AWAcon 2013

For a belated anniversary trip, Sak and I decided to continue our convention trek by going to Anime Weekend Atlanta (Awacon).  We picked awa because we'd never been to Atlanta before, the con was roughly the same size as Fanime, and flights were cheap.

Like Fanime, Awa "started" on Thursday night with pre-reg and a swap meet.

We timed the pre-reg line, a healthy 45 minutes for us to get our badges.  Beautiful. I knew it'd be a great con just from that.

 The convention was held in a pretty interesting venue. Part convention center, part hotel, part shopping mall.

Hotel, with cosplay watchers lined all along the sides.

Small shopping mall

Giant main ballroom

On a whole, I really enjoyed this convention.  Since we booked our room late, we got "stuck" with a suite at the embassy suites a block away from con center, though the price of our suite was about the same cost as a normal room here in California! So we didn't mind :)

Our neighbor's room..

Soo let's go through the con-staple run down!

Dealer's Hall - large, many of the same vendors I've seen at other cons, but I found a few cutesy smaller business booths to buy some lanyards for my sister.

Loved all the lil' pikachus on display!

Eren-chu! Where's Levi? :P

Artist Alley - I didn't really like the layout of small circle clusters since it was hard to make sure you visited every booth.  I think we ended up going in figure eights to get to everything! What I did think was cool..the FOOD TRUCKS in the back of the hall. What! That's awesome.

We got some crazy hot dogs with Atlanta special - pimento cheese!

Arcade - Kinda on the small side. But it was cute, in a little rented out storefront in the mall. Free too, I think? We didn't stay here long, just to get streetpasses on our 3dses! :)

Panels - We only went to one instructional panel, on how to alter store bought patterns.  I learned that I should probably invest in a curved ruler. For what exactly I'm not sure, but it seemed important!

The rest of the panels we went to were more video based. One on anime openers, one on random funny clips, and one on rare DBZ footage (including public traffic safety messages from Goku, lol)

A badly laid out panel room. Look how tiny the screen is compared to the room size! Bigger screens please!

 Concert/Costume Contest - *ashamed* Can't say..since we didn't go.  We didn't go because..

AMVs (anime music videos). Sak and I looove these. Especially the funny ones.  Anyway, Awa had a room dedicated to amvs. And a lot of AMV editors come to hang out too! It was really cool. So we basically hung out in that room most the weekend.

Like Iron Chef, but with people creating AMVs right on the spot!

Super dark room so super bad image, but the speakers were Evanglion themed. 

Another random thing in the AMV room. hehe.

Anyway, Iron Editor was pretty interesting.  While the two contestants worked on their videos, the hosts played mini games with the audience, like guess the song in the AMV, sing-a-long AMVS (Let's get down to busssinnness, to defeat, the huns!), and an AMV Portal-esque mind test which I can't really explain. If I ever find it on Youtube I'll link it or something :P

In addition to AMVs and the AMV contest, we also did Anime Hell which was awesome as always. Not all of it was Fanime repeats either, which we appreciated.  Awacon is a 24 hour con, though we are too old to truly take advantage of this :P I think we were in bed by 1 or 2 am each night!

Karaoke was in the mall..haha.

I didn't take many cosplay pictures again because I am lame and too shy to ask most the time. But this Nobunaga Vader was pretty awesome. Two of my favorite people!

And we found one other Maou-sama! Co-worker!

And here's Sak in his uniform:

 We also did casual Vegeta (minus hair) and our casual Keroro from last year's Otakon.

Overall, it was a really enjoyable con, and the weather was really nice.  There were plenty of eateries within walking distance, con attendees were pretty polite (though I don't mind a riotious debacle now and then, honestly..), and the room and ticket price were very reasonable.  I wouldn't mind coming back! I think all cons should have an AMV room, in any case! Haha!