This year at A-Kon, things were not too different from the last. I, again, did not have a lot of money, so I was not able to afford all the things I was interested in. What I did get was this awesome shirt below and a dōjin I will not disclose due to it’s………content………yeah…

Also, I was able to get an kick ass image of Yuffie Kisaragi from Final Fantasy 7 thanks to Nobody. Thanks bro! The style is something to aspire to. Check out the image below, it is a rather large image in real life.

This year at A-kon, not only was my money limited but so was my time. I was only able to attend Friday and Saturday of the convention. So I will split the experience into two parts.

Friday: The A-kon I love.

Friday was a pretty mellow day with a average amount of people present.(closer to the number of people I expected to come to A-kon) It’s actually the day I took most of my images. The main events of this day was the panels I attended. I ventured into a panel of Tips on Digital Coloring and a panel on the History of UDON. The Digital Coloring panel was presented by Lori of Pandora and Allison Strom. Even though I knew how to do most of the things they showed us, it was still an entertaining panel. The Udon panel on the other hand was something closer to nirvana. The entire thing was done by Jim Zubkavich even though it was suppose to include Eric Vedder and the awesome artist Joe Vriens, but as Jim put it, they got stage fright. I find the history of Udon particularly interesting because it started as a collaboration of different artistes brought together because of there dedication to art and getting the job done when it was requested. The founders saw this and decided to make this venture into a business. Every time Udon gets a new job they go to in house artistes or in some cases, request artistes from new walks of life. An example of this is in the book “Street Fighter Tribute”; an art book to commemorate 20 years of Street Figther which includes over 200 drawing from professionals and fans from all over the world. The panel reminded me so much of what I’m trying to accomplished here is Allugic. Well, more on that at another time. Needless to say, this day made my whole year and the information received from the Udon panel gave me a better understand of where I am going in life. Saturday on the other hand….

Saturday: OMG EPICWINZ LOLWUT AMICOOLYET GUYZ??!1?/

So as soon as I step into the convention I notice the place is full. No, I mean REALLY full. This was probably the most packed I’ve ever seen A-kon and this is coming from someone who’s been going since 2003. Actually, I expected it to be more packed on Saturday but it well over exceeded my estimates. Interestingly, considering the cosplay contest took place on saturday and the population was much larger, one would expect that were the day I got most of my images. Nope. Early in the day, I went to another panel by the same ladies who did the digitaling coloring. This one was over autonomy in anime. Again, I did not learn anything new but it was entertaining. Udon was doing another panel but it unfortunately ran at the same time the cosplay contest did. So Eagal Skull and I made the decision to just go to the cosplay contest. (bad fucking idea) To put it simply, we should have went to the panel. After the cosplay we waited around to attend the Misfits of Comedy panel. Essentially a who’s line is it anyways clone but with more adult jokes. As the time came closer, we decided to find the room and get in line for it. Once we arrived we were surprised to find the line was already pretty long, we hopped on and other people began to arrive behind us. Ho-o-ly shit, were these people annoying. How so you say? Every 5 seconds they yelled out random internet memes. As a matter of fact, that whole Saturday was pretty much one giant 4chan gathering.(particularly /b/) Hearing “BUTT SCRACHAAA!!!” every gwad damn corner I turn was only funny the first time I heard it on Family Guy. But despite all of this bullshit, the comedy panel was golden and made up for all the tards present that day.

As I mentioned earlier, I wasn’t able to attend Sunday but Friday was more than enough of an A-kon to satisfy my year. This year I had a new camera to record and take pictures with. It is a Sanyo Xacti Full HD Cam. It is able to not only record in Full HD but also take pictures. Now keep in mind, it is an cam before it is an camera.(I suck at accomplishing both) Without further ado, here are my choice of 10 images I liked in no particular order.

Very cute girls dressed as Pokemon.

Haruhi Suzumiya and her slave in action.

An extremely cute Vanille from Final Fantasy 13.

An amazingly done Sazh from Final Fantasy 13 There was a lot of final fantasy cosplay this year.

Awesome Daft Punk cosplay.

Master Roshi from Dragon Ball. There was a surprisingly large number of Dragon Ball cosplay as well.

Two guys cosplaying from a famous SNL skit.

A freakin awesome Speed Racer cosplay.(particularly the girl)

A top notch Rocket Man cosplay. I Wish I could have gotten a better shot from the back, if you know what I mean.

A very gorgeous Morgan from Darkstalkers.

It would have been great if the whole weekend was like Fridays cosplay but it wasn’t. As of matter of fact it got pretty damn bad. “How bad was it Dre?” you ask? Well take a look at the image below.

Yeah…….I have no comment to express the feeling of fear this image gives me. I really hope this isn’t the direction A-kon is going in.

.::All of the images taken::.

Over all, I had a good time. I met wonderful people, hot girls, old friends and new products to enjoy. I’m just going to mentally block out all the negative stuff that happened and hope I don’t see it again next year. (please don’t happen again!!! PLEASEEEEEE!!!!!)

Oh yeah, I do have some video footage recorded, I may upload them on Youtube or something if I feel like it.