Alrighty since the 3rd day wasn’t much and after Saturday I was pretty exhausted (and left my camera at a friend’s hotel) I figured I’d combine the two days. First and foremost: I WON FOR THE COMEDY CATEGORY IN THE AMV CONTEST!!!!!!!!!!!!! This is like a first for me. I was just damn happy that my amv even MADE it into the freaking contest screenings (damn you Otakon!) So anyway today was a lot of fun and although a few things went awry, nothing majorly “annoyed” me or pissed me off like I often felt at Otakon. Perhaps it’s because the staff was actually helpful and not a bunch of angry dicks.

So while in the morning I had plans to see the amv contest, because I spend like 30 min looking for a piece of my cosplay that set us back and by the time we got to the con, the screenings were over. So we took my 30something doujinshi books and hauled them over to our artist table. The sales today were pretty poor. I coulda sworn I sold more at Manga Next than I did at this con. It seems the crowd here is really….different. You’ll see a ton of Haruhis and Ouran cosplayers but yet the art piece of mine getting bid on is Card Captor Sakura…not any of my Naruto stuff o_o. That is soooo bizarre. Most people would walk by, aww and ahh and “how cute” but then move on.

Despite all the crappy cosplayers walking around (who just put on like a half assed “part” of a costume - i.e. Ed’s Cape, a Naruto headband etc) I managed to get a few good pics. My camera was being a butthole and screwing up with the flash. By the time I figured out how to take good photos with the indoor lighting there…wasn’t much photos to be taken. One of the rare cosplayers I saw was an Emma from Victorian Romance Emma. She was also sitting at an art table across the room. That’s pretty awesome. I was originally selling $1 pencil sketches by request but when someone requested Dark from D.N.Angel, I basically blanked out since I hadn’t drawn anything from that manga in like 2 years and the girl didn’t have any reference pics. In the end I only drew a sketch for DS and one for someone who gave me a reference pic of Haku from Naruto.

I managed to go to the dealer’s room after the insane line died down. Most of it was a total ripoff with $3 ramunes and like $5 boxes of pocky….which at my asian grocery store are $1.15 and $1.25 respectively. Most T-shirts were also like $17-20 so I didn’t bother with those. The one thing I DID get was a cell phone strap (i love straps) of Itoh Noiji’s Haruhi which also lights up when someone calls me. Man that was $5 and is probably the best deal in that whole damn room. I bet at Otakon something like that will be jacked up to $15 or something. I also saw an $8.50 Dokuro-chan figure and was tempted to buy it but by the time I changed my mind they closed the dealer room xD. It’s so cute, Dokuro’s my favorite violent female character.

At one point I opened up my laptop and played the full dance version of Hare Hare Yuukai. Some people stopped by and danced too XD I took some photos. The best part was my table mates’ friends who came by attempting to do the dance they never did before. XD it was so great. People were walking by and occasionally peering in to see what’s happening. I coulda had another chance to do it but my laptop took so damn long to boot up the people gave up and left. =( Also it didn’t help that the damn video kept freezing -_-;;

I briefly saw TL-Chan walk by and say hi. I wish we coulda talked longer but she seemed in a hurry ^^; At 2PM was the Naruto photoshoot. I had JP take a ton of photos and there was a ton of people as usual. They had a Gai yell out the picture setups (such as “team 7″ or “jounins” etc.) One of the …bizarre shots was the “makeout paradise” one which there was an Ino making out with Sasuke (although it looked like she was eating his face) and then a Sexy no Jutsu Naruko and…damn I can’t remember who she was making out with. I don’t think it was a Sasuke though XD. Around 6 we packed up our table and then went to Red Lobster for dinner. At that point I took my wig off because I felt like my head was being crushed by a helmet.

After that me and JP ran back to the con to check out the AMV winners. They said they’d play the winning videos during the cosplay intermission. The staff told us to come back at 9:30 but we heard some sort of music while we were about to leave and lo and behold they began playing the winners ^^;;…yea so then we ended up staying..and well that’s when I found out I won. My amv was the last one shown too (they always save Comedy for last). The interesting part was all the fangirls who squeeled like crazy during any of the Ouran parts and all the guys laughing during the part where Izumi whips that guy from He is My Master and the part where the computer club president has his hand placed on Mikuru’s boob by Haruhi. Btw there was a LOT of Haruhi’s this year…I managed to get a bunch of them during their outside photoshoot. Man when I saw my amv played I just screamed out “YES YES I WON!” lol.

After that we stayed for the awards ceremony hoping that they’d announce something regarding the AMV winners but nothing came. After we saw the camera guys packing their stuff up we asked one of the techies what the deal was and he told us to go see the con staff upstairs. We went up there only wait wait 15 minutes to be told that the AMV guy went home and nobody else knew what the deal with the contest was. o_O What a lack of communication but at least they managed to play the videos rather than screw everything up. They told us to come back tomorrow and they’d give us our prize or whatnot. I also got a chance to speak to one of the judge’s awards winners on the bus back to NYC. He said his Black Cat amv won which due to me missing the amv screenings that were early as hell, I did not see.

On Sunday…I pretty much spent my day at the artist alley. I went up to the staff room to pick up my AMV prize which was basically a babbit mini plushie and then they showed me a box of random DVDs and said “pick whatever” so I picked like random volumes of BLack Cat, To Heart & Kodocha. The rest was anime I couldn’t give 2 shits about or some anime I never even heard of. I mean WTF is Shingu?! I also went to the dealers room to get that Dokuro-chan trading figure. Unfortunately (or fortunately if I was a fat sweaty fanboy) I got the RARE SPECIAL one…of Dokuro-chan in a freaking bathtowel. Dear lord I wanted one of her in the school uniform or hell even the pink sundress woulda sufficied. NO. I get the SPECIAL SECRET ONE OF HER IN A TOWEL…and when her top half of the body comes off *GASP* BOOBIES! *sigh.

At the end of the art auction some idiot never did pick up one of the pieces they bid on. They had a really stupid bidding system too. You could just come up to the pic, put your bid amount and walk away. No one “binded” you to any contract like Otakon which takes your name address & credit card info so that if you bid, you have to pay and whether you come to pick up the piece or not is nobody’s problem but your own. I’ll prolly post this on the forums as a feedback because their bidding system was crappy and I coulda gone home with 2 unbid pics instead of 2 unbid and 1 not picked up. I ended up selling 12/40 doujins so I have like 28 left. Will be setting up a google check out account shortly.

And last but not least….CONVENTION PHOTOS! Enjoy!

P.S. I won’t be blogging this weekend’s stuff cause I’m super behind and I still have new stuff to watch ^^;.

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