Anime North... The Real Deal

Hello internet! After a month of silence and anticipation I can finally tell you about the journey to Anime North! The journey to anime north was a face paced race against time because we started so late in the game. The mass amounts of planning for a smooth ride took a long time between the end of school and helping out the rover team so when I finally booked the hotel and the tickets finally got bought things were official and exciting! Almost a month before the con we bought all the fabric and almost all the stuff needed to put together costumes but I had to spend the next week or so finishing up with the rover team so I could put all my effort towards making costumes, but that's where the late time period comes from.

While most cosplayers spend half the year on a costume we worked our butts off and made 12 costumes in two and a half weeks. It was intense, we met everyday at my house and even when there wasn't anyone over I was working anyway lol lucky me I was unemployed and had nothing else to do ^_^ We cosplayed as Bleach (Rukia, Urahara, Shusui, Matsumoto, Aizen, and Ishida) and as Ouran High School Host Club (Honey, Mori, Kyoya, Karu, Hikaru, and Bossanova), we only had 4 days to make our Ouran blazers, we made all the food the morning of and the rest of the time was making all the Bleach costumes. Lucky us the only time we had to scrounge any fabric was for Ishida's pants, and because of that he got lucky and his pants actually pleated the best (pleating all the samurai pants was not fun lmao). We now have a surprising amount of fabric left so once we decide if we need any of it for next year whatever we don't need I want to make everyone a little memento. Our eating habits were sooo bad! We all undoubtedly gained an unnecessary few pounds, and with all the work to be done who had time to exercise?
Not I said the Angie.



Friday morning was kind of hectic. But we survived! Thursday night we had one person and my mom go buy everything and start the stuff that would take a while to cook, so we were never waiting around doing nothing while cooking. My mom, me and one other of our group members were the cooks and the five others finished up last minute packing of cosplay, put on the Ouran badges, and looked over the cool panels, I don't know if they were busy the whole time or not cus everything went down at separate houses, hecticness occurred, thank goodness for phones! We finally go ourselves going then had to stop for some stuff, then came back got a few forgotten things and were on the road!

The drive was really smooth and quick since we took 400 series highways, the slowest part of traffic was the merger to 407 dealio. Then driving past the hot zone of cosplayers was the moment your body develops a fanboy/girl squee. It really is like stepping into a dream world fanfic where there is a super mesh of your favorite anime and anime style video game characters have joined forces for some kind of wonderful gathering (convention lmao). Suddenly the protective barrier of your car is a prison and you just want out to join in the merryment. I bet that is what it feels like to visit an elven village for the first time in a fantasy novel. Seeing cosplayers on the first day is a super hype up, it is so awesome!

The land marks on the way to the Hotel were questionable (regarding the pilots who usually use there places) The first was Cupid's a sex toy shop, then The Landing Strip a burlesque house, and then Hooters the restaurant, a little further down the road behind the brush of an evergreen plant is the lovely hotel. Then we got to the hotel, It really was a nice place, the web site is in no way misleading (Hotel Indigo for any of you who might want to stay there), we got the best rate in town, there was a pool, parking was cheap, room service brought us a news paper coffee and fresh towels in the morning, and once we were settled they pretty much left us to our own devices and didn't tell us we couldn't bring in our own food or coolers which was a bonus. We did have a little trouble when we first got there no thanks to an unnecessary amount of lack of communication on their part. When I checked in they only gave keys for one of the two rooms I booked even though I gave them both confirmation codes, then we almost didn't have enough beds because they apparently didn't hold two rooms with two beds each. Instead they were only going to give us two kings even tho I booked for 6 people (?) Lucky enough they had one room with two beds which is okay it worked out fine and we didn't loose out any money (but she tried to charge us extra fees) and we were almost charged twice for parking (facepalm) but I as very firm which is probably surprising to hear from a girl who looks like she is sixteen and speaks like a 40 year old to everyone over the age of 30 (lulz) Any which way thing would have worked out because I could tell Urahara wanted to give someone some UBER shit for inconveniencing us that little bit XD.

We took our time getting to the con, even though it was super exciting, being in my first real hotel was also super exciting! Don't get me wrong I have stayed in a motel a couple times and condo's before, but never a HOTEL, which is just so much classier, with those elevators, room services, and air conditioned hallways ^_^. The room was lovely and the bathroom was a pretty nice three piece, not quite heavenly but better than my three piece at home that's for sure. So we took a little moseying to get unpacked and prepared for the next day, since I know that as soon as we got back I would have liked to crash. Matsumoto and I shared the king and the four boys split the double beds. I think the only living issues I had was with temp. At my house we use AC to keep our house one degree below room temp, and I find that cold, but everyone else likes it significantly cooler. Whatever - it was two nights, no one got sick, so no harm no foul :).

When we finally left the Hotel we went to Hooters for dinner! We lolled, ate noms, drank beers (or as pastafarians would say, grog... I actually came across grog flavored mints), and made alot of sexual innuendo jokes because we were at a Hooters! Come to think of it "that's what she said" was a common phrase the whole weekend... anyway Ishida with hat in douche bag mode + Urahara = many hilarious innuendos. Since we had been drinking we decided to walk.


One long ass walk later (remember, we have to do this walk back) our beer calories had been worked off and we went straight for the dealers room. Friday was supposed to be our designated shop day but since we had got there so late we did WAY more shopping throughout between panels, chasing cosplayers and socializing. Urahara did the most soacialising but he cant really help it lol but at an anime con it is so easy because people are SO nice, which is part of the allure. We did lots of cosplay chasing, or so I though until I saw the amount of photos on the official facebook site, I wish I had taken more photos and more photos of me with the cosplayers, because coplayers are like the mascots at wonderland but they are having fun.



My favorite cosplayers were these Gurran Lagann Kamina a Simon. I have a little bias because they picked one of my most favorite anime but they cosplayed SO WEll. They were both very suited to the roles, not that that is what is important in cosplay, but the costumes were SO good, they had me so convinced! So thanks to these two guys I got my biggest Fangirl squee of the convention. I didn't talk to them because we were looking for people and I was trying to supress the squee and not scare the poor guys XD I've noticed fan girls can be a little scary to boys. I think that kind of passion is admirable so those of you Kyoyas who got glomped be happy that, that girl was there making your cosplay feel that much more special!


~SQUEEEE~
We went to quite a few awesome panels, hung out with Lar Dasouza the Lartist from Least I Could Do and Looking for Group, chased cosplayers, and had mad shopping fun. Sure we missed alot, like the auction, and the manga library, and quite a few panels but it was so much fun, especially cosplaying as Ouran and having so many pictures taken and making so many friends ^_^ Actually as Ouran we were missing a Tamaki and Harui but we had a Tama-chan join our group for most of the day which was awesome! The one Haruhi we found left a day early so we couldn't conscript her but we would only have been missing Renge and Necozawa from the crew ^_^

The neatest thing we did was the Maid Cafe, a fundraiser for the Sick Kids Hosptial, here is a video of one of the dances they put on for us:


You can click here to see the rest of my photos and here to see the Official Anime North Facebook Page.

P.s we are already planning our cosplay for next year haha! FMA here we come!