blueZhift Blog

Saturday is always my day for new cosplays, which this year meant Mahoro! Mahoro made her debut at ACen back in May, but I hadn’t finished styling the wig completely. For Otakon, I finished the wig with two points of hair that stick out at the side and did some other tweaks.

No trouble getting ready today. I got to the h.Naota fashion show only a little late. Really cool styles, and I especially like the fusion of the disgusting with the super cute in some of the outfits. One thing that would prove to be a continuing theme at this year’s Otakon was just how cool the Japanese guests were!

After the show, I got my first picture request, yay! And shortly after that, some jerk pulled the fire alarm somewhere in the convention center leading to the evacuation of over 28000 people into the hot Baltimore summer. Rather than wait outside, I headed back to my hotel room to freshen up, then I went to a cosplay panel in the Hilton which was unaffected by the BCC evacuation.

Once the center reopened, I did some karaoke and then went to the AMV contest. I think I’ve been having more and more fun singing at cons. When I first started, I was so serious. Mistakes just killed me. But now I have so much fun watching others sing and the friends I’ve made over the years, that mistakes don’t matter. I just laugh and go on, which is good since I totally goofed up a verse of the Clannad opening, Megumeru!

The AMV contest was pretty good. But one thing I never understand is why so many people leave when the Romance AMVs start to play. I know a lot of otaku don’t fair so well in affairs of the heart, nevertheless, they missed some sweet AMVs. Oh well… After that I headed over to see the Masquerade. I missed it last year, but with Yoshiki performing during the break, I had an extra incentive to go. The masquerade was okay for the most part. I was especially pleased at the absence of too many yaoi themed skits. And Yoshiki and Sugizo’s two songs did not disappoint. I would have loved to see X Japan in Chicago, but the tickets were just too expensive, so I’ll check out the tour DVD later.

I finished up Saturday with karaoke where I met a friend from last year, Cassandra and I dropped into the Overclockers panel. I had no idea what the Overclockers were, but I had no hope of getting into the rave before it ended so I just decided to try out whatever was nearby. It was fun. I love how there is always so much going on that you can always find something interesting. You just have to be willing to try new things. Afterwards I ran into Cassandra again which was nice as she was looking very cute. (^_^)

I got up early Sunday to make sure I could get one more song in at the OtaCafe. Today’s cosplay was my Toru goth loli nurse uniform. I was pleased, though not surprised to find Omo and The Big N in the OtaCafe ahead of me and thoroughly enjoyed seeing them sing again. I was also pleased to get so many picture requests! I guess nurse uniforms are just one of those timeless classics, LOL. Later I even got an exclamation of Hello Nurse! from some unknown person behind me.

The highlight of the day was the Home Made Kazoku concert. They were great! And I had fun dancing the whole concert, which made up for missing the rave on Saturday night. I really wish the concerts had a mosh pit so that those of us who want to dance, can do so without blocking the people who just want to sit.

So Otakon 2010 came to an end, but wait! There’s more! After the con I finally met up with my friend Rebekah. She totally did not recognize me in costume outside the BCC. We found ourselves talking to each other on cell phones a few feet away from each other! I was very happy to get a chance to show her one of my costumes. Didn’t faze her a bit, in fact she liked it. To make it all complete, some random guy asked for a picture of us together while we were talking.

After that, I hopped in the car with her husband and daughter for a quick ride back to the hotel and change into normal clothes for dinner. Her daughter Lilah is absolutely adorable. It was with great pleasure that I presented her with her first Pikachu plush doll which she carried proudly as we walked past the BCC on the way to the restaurant for dinner. A little girl carrying a Pikachu through a sea of cosplayers, priceless.

My Otakon adventure came to an end with a relatively uneventful drive home until I made a wrong turn. A wrong turn that ultimately saved me a ton of money in tolls without costing me much more time! Yeah, it was a great trip!

Almost a week since returning from Otakon and I still haven’t unpacked my bags completely. I had such a good time, that maybe this is just my way of subconciously prolonging the con. Naaaah, probably just laziness, as my wife might say.

This year’s trip to Otakon was full of interesting foreshadowing. At church in the weeks leading up to my annual solo trip, the sermons were all from Proverbs and full of warnings not to tempted by wayward women! Mmmm, okay, not that this has ever really been a problem. My other worry was about getting a speeding ticket. Well, took care of that before leaving Chicago, by getting one on Wednesday! Needless to say, I was a lot more careful during my 1400 mile round trip to Baltimore.

I got a lot of things done ahead of my departure this year so I got out on the road pretty early, 4am, and made the trip in about 11.5 hours. It was great getting to Baltimore with enough time to hang out. I got through pre-reg pickup in about 10 minutes. This left me enough time to briefly visit with my friend Cathy and her boyfriend before heading off to the MegaTokyo dinner meetup. It was great seeing Omo, The Big N, and everyone again. And this year, I wasn’t too tired to go to Pickles for drinks after dinner.

As usual, it took me about 3 hours to get into costume Friday morning. No matter, I was really excited because I had new, more comfortable, boots this year! Tsubasa Infinity Arc Sakura is one of my favorite cosplays, but I could never stay in it very long because the old boots hurt too much to walk in very long. This time everything felt and looked great, and I got some nice compliments too. Sadly I didn’t get any picture requests, but I didn’t spend a lot of time in the places where that usually happens anyway. And I’m still not quite brave enough to get pictures taken in the photo suite, next year I think I will.

I signed up for karaoke then took off for the Madhouse panel and then the AMV overflow showing. There was some question before the con about whether the overflow would even happen, so I was very happy to see it on the final schedule. I’ve never made the Otakon AMV contest finals, so the overflow is the only chance for my AMV to be seen at the con. I was really happy to see Puri-on on the big screen! After spending so much time making it, I was glad that it looked good on the big screen. And getting a Creator’s pass to see the AMV contest finals is a great perk!

I ended up taking too much time doing other things and missed my turn at karaoke. This turned out to be a good thing though. I signed up again, and while waiting a friend from ACen came in. I’d met Nicole at ACen back in May. She and another friend, Joanna had driven out to Otakon together from Illinois. This was Nicole’s first Otakon and, as it turned out, her first karaoke performance. So when her turn came, she was a little nervous. But my friend Alissa hopped on the stage and helped her out. She sang “I Am A Pioneer” from Tenchi Universe, one of my favorites. Yay! ^^ That’s one of the great things about OtaCafe karaoke, the singers are always so supportive of one another.

After singing, Nicole and I headed for the dealers room. She was looking for a Strike Witches figure and I was hoping to find a couple of friends who are usually working the con there. Unfortunately I didn’t find them, but I did find a cute Pikachu plush that I hoped would be the perfect gift for my friend Rebekah’s daughter. Rebekah lives near Baltimore, and when she found out I came out every year for Otakon, we decided to meet up. I hadn’t seen her in years since she got married and left Chicago. And it would be the first time I’d meet her daughter. Unfortunately, her daughter got sick that day and we wouldn’t get a chance to meet until Sunday after the con.

I spent the rest of Friday getting pictures of cosplayers and going to see the awesome Yoshida Brothers concert. This is why you must go to opening ceremonies if you can. I wouldn’t have even thought to see the Yoshida Brothers if I hadn’t seen their film clip at opening ceremonies. After the concert I went to Voice Actors After Dark. I like how they turned the tables on the fans, where depending on a coin toss, either the fan asked some lewd question or the VAs ask the fan! XD Good show!

The Friday dance was way too crowded, and quite honestly, the music did not appeal to me at all. So I bailed on that after about 15 minutes. Otakon really needs a bigger space for the dance. It just isn’t fun when the only dancing you can do is jumping up and down in place. On that note, I’ll end this tower of text with one of my favorite cosplayer pictures this year. You can see the whole set here.

The last month’s been pretty crazy with moving and everything, so I’m finally going to finish this up now. As luck would have it, my family showed up on Saturday while I was trying to get into costume, LOL. I figured it would happen that way, I never get up early enough because I’m out all night at cons. Oh well, just a hazard of having fun! XD

No matter, I wanted to wear my Princess Sakura outfit on Saturday because I wanted to show it to a friend of mine who was coming to her first ACen and was in the fashion show no less. She’s a loli, and my Sakura is about as close to anything loli as my costumes get. So I wanted to see if she liked it. I really love this cosplay, but the boots for it are killers! They look great, but there’s a huge price to pay for it!

After getting the family settled into our room, we all headed out. I wanted to say hi to some friends working in the dealers room in the convention center which also offered a lot of photo ops. On the way I ran into another friend who at first either didn’t recognize me or was totally shocked, but in a good way. She really liked my  costume, not only did she say it looked good, she said I looked like a woman! That’s the highest compliment I can possibly get for this kind of cosplay. (^___^) She looked great too doing a gothic Chii cosplay which you can see in the pics I took.

I guess my cosplay skills are improving, after I left Chii, an older black man took a look at me and said I was “lookin good”. There were two things I wanted to work on for ACen, makeup, and truly owning my characters. Oddly enough, I had been inspired in both by the 2nd season of RuPaul’s Drag Race! I really wanted to totally own my cosplays, and totally enjoy them. Not that I hadn’t been before, but I tend to be a bit reserved. I think that this ACen I was able to really cut loose and enjoy myself.

Makeup-wise, I’d been holding back too much. After watching RuPaul’s queens doing makeup, I think I finally started to get it right. I’m not afraid of the makeup anymore. This time I got my foundation on the right way and added some blush to bring out my cheeks a bit. I think it worked very well, and I discovered that I actually have a pretty face. Maybe that’s a conceit, but it’s a good one to have! I also enhanced my wigs, adding wefts to puff out the bangs more.

Of course none of this changed the fact that those boots were killing my feet. By the time I reached the dealers room, I was sure the boots were filled with blood. So after visiting with a friend who was working there, I found a seat in an empty booth and took a rest. Then it was time to go line up for the fashion show. Standing in that line was pure hell on my feet! But I did learn a few tricks to take the pressure off and got a picture of an awesome femme Spock. <3

The fashion show was interesting, I just wish I could have taken better pictures. In the end, I wasn’t able to meet up with my friend Grace until later after I’d changed out of the torturous boots. But she liked my outfit anyway and was impressed that I had made it myself. She’s pretty cool, and wasn’t in the least bit fazed that I was crossplaying. Yay!

The masquerade filled up as usual, but just as I was about to give up hope, I stumbled upon live video being projected on the hotel lobby wall. So watched there and most of what I saw was pretty good. After that I eventually made it to the hotel where karaoke was going on. It was packed, but I got some more cosplay pics, visited some friends and eventually got to sing. Then to top the night off, I went to the Soap Bubble, still going strong sometime after 2am. I think I ended up out later than I had been the night before, YEAH! It’s nice to know that I can still do stuff like that, heh heh.

Sundays are usually pretty quite. We had breakfast, checked out. Family headed back home and I made my final picture taking rounds. It was a good ACen, more fun for me than last year. Can’t wait to do it again next year!

It’s been almost a week since Anime Central 2010 and I’m still riding a wave of enjoyment. So I guess that means I had a really good time! I did indeed have a lot of fun at the con. This year I skipped out on the Thursday meetup to see Pandora Boxx at the Berlin Club in Chicago. That was a lot of fun, but a little crazy staying up so late the night before the con, though I do that all the time!

This year I didn’t have the family come out until Saturday to avoid the trouble of school and other engagements. That left me free to cut loose on Friday. After opening ceremonies I got into my Tohru Goth-loli nurse cosplay now with a new bag and shoes and went out to take pictures of cosplayers. Later I went to the concert featuring the Spoony Bards and Aural Vampire. I’ve always loved the Spoony Bards since they started playing in the lobby at ACen years ago. And Aural Vampire was pretty good too.

Next it was time to change into my second and newest cosplay, Mahoro Andou. I hadn’t given this one nearly enough test fittings, so it took some time to get it all together. I was planning to go over to the AMV room in the Double Tree to see AMV Wars Hentai Edition. I had an entry in the contest and thought it would be sort of ironic to go as Mahoro who definitely doesn’t go for anything echi! LOL I also thought it would be pretty funny if I won because I probably couldn’t tell most of my friends about it, much less show them the video.

Well as it turned out, there were only two entries, mine and the defending champ from last year. I was sure I had no chance, but after I saw his video, I had a glimmer of hope because he didn’t really follow the Sexy Magical Girls theme. Then my video played and the crowd really got into it, clapping to the music! They liked it! They really liked it!

The defending champ had a lot of fans in the audience, so in the end I tied with his video. He won the thong, and I won the bra. People were a little shocked when Mahoro got up to accept her prize! But even better than that, prior to that a young woman had called me adorable! <3 After that I watched some more videos before heading back, bra in hand, for the dance where Mahoro danced into the early morning.

Well, I’ll pick this up a little later. In the meantime here are some awesome Sailor Senshi.

Just two more days until Anime Central! I had hoped to avoid working on costumes at the last minute, but of course at the last minute I am! LOL I had to help my youngest daughter make an Athena costume for the Latin Olympics on Sunday. She’ll probably wear it to ACen too. I just made the skirt and camisole. She made the shield, spear, and is working on the helmet now.

As for my cosplays, I don’t know if I’ll finish Mahoro in time. No matter, I have a finely tuned Tohru, more like tricked out really, ready to go and some others. This year I’ve got more cosplays I’d like to wear than usual. So I may do some mid-day changes. This is going to be sooo much fun!!

Once again, my AMV did not make the cut for the finals. But that’s…okay…*sob* People will still get to see it! And I’ve got one AMV entered in an, *ahem*, adult category as well, a first for me. I hope the people who see them will like my work.

I usually go to the Thursday night meet and greet, but this year that coincides with Pandora Boxx at the Berlin Club, so sadly I’m skipping the meet and greet, probably. I could probably make the meet up, but skip the IHoP portion. It’ll depend on what mood I’m in I guess.

Oooh! Just two days to go!

As YouTube continues its march to legitimacy and perhaps profitability, it seems that my own little hobby of editing anime music videos (AMVs) is getting caught in the crossfire. Sadly Bandai has decided that it would rather attack the fans of its series rather than embrace them so one of my AMVs featuring clips from Gundam Seed was taken down. I argued that the video portion is clearly fair use, but to no avail. Someday, I’m going to put up a real fight, but now is not the time. Besides, all of my videos are still available at AnimeMusicVideos.org where I’ll continue to add new ones.

As a fan, my hope is that anime and manga will continue to exist and thrive, all of the banning and blocking of derivative, fan created, works smacks of desperation. It’s no secret that the Japanese anime model is a difficult one for content producers to profit in. The internet and advances in digital technology have only made it more difficult. I buy all of the DVDs I use for my videos from reputable sources, but I know that for most fans these discs are just too expensive. This is especially the case in Japan itself. Piracy is like a release valve on the market. If prices are too high, the valve is going to open up.

I think in the end, the market will sort itself out. A lot of companies are going to close, but will this mean the end of anime? Of course not! As long as someone wants to create it, someone will figure out a way to make a profit. A new model will rise from the ashes of the old and before you know it, we’ll have more magical girls than we know what to do with!

I’d been waiting for this a long time, so I was quite happy to find Yubisaki Milk Tea Volume 8 on the shelf at Borders in the Loop on Tuesday, a week earlier than expected. So I bought a copy and quickly digested the double volume sized manga. It did not disappoint. It’s full of the same fan service, taboo busting, cross dressing goodness that anyone who’s followed the series has come to expect. This is not for kids, each copy is shrink wrapped for very good reasons!

This volume actually contains Japanese volumes 8 and 9. And the series has already reached its conclusion in Japan earlier this month. I wonder if that might have been the reason for moving up the release date here in the U.S.? Scanlations of the series up to chapter 69 have been around in the usual places for years now since the series went on hiatus. The new TokyoPop release covers chapters 57 through 74. With the series coming to an end in Japan, there may be new interest here, so moving quickly is probably a good idea before everyone reads it online. Even if you’ve read the scans, please show your support for Tomochika-san and the industry by buying a copy!

After two years waiting for volume 8 and now four years since I started reading the series (my 2006 post here), I’m happy to have this fat little volume in my hands! Thanks TokyoPop! ^__^  I hope I won’t have to wait as long to see the conclusion.

Don’t think I’ve ever been so late posting a con report, but here it goes! After a two year absence, I finally got back to Ohayocon, but it was not easy. I’d been looking forward to going back for a long time, so I planned ahead. But as is all too often the case, things did not go entirely as planned.

First, I had to get a new car. My old car, a 1998 Camaro, had over 100K miles on it. It had been a good car over the years and I took good care of it. But I know from experience that after 100000 miles, some components just start disintegrating. So when the car start running poorly just a week before the con, I knew I wouldn’t be able to rely on it to make the Chicago to Columbus trip. I’ve never been stranded on a convention road trip, and I did not want to start now.

I had hoped to put off a new car purchase for at least another year, but I didn’t want to miss the con, so I went shopping to see if anyone would be crazy enough to give me a car loan. My credit is good, but in this bad economy, I did not hold much hope for  getting a loan fast enough. Well, silly me, I’d forgotten that car dealers want to eat too, so in a few short hours I got a call from a Chevy dealership that was quite interested in my Camaro trade in. I’m still a gear head at heart, so their enthusiasm swayed me, that and the possibility of getting a 2010 Camaro as a replacement.

Long story short, I got a 2010 Camaro with a little “building lockdown due to possible gunman sighting in my office building on the day I need to pick up the new car” drama thrown in for good measure. Oh, and while all this is going on, I’m feverishly finishing up a new costume and tweaking a couple of older ones. I ended up finishing up my maid outfit at the con, derp da derp…

So Friday morning I hit the road, two hours late, in a hot new car. Funny thing is that as much as I wanted to, I never really opened it up all the way. I don’t think I ever exceeded 90 mph. Just too many police out there and states hungry for money to take too many chances. So, for the first time on any con road trip, I actually used the cruise control to keep my speed a respectable 5 to 10 mph over the limit.

Once I found parking, the con’s first challenge was the elevator. This never improved the whole weekend and I ended up climbing an descending a lot of stairs. Brutal! And being hours behind schedule, I had to, gasp, spend a lot more time in normal clothes than usual. These days I feel almost naked at a convention when I’m out of costume.

The first thing I noticed was that Ohayocon was using a lot more of the convention center than the last time I was there. And there were a lot more people at the con than two years ago. Last time, I missed out on karaoke, not this time though. I had a lot of fun singing and enjoying the singing of people I’ve come to know on the con circuit. The combination of karaoke and cosplay is one of the things I enjoy the most about going to anime conventions. (^_^)

I also enjoy dancing my ass off, in costume no less! We also got a preview of a new Pendulum song, courtesy of Greg Ayres. Friday night I didn’t get back to my room until after 3am, a new record for me. The next night I smashed that record and didn’t get back until dawn! XD

The AMV contest was pretty good, and I got to a few panels as well. The one that impressed me the most was Greg Ayres panel. He talked about the heart attack he had last year and how his life had changed since that time. I was really impressed and inspired by his resolve to do what needed to be done to go forward.

As always, I took a lot of pictures of cosplayers which can be seen here. I’ve also put them into a tasty slideshow format with some appropriate theme music. I listened to a ton of I’ve songs on the drive! Needless to say, I had a ridiculous amount of fun at Ohayocon and can’t wait to return next year!

Actually, I finally got around to putting together my traditional post convention slideshow last week, but I want to give the WordPress 2.9 improved video embedding a little test. The slideshow is the first video I’ve made on my Mac using iMovie. iMovie is okay, if you haven’t used other, more conventional, video editors. But I found it a bit confusing at first and later too limiting. Still, for a simple slideshow, iMovie is fine. But I’ll be sticking to Sony Vegas 8 for my bigger projects. Yeah, it means booting Windows, but I’m not in the mood to spend a lot of money moving to a native Mac solution and having to learn a new tool. I still hope there will be a Mac OS X version of Sony Vegas some day.

Anyhow, here’s the slideshow!

Hmm, in the end I still had to put in the object code by hand to embed the video. Just putting in the link only gives a link… Well I’ll look into it some more later… Maybe it doesn’t like Chrome.

A couple of days ago, I bought my first ebook. I bought Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture Has Invaded the U.S.. I bought the Kindle version for my iPhone and so far, I’m pretty happy with it. As a life long book lover, I’m both pleased and surprised at how this came about.

Reading digital books was not the reason I got an iPhone. And while the Kindle, Nook, and other book readers are attractive, they just weren’t a top priority item for me. Digital books are a good idea and long overdue, especially for heavy laden school children, but I was in no rush to get there. But now that I’ve slipped in through the side door, I’m glad I came. The iPhone screen is pretty much perfect for the extremely casual sort of reading I would be doing on such a device and so far at least, I’m not seeing any downsides to this at all. Of course, that’s bad news for anyone trying to sell dedicated book readers, unless they get a lot less expensive.

I ended up buying a book because I was in an adventurous mood and decided to try out the Kindle reader for iPhone. I was hoping there would be some free books available like the Barnes and Noble Reader had. And I wanted to compare the two readers. There weren’t any free books, but there was a sample available of the Japanamerica book. So I downloaded that and started reading, got hooked on it and bought it. Ultimately, the content made the sale, and since I usually buy books from Amazon anyway, it was easy for me to buy one more.

I still like physical books, and have no plans to stop buying them, especially since some, like manga, wouldn’t be good on the iPhone’s screen. But from now one I’ll definitely be looking for a digital version.