The Kon - Day Two

Described in one word: epic. I'm posting this a bit late because I've been so exhausted from the epicness of the weekend that it took time to recover.

The events held on Sunday were certainly more interesting than those of Saturday! I noticed that a few people complained about this on Saturday when they saw the events list for Sunday. I thought it was a strategic move to get people to come out on Sunday. For some reason, the culture here in Barbados is to stay home, kick back and relax on Sundays. And, while that's all nice and well, it shouldn't be the thing that keeps you home from a really cool event. Regardless, due to this fact of Barbadian life, Sunday's numbers, good as they were, didn't seem to be as large as Saturday's. Regardless, Sunday was indeed an excellent day!

There were fewer movies shown and more panel discussions/workshops held with featured speakers like Marshall Candland, a technical director at Industrial Light & Magic who worked on movies like Pirates of the Caribbean, Transformers, Iron Man and Aliens and Cowboys, as well as some guys from DC Comics! Marshall showed a short presentation of how they created the effects in movies like Transformers and Pirates of the Caribbean. I missed out on the panel discussions/workshops with DC unfortunately but I heard they showed some previews of upcoming works. Very cool stuff.

The Kosplay Kompetition was a hit this year! Last year it didn't come off for whatever reason and I was sorely disappointed but this year it happened! I kinda wish I had entered the competition now...but anyway! The winner was a guy cosplaying Cloud, second place went to Lara Croft and third went to Tifa. The only big problem I had with AnimeKon this year was the judging for the cosplay competition! There was a girl who portrayed L from Death Note extremely well and did not get into the top three. As they were using crowd cheers to judge the top 3 and then again for the placement of the top 3, L received louder cheers than Tifa did...by far! Maybe if the competition is to be judged by crowd reaction and cheers, a decibel reader should be used...it's the most fair and accurate way to judge, don't you think?

Then the night ended with a BANG! with an outstanding performance by Standing Penance, a local band who blew the roof off that night! It was a massively high-energy performance that completely blew me away. Loved it. It was what AnimeKon needed to end the entire event...with an EPIC performance.

Huge Thank You's to Melissa and Omar at AnimeKon! You guys really outdid yourselves this year with an impressive comeback from last year's disappointments. All the hard work throughout the past year was certainly not in vain. Of course, there's always room for improvement and so I look forward to next year being bigger and better than this! (No pressure!) But don't worry, after this year, there'll be lots of buzz and hype when next year rolls around.

I've had some amazing times this year but this was, by far, the best weekend of 2011!

The Kon - Day One

Described in one word: impressive. And I use the word impressive because I'm impressed with the degree of improvements I saw this year!

• larger floor space with adequate room between booths. Last year, all the booths were packed into one room. This year, they've expanded the area and nice placed people apart, with artists in one section and gamers and anime lovers in another section.
• more anime and even some manga!
• AnimeSpot was there showcasing some manga, 
• The theatre showed all anime films like Spirited Away, Appleseed and Akira
•  Anime music video displays by local editors like the amazing soulvws and JMRE09
• I even got to watch a random episode of Bleach. Lovely! I'm not sure if other random episodes from other series showed since I moved around a lot. 
• more events spanning 2 days. Yay! I've seen a lot more fun stuff this year compared to last year.
• amazing green screen room to live out your wildest anime fantasies. Except, it didn't seem like a lot of people utilized it unfortunately. It looks like such an amazing concept...I haven't done it myself lol but I might on Day Two!

I cosplayed as Osaki Nana from NANA this year...my first real attempt at cosplay. Turns out that I did pretty well...it seemed to have been a hit with people. I got a lot of stares and lots of requests for pictures either of or with me. I was feeling quite like a celebrity! I even had a little photoshoot and all (compliments soulvws). Apparently I looked epic. Many people suggested I do it again for day two...I wasn't planning to but I started reconsidering and after telling my mom about my outfit's success, she insisted in a repeat for day 2. And so it will be (because now I have no choice haha).

I met a lot of people (thanks to my eye-catching look) and I got to be very social and friendly. Not something I'm used to...like the mass attention I got. But it was nice being different. I'm not used to getting anyone's attention but it's grown on me and, admittedly, I started to like it. I saw a few others dressed up, though not as impressively if I do say so myself. I was also told that I'm one of the few who looks awesome (talk about ego booster). Ah, my self esteem shot up like a rocket. Oh! I saw a girl cosplay Chun Li. It was nice and it made me decide that I should probably l go for that if I cosplay again. :) We'll see how that goes because I'm not so sure I'll be able to make it to AnimeKon next year and definitely not the year after...or maybe. Medical school is gonna get tougher and I'll be working 7-days a week but who knows!

AK 2011 Excitement!

The AnimeKon 2011 weekend is just four days away! I'm excited! Last year, I tried not to go with high expectations and I guess it was a good thing because I wasn't entirely pleased. The organisers managed to score some hit points with me after responding to my critical blog post about my disappointments and, as this is the second year coming, I've raised the bars of my expectations.

The organisers of AnimeKon have been so kind to seriously take on my few opinions over the past year as they vigorously planned for this year's 2-day events. I know they've done their best to improve things a whole lot so I'll be looking forward to those.

I have all intentions of getting my Canon VIXIA back out of its bag and kick up the old vlogging. It must've been building up some dust over the past 6 months! I've been meaning to do one or two over the past months but never really get to it, for some reason. I've actually somehow reached 101 subscribers! I know it's not much compared to other popular YouTube folks, but it's a big deal to me. =] I'm quite happy to have your subscription and will certainly make greater efforts to create new videos for those who are interested.

So, who's going to AnimeKon 2011 this year? Are you as excited as I am? I'll be there both days this weekend so if you stop by, do say hi!

Gotta Keep Up To Date

I'm hardly aware of what's going on in the anime/manga community these days. I feel like I'm just drifting further and further away from my place of rest and relaxation. For the past few years, I've been a proofreader for a few different scanlation groups...this was my attempt to remain grounded in the manga community as I began medical school and realised that it sort of took over my social life. I tend to spend a lot of time on my computer and I have no other skills to offer so I figured...I'll help proofread and give back to the wonderful manga community! As for anime...I could live without it and if I wanted, I'll do what I can to make provisions to watch the great series people will constantly badger me about.

I'm still a proofreader for manga/manhwa/manhua translations...I almost retired from it but decided I'd stick with it despite the drastic decrease in free time. I'm really continuing for one particular series which I managed to grow particularly fond of and, for some reason, just don't really want to detach myself from. =) I help out with random chapters of other series but, for now, that's what's keeping me rooted to the community. Since I'm doing a poorer job of keeping up to date, I was checking out Wordpress for some cool anime bloggers and found these great reads so far:

• Rail Tracing Anime Blog
• Everyone Has An Anime

Sure, I could always stay up-to-date with AnimeNewsNetwork but I like to read blogs and see what people think of things...see what's popular these days.

For super quick anime/manga news, there's Twitter! I get a lot of good stuff in my Twitter stream since I started following @BreakingAnime.

What about you? Any recommended blogs or websites?

Manga Artists Cheer Japan On!

A few days ago, Takehiko Inoue (creator of Vagabond and Slam Dunk) showed his support for the rescue efforts of the recent magnitude 8.9 earthquake in Japan. These were inspirational sketches to cheer up the people who suffered great losses and cheer on the efforts made for each prefecture to recover. These images were drawn for inspiration and encouragement with an iPad/iPhone app called Zen Brush. 

 

These are some of the prefectures that have been hit the hardest by the earthquake and tsunami (the shirt names are the prefecture names).

A semi-annual art exhibition held in Japan was postponed due to the recent disasters but the chairman of the exhibition suggested that artists post some art in support of the hardships Japan is now facing. If you search for the hashtag #newday_GEISAI, you'll these submissions on Twitter.

AnimeKon: What are you looking forward to seeing?

If you were there last year, you may have been a tad disappointed with how AnimeKon turned out. I'm sure some people were happy and satisfied but it just wasn't good enough for me. It's easy to have high standards for big events that you aren't planning yourself. If there's anything I've learnt from being on the Medical Students' Association over the past year, it's that. 

So, here's what we've got to look forward to:

~ TWO days of anime, comics, games goodness ~

~ TWO days of movie goodness in the larger, all-anime theatre ~

~ TWO days of competition goodness ~

~ TWO days of cosplay goodness ~

~ TWO days ~

Did I mention that things are happening over a period of two days? This sort of information is very important for busy folks like myself who felt cheated because they arrived in the evening and missed out on all of the day's events last year. It's two days this year. Two days = A whole weekend.

July 2 + 3 Mark those calendars! I've marked all of mine.

I said in my previous post that I'm pretty much volunteering myself to help out however I can in the success of AnimeKon this year. Omar and Melissa are the great people that I've been chatting with over the past months and they highly value the wants and needs of the anime community. They'd love to hear your thoughts about:

• What movies would you like to see in the bigger all-anime theatre? Last year there were 5 movies...this year, there'll be more!
• What are some really good series that you'd suggest be shown on the AnimeKon screens? The really good stuff that you've been watching recently and want people to see...popular or not.
• Who would you like to see be cosplayed? Whether it be a character from Marvel or anime, who would you like to see? And are you going to cosplay too?
• What is it that you would like to see most at AnimeKon? It might not be too late to get in a suggestion! If it is though, I'm sure it'll be saved for the planning of the 3rd AnimeKon Expo!

Comment on this post with your thoughts and opinions about what's in store for AnimeKon 2011! There's a lot of other super awesome, super top secret stuff happening this year that you'll just have to find out about when July comes! ;)

You can also contact the organisers personally here.

Remembering The Anime Fangirl In Me

A few things have been running through my mind lately.

1. I haven't made a video in 2 months! That needs to be remedied.
2. I'm months behind on my favourite ongoing manga series. *cry*
3. AnimeKon is gonna be here in a matter of months...it's practically right around the corner!

I will indeed try to fix this problem with my lack of vlogging...2 months gone already? Wow. It was just Christmas! As a matter of fact, I need to fix this problem with fun. Period. I don't have very much pleasures in life anymore. No more anime, no more manga, no more video editing. Sigh. I think the last thing I watched was...Kanon (2006). That was good.

My last frustrated-about-life-and-school post in which I said little tidbits about my recent lifestyle changes didn't include my fun life. My fun life is almost virtually nil. The hospital is a fun-sucker. Fun. Sucker. Psh. I want back my fun.

Remember this video from June last year?

Oh, yeah. Those were the days. The days of fun. I'm such a critic when I want to be (though I'm usually not).

This year, I'm very very very much looking forward to what the organisers at AnimeKon have in store! Thanks to that very honestly opinionated video I made almost a year ago, those lovely folks contacted me. That's not sarcasm...they're actually very awesome people. And I chose to help them out in whatever way I can...blogging and vlogging (maybe).

So, somewhere around 7 months ago, I made this video...

...to which I got very poor response. =[ Only two people really cared enough to answer one of my questions and they both wanted the same thing: amv contests. What would your answers be? (P.S. Important people at the high end of the AnimeKon hierarchy might just read up on your comments! Your opinions are everything =])

It's now a new year with a great new AnimeKon coming up beyond the horizon. Are you as excited as I am? If you aren't yet, you will be!

And on the night of AnimeKon...

...I enjoyed myself...somewhat.

All I can say is that it was nice being out of the house and that I wasn't disappointed. In my recent post about AnimeKon 2010, I mentioned that I wasn't going with much expectation so that I wouldn't be disappointed. Such a smart thing to do. I was excited because I got to dress up but that doesn't mean I expected it to go down great.

In all honesty, if it had been called GamingKon or something, I wouldn't have gone and all the guys and girls who would go to "GamingKon" would have gotten all that they could ever hope for. They could never have been disappointed. Why? Because AnimeKon was really one big video game convention. The only anime-like things that went down (to my knowledge) include: cosplay and the showing of Final Fantasy: Advent Children...oh yes and I guess the fashion show was supposed to be related?

I had the great misfortune of being stuck in a meeting for most of the afternoon. During this meeting, people who cosplayed were around at AnimeKon and I missed a few other, more entertaining events. By the time I had arrived, few people were dressed accordingly and I was told about all the cool characters that were around in my absence. The only goodness I got to see was a pair of girls walking around in their costumes as: Kakashi and an Anbu. I had to sorta figure out the Kakashi character. This was my experience, having gone after 6 PM.

There was a fashion show that I got to see. It was short. It wasn't bad. But then again, I personally am not really one for fashion shows because I don't really get the fashion behind it. Yeah, fashion isn't my thing.

There was some good artwork and graphic designs around so I was pleased with the amount of that floating about.

What made it all worthwhile for me was seeing a bunch of friends that I don't get to see too often. So I was pretty pleased about that at least. Oh and I also got to dress up! I like being able to dress differently from usual.

So, if any of the guys at AnimeKon read this, here are my suggestions for AnimeKon 2011:

• More anime! Otherwise, it's not AnimeKon. I expected to see a whole lot more anime-related things around.
• Anime movies in the "Anime Theatre". Marvel stuff doesn't count because it's American.
• Play some anime-related music: japanese music, theme songs, series soundtracks.

I think that was my biggest problem with AnimeKon. The fact that it had so little to do with anime and so much to do with video games. Anime conventions usually exist to promote anime, promote series that deserve more recognition. I didn't feel like the anime community was properly catered to. But it's something to work on for 2011.

Understandably, this could be difficult to tackle as there aren't really any anime/manga outlets in Barbados, to my knowledge. But using AnimeKon to promote this awareness would be ideal. There are loads of anime fans in Barbados but our source of it is only via the internet and a change from this would be nice, I'm sure. Video games are good, graphic arts are good, Marvel stuff is good but anime is great too! So, you have an entire year to try making AnimeKon 2011 a much more appealing event for anime fans such as myself (because I'm not a big fan of video games).

All in all, I think it turned out to be pretty successful.

AnimeKon 2010!

Barbados' first anime convention! To be held next Saturday, June 26th 2010 from 10 AM - 10 PM. No doubt. I'm going.

I don't have any costumes or anything so there'll be no cosplay for me (I sort of wish I could though) but I'll see what I can muster up from my closet. =) Even if I did want to cosplay, I wouldn't even know who to go as. But I do know I'd wanna be someone with a simple outfit. Complex, exotic articles of clothing do not make me happy...especially if they'll make me hot. I have a friend who may go as Afro Samurai. I think he couldn't have chosen a better character! If you knew him like I do, you'd think so too. =) I wonder how many people will cosplay for the event...

It's Barbados and it's the first. I'm not expecting much really but I'm hoping I'll get a pleasant surprise. Too much hope though, will leave me disappointed. So, I can't say I have a lot of hope or expectations but we won't know how this comes off until the day arrives! I've never been to an anime convention before, so I won't have anything to compare it to, at least.