Picture heavy post coming up!
It's been a few weeks since the convention, but I haven't found the time to write about it until now. I probably would have more to tell you about the event itself, if I'd written this right after the convention weekend, but instead here's all the wonderful stuff I found and brought home from there. <3
The very first panel I went to see was held by Mari Kasurinen, who is known for her sweet My Little Pony sculptures. It was really interesting to see some work-in-progress photos of her sculptures and there were a few actual ponies on display. I didn't realize before that they came in various sizes, from really tiny ones to big ones. Now I regret that I didn't go to her workshop, but there were so many other interesting panels held at the same time! Curses!
The main thing that attracted me to come to the convention in the first place was of course the Pokémon Musical - I Choose You! It was quite spectacular, I especially loved the costume design for the Pokémons! I want one of them Zubat/Golbat hoodies so much!! Unfortunately, during the first half my view of the stage was blocked, because I just so happened to sit behind the tallest guy in the audience who also had big frizzy hair. Lucky for me, there was a half time and I was able to move to another seat and enjoy the rest of the musical.
I couldn't leave the place without something Pokémon in my hands and that's when I found these super cute sleeping starter Pokes at a vendor table. I originally only wanted to buy one, because these tiny figures were too expensive for my taste. I was torn apart between Bulbasaur and Charmander, I couldn't pick just one! So I decided to take them both, but then I got a touch of OCD and couldn't leave Squirtle behind and now my wallet is crying.
Then I also found this chibi Mewtwo that came with a display background (or whatever you wanna call it), which I think is a bit unnecessary, but that might just be because I don't recognize place it's supposed to be. Good thing there wasn't any more of these for sale, otherwise I might have ended up getting the equally cute Mew, Eevee, Jesse & James and Meowth as described on the backside of Mewtwo's box.
....... and now we get to the part where I really lost control of all my money. For once, there were some Dragon Ball stuff up for sale and I bought it all, well, not all but most of it anyway. I got a cute Baby Goku, Super Saiyan Goku, Piccolo, Freeza.... oh sorry, I mean THE Freeza, like it says on the box. Also, I got close to 50 Dragonball Heroes game cards with awesome artwork. <3<3<3
Last but not least, the only Star Wars thingy I found worth taking home was this mini Shaak Ti. Do I even need to mention I think it's cute?
I wouldn't like to say this, but this year's trip to the Animecon left me very disappointed and sad, but to be fair the reasons for my disappointment are not the convention's fault, but rather my own. This was going to be the first time I was going to cosplay, but I'd to give that up because the damn post office failed me.
I like going to different panels, but this year, none of the panels sounded interesting to me, so therefore I didn't go to see any except for the guest of honor, of course, which was The Nostalgia Critic (Doug Walker) by the way. Both of his panels Movies Everybody Disagree with You On and TGWTG Q&A were fun and enjoyable until the last 15 minutes of the latter where one statement made by one of the fans that I thought was really out of line and hurtful, but I doubt anybody else felt that way in the room except for me. I left the convention immediately after that, thereby missing out on 5 hours worth of programs, including Walker's autographing session. I didn't want to be there anymore.
The Anime concert also started off with very unfortunate news, they were not going to play the opening theme of Attack on Titan for some unexplained reason, they did show an AMV with the opening music instead, which probably was the best consolation the audience could get. Like last year, my favorite part of the concert was actually the encore song which this time around was the Kirby's Dream Land theme.
Since I wasn't listening to that many panels this year, it left me with too much time to go on a shopping spree (which I am regretting deeply right now). I'll make a separate post about the figures I bought, but for now, here is something I usually don't buy at the convention's (that might change after this).
Ramune peach flavour (carbonated soft drink)
Many years ago I tried out the strawberry one, I don't remember liking it too much, but decided to give the drink another go. There were far more flavours to choose from this time around than what I remembered and so, I went ahead and chose the peach taste. Surprisingly, it wasn't too bad, it was actually pretty good! Thanks to this, I think I'll have the courage to try out other flavours in the future.
Pocky Cookies & Cream (chocolate biscuit stick coated with milk flavour confectionery and crushed cookies)
Similar to the Ramune drink, I've only tried a Pocky pack once before and I wasn't impressed. So I never understood why these were so popular, seeing people walking around with their bags full of Pocky packages. Why not give it another go? After all, they were conveniently sold at the same station where the drinks were and the queue was long and slow which gave me enough time to choose which flavour I wanted. I deliberately chose the one I thought looked the most delicious and oh yes it was! It's like you can't stop eating them one after another once you take a bite! I definitely will pick up more of these in any following conventions.
Meltykiss Fruity strawberry
That is all I can read on the package because the rest is in Japanese. I wanted to try out something I've never had before and this one seemed safe enough, because all the other sweets drowned under their cute mascot characters and lacked a proper image of box's content, which this one does well. They did have green tea flavoured Meltykisses as well, but based on my experiences with the actual tea itself, I knew to stay away from it. There's a very thin layer of chocolate covered in chocolate powder and I'm guessing that the inside is some sort of strawberry cream filling? Whatever it is, it's quite good. I don't believe I'll be buying any more of these in the future, even though there was nothing wrong with them. The overall experience didn't match up to the price.
Digimon!? Where did that come from? Yeah, I haven't even mentioned Digimon until now, and after this I'll probably never mention it again. As a cursed materialist that I am, I have wanted to do a "collection" post like this one for a while, but frankly I didn't know where to begin. It was too much of a daunting task to start off with one of my biggest collections, so I thought it would be easier to start with something smaller. I'm not sure if I should even call this one a "collection", because I haven't bought any of these for the sake of collecting. These are just stuff that has stuck around because I've a hard time to throw/give/sell anything away. *coughhoardercough*
Anyway, back in the days Digimon was a little bit "controversial" around our playgrounds, you had to either like it more than Pokémon or absolutely hate it. Whenever I was asked which one I liked better, I'd say Pokémon of course. Which was true, but that didn't mean I hated Digimon. Okay, for a brief time I did hate Digimon, but that was before I watched any of the episodes (then I secretly liked it a little). Looking back at it now, I'd probably say that the Digimon anime is better that the Pokémon anime.
So if I wasn't that much into Digimon, how did this stuff come into my possession? Mostly because my parent couldn't tell the damn difference between Pokémon and Digimon >_> but that was probably the case with most parents. So here is my very modest collection of Digimon merchandise.
16 Trading cards
The only foil ones are Gabumon, Devimon and MegaKabuterimon.
Lillymon figure
I believe there was some sort of a stand or platform that you were supposed to put the figure on (as it is right now the figure can't stand on its own at all) and I have a vague memory of a profile card or something like that, but I'm afraid those have been lost through time.
Double sided Poster
I think it came in the same box as Lillymon. It's all folded up and not much larger than a regular comic book.
Comics (Digimon Tamers)
I got interested in Tamers because of Renamon, who I thought was an insanely cool looking Digimon because it resembles Mewtwo (or Lucario....) and it's (Digi)evolved form is a beautiful nine tails. To my disappointment the comic got boring very quickly and with that, my interest with Digimon died.
Gatomon & Gabumon
I suspect these two came in a random toy bag that came from a flea market. Poor Gatomon is missing its tail. I guess Gabumon would talk if you moved it's arms around or something because it has a build in speaker on its back. I never bothered to check what kind of batteries it requires, so I don't know what it is supposed to say.
Gatomon bean bag plushie
This one is an exception because I intentionally bought it, despite that it was a Digimon. It is too damn cute :3 Gatomon or Tailmon as I better know it, was my favorite Digimon from the series. Wonder why the gloves are yellow on toys, but in the show they are green?
*Update 07.03.15
Apparently I have a few stickers as well!
*Update 20.05.15
Found a Patamon plushie at a flea market!
*Update 15.09.15
Found a tiny Gomamon at a flea market!
*Update 02.12.15
Found both Gomamon and Agumon plushie at a flea market, and apparently I have a few more stickers as well!
There you have it, but I'm not done yet! One other thing you had to love about Digimon was the opening and ending theme songs!
The first Digimon opening Butterfly done with Pokémon? Awesome!
Finally, there's nothing quite like taking a nostalgic trip by listening to the Finnish dub of the Digimon Adventures opening. We have The Bad dub and The Good dub. Both which are pure gold in their own special way. XD
This was actually the first time I managed to get a ticket to the anime concert and it was amazing! No wonder it is always sold out! Even though I didn't recognize half of the animes that were on the playlist! If they only would've played a half an hour longer that would have been even greater. But hey, I take what I can get. Such a shame I've missed the concerts of the two previous years. My favorite part of the concert was actually the encore song "This is Halloween" from The Nightmare Before Christmas I've heard some people complaining about it being played since its western animation and not anime. So what? just listen to the amazing music that is being played for you! Let's see if my playlist works...
This time I didn't go on a total shopping spree. I only sought out to buy one affordable yet a cool looking figure. In the end it came down to two Brook from One Piece figurines to choose between (I'm a sucker for skeletons). Brook before time skip or Brook after the time skip figure. I chose before time skip Brook because I like that look much better than the whole Soul King-thing he has going on now (and it was 7 euros cheaper). I couldn't be happier. ^_^
