こんにちわみんなさん
I got back from Anime North today. I was staying overnight at a hotel because of the driving distance between the venue and my house. The convention was from Friday - Sunday. I initially wasn't going to go because of my fairly recent interest in anime but my friends ganged up on me and convinced me to come along. They even went through the trouble of arranging for my hotel and roommates and one of my friends' dads drove me down there. Since they went through all the trouble, I decided I had better have a good time so I spent a while mulling over the schedule each day, figuring out exactly what I wanted to do. I left on Friday with high hopes.
Usually things don't go as planned and so it was the case for me. My friend showed up late to pick me up to take me down to the convention, and my roommate, who had put her name down for the room, also showed up late to the hotel. I was hoping to attend a panel for Cardcaptor Sakura, one of my favourite anime at 6. But because of the delays, that fell through as did a couple of other things I had planned. But my friend did mention that there was a flea market that only opens on Friday. So after a bit of wandering, I stumbled upon a Key/Kyoto Animation table. Kyoto Animation is my favourite anime studio so it caught my eye immediately. The vendor there had quite a few interesting things on sale. Most notably, he had the original visual novels for Kanon, Air, and Tomoyo After. I've been wanting to try a true visual novel for a while now. Out of the three, I liked the anime of Kanon the most (Tomoyo After is a spin-off to Clannad but Tomoya goes out with Tomoyo instead) so I bought Kanon. Since it was Japanese-imported it cost me quite a bit of money: $90. But it's the limited edition which comes with the game, the original soundtrack and a remix soundtrack. Now... I just have to research how I'm going to play this. Aside from it being Japanese, the game is also a decade old. :P After the market, I ate dinner with my roommates and a few other friends. Once me, my friend, and my other 2 roommates returned to the hotel, my friend and one of our other roommates started working on their cosplays for Saturday. The two of them ended up staying up until 6 trying to finish them before they eventually went to bed. Which meant I was up that late as well...
Saturday was hectic. At 12, I went to a showing of K-On!! since I really do love that anime, especially its second season. At 1, I went to Crunchyroll's panel but there wasn't anything interesting there, plus it ended way earlier than I expected it to. All they showed was their spring schedule. Not even a mention of what they might show in the summer. So from 1:30 - 6, I just ended up wandering around the dealer's area. While there, I spotted the collector's edition for Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2. After mulling over it for a half hour, I eventually gave in and bought it. In retrospect, it's not really worth it (it cost me over $150) but what are you going to do? You're willing to pay for stuff you like. Speaking of which, I also bought the entire anime collection of Lucky Star. I already own volumes 1-5 but the 6th volume is a rarity and they go for $100+ online. So I decided: enough is enough, I need the 6th volume. It cost me $65 but that's still cheaper than buying the 6th volume online. After eating dinner with my friends at 7, I went over to a panel that was showing off Key's work. After Key's panel I had another couple of events planned including a panel talking about eroge but I decided to pass on those and I just went back to the hotel. That night was also eventful and bedtime was at 5:30. :P
Sunday was a fairly chilled out day. Since we all went to bed so late, there was no way I was waking up at 9 to pack up and then go to my planned events which was a Name That Tune game for RPGs, and a Hetalia panel. So I just stayed in the room until 12 and got packed up to leave. I went to a video game soundtrack panel at 1 where there was a discussion about how important music is in video games. It was nothing I didn't already know about video games already. From 2-4 I just hung out my friends before I went to a visual novel panel at 4. The genre seems really interesting and it's so weird that as a gamer, I didn't even know this kind of genre existed until last year. Since visual novels are really obscure and there are very few Western-made visual novels, I guess it's natural not to find them in the mainstream retail market. Besides, I find that a lot of gamers don't like to read which is pretty sad. I love reading and writing (as you can probably tell from this blog ;) ). After the visual novel panel, that was it for me and my dad came to pick me up from the convention.
Aside from my personal schedule, the atmosphere was great. The only other convention I've been to is Fan Expo for the past two years. I do like the organization of Anime North better than at Fan Expo. But then again, Fan Expo doesn't have a ticket/cap limit. The funny thing is as well, Anime North is fan-run. There were a lot of great cosplayers; for a few in particular, their attention to detail for their characters was uncanny. The only thing that kind of ruined the convention was that it was cold. I feel bad for the cosplayers, particularly the girls with their skirts, for having to cosplay on such cold days. The wind did not help matters at all.
I had a great time. Would I go again? Maybe. I prefer Fan Expo since there's more for me to do and there's more stuff I'm interested in. Plus when I go to Fan Expo, I don't need to stay overnight; I can just go home at the end of the day. I still have another year to think about going again. I'm sure my friends will probably gang up on me again next year to go. That's it for now. I'm glad to be back home and I can sleep in a bed again. I was on the floor for both nights because the hotel goofed up our reservation and we only got a one bed-bedroom. So naturally that went to the two girls. Now, back to my regular activities!
また後で
Read more at http://myanimelist.net/blog/Smashking#PDzXkr6zhVj0To3y.99
↧