Ai-Kon 2010

Ok, I originally wrote this post up about a week ago but you know… stuff happens and I get extremely lazy. I felt that it would be a complete waste for me to throw this post away since I did spend a great amount of time writing this up.

It has been a few years since I last went to an anime convention and a lot longer to this particular one. Thanks to some motivation by some friends, I finally got around to going this year.

I was hoping to get a coloured badge since it was a weekend pass but apparently low budget or something. I also don't like the mascot girl that much. Too shoujo.

To be totally honest, I thought this year was going to be terrible. I was a bit surprised at the quality of many of the cosplayers this year. One of the things I enjoy doing is take pictures of and with cosplayers. Usually I tend to get people who carry props around to do a stupid pose. It’s what I do, I have fun that way.

Day One

First thing I do when I walk in was check out the gamers lounge since I’m that type of person. I actually spent quite some time in the gamers lounge over the entire weekend playing around with BlazBlue,  doujin games (lol th12.3), and watching my friend play DDR. Unfortunately, I didn’t bring my stick so I was stuck playing very poorly on a controller. oh such woes.. Although I spent the majority of my time around the station where Touhou was set up… I probably would have enjoyed the game more if the weather system wasn’t completely stupid as hell… but that’s a different story. I see a Touhou cosplayer trying to present their own bullet hell game but it still had a long way to go. There was also the normal bullet hell stuff but I can’t say I was too interested since it didn’t have people fighting each other.

There was a SSF4 tournament taking place and I decided to take part just for the hell of it but I got knocked quite fast because I was an idiot to play Viper instead of Juri. That will teach me from ever playing Viper again.

I was quite surprised to see many people I know at the event, many of which I didn’t even expect to see. I didn’t even realize that they had that sort of hobby and such. Also got to see some people cosplaying as the same thing as they dressed at Comic Con.

I don't give a fuck.

I had many regrets on this day. There were many things I should have done but just missed it. Missed the Mode 7 concert that I was kind of hoping to see because of that tournament… should have got my priorities straight first. Another one was that I wanted to do was to get a picture with Haruhi, Nagato, and Mikuru in bunny outfits.  Yeah… those outfits. I only got a glimpse of them from afar and I thought I would get a picture of them later on I didn’t see them for the rest of the night.

Imagine this but in glorious 3D. I want the 3D version. ;_;

I saw a bunch of random sailor scouts running around as well. Good eye candy as well. It took me a little bit to get into the swing of things and start asking around to get some cosplayers to do those  stupid poses.

Day Two

I leave my house just after noon and was welcomed with some heavy rain. Although it was planned that we should have met up around 11 or so to be able to take part of a sushi/onigiri workshop that my friend was looking forward to but his lazy ass slept in.

Brainssssssss

Again, the first thing I do is to walk into the gamer’s lounge to play some video games like an idiot. I was greated by some of friends cosplaying as zombie Mario and Luigi. I spent the majority of the day debating whether or not I should enter the BlazBlue tournament happening later in the day. If I goto an anime convention and I should trying to enjoy some of the shows and events that was offered. I tried to avoid all anime showing since I can just watch anime on my own time.

Trying to kill some time before the cosplay contest, I would end up randomly walking out of the gamer room to get pictures… and a few shots of me doing stupid stuff.

Fuck you Clouddddddd

Fuck you pyr- guhhhhaarrr

Eventually, I started to stand in line for the cosplay contest. We waited for at least an hour just to get into the main event hall and was lucky enough to score seats. Although there were still many people standing. The cosplay content was surprisingly entertaining. The spin off skits was really random and at the same time very funny. There was a Vocaloid performance that was kind of funny but for a different reason. The performer was to show off her dance but for most of the performance, she spent most of her time trying to keep her midriff from falling off. I hope she wasn’t feeling completely emberassed afterwards, the crowd loved it and all thought it was funny. Unfortunately, I was not able to take any pictures since I was sitting near the back and my camera sucks ass.

The cosplay content ended early. I tried to get back to the gamer’s lounge and enter the BlazBlue tournament. It was full of scrubby players and I felt that I would have placed very well if I was able to play. The guy who won the tournament wasn’t very good and I felt that I would have been able to beat him if I was playing on stick. /ego

I ended up calling it a day early since someone else needed a ride home and I didn’t feel like acting a bit selfish in the hopes of getting more pictures.

Day Three

I was stuck going alone since my friend had other priorities to do. I get there before lunch and manage to enter the TvC tournament which like… people only entered for the hell of it.  I managed to placed 4th. Again, I should have done better but was playing on pad and another friend (who ended up winning the tournament) beats me with Zero for free… also not playing the game for several months might have attributed to not remembering my muscle memory. Team Sushi (Roll and Saki) wasn’t able to shine fully.

I felt today was more of a socializing day since I ended up talking to a lot of random gamers about their game and all that lame stuff that gamers talk about. BlazBlue players trying to improve their game and I was just destroying people with no emotion… still doing it on pad. I’m actually very bad at the game but people seemed to be impressed that I was playing Rachel rather well (I’m really not).

Since I was on my own, I wondered around aimlessly trying to find some pictures to take. I ended up running into a volunteer friend. She gave some weird ass grape drink.

GRAPE DRINK

Our conversation went something like this:

Her: Hey.
Me: Hi, what’s up?
Her: Nothing, I just went up to the vendor room and got this. Are you thirsty? [brings out drink]
Me: No, I’m fine. Why did you buy it?
Her: Because this was on the label. [she points to it and it apparently says it was amazing] Here take it, I don’t want it.
Me: I don’t want it either.
Her: Take it anyways.

I just orz’ed and palmfaced a bit inside. I don’t think I’m ever going to drink it. It will forever remain sitting on my desk.

There was on guy that hung around the Touhou station whom I ended up fighting in TH12.3 trading games. I think I did pretty decent considering I don’t even play the game. Convinced me to end up buying a doujin that I may never read.

Yeah.. I'm never going to read or open this.

He also suggested me buying a yuri doujin with lots of action. I look at him with a raised eyebrow thinking that if he was trying to make a clever pun but it seemed unintended and assured me that there was a lot of fighting. I would have bought it but I didn’t bring that much money because I’m poor and only had $15 at the time. Next time! Maybe… I ended up getting the guy’s contact but fail me, I fucked up somewhere while trying to take  it down. Oh well, I’m pretty sure I’ll end up seeing the guy there next year or something.

Since it was Sunday, the last day of the con. A lot of people just went in normal clothing. The population was still healthy but many people were probably just resting up from the weekend of doing nerdy stuff like goto an anime convention.

I take my leave and make the 20 minute journey back home and took a huge nap.

That concludes my Ai-Kon 2010 experience. I am looking forward to going to the one next year so I can mostly do the same shit. Probably spend more time checking out the other events and shows. I will try to have a bit of spending money so I can buy that yuri doujin if it is still there. I think a larger number of people I know will be going next time, it all should be good and fun times. There was a pick up line that I was saving to use but my broke engineering friend wasn’t able to make it out and he probably would have been the only person to fully appreciate it. Next year… next year.