Miscellaneous

Here’s a rundown of how my weekend (well, Friday & Saturday) at AWA 11 went:

Friday:
Didn’t arrive at the Cobb Galleria until late, and registration took a good 45 minutes. I am never pre-registering again, since the walk-in registration line moved several times faster as the pre-reg line and was about 1/3 as long. Since the dealer’s room was closed by the time I was done registering, I pretty much walked around with my friends admiring various costumes, and then went home.

Saturday:
Got to the convention around 3:30PM, and spent the next hour in the Dealer’s Room. The only things I bought were Nana volumes 10 through 13 from the Sasuga vendor. I tried to pay him in yen (I happen to be carrying around 2000 yen in my pocket from when I passed through Narita a year ago), but he wouldn’t take it. The Dealer’s Room itself had the usual array of merchants, though it felt like there were less weapons vendors than last year (not that I was looking for one). Spent a little time perusing the artwork at the Art Auction and the Cosplay Gallery. I also spent a few minutes in one of the video rooms and watched some 10 minutes of Appleseed (which I still haven’t seen all of). After dinner, we returned to catch the last 15 minutes of the Yoko Ishida concert. By that time, she was doing Para Para Dance stuff and getting the audience to join in.

Of course the main attraction of the night was the Costume Contest. I find cosplay a good indicator of what regional audiences are currently watching/interested in. I didn’t bring my camera though, so you’ll have to rely on A Fan’s View for pictures.

  • Several several FMA costumes and groups, lotsa Naruto, even some AzuDaioh (including one surprising good crossplay Osaka [he had a helmet of her head]), but very little Bleach. There were some Ichigos running around, but only one entered the costume contest (and didn’t win anything). I imagine Bleach will pick up more popularity/cosplayers next year (especially if someone licenses the anime).
  • Tsubasa Chronicle and xxxHolic had strong showings, but none of the costumes were particularly amazing. I attribute the large quantity more to the fact that they are both successful mangas put out by Del Rey, than to the fact that the anime is currently ongoing. Still, those particular groups/costumes got very little applause and yelling (as opposed to the Naruto or FMA costumes).
  • I felt really bad for one girl in a pretty good Rushuna (from Grenadier) costume that won an award, but virtually no one knew who she was cosplaying as, nor got the joke that the MC made pertaining to reloading her gun using her breasts.
  • Tons of video game characters: several Final Fantasies, Resident Evil, Metal Gear Solid, Katamari Damashi, The Legend of Zelda, and Kingdom Hearts, just to name a few. In fact, video game characters got arguably the most recognition and applause. Best in Show was awarded to the Katamari Damashi group, Best Group went to a Resident Evil group, and a Legend of Zelda: Four Swords group also won an award.

    • Granted, this wasn’t a huge con like Anime Expo, so the costumes didn’t really offer much from recent seasons. It felt a lot like this was the watches-Cartoon-Network crowd, which is pretty understandable especially since its headquartered right here in Atlanta.

    Overall I had a pretty good time. The only thing I regret not doing was going to the video rooms on Friday and seeing whose subs they were showing for unlicensed series like SHUFFLE!, GSD, Tsubasa Chronicle, FMP! TSR, etc.

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