Anime Evolution 2009

Another Anime convention less than a month since the last one XD I wasn't planning to go, but giving it some thought, it is the Vancouver one, I'd better go. So there I was from June 12-14 mostly at the newly built Vancouver Convention Centre walking around in a zombie-like state because I stayed up the night before each day of Anime Evolution ^^;

And yes, that is me in the first picture cosplaying as Kyon from the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. It was cooler on Sunday that I decide to wear it since I didn't really see any Haruhi cosplayers much. So that's why I posted it... and yes my face is naturally blurry :P

The pre-registered badges were able to be picked up on Thursday, so I went there early and also to check out the place and possible parking places. I went down the escalator to see the end of the line... I stared and stared at this one person at the end... She looks like Chun. I walked up close to her and it IS Chun! What a weird coincidence! She claims that I was stalking her... but do not believe a word she says! >.> More stories about this meeting in another post.

Since this is a very photo-heavy post, I'll cut down the text as much as possible. I thought I didn't take as many pictures as AnimeBoston, but turned out I took more!! On that note, enjoy the pictures!

Oh and if you are from Vancouver and see your picture here, let me know if you want a bigger copy or if you want me to remove it ^^;; My email is on my profile :)

From the Opening Ceremony: MinxZone makes an appearance... Unfortunately I never got to watch their concert -_-

So many Vocaloid cosplayers during the whole convention 0.o But I'm glad someone cosplayed as Meiko! Here we also see Kaito, Neru, Rin and Len.

Zero Suit Samus from Metroid/Super Smash Bros. Brawl

A lot of Yoko (Gurren Lagann) around the convention too... This is the Bounty Hunter version.

Hehehe I laughed at this one after seeing Mothra's wings. I had to get a picture!

Nekomimi Shana! I even had a small talk with her about her Cocytus around her neck and I showed her my Azure as well ^^;

Vocaloid Kagamine Rin! From the Gekokujou PV. Thanks to Coco and Tenrou for the title and link, respectively. ^^

Some of the Soul Eater cast: Blackstar, Medusa, Maka & Soul

Rider from Fate/stay night. She even had the contacts for her eyes to look like Rider! Very cool!!

A weird compilation picture... I only recognize Link and Tetra though ^^;

Akaito and Kaito. Kaito is actually ClearTranquil from DannyChoo.com!

Funny story on how we met ClearTranquil here... I was just checking out the Art Gallery and bumped into Chun again on Friday. She was fixing up her and her friends' gallery. I thought I'd help along since she kept dropping tacks, clips and art all over the place XD Suddenly we see a Kaito checking out the art on the board we were fixing (check out this board on chun's blog). Chun and I were whispering and wondered if it was him or not, so I spoke up and asked, "Are you ClearTranquil?" He was surprised that we knew who he was and then he saw Chun's art. He exclaimed in real surprise, "Oh it's you!" and I couldn't help but laugh. A moment later I showed him my badge that says "Lightning Sabre" on it ^_^ Funny meeting. I think I saw CT a few more times on Friday or vice versa, but didn't see him again after that.

[Reminder for next year: set an arrangement for DC.com members to meet]

Meg from Bakuretsu Tenshi/Burst Angel. Kawaii onna no ko!

Chii from Chobits! Skirt... so... short...

An all female Kingdom Hearts cast. Namine, Kairi, Sora and Riku! Thanks to nyoron for the names ^_^

Ah and here are a couple of my friends from the store I buy my comics from. Roland on the left is Winry and Misty is Ed from Fullmetal Alchemist. And wow great work on the metallic arm guys! Too bad Winry's wrench was confiscated since it was metal ^^;

The Cybersix Panel on Saturday morning. A really great show that was a collaboration of TMS, a Japanese animation studio, and NOA, a Canadian company, to produce an animated series based on an Argentinian comic, called Cybersix. This is in honor of the 10th year anniversary. The woman in the middle is Cathy Wesseluck who voices the main character of Cybersix. Opening animation below.

I usually don't take pictures of cosplays I don't know... but I can't help but take a picture of her. Thanks to nyoron for pointing out that she's Kuja from Final Fantasy IX. ^^

Dot Matrix from ReBoot! WOW, just wow... Great cosplay! I heard she was Dot Matrix for two days in a row!

Candid picture... I see a few from Soul Calibur here, including the elven girl ^_^

The Glomping game? I have no idea. From what I gather you kick the empty bottle to somebody and give that person a hug and the next person gets to the center and kick it again to somebody else...

Muten Roshi from Dragonball series. Not the Chow Yun Fat version from the Dragonball Evolution version.........

Zelda cosplayers all gathered up! Hmmm not sure about the girl in blue though... Refresh my memory? One of the Links in this picture (Jessica) told me that it's Princess Ruto ^^

Gwendolyn from Odin Sphere... which I realized I took a picture of her last year ^^

The ReBoot panel on Saturday. In the panel were the creator, Gavin Blair, voice director/actor Michael Donovan, and other voice actors, Garry Chalk, Scott McNeil (in the cowboy hat) and a few more people whose names I don't remember right now... sorry m(_ _)m

Michael Benyaer was somewhat present for the panel from LA through a webcam. He's the original voice for Bob.

Oh I was so happy to take a picture of her... Mizore Shirayuki is one of my favourite characters from Rosario + Vampire.

Hatsune Miku, World is Mine version! Cute pose ^^

Chidori and Tessa from Full Metal Panic

Saber from Fate/stay night

Vocaloid Megurine Luka

Wow a K-ON! cosplayer already! Mio Akiyama, 'Don't Say Lazy' version.

SO I HEAR YOU LIEK MUDKIP?? Chun also found his Cosplay.com site ^^

During one of the events Mudkip was munching on a Shisengumi member ^^;

From the same event, a female Zidane from Final Fantasy IX getting real cozy with Yoko... Hmm, Yuri Mania potential... Too bad it wasn't the best condition to take pictures there. At least this one turned out somewhat ok >_<

From To Heart 2... I only know Chie unfortunately...

More Vocaloids! There's even a male version of Miku here!

A very cute Ryomou from Ikki Tousen ^^

Testing out the zoom and steadiness of the camera in my hand. I took this from the second floor and able to take a picture of this group.

One of the last things I did during the convention on Sunday was the Lolita Fashion show. It was a short even but the clothes were cute and they talked about the culture regarding these clothes. Bad lighting condition and I tried to take as best and as many as possible, but quite a challenge. Enjoy whatever I got here...













And finally I took a few pictures of the interior from the Vancouver Convention Centre. I think our event is probably the biggest one they had so far. We used two levels during the weekend; the basement and the 2nd floor. I saw on one of their signs that they were using the first floor for a high school graduation ceremony or prom for Friday and Saturday ^^;

This is the second floor. I got in a couple of Ganguro girls in the picture too ^^

The lowest floor. Very nice design on the floor, eh?

The ground level... lots of space!

From the second floor... very nice views of the water and mountain! You can also see Canada Place here, the boat/sail like building on the right.

These eagle sculptures were all over downtown. These are the only ones that were side by side in multiples.

And that's how Anime Evolution 2009 went down. A total of 5000ish people for the weekend. Hopefully that's enough for them to be able to use the Convention Centre again. We got a good use out of it. I didn't see too many things during the weekend, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. I was walking around with a friend who was new to the anime world and anime convention. I also met up with a friend who worked nearby and had my first authentic Japanese ramen for lunch on Friday because of him ^_^

A very fun weekend... too bad my cough got worse again on the last day... what is it about me and the last day of conventions?? I'll be sure to go again next year for my 8th year in a row!

Yuri Mania 13: Iono-sama Fanatics

Gokigenyou! Eeep, lucky #13, eh? Well you can never be unlucky when you're dealing with yuri!

Now I'm sure some of you have read or heard about Love Hina, Tenchi Muyo, Girls Bravo, and Shuffle. They have been called harem shows because there's only one male character and gaggles of female characters of all types of moe! Now let's replace that male character with a female one and you get one of funny yuri romance story! This is Iono-sama Fanatics!

Iono-sama Fanatics is created by Miyabi Fujieda and runs for only 14 chapters; a very short and sweet story. It is sometimes called Iono the Fanatics because the author wrote it in English that way. Instead of the lovable loser male character as the main character, whom the women "throw" themselves onto, we have a lovable queen who's got THOUSANDS of girls surrounding her in her own (fictional) kingdom in Europe. Unfortunately she's left most of them behind so she can look for a black haired beauty in Japan... Plus it really cuts down the cost of ink drawing all these girls in the manga.

So the queen, Iono Mito Arshrain (my own romanization translation on the last name), has arrived in Japan for diplomatic relations visit but also in search of sobame (Japanese word for lady-in-waiting and/or concubine). During her search she finds Eto Hachibe, a clumsy, careless girl with glasses. Eto was dumped by a girl back in high school which developed a complex to her clumsiness. Yes, they make it sound like this is a common occurrence and yes, the queen just happened to coincidentally find the one girl who actually likes girls. Convenient plot device aside, it's obvious who Iono has picked for her new sobame. Eto resists at first but eventually accepts Iono's offer and even craves for the queen's attention.

Aside from the queen and the new sobame, Iono also brought her entourage. Aida Brummel is Iono's beautician and sometimes accomplice. Even though she is one of Iono's sobame, she isn't very attached to the queen, in fact she even helps her find locations to find new sobames and where to treat them. The other side of the spectrum is the jealous Kass Lusence. She is pretty much like Iono's personal secretary. She is strict and always gets mad when Iono goes after more girls to become her sobame. I think she fills in the tsundere position well, sorta...
Iono-sama is an important leader of a kingdom, so we can't have a queen running around without bodyguards, right? Iono's Special Police force are so good they only consist of two members, and to top it off, they're mother and daughter! Freshé Vincent is the mother who's always clad in black and wears a shade. Freshé is very capable, especially with a gun. Her daughter, Argent Ephemeral (don't ask me why she has a different last name) or Aru for short, is always clad in some kind of gothic lolita dress. She is also a lolita... Her black decorated hair buns makes her look a panda. Armed with a katana sword, she is one force to be reckoned with if you mess with Iono. She also likes to call Iono, "the horny queen". ^^;

With so many girls in a harem-like situation, you'd think there are a lot of fan service, right? Well... unfortunately a lot of the hanky-panky is off-panel. But you do get the occasional Iono trying to get it on with the girls around her (mostly Eto). It's not explicit, but very suggestive. I got a reaction out of reading some of the ecchi parts >.>

The girl pairings aren't limited to the Queen and her harem either. Eventually you'll see that Iono also allow and approve her girls to have their own girlfriends. Ah, what a country...

The art is very beautiful and cute at the same time. The art jumps back and forth from normal-sized, beautiful girls to chibi-sized, cute forms. It's a very good balance between dramatic, romantic and comedic chibi art. The first thing I noticed when I saw the cover is that Iono looks like Mahoro from Mahoromatic. I'm pretty sure Mahoro would not be happy to be associated with this ecchi queen though ^^;Another thing about this manga, it was licensed by Infinity Studios, which is how I found out about this title when I picked up the hard copy in my hand. I loved it very much... unfortunately they've never released the second volume. I've emailed them about it and unfortunately there weren't enough interest for them to release the second volume. I think Infinity Studios is defunct as well since their front page has been hacked and have no release dates for 2009.

So when I found out it was on OneManga.com, I jumped the chance to finally finish the story. The difference between the translations was a bit off that I was off-balanced when I read it again. But yes, you can read it there. I recommend to read chapter 1 first and leave chapter 0 til you finish the last chapter. The pictures are also from there... I would have scanned my copy, but I can't seem to find it. Most likely I've separated it where I can find it in the future to make this post, but that didn't work -_-

Doesn't the scene above make you want to read more? Hekekek!

To this day Iono-sama Fanatics is still one of my favourite yuri manga and it's a quick read; so safe to say I highly recommend this. You can't go wrong with yuri harem!

Thanks for all the Visits!

ども　ありがとう　ございます！　

Ever since Danny made that Kira Trooper picture, I've been dying to play around with it to the above result (Apologies to Danny Choo, Lucasfilm & Marvel Comics ^^;). To commemorate a milestone on my blog, I thought I'd do a little Photoshop project I've been meaning to do. ^_^

I didn't think I would make a big deal out of over 10,000 visits and over 20,000 page views (since January), but I think a very big thank you to all the regular readers and visitors just dropping by is something that needs to be done. Especially this silly little blog that some people found interesting enough to read and view. ^^;

It's also thanks to Danny's hijack of my AnimeBoston loot post that finally gave it the push to these numbers. Somehow that hijack attracted the attention of a Japanese site called goyaku.seesa.net that was translating his news to Japanese readers... I'm not quite sure what the name of the site is unfortunately. I guess Japan was interested in what Rin and I, the foreign otaku, buy from anime conventions ^^;

You might be asking why "since January"? Well apparently I forgot to put on a site counter when I first started this blog... I finally added one courtesy of SiteMeter. So technically I should be around 11,000 visits and 23,000 page views (more or less） if I added it right at the beginning...

So here are the current numbers as of June 2nd, 2009. Over 10,000 visits, almost 11,000 with over 22,000 page views.

June 2nd was also the most visits and page views I've ever had ever since I started this blog! The 2nd most visits were the time when I won the "Your Room" giveaway.

This pie chart shows that 76% of the readers on June 2nd were Japanese... Time to make a Japanese version of my blog? ^^;

Of course I don't wanna bore people with just silly stats... so that's why I made the Spider-Trooper to make it more fun ^_^

Your friendly neighbourhood, Spider-Trooper shooting a webline!

I also collected some of my older Photoshop manipulations I did on DannyChoo.com. You've seen here in some of my comics, The Melancholy of Saber Lily, and some that were made before this blog was even started.

Hwang Mi-Rai Hee

A fun little project after someone found a potential model for Mirai, DannyChoo.com's mascot, in the form of a Korean model named Hwang Mi Hee. Someone suggested that a Photoshop should be done to make her look like Mirai... I figured I'll take that challenge ^^

Now here's a before picture of Kanu Unchou in Goth Loli dress. I used to run this little series called, "Guess that Thigh High", showing only peeks of the figure's thigh high. It was way too easy, so it wasn't too much fun. This one time I used Kanu's stripey thigh high and everyone was guessing Ronald McDonald XD

I disappointed everyone when I revealed that it was Kanu... but that didn't stop me from making a Ronald McDonald version of Kanu :P

Behold! Kanu McDonald!

Which Photoshop manipulation do you like best?

By the way... two of the most visited pages are the ones that hardly have any comments... The most visited page is Yuri Mania 6 where I talk about Shoujo Sect, a yuri hentai; and the second most visited page is The Lunamaria Hawke Shrine. Very interesting tidbit, eh? What's your favourite page?

Once again thank you everyone for visiting, reading, viewing and commenting on this blog! Hopefully one day, before I reach 20,000 visits, I'll put up an actual header with pictures on it instead of just the text, lol. Here's to more shenanigans!