The following is a short recount of my experience, followed by the real reason you’re probably here, pictures and stuff. Here’s the standard 56k disclaimer for whomever is still stuck in the internet’s dinosaur age, because it’s still sort of an obligation to say it. Rally ho then!

Friday:

This was my primary shopping day, and damn, the dealer room was incredibly huge. I can’t say about how big the entire room was, but it felt like it was as long as a football field with vendors packing the room from front to back. Spent a good 4 hours alone scouring every vendor’s wares looking at merchandise. Made some small talked with vendors about this and that, including the guys at the MangaGamer booth. The ecchi dakimakura they had were nice but pretty pricey too. Almost bought a Da Capo shirt to support them, but then I remembered I don’t like Da Capo that much so ended up passing on it.

Saw Touhou games at a couple vendors but had to pass since they were pretty expensive. ~$25 for the older games like Scarlet Devil upwards to ~$45 for the newer stuff like Mountain of Faith. Saw an old copy of Melty Blood for a reasonable price, but I don’t really care for the MB series. I was also pleasantly surprised to see Eternal Fighter Zero in the doujin game pile… for $45. Thanks but no thanks. I… ahem… Already have a “copy”. There were a couple other game vendors selling old-school games for exorbitant prices. Valkyrie Profile for $150, Ogre Battle for $100, FF7 for $80, that kinda stuff. None of those games are worth that kind of money.

Among the things I saw that was a relatively good deal was a Max Factory Kasumi for $65. You know, the one with her bending over with breasts ready to pour out of her kimono. That one. Normally I’d have bought it, but suitcase restraints proved otherwise. It was probably for the best since I’m trying to get over my past figure addiction anyway. Did yet more walking and ended up buying Kino’s Journey: The Beautiful World and AIR Memorial artbooks. Spotted the Kanon Memorial and Clannad Memorial artbooks too but figured they’d be around the next day since there were a lot of copies of both.

Also bought a Lucky Eva shirt (absolutely love it) and felt obligated to get the Otakon 09 shirt to say, “Look, I went to Otakon!!1″. Contemplated getting more novelty shirts, but I don’t exactly wear geeky shirts all that often. You know, because they produce weird stares and I don’t really like attention of any kind. Didn’t take a whole lot of pictures since I spent most of the time shopping and didn’t see a ton of great cosplayers anyway.

Saturday:

Planned to take a lot more pictures than I did. I saw a lot of good cosplayers walking in the halls but couldn’t get many opportunities to hold up traffic to take pictures.

Notable cosplayers spotted but not photographed:

-Several P4 cosplayers including a crossdressed Yosuke during “that” event
-Decent Tsukihime cosplayers, most notably a wicked Ciel
-4chan meme cosplayers like Raptor Jesus and co
-A damn good Noel Vermillion
-Your mom

Cosplayers seen but generally not photographed because I don’t need/want any more pictures of these characters/series:

-Kingdom Hearts
-Most Final Fantasy
-Guilty Gear
-Naruto
-Cowboy Bebop
-Trigun
-Bleech
-Gurren Lagann
-Desu Noto
-Team freaking Fortress, most notably the bevy of Medics (running around without Heavies no less)
-Master Chiefs
-Phoenix Wright
-Haruhis
-Gothic lolita
-Fat Kenshins
-Your mom

A list of cosplayers I’d like to see in the future:

-Hawt Kirika Yuumuras
-Anything KEY, preferably Misuzu or Kotomi
-Youmu Konpaku
-Shiki Ryogi
-Akiha Tohno
-Eve/Golden Darkness
-The K-ON gals
-Fate Testarossa
-Yukkuris
-Ein (Phantom)
-Sola

After I was done looking for cosplayers, went back to the artbook vendor to claim the Kanon and Clannad artbooks. Got the Clannad artbook, but alas the Kanon artbooks were all gone. I made a sad face and went along my way, thinking that I could just get it online anyway, but it’s more fun to buy spur of the moment merchandise at a con.

Explored the con a bit more and wound up at the ridiculously huge game room, where I spent the rest of my day at the con. I’d have to say the game room was probably as big as the vendor room, and there had to be about 80 TVs with games hooked up to them with the full gamut of genres, though fighters prevailed over all else. Watched some killer matches at SSBB, SFIV, MvC2, Guilty Gear and BlazBlue. The lines for the popular games were pretty crowded, so I opted to play the less popular games. In Last Blade 2 I actually held my own despite not remembering how to activate the specials. The fast paced fighters are all the rage, but slower fighters like LB2 have their charm too and can be more fun if you prefer to think more than rely on dial-a-combo memorization to win.

Basically spent the rest of day at the game room, and that was it for the con. Coulda, shoulda, woulda taken more pics but didn’t. Oh well. Overall, the con itself was pretty enjoyable, dare I say actually better than A-Kon, but the other things involved in the experience like air travel and staying in a hotel (and their subsequent fees), will probably keep me from returning next year. If I lived closer, I’d come back in a heartbeat though. Otakon, you were a good con, but looks like next year will be same old A-Kon again for me. I’m heavily contemplating doing a cosplay, nothing too high profile though. Something along the lines of a uniform, such as Gintama’s Shinsengumi or the Clannad male uniform for a Sunohara cosplay. Either way there’s plenty of time to decide that later.

tl:dr: Otakon was fun. Bought artbooks for Kino’s Journey, Clannad, and AIR as well as a couple t-shirts. My legs are tired. Now here are pics lolol.

At any rate it’s refreshing to attend a new convention, and I’ve always heard Otakon is a blast so I’m looking forward to it. I’ll share my experience here in the coming days as I take in the sights and snap plenty of photos. Noirsword signing out.

Another Anime Fest has come and gone. It was fun but ultimately uneventful. There wasn’t much to do besides hit up the dealer room and chill out in the viewing rooms to watch anime I’ve already seen (Natsume Yuujinchou, Haruka Nogizaka and others). No big ticket items this time around, which is a first for me because I usually splurge for a figure or artbook at every convention. The Noizi Ito Guren and Kaen artbooks tempted me but were $55 each. Ouch. No thanks. I’ll use my better judgment and look for those online. I really hate how so much con merchandise is extremely overpriced. So like I said earlier, Anime Fest was fun… But uneventful. Onto the spoils of war!

Items acquired:
Clannad pencil board – $7
Shana pencil board – $6
Kara no Kyoukai pencil board – $6
Haruhi Nendoroid Petit trading figures – $22
Miko Kagami keychain – $6
Pokaymon and assorted trading cards – $25

Total
$72

Edit: Meu said epic phail without pictures, so here are the pics kthx.

With the festivities winding down today, so ends another chapter of A-Kon. There were cosplayers, internet celebrities, furries, 4channers, and regular fans all gathered together for the sake of anime. Sure the smell was… unique, but it was certainly fun. There was a group Caramell Dansen in the dealer room earlier but alas, I didn’t bring my camera for the final day.

Picked up one final item, the Kotobukiya Shana swimsuit version for a cool $30 plus tax. I couldn’t resist Shana’s siren song after all. I also saw the cute Max Factory Kotori Shirakawa, but then I realized that while I like Da Capo, I don’t like it that much. Some of the dakimakura covers were tempting too, but I wouldn’t be caught dead with one of those.

Anime Fest is spaced far enough from A-Kon to give my wallet time to recover, and for better or worse, it’s a much smaller convention.

I don’t think I’ll go to A-Kon next year, but I’ll be shooting for either Anime Expo or Otakon in 2009, because it’s time to see and experience something new. I’ve really wanted to go to both of those conventions for a long time. I should start looking for a group to meet up with since I don’t know anyone out there, and it’s doubtful I can persuade any of my friends around here to travel that far.

This year’s A-Kon journey has come to an end. Well it’s not officially over yet, but Sunday is more of a wrap up day to haggle for dealer leftovers. The Rebel XTi went on its first convention tour-of-duty and there are plenty of pictures, but what I have doesn’t even begin to encompass the massive amount of con-goers and cosplayers that were there. I meant to take more but fatigue (and laziness) set in.

This was my first real outing with the camera. I know the photos aren’t great, so I have to keep practicing to get better. You can find all the pics at the Photobucket link below. My favorite pics and goodies are after the jump.

A-Kon Photos

My goodies:
I actually didn’t get too much this time. I used to get trading figures and DVDs at past cons, but I’ve grown away from trading figures and DVDs are much cheaper at a certain site that provides deep discounts. So here’s my loot for this year.

Alter Caren Hortensia: $25
Kotobukiya Nagisa Furukawa: $40
StrikerS Fate promo poster: $20
Air promo poster: $20
Shana and Lucky Star pencil boards: $4/each
Shana pin (not pictured): $4
“My giant robot can beat your giant robot” button (not pictured): $2

Kind of disappointed that there was no Kanon, Clannad, Sola, or Arcana Heart merchandise. I was really looking forward to finding Max Factory’s Ayu Tsukimiya too. Perhaps some other time at some other con.

I found the Alter Caren at an excellent price. This was counteracted by the inflated Kotobukiya Nagisa, which I bought with some persuasion. I found three different Air posters; One featured Misuzu with more text than picture, second was Minagi and Michiru, and last was Kano and Hijiri. The Kano poster looked the best to me so I got that one. The unexpected double Fate poster was also just too good to pass up.

The shadow of A-Kon 19 is looming overhead. I just spent the last 3 and a half hours standing in the vicious pre-registration line. It’s discouraging that my morale is so low before the convention has even started. Over the next few days, I’ll brave the dangerous crowds to hopefully attain some much coveted goodies, all the while taking pictures of otaku in their natural habitat.

Survival gear, camera, checklist, hazmat suit, autographed picture of Donna Summer… All systems green. I’ll be back in a couple days.