AvCon Hoooo!!

Well, I've come back from AvCon.
It's a pity that I couldn't get any of my otaku friends to come along, as I'm sure they would have enjoyed it. I was going to go with one (we had even agreed to it months before), but he's gotten heavily into WoW in that time and didn't want to disrupt his raid schedule. I respect his wishes, and more power to him for that, but it was still a bit of a pity, as I think he would have enjoyed it a lot. If you're reading this, you know who you are.
Not letting that get me down, I still went with a friend, and had a great time.

I had plenty of fun, despite the drizzle and the rain - lots of good quality anime being shown in the various cinemas at the con, like Initial D 4th Stage (although it was 2 years old), Fate/Stay Night, Keroro Gunsou, Tsubasa Chronicle, the two Mai HiMEs, HiME and Otome.
A note in advance - my digital camera was running low on batteries when I went (and I had forgotten to buy more), so some of the photos came out weird.

AvCon Hooo!!! Me trying to pose like Hard Gay Razor Ramon:
http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f327/nightbringer360/Photos/AvconHooo.jpg

The theme this year was Pirates vs Ninjas, and there were quite a few of those around. Cosplayers turned out in force for the con, and although I didn't see too many absolute cuties like they have in Hong Kong or Tokyo, there were still some pretty nice girls. I saw plenty of maids, one girl in a rather short kimono dressed up as Fuu from Samurai Champloo (apparently her boyfriend or something was there as Mugen, but I didn't spot him), and a guy cosplaying Luffy from One Piece. Damn, Luffy would have been cold, wearing nothingbut shorts, a vest, thongs and the straw hat. I saw some guy cosplaying Athrun, complete with bright blue wig (I hope it was a wig) and ZAFT red-coat uniform, as well as some Asian dude cosplaying I think Shinn - I didn't get to see the front of his uniform to see whether he had the top lapel open like Shinn does.

Cosplay photos:

A random School Rumble girl: http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f327/nightbringer360/Photos/SRgirl.jpg

A trio of cute girls dressed up in maid costumes: http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f327/nightbringer360/Photos/Maidgirls.jpg

One of the maid girls by herself:
http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f327/nightbringer360/Photos/Gothloli.jpg

A girl dressed as Yuna from FFX-2, in Gunner dress-sphere mode: http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f327/nightbringer360/Photos/Yunagirl.jpg

As well as the cosplayers and the anime (all in Japanese, thankfully - no sign of crappy English dubs there, always a good sign), they had some interesting things, like game tournaments, and various panels. I went to a rather entertaining panel called Iron Artist, which, obviously, is a parody of Iron Chef. The rules are simple - you have half an hour, one concept and three key words which are randomly selected, to draw a picture.
The words were "Homoeroticisim," (prompting remarks of the various Gundam boys from Gundam Wing being together - such as Heero x Duo ... shudder), "Happy" and "Mecha." There wer five contenders, each given a colour as is the proper thing for a sentai team (like Power Rangers) - we had red, blue, yellow, pink, green and yellow Iron Artists. This was presided over by a couple of guys, one who was a commentator, and another dressed up as a ninja, called the Cursed Ninja. He pretended he was Sub Zero at times, and made various cutting comments about the artists' drawings. Some of the resulting drawings were rather entertaining. One involved Naruto and Kakashi ... well, I imagine anyone who's watched enough Naruto knows about the One Thousand Years of Pain.
While we were waiting, they got people from the audience to be a 2-minute Iron Artist, including this guy wearing black that the commentator and the Cursed Ninja teased, calling him an "emo kid," and this rather cute girl in some sort of goth loli cosplay outfit.

The Cursed Ninja stole the cap from the guy on the far right in the grey trenchcoat (that's right, the one next to the Jack Sparrow lookalike), and pretended he was a Communist ninja.
http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f327/nightbringer360/Photos/IronArtist-1.jpg

The 2-minute Iron Artist challenge with the goth loli girl (she got Schoolgirl as a key word to draw):
http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f327/nightbringer360/Photos/IronArtist03-1.jpg

One of the other ups that I had at the convention were meeting my friends from Shintokyo at the Shintokyo stand - plenty of looking around, chatting with them, and so on. I got a real kick out of the fact that one of the guys told me I was the most fanatical Gundam fan who came to their store. I even joked I should get a badge - "Shintokyo no ichiban Gundam fan" (Shintokyo's #1 Gundam fan).

I'd go again next year - this time with more people! And then I can run around and spout random Japanese at people, because I'll be proficient enough in the language for that then ^_^