GIR

The Otakuthon anime convention took place in downtown Montreal this weekend I was there to see what it was like.

The convention started off slightly badly for me and my friend due to long lines for registration. (I’m pre-registering next year) But it was well worth the wait. The first thing we did was waste all our money. First we both got boken which ending my friend’s spending ability but I bought a FMA pocket watch which made me go broke as well. I learned my lesson, next year I’m bringing at least 200$ CDN. I saw a lot of awesome things like Death Notes and Naruto headbands and lots of amazing model kits including the Lancelot! There were awesome sexy figures from Fate/stay night but they were around 60$ CDN at the least. Well here’s what I bought plus my badge. (Yes my handwriting is strange. But I say it’s fairly nice.)

The first day we were planning to see the Anime News Network panel at the beginning but the wait for registration ruined that. We didn’t go to any of the panels we planned to see that day. We did go to the game rooms and played Melty Blood Act Cadenza on the PS2, Exhack raped as Ciel. I got a chance to play a Bleach game for the PS2 and then we watched this guy play Wario Ware Wii. That voice that explains the poses is odd and hypnotic.

The next day we missed the first panel which was the one we really wanted to see because the first buss that came had too many people on it so we had to wait an hour. So when we got there we went to a screening of Kanon 2006 episodes 1 and 2. Then we went to the board game room and tried Go but we must have missed a rule because our game was screwed up so we stopped. Then we learned how to play shogi and it was the best hour I ever spent playing one game of chess. We didn’t finish but we stopped so we could go see if there was a panel or screening we wanted to see. We ended up getting there at the end of the Voltron screening and then we saw Gun x Sword episodes 1 and 2. It was the first time I saw episode 1 although I’d seen parts of the series before and it reminded me why I loved it. Exhack on the other hand was a first timer on this show and it drew him in. We then went back to the video game room and played a Gundam SEED Destiny game that never came out here and enjoyed some absurd matches. One of them was me as the Destroy against him in the Moebius Zero. It wasn’t that fun due to how easy it was for me to win. I later made an awesome round as the Strike Freedom and won. It was a great day. We left then because there wasn’t much going on. Now it’s time to talk about cosplay.

I saw lots of good cosplay but one of the first ones I saw was the worst. Male Sailor Venus. It seems there’s one like that at every con. I saw lots of Naruto characters, Bleach too. I saw someone as Hard Gay and I saw an amazing Don Kanonji that I regret not getting a pic of. I saw lots of Eds from FMA and I saw a few Ls, Lights and Misas too, I even saw someone as a Death note. I have five pics of some really good ones. Here:

We were hoping we’d see at least one Type MOON character and the Saber one was it. We saw a lot more Katamari ones too. The Urahara and Yoruichi one was great. It proves that the best cosplays usually come in pairs. I say usually because the Cloud one was the best I saw. I don’t know if you can tell from the picture but his sword has a little mechanism to make the sword expand so it’ll look like it does in the picture. That and the hair are perfect. The only two (or technically three) bad cosplays I saw were the male Sailor Venus and two guys dressed up in perfect costumes of Kaori and Sayuri from Kanon. I didn’t notice they were guys until they were a meter away.

All-in-all the cosplays were amazing and I regret not getting more pictures. Hopefully the official pics from the convention staff will be posted soon so I can show you more. There’s one of my friend being frustrated during our shogi match. I hope you enjoyed my con report as much as I enjoyed being there! I’ll bring more coverage next year from Otakuthon ‘08!