Darkain - Fanime 2007 Con Report

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May 31st, 2007

02:44 pm

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Fanime 2007 Con Report
A weekend for the history books! This past weekend exceeded my normal level of "craziness" by FAR! I was invited on a road trip down to FanimeCon by three girls (

blitzacetidus,

the_nutcracker and

luna_roze), all of which I had only met for the first time a month ago at Sakura-Con. I was really worried at first, as any number of things could have gone wrong with this idea. Luckily, nothing did. It was damn near perfection!!

Tuesday night: I pack my bags, and all was well.

Wednesday morning: I board the bus from Tacoma to Salem where I would meet up with the girls. I had about an hour layover in Portland, so I ran around the downtown area for a bit to get some pictures (will be uploaded later). Once I got into town in Salem and got picked up, it was run run run around here there and everywhere. I swear I've seen that entire city five times now with all the circling around we did. And then finally, we packed the car with brazillions of everythings!

Thursday: We wake up, and like BAM! We were on the road heading somewhere! That "somwhere" only took us about 10+ hours to reach... ugh... We did manage to get to the convention center in time for the day-zero pre-reg badge pick-up! This was quite helpful for us all.

Friday: Con, day one... Things start off a little slow for me. I start getting some photos every now and then. The girls all slipped into their Naruto outfits, and we proceeded to our first photoshoot of the con!! This was great n all, except I landed on my left knee really hard, and messed it up for the remainder of the weekend. As of this posting, there is still a large bruise on it. I did my best to not let my injury slow me down at all, but I knew I had to take things easy. From here, I limited myself to photoshoots only, and almost no hallway or event photography. After Naruto, I headed over to the Final Fantasy gathering. Things started a tad bit late with this one, but once it picked up, it went quite well. There were plenty of great cosplayers in the FF gathering. After that, I spotted some Devil May Cry cosplayers, so I got a few decent photos of them while waiting on the Capcom vs SNK group to all show up. The CvS group was much MUCH larger then I had thought it would be. I was quite pleased. Once that was all done, I headed over to my photoshoot with a Rikku cosplayer. Time seemed to fly by really quickly with this one. Sometime during all of this,

luna_roze swapped costumes over to Tohru and demanded more pictures from me!! After that, she and I headed over to where

blitzacetidus and

the_nutcracker were hiding. We got a few quick sleep-drunk photos, then called it a night.

Saturday: DAY TWO! The morning started off with a "large" *cough*cough* FMA group gathering. Things with this were horribly disorganized, and fell apart very quickly. The girls were all dressed up in some of their FMA outfits, and we also stole the "Real Life Hohenheim" for a private photoshoot. Some great "family photos" came of this. As if time had killed us, it became lunch time! We were taken on a ride to some place a few miles from the convention center where the "piggy" adventure began (this will be explained at a later date). After eating some not-so-great food, we returned to the con. I split from the group, because I wanted to hit up the Sailor Moon gathering. It seemed pitiful. I arive, and there is ONE Sailor Moon cosplayer. ONE! Thats it. After getting a few pictures of her, two of three more show up. After about 15-20 minutes, we finally have a group of maybe 10 total. Dispite this, the Sailor Moon group still churned out some of the best photos from the convention. The Sailor Moon and Sailor Pluto cosplayers were beautiful! Can you guess what happened next?

luna_roze changed into Tohru AGAIN, and demanded more photos AGAIN! From here, we once again meet up with the other two girls. We geek out for a while, then head out for some more photos. At this point,

luna_roze changed outfits AGAIN! This time shes mobbing around as Kairi.

blitzacetidus and

the_nutcracker were still running around in their FMA outfits. We got some bad-ass night shots of the two of them being alchemagicians! They were EPIC!

HOBO RAVE: As if the day couldn't have gotten any more awesome, the girls change into their raver outfits. Why? NOTN Hallway Hobo Rave 2007!!! Yup, thats right... We wheeled some speakers out into the middle of the hallway in the con, and had our own little rave. I was still sore from the previous day's injuries, so sadly, I couldn't really dance around much. :( *sad* NEXT YEAR GIRLS!! I promis things will go better with this. ;)

Sunday: DAY ja vu... Okay, silly pun. But yes, the day did indeed start out the same way: FMA group gathering. This time around? Things went.... pretty much the same. It was pretty damn lame. So once again, the girls and I trotted off to do our own private photoshoot away from the "large" croud. Can you guess what happened after that?

luna_roze changed outfits!! Yup! This time, it was for the large Bleach group gathering. I must say, this was probably the most organized and well put together group gathering of the entire convention. It was probably the largest as well. I can easily estimate 50+ cosplayers in it. Once the large group spread out and moved on,

luna_roze and I stuck around for a few more quick photos. After this, I had to head out to another photoshoot. The guy I was meeting up with was really nice, and we got photos in just about every possible location in the convention center. Once I got back from this, it was time for some epic Automail photos with

blitzacetidus. She was telling me how she hadn't worn the arm in over a year, and how she brought it along just so I could get some good photos of it! Sadly, this had to be cut short, as I had another photoshoot scheduled with a small Gundam Seed group. This was yet another adventure of running around everywhere possible in the convention center for photos. mmmmm, guess what happens NEXT??? Yup, thats right,

luna_roze changed, again. This time? She was back in Kairi, and we got some very lovely photos. The previous ones were at night so they didn't turn out too well. This time, they were out in the sun, and came out great! Later in the night, it was time for some epic awesomeness of winnifications!

blitzacetidus once again proved that shes the best damn alchemagician ever!! We did some more epic night-shot photos, and they came out beyond great! Edward got into trouble though, so Hohenheim had to send him to the corner.

Monday: Long... ass... trip... "home"... and by home, I mean only back to Salem. Not a whole lot to report about on this one.

Tuesday: We spent the day running around Salem again. I had yet another tour of virtually everything in town. We eventually started running late, and forgot stuff, so I missed my bus ride back to Tacoma!! This lead to even more adventures in town. I was rescheduled for a bus a few hours later, and was eventually on my way back.

So, thats the jist of things. I left Wednesday morning at around 10am, and got back home around Midnight the following Tuesday. 10 more hours would have made it a perfect full 7 day adventure. The entire experience was enjoyable, and I hope to have more adventures like it in the future.

Up until this, I've only been a local con goer. I've attended 4 years of DragonFlight, 4 years of Sakura-Con, and 1 year of Chibi-Chibi-Con, all of which are 45 minutes away or less. 15 hours on the road is a large jump from that!! Fanime's convention environment is quite a bit different too. They are much more open to a lot of different things. I noticed in the convention schedule that they were showing Evangelion ReDeath! For those of you that know me and have seen it, you know that its one of my favourite things of all time!! Everytime an elevator door opens, I just want to bust out and say "Its Gendo!" and play music. The whole concept of the "Hallway Hobo Rave' would get you kicked out of virtually any con in the country, yet its perfectly normal at Fanime. People were joking that it should be in the official convention schedule, as its so well known at this point and expected to happen.

While at the convention, I stood by my trend: I purchased a new Asuka figure!! I'll have some photos up of it later. Right now, my photo priority is still processing the 12 remaining (as of this post) galleries from Fanime.

Final thoughts:

The convention was great. I hope to return next year!

PS: Alphons makes the best EBK cosplayer.. EVER!!!