You know, that weekend where Katrina mysteriously dissapeared for a few days along with her wig and all her money. Problem is the money never came back. But that's okay, cause it was spent wisely!

Well, I've made it to the place. Finally. Chicago is a long drive when you've been waiting all year to get there. Something like that. Anyway, I haven't really done anything yet, but that is besides the point. I'm there and I'm damn happy 'bout it.
Right. Here we are in the dealer's room and I just happen to see San, from Princess Mononoke, in the smaller Dealers room, cause they had two(!!!) of them. She is kind enough to let me have her picture. Umm yeah. ^_^
And here we see Devil Hunter Yohko. I saw Devil Hunter Yohko once. It was kinda funny how everytime she got into a fight the bad guys could hit her clothes and (accidently of course) rip parts of them off, but they couldn't hit her. So, as interesting as it was, I don't watch that any more. And I don't know if you can see up in the background, my Totoro that I later brought home and got out of the horrid bag. He now has a kind loving home, and when I die, he will go to Desirae LeMay.
When you've got a little brother, the thing that you do after registering, is go find the video game room and leave him there. Alex lived in that room for the weekend, and I don't blame him. He didn't enter any tournaments, though, he should have. My mom wanted to enter the Tetris tournament, but they didn't have one. (My mother is a psycopath for Tetris and Freecell. I think she's up to 61 wins in a row at Freecell, and if you don't believe me, I'll take a screen shot for ya) So what's the coolest part of the gaming room?
Ehehe. I don't know why I got such a kick out of it. The lines were insane, and I really did suck at it, but it was a lot of fun, and there are always guys waiting in line without partners (there's two pads, and you pass the levels together) so I didn't have to wait long. Teeheehee.



Well, my favorite was the Dance Dance, Revolution machine. That's what I'm waiting in line for here. It's an arcade game type thing that they've set up so that you don't have to pay (they're all free) and what you have to do is dance to pass the levels. It shows you the steps and you step on the little arrows on the pad that you stand on and if you do them at the time when it tells you to, then not only do you get points to pass the level, but you're dancing to this song.
Yeah, people in the Gaming room wear costumes too. And I took pictures of them. Yay. Its King Endymion.
In addition to having all that stuff to buy, and video games to play, they have workshops to participate in at Anime Central. A convention wouldn't be a convention if you didn't learn something...errr, right? Anyway, I went to a model making workshop just for the fun of it where they give you a model kit (bandai donates them) to build and then help you with it. This right here is my very first model. A Gundam. *sigh* Hehe. It was fun, I would have bought another one to do if I had had more money. My brother bought like three of the things.
And then, in addition to the above mentioned, they have special guests. This is me standing in the very same room as Chiho Saito, creator of the Revolutionary Girl Utena manga, and she's giving me her autograph. Also down the table is the Director of the Sailor Moon anime (forgot his name) and the creator of the manga, Aquarius (damn, don't remember her name either).
The main highlight of the weekend that I think everyone looks forward to is the Masquerade or Cosplay. Its where all the people that dressed up show off their costumes and are judged by the guests to win prizes. Many of them also prepare skits and go up in groups. There is no flash photography allowed, but everyone cheats (including me) and this right here is a real live (hard to see) jiggly puff. Hehe.
After the Cosplay, there's a little get together out in this huge tent where they have some food (they call it food, but its just a bunch of cheese) and everyone takes pictures of the people in costumes. All the next pictures are from that. This is Godzilla. He speaks for himself. The guy next to him is one of the four people that got up and started dancing to Monty Python's Knights of the Round table. I laughed so hard...
In addition to all the costumes that I recognised and were awesome, there were also some costumes that looked really cool, but I had no clue what they were from. Is the white one from Bust A Move? *shrug*
Yeah, here's another one of those where I had *no* clue. But she sure was cute.
Another thing I haven't mentioned is that they have 6 (count them! 6!) rooms where they show anime 24 hours a day, all weekend. It was in one of these rooms where I saw Card Captor Sakura for the first time. Such a cute anime. Anyway, then I recognised Sakura when I met her in person. ^_^
This is a group that had just about every main character from Fushigi Yuugi that you could name. Hotohori's costume was the best though. Too bad it was a girl that dressed up as him. Did I just say that?
This is the Utena that did the Rent parody. She was really awesome. Next to her is Miki. ^_^
This is Shinji's dad from Eva. What's his name? Do they just call him Mr. Ikari? I don't remember. Anway, the scary thing about this guy was that even when he didn't have his costume on, he looked just like Shinji's dad. I'd see him walking around and just kind of stare cause the resemblance was uncanny.
This group was named the cuties of the convention at the Cosplay. There's Umi of Magic Knight Rayearth, that little animal thing from Card Captor Sakura, and two other ones that I don't recognise. Poor little anime deprived Katrina.
There were a surprising number of people dressed up like this guy from Trigun. I haven't seen the anime, but I at least recognise the characters. This costume was particularily awesome though. This guy didn't win any prizes, cause he was part of the staff and they can't participate. Oh well, I got a picture.
This is either Tira or Chocolat from Sorcerer Hunters. I don't remember which cause I've only read a few installments of the manga and haven't seen any of the anime, so if she's not wearing a cloak, I can't tell. lol. You should have seen the huge crowd of young men that I had to get through before I could get my camera in there to take a picture. ^_^;;
One of the many groups that dressed up as the cast of FFIIIV. That Edea there is male, incase you couldn't tell from the picture. lol. How silly.
More FFIIIV. I wish I could have gotten into the game more. I don't play video games much any more, but after seeing the beautiful introduction to this one I started playing it. I don't know, it kind of died after awhile. Its hard cause I could only play when my brother wasn't playing and he was way too far ahead of me and so he would spoil stuff and blah. It just didn't work. But here's some characters. ^_^
Well, I guess we're going to end the show with some Magic Knight Rayearth characters. There's Clef, Mokona and some other dude. Hmm. These guys were really really hilarious in their skit. They had puns galore and they won a prize. Just an example, they ended their skit with a "Clef hanger". Ohohohohhehehehehe. Ahem. ^_^

Maybe next year I'll get a decent camera, and better photo taking skills so that the pictures won't be so bad. Maybe not.