otakuthon 2007: saturday convention report

My sister decided to plan a garage sale the same weekend as the con, so I had some major multitasking to do in the morning. I had to get up, shower, eat, set up and get into costume; all before 8:50. For today, I was cosplaying Kou Shuurei from Saiunkoku Monogatari. Before heading in the direction of the con, I had to go and pick up Steph, Arisa, Lisa and Erika. It was a tight squeeze, but we got there about ten after ten.

Arisa, Lisa and Erika didn't want to wait in line for registration, so they went shopping for an hour and a half, hoping the line would die down by then. In the mean time, Steph and I cut the major part of the line and got into the pre-registered line. Despite being a small line, I found it moved pretty slowly (or at least a lot slower than the non-pre-registered people). They had to search for your name manually through a box of name tags and there was only two people working that part of the table. Although the method was tolerable for such a number of people, if the con gets bigger, they'll have to either have more people helping out, or they need to find a more efficient system.

We had an hour to do whatever until we were supposed to meet the others by the time we got our badges. The Dealer's Room was right there, so we decided to check it out. There was a line to get in, which was kind of annoying, but it was in a much better location this year. They also had a lot more dealers and the floor plan was definitely better. I would have liked to have a little more isle room, but it was okay. I was surprised at how much cheaper things were this year compared to last year (which I then compared to merchandise prices in the States). I guess it's because the US and Canadian dollar are so close now.

I didn't have any spending money with me, but it was fun to browse. There's this one figurine that I'm really tempted to buy tomorrow with some of my garage sale money... Anyway, we dropped our bags off at the MuseBasement booth since Steph works there. Daniel from Anime Club was there! It took me a second to realize who he was, and how he knew my name, but it made me really happy. ^^ I didn't expect to see anyone familiar there. Plus he recognized me in cosplay. =D Eleven-thirty came sooner than expected, and we were off to find our little group.

We couldn't seem to find them, even when we looked outside. Steph eventually called Arisa. They were waiting near the door to get in and register. They had met up with some of Arisa's work friends. With nothing better to do, Steph and I just waited until they had their badges.

Arisa and company wanted to check out the Dealer's Room once they had their stuff, so we headed back to where we just came from. Steph and I finished our little tour while the others browsed around. By around 12:30, Steph was getting hungry while Arisa thought the others were getting a little bored. As we were heading towards the other building, I decided to go back to my bag and get my wallet out, so I wouldn't have to come back to get it when we wanted to go and eat.

When we found them in the other building, they were in the Japanese Game Shows room. I'm not sure what the show was, since I only caught the end of it, but it was amusing. A group of judges were judging whether or not Shingo (from the JE group SMAP) had a fake smile. As the episode ended, Arisa asked the others if they wanted to stay or go somewhere else. I would have liked to watch a little more, but the others wanted to leave.

As we stepped out of the room, I got my first good look at the schedule. To my slight dissapointment, I realized that we'd missed half of Anime Name that Tune. I decided to go to the Cosplay 201 panel to see if there was anything of interest. I told the others to meet back at two to decide what to do next. Once we agreed on a meeting place, the others and I went our seperate ways.

The panel wasn't bad. I learned how to attach big wings to a costume and that Model Magic and craft foam could be sewn. I was familiar with most of the rest of the stuff that was discussed, but that was okay. It was interesting nonetheless.

At two, I went downstairs to where we supposed to meet up. There were a few misunderstandings, but by 2:20ish, we were at the restaurant. I wasn't that hungry, so I only picked at my food. I kinda felt bad about it, but I didn't have room to carry the leftovers with me since I had another big bag and I didn't want to get my costume dirty with oil that might leek out of it.

During lunch, we discussed how we found that the con was a little dissapointing. Based on Saturday alone, I thought that last year was a lot more fun. Arisa and company had stopped into Anime Name that Tune while I was at the cosplay panel, and she said they were only playing songs from random ecchi games. We were a bit skeptical about coming back the next day, but I figured I might as well get my money's worth. One random thing that did make me happy about the con this year was there were actually people who recognized my cosplay! I really didn't expect that since I think Saiunkoku is pretty obscure. ^^'

None of us bought tickets for the masquerade or the jpop show, so we decided to call it a day. We all headed downtown for a little shopping before heading back to Arisa's house to hang out.