Anime North 2012

Wondered why there were no reviews recently? Well, that's because I was at Anime North this past weekend. With this being my second year at AN, I had a bit more experience in traversing through the crowd of otaku and surviving on about 3 hours of sleep each night. Additionally, this was my first time cosplaying so if you saw a Waver Velvet, that was probably me (since I don't think there was another Waver). This year's attendance cap might have also caused a cap to be enforced on some panels/workshops, resulting in a few disappointments. However, it was a great experience overall and I'm definitely looking forward to going again next year.

tl;dr: I'll be caught up with reviews eventually (before the season ends for sure) since I need to prioritize my academics over blogging.

First off, I sincerely apologize as I somehow ended up with no photos. This was probably due to multiple factors like leaving my camera in the hotel room, bringing my camera and forgetting the battery, and feeling too lazy to take my camera out of my pocket, turn it on, and use it. Therefore, if you don't mind short walls of text on my thoughts for some of the events I went to, feel free to continue reading. If not, you can wait until next year where I'll most definitely get some photos (or search Google for some yourself).

Friday
Nominoichi
This was a garage sale of some sort where people came to sell their used goods. I browsed around for a bit but couldn't find anything I wanted. The large number of people crowding around the tables made the browsing experience a lot worse. Well, at least I managed to find two of my high school friends there, so that was a plus.

Karaoke
Like in all karaoke events, there were both good and bad singers. Since I dislike singing in front of a crowd, I sat there for the majority of the event, appreciating the good singers and laughing at the bad. I barely knew any of the songs, save for the Pokemon theme song, so I wasn't particularly entertained by this event.

Saturday
Dealer's Room
This year, I was more conservative in terms of figurines after learning that I bought two fake ones last year. And so, I ended up buying 8 volumes of manga only—four K-ON! (complete) and four Bakuman. I couldn't find anything else that caught my eye and was affordable besides that.

Fate/zero Photo Shoot
Not an official event but, as part of a Fate/zero cosplay group, a photo shoot had been arranged in the evening. For about three hours, we just stood in different formations/pairings/groups/etc. and had our photos taken. Being someone who doesn't like getting their photo taken, I'm glad that I was assigned to cosplay as Waver since most of the attention was drawn towards the Servants. From the point of view of a first-time cosplayer, I found cosplaying to be interesting and enjoyable, aside from the costume-making part. If I were given to choice to cosplay or not, I'd probably choose the former on the condition that I like/don't mind being the character I'm cosplaying as.

J-Pop Dance Party
I skipped the J-Rave (or "Druggy-Rave" as I like to call it) due to my dislike for drugs. Instead, I chose to go to the "cleaner" J-Pop Dance Party. While I'm not a big fan of loud volume and dancing, I still found the event enjoyable thanks to the decent choice of music. Aside from the random K-Pop songs (it was supposed to be a J-Pop party...), I actually recognized some of the songs and had fun randomly dancing. It's unfortunate that the event ended before my request for AKB48's Beginner could be played.

Sunday
Artist Alley
Last year, I only bought one thing from the Artist Alley—a K-ON! print. This year, my goal was to buy about five prints to fill up the bare walls in my room. Unfortunately, this didn't happen. In fact, I walked out of the Artist Alley empty-handed, with none of the products I saw meeting my (high?) expectations. The lack of THE iDOLM@STER and good K-ON! prints was quite disappointing. There's always next year, right?

Fashion Show
I kid you not, I did go to this—and it was much more entertaining than I expected. The show consisted of four parts: Lolita, Kimono, Visual Kei and Steampunk. In addition to getting to see a number of good-looking fashion styles, I also learned a lot about Japanese fashion, in general. I personally liked the gothic lolita clothing showcased and the latter half of the steampunk section.

Asakawa Yū Panel
To be honest, I had no clue who Asakawa Yū was except for the fact that she is the voice for Megurine Luka (VOCALOID). But after my friends told me about how awesome the Asakawa Yū & Sasanuma Akira panel yesterday was, I decided to grab the last opportunity and go to this panel. Although it was just a one-hour Q&A session, I found it extremely entertaining to listen to the weird/amusing/creepy questions that the audience would ask. And since Asakawa Yū's English was much better than an average Japanese person's, meaning a translator was needed less often, quite a lot of questions got asked. Unfortunately, some inconsiderate jerk had to bring up her ex-husband, most likely gaining a lot of silent hate from the rest of the audience, as it put a stain on what was a really great panel.

So, yeah, I had a blast at AN 2012. A special thanks to everyone who helped to make this con awesome for me and to the organizers who made everything possible! See you next year~