Fanime 2015

Fanime con 2015.  Perhaps one of the smoothest-run fanimecons yet?  A pleasant little gathering - Friend E, Cousin T and Friend M and J were all able to come this year.  Missing J's wife Friend R, and our Cal Poly friends, but all in all a nice group of people! Plus my sister. Can't forget her haha.

Taken on the last day. Hence, Sak's crazy hair.

Let's recap the events/halls.

- Registration.  Smooth sailing as it was last year. The new system of QR code scanning and tons of printers is really working well for them.  We picked up in a matter of minutes on Day 0 (Thursday night).  Someday I'd like to be able to pick which badge design I get, like at Otakon, but it's really a trivial matter.

Not reg, just a hall shot

not reg, but beginning of con when the pamphlet table was still somewhat orderly lol

- Swap Meet.  SO MUCH BETTER.  They moved swap meet to South Hall this year, which gave it necessary floor space and none of that fire-code capacity limitations that the civic center had.  I'd like to see it continue in the South Hall, as there was plenty of room (sellers only took up half the space).  In future years it'd be great if it could be filled up completely with sellers!

I found a few small things in Swap this year. Little Big Planet bookends and a mini sackboy plush for under $10 total, and a small CC figurine and Munna plushie for $3 each or so.

Sackboy!

- Hotel.  We stayed at Saint Claire again, and they re-did the bathrooms which was nice.  Fanime policy changed to only handing out 2 special design room keys though, so we couldn't "collect 'em all".  There was also a fridge in our room, which was awesome! I don't remember if that's a new addition or not, but I like to think it is?

The room keys are always so fancy, I guess I can see why they were limiting them this year.

- AMV Contest. Fairly solid line up this year, nothing too bad, but nothing super stand-out either.  My favorite (and also best in show) was a Tonari No Seki-Kun amv, you can see here.  It's such an under-rated, yet amazing anime, and very short, non-committal episodes to boot.  Definitely a must watch/must read in my opinion.

- Anime Hell/AMV Hell/Midnight Madness.  Laugh out loud riot as usual. Always some of my favorite events.  However, being pregnant put a damper on things, and I had to go to bed just as midnight madness was starting. Exhaustion ain't no joke.  Sister was pissed, but I couldn't leave her there at con by herself, and none of the other "adults" wanted to stay and watch with her.  We are all too old and crochetey. So sad.  Next year, hopefully I'll find a bit more stamina.

- Dealer Hall.  To be honest, I don't get much thrill out of dealer halls anymore. Most of the stuff I can find online, and I'm not convinced their convention pricing is the greatest.  That said, we did get a nice big messenger bag to use as a diaper bag.  Sak was not interested in toting around some of the standard feminine options at most baby stores, so an otaku bag was the way to go.  Also, Sak bought me the Zelda heart necklace I've been fawning over since forever. It's so PRETTY.  I'm considering this my early push present. Haha.

- Artist Alley.  I was a lady on a mission this year.  A mission for cute nursery art. With animals perferably.  I spent a lot on prints, but ultimately got what I wanted (which I'll show someday when I ever finish the nursery..).  Mostly Pokemon, since that seemed to be the "animal" of choice in the hall.  Overall, the vibe from the AA was mostly prints (not as many crafts), a lot of Steven Universe (sister told me it'd be the "it" show this year), and a lot of custom "washi" tape (not actually washi material).  The tape was a new thing to me.  Someone must have found a supplier to do the custom tape, because many people sold it and it all looked to be the same size/quality.  I liked the idea a lot though! I bought two rolls for about $5 each I think?  The average hall price was $8 a roll.  Which is pricey, but remember it is custom designed tape.

- Gaming Hall.  Pretty much on par as year's past, at least from my weak gamer perspective.  My sister got into magic the gathering this year, so she and a couple of our friends planned to enter a tournament.  Unfortunately the staff member they asked gave them they wrong day for the particular tourney rule set they wanted to join, so they didn't participate.  Next year hopefully!  She got a few nice mats from swap meet in any case, and plenty of people to play magic with.

Tabletop, arcade, console, handheld - all types of games in their respective sections!

And giant jenga. Of course.

- Masquerade.  Still had a lot of issues like last year, it seems. Though the host was *much* better, there were still a LOT of audio/visual issues. Many of the acts had to start and stop. Also interestingly, masquerade ended super early. And the entrance system was different (and not well-advertised).  You had to go early in the morning to get a colored dot put on your badge, and then later your color would determine what group you could enter with.  We went semi-early and got the first grouping, so we didn't have to stand in line at all! So nice.  But I kind of felt bad for everyone in line that didn't know about the dot-system.

  

- Food.  So our Fanime staple - Hydration (the bento/boba place), is GONE. LAMENT. Instead, it was replaced with a place called "Boba Bar".  The drink selection was much smaller (and according to some, inferior).  The food selection was also much smaller. No more grilled saba (mackeral) bento for me :(  The one bright spot though - was the absolutely delicious pork belly rice bowl they had. So fatty and delicious though.  Aside from pork bowls we had the usual Pita Pit, giant naan, breakfast burritos, and grilled onion hot dogs. Not a fan of all the litter that the hot dog carts left on the floor though :/

There were little blue bun tabs everywhere.

- New Stuff.  Cousin T signed up to do the Anime Game Show this year, and she won second place and even got to do the championship round. But over a decade of being otaku, she really knows her stuff!  She's so awesome - dunno how she could keep her cool in front of all the people and remember things to answer the trivia questions!

Also, Cousin T and I went to the very tail end of the yaoi bingo event.  They hold it every year and we always say we'll go but never do for whatever reason.  We didn't see much, just a bit of dancing and prize raffles.  The prizes were really good though - pillows and signed prints and stuff - so if they have an event next year I think we'll have to go for the whole thing!

- Cosplay.  Good I guess? Fanime always has pretty good cosplay.  I was too tired to put anything together, unless this Kirby shirt counts lol. Only one person "got it", probably because I just looked like a rounder person in a frumpy shirt.  I should have found a more form-fitting shirt I guess.

Penga-Sis had two costumes this year - Medli, from Zelda windwaker.

Our Paw Paw helped her sew the dress, and the apron/bib thing is glued felt pieces.

She found the rest of the windwaker crew! 

And she also did a casualish Charizard X from Pokemon.  I think she needed wings, because she was a little too obscure at con.

Love Charizard X's colors though! 

Friend E did his Friend cosplay from 20th Century Boys.

That was it for this year. No fun group cosplay :(  Are we getting too old and tired and busy?! I hope not.

Anyway, here's some more hall shots of others.  Unfortunately, I did not take too many :P

Adventure time ladies

Assassination Classroom

Foxy from Five Nights at Freddies. Have you played this?! Such a scary game!!

Girahim from Zelda. Love the pose!

Splatoon!

a trio of Rilakkuma!

And this is my one piece dressed cousin, lol.

All in all, I had a great time this year, even in my costume-less, energy-less state. This'll be the last convention for the year for me, sadly (we also went to Sacanime in January).  I don't intend to stop going to conventions once baby is born - in fact, we already pre-regged for 2016 Fanime - but I can't help wonder how it will change us as con-goers.  I don't feel like babies or small children belong at conventions (there's some crazy non-stroller friendly crowds and a lot of adult material - let's be real). So either we'll have to find a babysitter in the future or reduce the amount of time we spend at con.  I guess we'll figure it out as we go.

Anime Pilgrimage: Tamako Market and Eccentric Family

I was introduced to the idea of anime pilgrimages earlier this year, and was impressed enough by the idea to want to try it myself during our visit.  Basically it's visiting the physical location of a place shown in an anime.  Sometimes the anime will have a fictional place name or buildings, but still maintain enough landmarks to pinpoint the show's location inspiration.  Other times, the anime will draw the locations as is.  True otaku can even take real life pictures in the exact same angle and frame as the animated drawing.

I'm not an expert otaku enough to take side by side shots, but I thought it would be cool to at least visit some of the places that inspired the anime we like so much.

We took a bus over to the Masugata shopping arcade, near the Demachiyanagi (出町柳) train station, which is the inspiration for the setting in KyoAni's Tamako Market.  But to get there you pass by the Kamo River, which is part of the setting for Eccentric Family! Two birds tanuki with one stone, haha.

The Kamo river is famous for it's stone turtles, and is overall just a really nice place to hang out. There's bike paths on either side too, would have been nice to ride along I think!

Under a bridge, reminds me of the lovey lovey scenes in Chunnibyo!

Eccentric Family, an anime about a family of Tanuki shape-shifters, is set in this area of Kyoto.

Same bridge huhuhu.

Ah! Here's the entrance for Masugata Market.

Tamako Market, for the unfamiliar, is a slice-of-life anime about people that work and live in a shopping arcarde.  It's cute with light humor, and there's a mochi-addicted talking bird named Dera. Just because.  Right at the onset we stood in the long line to get some of the famous red bean mochi, which Tamako sells at her family's mochi shop.

From the anime~

Everything in Japan comes nicely packaged.

mame mochi!

The mochi was interesting.  Super fresh, which was delicious, with semi-hard beans mixed in.  The firm beans were a little salty, and paired well with the soft, sweet mochi. Yum!

We walked through the shopping arcade, which had the standard neighborhood staples featured in the anime - fish shop, meat shop, toy shop, flower shop, etc. No onsen though that I could see.

A little brighter, but still has all the flags on the top of the street.

A plush Dera!

Big fish hanging in the middle

Same fish, from Eccentric Family

There were some posters up from different anime that use the market as a setting!

And also random things non-anime related :)

lame mirrors?

Watch bagels?

At the end of the long alley were otaku "guest books".  I was not confident enough to leave a drawing though, haha!

So cute!

There were also cute character "children crossing" signs nearby.

Tamako and Dera

Choi

Although it was really cool to see the real-life location of Tamako Market and Eccentric Family, I was a little dissapointed we did not find a real life Mochizo! He's such a cutie! Haha!