Akicon 2013

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?)

One Zoe

I think this was supposed to be Titanic???

I don’t know what was going on…

Petra (spoiler)

I have no idea who this is, but people said s/he is a spoiler

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