A few weeks ago (Oct 25-27th), I attended Akicon 2013 as my first big anime convention since moving to Washington last year. In the northwest, there are two large anime conventions, Sakura-con and Akicon. I somehow managed to miss both last year, but made sure to attend this year (and plan on attending Sakura-con 2014).
Overall, the con was alright. I was quite surprised to see over half of the participants in cosplay. Normally, I spend most of my time at anime cons taking photos of outstanding cosplayers, but at Akicon, it was such an overwhelming majority that I ironically ended up almost taking none (i.e. so many cosplayers I couldn’t bring myself to go up and ask individuals for photos >_< ). There was also an overwhelming number of Shingeki no Kyoujin cosplayers (as expected), most of which were female (poor Erens) and actually no titans at all (you’ll see this below in the SnK group photoshoot). The merchant hall was alright (I only bought a small Kirito plush) though I did bust one stall for trying to sell bootlegged nendos. The panels overall were quite boring, but that probably had to do with the fact that I wandered the con alone this year (WTB more anime friends, QQ). Actually only stayed for Saturday in the end even though I also bought Sunday tickets.
I cosplayed as Kirito from Sword Art Online. I was originally planning to use it last year but since I missed both cons, I figured I’d use it for Akicon at least. Completely forgot to take pics at the con, but you can see a few older at-home photos on my CureCos profile. There were also a small handful of other SAO cosplayers, but unfortunately none of them showed up when it was time for the SAO group photoshoot. For Sakura-con 2014, planning on cosplaying as Shiroe from Log Horizon and hopefully meet a few fellow LH cosplayers (an Akatsuki would be nice too ^_^).
Here’s the photo dump. Half of the photos were from the SnK group photoshoot so I only included a handful of them here (I put potentially spoilerific ones in spoilers, but you have been warned!). For all photos, see the complete set on Flickr. More photos from other people can be found here and here. Enjoy!
~Keripo
Lining up for tickets
Random Joker vs Batman
Welcome to Akicon banner
Badge – I bought Saturday and Sunday tickets but only attended Saturday
Soul Eater anyone? xD
Programming guide
They were doing LARPing. I wanted to join in (cosplayed as Kirito xD), but the line was long
Merchant’s hall
Yupppp
Random pics of the general lobby. A really high percent of cosplayers
Panoramia
No one was willing to use it xD
A few other SAO cosplayers spotted
Random Tenshi cosplayer, really liked her wings
Gaming room. I played a bit of BlazBlue CP, Project Diva F, and Gundam Extreme Versus. My friends stayed there the entire time since they were running the tournaments, but I couldn’t stay seated that long.
Project Diva F
Something was going on in the room across – no idea what though
DanceMania \o/
Wanted to play some Virtual On, but when I came back later, the machine was broken 🙁
Halls busy as ever with cosplayers
You shall not pass!!!
The cosplay room consisted of a bunch of sets/backdrops
In the courtyard, a few dancers were showing off their moves
Bright and colourful
Dark and gloomy xD
Show me your moves!
Some kind of skit panel
Back to watching people dance
Some VA talking about something
Random mob dancing in the halls
Shingeki no Kyoujin cosplayers started gathering for the group photoshoot
There were wayyy too many, so we relocated outside
Panorama of all of em (might have missed a few)
THIS IS SPARTAAA!
I don’t even…
Levis
Erens
Mikasas
Armins
Line of salutes
Jeans
Marcos (spoiler?)
Spoiler (Click to view)
One Zoe
I think this was supposed to be Titanic???
I don’t know what was going on…
Petra (spoiler)
Spoiler (Click to view)
I have no idea who this is, but people said s/he is a spoiler
Spoiler (Click to view)
Annie
Wat?
Main characters?
Face-scarf
At this point, people just started doing random stuff
Durarararararararaaaaaaa
Pretty awesome Mari plugsuit
Didn’t expect to see a Guilty Gear cosplay! (May)
There were a bunch of Brohou cosplayers around, didn’t get any proper pics of them though.
Here’s the courtyard dance video (click the picture). Quite impressive.
~Keripo
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/keripo/sets/72157637076897576/
MyFigureCollection: http://myfigurecollection.net/blog/11160&blog=1
