Saturday is always the biggest day of the con for me. It’s the day that I’ll often have nightmares about a month before the convention begins. The nightmare usually involves running around the convention all day and forgetting to cosplay! That, of course, did not happen to me at Ohayocon. In fact, it was a two costume day.
I led off with my Kaname Chidori cosplay which continues to improve. I took the blouse in a bit so that it fit better (no manning the harpoons here), and I finally got the front bow right! That bow had been my bane the last two times I’d worn the costume. So I made a real bow a day before the con, making it twice as wide and about 20% longer. The blue wig is still out of control, nevertheless, I got some nice compliments and a few picture requests. The most surprising came while I was standing near a wall in the hotel just outside of the convention center. I was frantically searching my bag for a receipt I needed when people started asking for pictures. I happily obliged and soon thereafter found what I was looking for.
I was saving my third costume, the Yuujirou Shihoudani goth-loli nurse cosplay, for the afternoon and evening. I like to bring out my best stuff on masquerade night. This is my best costume, but I didn’t feel up to entering the competition this time around. I wasn’t even sure I was going to be at the con until just a short time before I left home.
Ever since I missed the masquerade at Anime Central last year, due to it filling up and no overflow area, I’ve been kind of paranoid about missing this event. So I was very happy that Ohayocon had a huge space for it in the convention center. I rushed over after the awesome Voices for concert and was greeted by a long line, to get into the line for the event. I was a little worried at first, but the line soon started moving and soon I was in with a good seat. Ironically, I was sitting next to a former nurse who was taking pictures with a very professional looking camera and told me that she absolutely hated those old style nurse uniforms. She said she always needed bunches of bobby pins to keep the hat on. My hat was actually pinned to my wig, so I fully understood the feeling! She was pretty cool. I told her about Princess Princess, the anime and manga the costume is from and we had a few chuckles about how the small community she came from probably wouldn’t permit such a manga to sold in the local bookstores.
The masquerade was pretty good, with the exception of one bad monologue and perhaps too many Naruto skits, most of the skits were entertaining. I felt bad for the woman whose monologue fell flat. If it were me, I think I’d have left the stage a little bit earlier, but I guess you have to admire her guts for sticking it out until the end. The audience, however, was not in a charitable mood and roundly booed her off the stage. Fortunately this was followed by one of the best skits of the night, a break dancing face off between Naruto and Sora (from Kingdom Hearts). How this skit failed to win an award is beyond me!
Looks like I’ve created a wall of text again! So I’ll finish this up later. After my last horrendous experience with Windows Movie Maker, I bought a copy of Magix Movie Edit Pro 12 online. I used it to create the slideshow of cosplay photos below with much less heart ache! :3