As most of you know, I went to Sakuracon this last weekend. As promised, here is a full report of my adventures.
DAY ONE: FRIDAY, APRIL 8TH
I woke up at about 8:00am, and went to the South Bellevue Park and Ride, where I caught a bus that took me directly to the Seatac Airpot (about two blocks from the con). This is where I realized my first mistake - I had no clue where the hotel was in relation to the airport, just that it was nearby. Luckily, I knew what street it was on, so once I found the main road I was able to deduce which way I needed to head, and I found it pretty quickly.
I walked into the hotel, and things were looking pretty quiet. There were a few cosplayers milling around, but nothing much going on. I asked one of the employees where registration for Sakuracon was, and they gave me directions that led me to a different building. Odd, I thought.
Well, it turned out that the bulk of the convention was taking place in the convention center of the Hilton hotel, so it all made sense in the end. I found the area for registration in short order, followed by THE LINE. This line snaked through three ~50ft long paths before leaving the entrance of the building. Wow, thats kinda long, I thought. Oh, how foolish I was, for the line continued outside the builing, fully around two sides of it, and then out on to the sidewalk.
Eek. Well, I figured that I would have to deal with it sooner or later, so I hopped in. I was right in back of a Ryo-ohki, Kuroneko, and Moogle cosplayer, and in front of a San (from Princess Mononoke) cosplayer, and I got to listen to their inane chatter. Actually, said chatter made this line much more bearable, as did the constant influx of random cosplayers. Anyway, TWO AND A HALF HOURS LATER I was registered, and I decided I had a bit of time I could use to wander around. I found the dealer's room in short order, and left there about $90 poorer than I went in. Then I went home, since I had to go to work.
DAY TWO: SATURDAY, APRIL 9TH
I had one, and only one prime directive for this day - to see he angela concert. The first step in this was to get a ticket, which they began handing out at 8:00am. This meant that I had to catch the 7:30am bus, which meant that I had to wake up at 6:00am to be fully ready to go. So that is exactly what I did, and in doing so woke up earlier than I have in probably more than a year. Along the way I picked up my friend, who was cosplaying as Kero from Card Captor Sakura.
We arrive at the con at about 8:00, and we get out tickets without a hassle. Then we wander into the arcade/LAN gaming room, and screw around on Para Para and Pop'n a bit while watching people play retarded miney edits for ITG. This got old fast, so I again headed for the dealer's room. Which is where I found ANOTHER HUGE ASS LINE. Luckily, as soon as the dealer's rooms opened (about two hours later than scheduled), almost the entire line got to go in at once. A while later sees me leaving $44 poorer than I was before. Since I now had two big posters in my possession that I didn't feel like carrying around, I headed home and dropped them off in my car and then came back - there really wasn't much going on at the time that I could be doing otherwise anyway.
Upon getting back to the con at about 1:00pm I see another huge line stretching out of the hotel. I think "hey, this ought to be something worthwhile." Oh, if only I knew. I asked around, and apparently it was the line for the Cosplay event. So I hop in, and soon they begin letting people into the main event room and seating them.
Now I want you to imagine a big ballroom, perfectly flat, with a stage in the front. Now imagine chairs being set up in this ballroom in lines stretching all the way to the back. As you can probably imagine, the people in the back rows can't see a damn thing since there are so many people in front of them. Indeed, this was the case, as I got to find out personally. I then found out that the event was actually a series of skits put on by congoers.
Most of these skits were really, really bad. Those that weren't were incredibly amatuerish, as were all of the technichians and the sound system. Some of the skits were really funny though, which almost made this event worth my time.
Once that ended, I just wandered around the convention for about an hour, taking pictures of various cosplayers and getting some food. At about 5:30 I went back to the main event area, to prepare myself for the line for the angela concert - I would NOT get screwed over with backrow seats again. So after an hour of diligent waiting, mixed with a bit of healthy line manipulation and lots of good luck, I the best seat (for non-staff) in the entire show - it was the front row for non-staff (so about four rows back), in the very middle, right next to the main aisle, with no one in the row in front of me.
Opening for angela was Kumiko Kato. She was very cute, and an excellent entertainer with a great singing voice. Her songs, on the other hand, were wretched hiphop pieces of garbage. I found myself looking more forward to the random things she would say between each song than the songs themselves.
After her was angela. Oh, not quite. They were having some problems getting things setup, so their rep came out and danced for us. Did I mention that their rep was a 39 year old man who was trying to copy the dance style of Kumiko Kato? This general hilarity kept us entertained until angela took the stage.
And man, what a show angela gave. Their lack of knowledge of English was incredibly obvious (atsuko was reading from scripts placed on the floor, and Katsu clearly knew next to no English at all), but that just added to the show. When they began performing, they got everyone in the room up on their feet and dancing. The only problem with the performence was that atsuko's voice wasn't loud enough, which I blame on poor sound technicions. Besides that, the concert was AWESOME. AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME. No matter how many times I use that word, it still won't adequetly describe it.
Afterwards, they are selling angela cds and having a signing session for them. Not I never buy cds, and I only listen to the ones I have a bit more than I buy new ones. Yet the concert had gotten me so pumped up that I went and bought a cd anyway, and had it signed by angela. Oh yeah. This involved ANOTHER HUGE LINE. Ah well, I had nothing better to do anyway.
After that, if you were to guess that the next thing I did was to hop into line, then you would be right. This time for the Sakura Rave Dance. It was rather dull actually, and not worth the wait. Although I had originally planned to spend all night at the con, I realized that I would have had nothing to do for most of it, so I went and caught the last bus home after only a few minutes in the dance. Upon getting home I collapsed.
For all of Saturday I had my camera with me, which means that I have lots and lots of pictures. Here are some of the better cosplayers I saw:
Anji, from Guilty Gear:
Alphonse, from Full Metal Alchemist:
Heavyarms, from Gundam Wing:
Osaka, from Azumanga Daioh:
A tentacle monster:
And here is atsuko and Katsu, of Angela:
And Kumiko Kato:
I also have pictures of:
Merle (Escaflowne)
Asuka (EVA)
Belle and Snow White
chaos and KOS-MOS
Chii (Chobits)
An executioner (I can't tell if he is from something specific)
The entire Galaxy Angel team
Haruko (FLCL)
A heartless (Kingdom Hearts)
A jellyfish (Slayers, I think)
Lina and Xellos (Slayers)
Kumi (Alien Nine)
Link in blue armor
May (Guilty Gear)
Misha (Pita Ten - not the Misha I ran into on Friday)
Normad (Galaxy Angel)
Rabi en Rose (Di Gi Charat)
Sailor Moon
Sakura, Tomoyo, and Kero (the Kero is my friend Teddy)
Shia and someone I don't know (Pita Ten)
Sora (Kingdom Hearts)
Suigintou (Rozen Maiden)
Suisei Seki and Shinku (Rozen Maiden)
Utena (Revolutionairy Girl Utena)
Wolfward (Trigun)
Zoro (One Piece)
As far as cosplay goes, most of it was at least decent. There were a lot of Naruto cosplayers, and even more Inuyasha ones - I think I counted at least five seperate groups doing the cast of Inuyasha. Of course, there were also your fat cosplayers, but they were usually easy enough to ignore.
As far as the con as a whole goes, it seemed to have two main themes. Here was one of them (this is a picture inside one of the dealer's rooms):
And the other theme was lines. Lines lines lines lines lines lines. I have never waited in so many lines in one day in my life. And never have I had as much fun waiting in line either, as the cosplay and inane anime chatter kept me entertained quite well. Still, two and a half hours in line is kind of ridiculous. I'll be sure to preregister next year.
Anyway, I had the time of my life. Easily worth every penny that I spent on it. Speaking of which, I ended up buying the following from the dealer's rooms:
A set of nice Bottle Fairy figures
A Dejiko plushie
The Mai HiME swimsuit artbook
A Karen (from Onegai Twins) figure
A Battle Athletes poster (I am sure that this is something I will never see for sale anywhere ever again)
A Someday's Dreamers poster
I can get pictures of any of the stuff I bought if anyone is interested. I'm also willing to share the pictures of the other cosplayers I listed above. Oh, and if you have any questions, feel free to ask.
DAY ONE: FRIDAY, APRIL 8TH
I woke up at about 8:00am, and went to the South Bellevue Park and Ride, where I caught a bus that took me directly to the Seatac Airpot (about two blocks from the con). This is where I realized my first mistake - I had no clue where the hotel was in relation to the airport, just that it was nearby. Luckily, I knew what street it was on, so once I found the main road I was able to deduce which way I needed to head, and I found it pretty quickly.
I walked into the hotel, and things were looking pretty quiet. There were a few cosplayers milling around, but nothing much going on. I asked one of the employees where registration for Sakuracon was, and they gave me directions that led me to a different building. Odd, I thought.
Well, it turned out that the bulk of the convention was taking place in the convention center of the Hilton hotel, so it all made sense in the end. I found the area for registration in short order, followed by THE LINE. This line snaked through three ~50ft long paths before leaving the entrance of the building. Wow, thats kinda long, I thought. Oh, how foolish I was, for the line continued outside the builing, fully around two sides of it, and then out on to the sidewalk.
Eek. Well, I figured that I would have to deal with it sooner or later, so I hopped in. I was right in back of a Ryo-ohki, Kuroneko, and Moogle cosplayer, and in front of a San (from Princess Mononoke) cosplayer, and I got to listen to their inane chatter. Actually, said chatter made this line much more bearable, as did the constant influx of random cosplayers. Anyway, TWO AND A HALF HOURS LATER I was registered, and I decided I had a bit of time I could use to wander around. I found the dealer's room in short order, and left there about $90 poorer than I went in. Then I went home, since I had to go to work.
DAY TWO: SATURDAY, APRIL 9TH
I had one, and only one prime directive for this day - to see he angela concert. The first step in this was to get a ticket, which they began handing out at 8:00am. This meant that I had to catch the 7:30am bus, which meant that I had to wake up at 6:00am to be fully ready to go. So that is exactly what I did, and in doing so woke up earlier than I have in probably more than a year. Along the way I picked up my friend, who was cosplaying as Kero from Card Captor Sakura.
We arrive at the con at about 8:00, and we get out tickets without a hassle. Then we wander into the arcade/LAN gaming room, and screw around on Para Para and Pop'n a bit while watching people play retarded miney edits for ITG. This got old fast, so I again headed for the dealer's room. Which is where I found ANOTHER HUGE ASS LINE. Luckily, as soon as the dealer's rooms opened (about two hours later than scheduled), almost the entire line got to go in at once. A while later sees me leaving $44 poorer than I was before. Since I now had two big posters in my possession that I didn't feel like carrying around, I headed home and dropped them off in my car and then came back - there really wasn't much going on at the time that I could be doing otherwise anyway.
Upon getting back to the con at about 1:00pm I see another huge line stretching out of the hotel. I think "hey, this ought to be something worthwhile." Oh, if only I knew. I asked around, and apparently it was the line for the Cosplay event. So I hop in, and soon they begin letting people into the main event room and seating them.
Now I want you to imagine a big ballroom, perfectly flat, with a stage in the front. Now imagine chairs being set up in this ballroom in lines stretching all the way to the back. As you can probably imagine, the people in the back rows can't see a damn thing since there are so many people in front of them. Indeed, this was the case, as I got to find out personally. I then found out that the event was actually a series of skits put on by congoers.
Most of these skits were really, really bad. Those that weren't were incredibly amatuerish, as were all of the technichians and the sound system. Some of the skits were really funny though, which almost made this event worth my time.
Once that ended, I just wandered around the convention for about an hour, taking pictures of various cosplayers and getting some food. At about 5:30 I went back to the main event area, to prepare myself for the line for the angela concert - I would NOT get screwed over with backrow seats again. So after an hour of diligent waiting, mixed with a bit of healthy line manipulation and lots of good luck, I the best seat (for non-staff) in the entire show - it was the front row for non-staff (so about four rows back), in the very middle, right next to the main aisle, with no one in the row in front of me.
Opening for angela was Kumiko Kato. She was very cute, and an excellent entertainer with a great singing voice. Her songs, on the other hand, were wretched hiphop pieces of garbage. I found myself looking more forward to the random things she would say between each song than the songs themselves.
After her was angela. Oh, not quite. They were having some problems getting things setup, so their rep came out and danced for us. Did I mention that their rep was a 39 year old man who was trying to copy the dance style of Kumiko Kato? This general hilarity kept us entertained until angela took the stage.
And man, what a show angela gave. Their lack of knowledge of English was incredibly obvious (atsuko was reading from scripts placed on the floor, and Katsu clearly knew next to no English at all), but that just added to the show. When they began performing, they got everyone in the room up on their feet and dancing. The only problem with the performence was that atsuko's voice wasn't loud enough, which I blame on poor sound technicions. Besides that, the concert was AWESOME. AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME. No matter how many times I use that word, it still won't adequetly describe it.
Afterwards, they are selling angela cds and having a signing session for them. Not I never buy cds, and I only listen to the ones I have a bit more than I buy new ones. Yet the concert had gotten me so pumped up that I went and bought a cd anyway, and had it signed by angela. Oh yeah. This involved ANOTHER HUGE LINE. Ah well, I had nothing better to do anyway.
After that, if you were to guess that the next thing I did was to hop into line, then you would be right. This time for the Sakura Rave Dance. It was rather dull actually, and not worth the wait. Although I had originally planned to spend all night at the con, I realized that I would have had nothing to do for most of it, so I went and caught the last bus home after only a few minutes in the dance. Upon getting home I collapsed.
For all of Saturday I had my camera with me, which means that I have lots and lots of pictures. Here are some of the better cosplayers I saw:
Anji, from Guilty Gear:
Alphonse, from Full Metal Alchemist:
Heavyarms, from Gundam Wing:
Osaka, from Azumanga Daioh:
A tentacle monster:
And here is atsuko and Katsu, of Angela:
And Kumiko Kato:
I also have pictures of:
Merle (Escaflowne)
Asuka (EVA)
Belle and Snow White
chaos and KOS-MOS
Chii (Chobits)
An executioner (I can't tell if he is from something specific)
The entire Galaxy Angel team
Haruko (FLCL)
A heartless (Kingdom Hearts)
A jellyfish (Slayers, I think)
Lina and Xellos (Slayers)
Kumi (Alien Nine)
Link in blue armor
May (Guilty Gear)
Misha (Pita Ten - not the Misha I ran into on Friday)
Normad (Galaxy Angel)
Rabi en Rose (Di Gi Charat)
Sailor Moon
Sakura, Tomoyo, and Kero (the Kero is my friend Teddy)
Shia and someone I don't know (Pita Ten)
Sora (Kingdom Hearts)
Suigintou (Rozen Maiden)
Suisei Seki and Shinku (Rozen Maiden)
Utena (Revolutionairy Girl Utena)
Wolfward (Trigun)
Zoro (One Piece)
As far as cosplay goes, most of it was at least decent. There were a lot of Naruto cosplayers, and even more Inuyasha ones - I think I counted at least five seperate groups doing the cast of Inuyasha. Of course, there were also your fat cosplayers, but they were usually easy enough to ignore.
As far as the con as a whole goes, it seemed to have two main themes. Here was one of them (this is a picture inside one of the dealer's rooms):
And the other theme was lines. Lines lines lines lines lines lines. I have never waited in so many lines in one day in my life. And never have I had as much fun waiting in line either, as the cosplay and inane anime chatter kept me entertained quite well. Still, two and a half hours in line is kind of ridiculous. I'll be sure to preregister next year.
Anyway, I had the time of my life. Easily worth every penny that I spent on it. Speaking of which, I ended up buying the following from the dealer's rooms:
A set of nice Bottle Fairy figures
A Dejiko plushie
The Mai HiME swimsuit artbook
A Karen (from Onegai Twins) figure
A Battle Athletes poster (I am sure that this is something I will never see for sale anywhere ever again)
A Someday's Dreamers poster
I can get pictures of any of the stuff I bought if anyone is interested. I'm also willing to share the pictures of the other cosplayers I listed above. Oh, and if you have any questions, feel free to ask.
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