This year I had the pleasure of attending my first anime convention ever: Anime North. For more information on the con itself, you can visit www.animenorth.com for what the events and stuff.

Experiences
At first it was fun seeing all the japanese merchandise and *ahem* attractive cosplayers... But then it got boring for a while... Then it picked up again after I decided to take pictures and buy stuff (lol). There were awesome (and not so awesome) anime music videos which people made. I think one was voted the best but I didn\'t stay for that :P. My old school (dmci from dmcigamers) had a booth selling commissioned pics and magnets. After walking for like... 8 hours around the booths, we went to go see the panels and watch more music videos. My friend and I attended a Video Game discussion panel which we promptly left after two Megaman were insulted :madgo:. Anyways, it was very fun and I\'m considering going again and cosplaying next time :D.

Cosplayers
My god... The Inu Yasha and Naruto costumes simply overpowered the rest of them. You could literally not face one direction at the peak hours and NOT see an Inu Yasha or Naruto character. Some people were very hardcore and perfected their costume to the smallest details and others... Well other costumes were sorta like having a sign taped to your shirt saying who you were, just enough to recognize the reference (hehehe)... We saw a couple (definition - two people who were dating) dressed as Shrek and Princess Fiona and it was weird and kinda cute. Lotsa people went as Rikku from FFX2. There were two people dressed as Yura of the Demon Hair (from Inu Yasha) and one as Raven (from Teen Titans) that I was surprised and happy to see. There were many more costumes but it\'s hard to name them all at once.

List of costumes I remember
Cardboard tube samurai from Penny Arcade
Blonde red jacketed guy from Trigun
Red jacket with a big red pimp hat from Hellsing
Solid Snake from Metal Gear Solid
That Chobits girl with the cat ears on the side of her hair.
[EDIT] - Vincent Valentine from... Something. (lol I recognized the costume because of MegamanZero66\'s picture: http://www.interordi.com/mega_man_pc/ioekaki/./pics/6578.png . I was poking my friend telling him \"Hey it\'s that guy that MMZ66 drew!\" and he looks at me and says \"What?\". Funny AND amusing)

Swag
I won the most adorable Inu Yasha doll ever from a claw machine. EVER. It\'s 250% more glompable than regular dolls. Fully trained combat marines wouldn\'t be able to resist the sheer charm and cuteness that is my Inu Yasha doll. So very, very cute :D... There were a couple of buttons that my friends with comissioned pics on them (some of which I thought I could do a better or equally good job of drawing). The Kikiwai booth was giving away really nice bags if you bought something there. I got one but didn\'t buy anything, my friend gave me hers (aww).

Guest Stars
omg omg omg! lol well not really but there were some pretty cool famous people at A.N. including a Japanese pop sensation whose name was not revealed to me but she sings well, does the voice for an anime series (I don\'t know which one) and she\'s very pretty :D. I also saw the 3 main voice actors for the English version of Inu Yasha (Voices for Inu Yasha, Kagome and Seshomaru [spelling?]) who did a mock reading of a script someone wrote in their basements about spaghetti and seasoning herbs that made very little sense but was silly enough to be funny. It was really awesome hearing them talk.

...

Yeah so discuss and comment away.

[Edited on 24-5-2004 by Pocket]

[Edited on 24-5-2004 by Pocket]

First off I think cosplaying is for losers. My opinion though. So are anime music videos...

Second, I envy you because you played a crane game/claw machine... I\'m completely utterly obsessed with those things and I haven\'t played one in awhile. I need a fix...

And oh, big deal that Megaman was insulted.. Do you expect most people to take Megaman seriously nowadays?

Wow... It\'s like the emphasis on what was important has been inverted for you somehow.

At first I thought cosplaying was stupid but then I saw some really good costumes and I became less disgusted and more interested. You didn\'t see these anime music videos... Most were crappy and I was hoping they\'d fast forward through it but some of them were REALLY well done and hilarious. It\'s really an injustice to just describe the videos because it\'s best if you actually saw them.

Sounds sweet. I\'ve never went to a anime convention in my life. Invite me next time you go. I don\'t think I\'ve ever seen a anime music video. Which animes were in the videos?

They had a lot of anime series but the ones I remember and know include: DBZ, Shaman King, Card Captors, Bottle Fairies, Escaflowne, GTO, etc. The music ranged from The Nutcracker to Backstreet Boys to some funny karaoke.

I\'ll try to tell you all when I go next time so I might see someone there. Maybe.

..what was important, the dub voice people being there? It\'s not wise to get my opinion on dub voice actors.

Otherwise, you talked about your Inuyasha doll, the cosplayers and anime music videos... And well, the j-pop chick, but ugh, j-pop is just as bad as regular pop.

Post redacted

Well I would think that the claw machine was probably the least important thing there... There was some 18+ anime dvds for sale and I saw a box of comics labelled \"SMUT\" so yeah... Hentai! Hehehe...

I don\'t really watch that many anime series so I may or may not have seen D. N. Angel cosplayers. I don\'t know what the characters look like.

Isn\'t D.N. Angel uhhh.....

If you see someone that looks like Waluigi, but hasn\'t gone all the way and wore suspenders.. I\'m kidding. I wouldn\'t go to one, because the one closest to me was in Baltimore..a.k.a. CRIME, GANG, AND DRUG DEALER CITY IN MARYLAND. I have no idea why they chose to have it there..

And no, claw machines are not the least important anywhere. Even if I met Todd McFarlane, and there was a crane machine in that room with him..I\'d talk more about the prizes in the machine instead of him.

\"Dude! You talked to Todd McFarlane?! Did you get him to sign anything?\"
\"Yeah, I got him to sign this stuffed animal I got from the crane machine there.. It\'s too bad too, I wanted the blue one but..\"

Yeah, I\'m pathetic.

Hmm... Sound very much like the one I worked in a while ago, only that was a Comic convention, but I guess they are quite simmular. So you are able to show off your own movies at that thing? not fair . I\'d have to buy a plane ticket to attend, so that\'s pretty much out of reach. To bad really, I\'ll miss all the crane machines

Strange that they would have a video game descussion there... and descuss MM games.

Well, MMX8 and MM64 were mentioned as being terrible games so I didn\'t feel like staying for the rest of the panel. There was this music video called \"Lollipops, sunshine and rrrrRRRRrrrr\" made by some guy name dokidoki. I want to find it. It was so great.

..X8? I think you probably meant X7.

As for MM64, I never played that one, but it was on the N64 and everyone thinks it\'s \'cool\' to not like any games made for it.. *shrug*

Actually, I think he meant X8, mostly since it was just shown at E3, so a discussion is just natural.... but Pocket can awser that. As for MM64, It\'s pretty much identicall to Legends so I have no idea why people who liked the PS version scorn it... (Note 1: Snakeman.exe = Nintedo fan )

Oh well, some might think that blowing off peoples heads with a shotgun is \"cooler\", however....it\'s still a videogame.

But now I\'m a bit off topic. I have a question: were there publishers present? Or some way to show what you could do? well apart from the video conest. Always wanted to try something like that

I\'ve seen people, who in my opinion can\'t draw well at all *cough*, get booths at anime conventions for a small fee, and sell prints of their work.. It\'s not exactly a hard thing to do, if they can do it.. I dunno if publishers are there though.

And well, I was questioning X8 because..how can you judge a game when it\'s not even out yet? O.o

Some of the artist booths at anime north had less than stellar drawings. They were good, but they shouldn\'t have been there...

The panel was saying how games were milked for all they were worth before being discarded and they picked megaman as an example. Something about X8 being too much and MM64 being a crappy game. They were mentioned, not discussed.

There\'s a submission thing on www.animenorth.com for anime music videos and there was auction for submitted art people did. (Random people submit art to a gallery, people bid, artist is paid, convention gets a cut of the profits) My friend bid $15 for a picture of Sasuke (from Nartuto). I thought he was crazy.

Here\'s a picture of the claw machine: http://www.geocities.com/dmcigamers/claw.jpg

You can see a couple Inu Yahsa dolls. I got the one to the right, face down, slightly above the one facing the camera.

[Edited on 29-5-2004 by Pocket]

I was gonna say, that one was in the perfect position to pick up.

But ack..Sailor Mercury plushiessss..how cute! I\'d get the cheap orange pigs out of there just so I could get one of those.

.. >.>

Pocket, Vincent Valentines from Final Fantasy 7. Yeah, one of my friends went there and got a Vincent Plushie... I\'m SO jealous.

I couldn\'t tell they were pigs. I thought they were bears until I got a good look at one. Ugly little buggers.

My friend found some pictures of anime north cosplayers. I saw most of these people. I don\'t know what Shrek has to do with anime...

http://www.kikiwai.com/ezine/con007.php

[Edited on 31-5-2004 by Pocket]

Some confused people up north, eh?

..and quite scary too.