & Anime You Hate Everyone Else Likes)", "Fanfiction 101" (surprisingly a REALLY good panel, the hosts were professional published writers who wrote fanfiction as a hobby in their spare time. I was expecting it to be a total hilarious, pathetic joke of a panel because last year's fanfiction panel was, but they actually had some great advice and info!), "The Vocaloid Phenomenon" (an amazingly good panel about Vocaloid, the characters, how to use the program, etc), and "Lolita Fashion on a Budget" (I wrote down some good sites to buy cheap loli stuff~ I need to go join northcarolitas XD; ). We had a great time on Sunday, it was an awesome end to the con!
And now it's time for FAVORITE COSPLAYER PICTURES~
IT'S THE APERTURE SPICE PERSONALITY CORE GIRLS!
FACT SPICE CORE!
SPACE SPICE CORE!
ADVENTURE SPICE CORE!
Seriously I loved these chicks. 8D
DANANANANANA RATTMANN <3<3<3
BEST STOCKING
EPIC Black Rock Shooter with one BIG ASS CANNON GUN THING
You shouldn't have done that, Ben~
RUUUURRRRRUUUUS~
This Chell out-Chell'd me. XD THAT PORTAL GUN WAS SO HEAVY THOUGH oh god I could barely hold it, I don't know how she did
FRIENDSHIP IS MAGIC, BITCH
WHAT TIME IS IT?!
THERE WERE SO MANY HOMESTUCK COSPLAYERS OH MY GOD and most of them were REALLY good which was awesome~ <3 My favorites were one of the blue robe Johns with the really big, colorful hammer who was really short, cute and adorkable, Snowman complete with whip, and Wayward Vagabond.
Panty, Stocking, Panty Panty Stocking Ooh~!
MYSTERION!!! :D
I see you~
Are you still there?
Madotsuki and Poniko ( with Uboa) from Yume Nikki! I cosplayed as Madotsuki last year, I wish I'd run into some fellow Yume Nikki castmates then. XD There was supposedly a Masada-sensei around but I never found him. 8'(
I've got a whole TONS more cosplay photos and stuff on the Photobucket album I linked up top, so make sure to check that out! And I'll have EVEN MORE in a few days after Bryan sends me the photos he took, including the ones of my cosplay and me with a bunch of the other Portal cosplayers~! 8D
Great con, great stuff, great costumes, I really hope I'm in NC for it next year too~