The Paramount was a lovely theater to hold the cosplay. Unfortunately, I wasn't free to explore it once I had put my costume on. (I couldn't even sit down in my costume --or go to the bathroom either. Yeek.) The character I was cosplaying was Shamanized Nina (aka her "Queen of Angels" form) from Breath of Fire 2 - a game which sucked up many of my carefree adolescent hours. Those of us with more bulky costumes had to wait in the garage/loading area of the theater next to the stage. (We were the last to get workmanship judged, which was probably a good thing since once I had had my wings put on, I wasn't going to be able to wear them for very long, although I DID wind up wearing them a lot longer than I thought I would be able to-- an hour at least.)

Here's a backstage view of the theater:



You can see my wings there getting in everyone's way. AND a large prop from the soon-to-be-infamous "Cook-o-Matic" sketch...

Oh, I'd like to special thank Phantom Ganondorf, Itachi, the stage ninjas, and everybody else who helped me with my costume. (It took three people to attach my wing harness and shoulderpads.) Thankfully, this costume was a lot more comfortable than my Alphonse armor, and as such, I was able to get a lot more picures of myself wearing it. I also managed to get quite a few pictures of my fellow masquerade-goers...


Mad Props to those mad props.


"I am the King of Cosmos! Behold the power of my shiny-blinky codpiece!" (Seriously, this was a nice costume. Go, Katamari!)


The NRA's Salesman of the Year...


These were the kind folks who helped me at AnimeDetour with my Alphonse costume. (Bet they're damn glad I didn't bring it to THIS contest. It would inspire too many unpleasant post-traumatic masquerade flashbacks...)

Meanwhile, out in the theater lobby, Jared, and I'm sure everyone else, were rather impatient to get in. (That gorgeous theater architecture only slightly takes the edge off of that otaku funk, I'm sure...)


"Ah. Those lovely chandeliers look as though they date from the Neo-Gothic movement from the last half of the 19th cen--OH GOD! WHO FARTED!?"

Eventually I got judged for workmanship-- (They asked me what I made my costume out of. I replied, "Everything,") --and went out on stage for my performance, which consisted of me walking imperiously in a figure-8 while the opening fanfare from Breath of Fire 2 played in the background. (Special thanks to my brother Bobby for remixing the game midi into something suitably majestic-sounding.) I had meant to leave the stage by the same way I had walked onto it, but unfortunately in the heat of the moment, I wound up exiting by the other end (meaning I had to squeeze my Mt. Fuji-sized costume back along the narrow corridor between the back curtain and the wall. Fun...)

The masquerade ended and it was time for the intermission. I went out into the lobby to give people a chance to take a picture of me in my costume (and it was a good thing I did, because the chance for pictures really wouldn't come later, as we'll soon see.) The people running the cosplay showed some AMVs and put on the aforementioned infamous "Cook-o-Matic" sketch--which I (perhaps thankfully) didn't get to see, since I was milling about at the front antechambers of the theater, getting the hotel staff to take pictures of me amongst the historic architecture...


"You've got the flash ON, right? Because I'd hate for this really cool picture to come out all blurry and dark..."

(Needless to say, I should probably bring my own photographer around with me next time I'm wearing a cool costume in an even cooler building...)

At long last the skits were over, the votes were tallied, and the time came to announce the winners. I stood at the back of the theater to watch this part. (Don't worry, I told myself. If I win anything, I'll have plenty of time to go round the back way and pick it up...) The hall costume winners were announced first. (By badge number only. Which meant that there was a lot of blank-faced looking around after each number was called. Next time, badge number AND name of costume might be a wiser choice methinks...) Then the winners of the masquerade were announced. I was glad to see Pyramid Head win something, as he had his character creepily down pat. And I was glad to see the cute, well-done EGL couple win as well. My costume's name was announced for Best Sempai workmanship and I rushed towards the stage using the lobby entrance. (Or rather, I stumbled clumsily towards the stage, as it is rather hard to rush when one is wearing hundreds of pounds of costume.) I eventually got to the stage and--everybody was packing up! (Apparently, they had gone past their time limit for renting the stage and the staff had to clear everyone out of there quickly else they'd have to pay hundreds in overtime. Which made for kind of an anti-climactic ending to the show, but I'm certain next year, they'll be sure to speed things along a little more quickly...)

I was able to pick my medal up at the Cosplay Central room on the 4th floor of the hotel (once I had undressed and made my way back there. Mucho thanks to Jared and the cosplay staff for helping with my cleanup and transport. While at Cosplay Central, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that I had gotten Best Sempai Individual workmanship AND Presentation. I also ran into Zach, who discovered that his group, the "Jenova's Witnesses" had won Best in Show. He seemed happy.




For the rest of the night Jared and me tooled around, visiting various room parties. (I stayed and chatted with a lot of the Cosplay staff, talking shop and doing all the fun things an overworked misanthrope like myself doesn't get to do the rest of the year...)

I also experienced the magic and wonder that is... Japanese Elvis!


"I'm a hunk o' burnin' bishounen!"

We got to sleep late that night (but not as late as we wanted to - that's one of the hazards of staying in an off-con hotel.) The next day we'd have to prepare for the arduous trip home...

DAY THREE - SUNDAY

Not much to report here. We managed to get out stuff packed and check out before 11am. I wanted to visit the Cosplay Show and Tell Panel while Jared wanted to roam the dealer's room one last time. I brought one of my wings and my shoulder armor to the panel and told just about everyone who'd lend me half an ear every last detail about my costume. (If you walk up to me and say "Cool, how'd you make that?" you'd better have a couple of spare hours handy.) They also started showing the Cosplay Masquerade video. (A bad VHS recording with bad sound quality - apparently there was a mixup with the DVD recorded version. ) Unfortunately, since it was started so late, I didn't get to see it all the way through. (I talked to the cosplay staffers and they say they're going to try and get whatever version of the cosplay they have recorded burned onto dvd and sent out to me. I'll keep you posted if there are any developments in that area...)

Jared and I were reluctant to leave the convention, but we knew we had to eventually. The trip back to Minnesota was largely uneventful. (We stopped at Albert Lea to eat at the Green Mill, a fancy-schmancy gourmet pizza place. Then we almost crashed on Hwy 494 because some idiot construction workers decided to block off one of the lanes and park an enormous truck on the merging ramp so you couldn't see who was coming behind you as you were trying to merge. Gah!) But we made it back safely, thank God...

Next update, I'll try to post an honest to god tutorial.. I promise....

Saturday morning we decided to go to a nearby Asian grocery and gift shop (which was listed on the "places which may be interesting to obsessed, Asiaphile Otaku" sheet the nice registration people at the convention handed out.) I found the place rather small and dinky, at least when compared to the massive Asian groceries I'm used to visiting in the center of Dinkytown. (There the Asian snack food aisles alone can take up an entire city block.) I was also kind of disappointed to see this store had less in the way of "gifts" and more in the way of "expired water chestnuts". But oh well.)

Jared and I had breakfast at the Cooper's Mill restaurant which is a lot like Perkins, only nice. It also had a lot of old-timey photos on the wall which are supposed to be charming, but which only show how dirty and horrible and depressing life was back in our ancestor's day. (I can only wonder if 100 years from now our descendants won't look at pictures of us and say "Oh, those poor bastards. Having to ride around in internal combustion engines, and make do with 770k broadband internet connections! How ever did they survive?")

After breakfast, we had to rush and put our costumes on so we could make it to the Naruto photoshot/panel in time. (I forgot to mention earlier that I had brought my Yuuhi Kurenai costume along with me. It's easy to see how I overlooked it when compared to the massive mountain of fabric and plastic which is my other costume.) Jared dressed up in the
Kakashi costume he bought from me last year and together we headed back to the hotel.

Last year, Jared and I had also tried attending the Naruto panel at AI. We arrived 15 minutes late only to find that the panel had largely been scratched, the picture-taking was already well under way and was nearly finished. Fortunately such was not the case this year (although I wish the panel portion hadn't taken quote so long. I saw a lot of really cool-looking Naruto cosplayers walk in, sit down, and then midway through the panel get frustrated and walk out again. I guess timing these types of things is a lot harder than it might first appear.) Anyway, the panel finally finished and we wandered out to a little narrow park area close to the hotel and next to a train track. The place was chosen because it had a lot of trees for climbing photos (which was cool), although it's narrowness made it difficult to get wide-angle shots. The shoot wasn't as organized as I hoped it would be, but at least we got most of the standard group shots and reenactments done. (And a few that weren't quite so standard.)


The AI 2006 Naruto Players present: Neji and Gai Perform a Gang Circumcision on a Reluctant Rock Lee



Itachi: "Okay Sasuke, I'm gonna get all Snidely Whiplash on yo' ass!"




Gai and Kakashi's latest campaign of Rock/Paper/Scissors enters into it's seventh day...


There was a cool Asian-themed nightclub nearby called the Dragon, which provided a nice backdrop for some of the photos...


Careful, Kaka-sensei. That one dragon above you looks kind of hungry...




SQUEEE!


After the photoshoot, we went back into the hotel where I eventually got around to seeing the Dealer's Room. It was fairly decent as dealer's rooms go, although the Japanese Snack Food selection wasn't quite as good as in previous years (unless you consider 8000 different kinds of Pocky a good selection.)


Okay, here's some Pocky..and some more Pocky...and a different kind of Pocky....Gah! Why doesn't anyone have those tiny little chocolate hamburgers?!


I did eventually buy a couple of things at the Dealer's room. (Being the cheap-ass that I am, I found them in a Bargain Bin - a Rei Ayanami bikini figure --a souvenir for my brother-- and a real treasure, a tiny replica of the Castle of Cagliostro (complete with a tiny little Lupin the 3rd.) Hooray!

The Cosplay Masquerade was this year going to be held at the Paramount Theater close to the hotel. Since I had to be ready and prepared for my walk-on rather early (around 5pm) Jared and I decided to get back in our regular clothes and go to lunch/dinner around 3. We went to try this Sushi house on the East side of town called...the Sushi House... I have to confess, I'm not a big fan of sushi (the first time having tried it, I had not known of the dangers of wasabi and pickled ginger) but this time I felt I would be well-prepared for my raw fish eating experience. (That, and..well... a misanthropic recluse like myself has got to try something new every once in a while...) The restaurant itself was a nice place- I enjoyed the Miso soup which came with the meal (-it tasted a bit "beery" I thought-) and I tried every one of the sushi pieces which came on the little boat they were served on. I know I probably looked hopelessly gaijin-y as I picked off the bits of wasabi from every piece, but I knew I had to do this if I were to keep from gagging. (God knows I didn't want our cook/server to see me gag, as he seemed a very sensitive fellow. I almost thought he was going to commit ritual seppuku when we tried to leave without putting our unfinished sushi in a to-go box.) For dessert, I had a bowl of red bean ice cream, which actually tasted a lot better than it sounded.

Around 5 o'clock, Jared and I went back to our hotel, grabbed my costume, and over the course of several trips, hauled it to his car. We didn't have much trouble finding the loading zone at the back of the theater. The hotel security guard who saw us hauling it in couldn't believe that it was going to be worn by just one person, (I wasn't sure I was going to be able to get it all on either, as I had only worn portions of the costume before, not the whole thing at once. This'll teach me to put off my costumes until the last minute.)

At this point, Jared and I parted ways, as I felt sure the Cosplay stage ninjas would be able to fufill my every cosplay need from here on out. He went back to the hotel to kill a few hours until the masquerade began and I began the long, arduous task of putting on my costume.

Next update: The Masquerade...

Before I begin: Those of you looking through my cosplay picture galleries who notice where I have failed to get a character's name listed (or listed correctly)--don't write in and tell me; please just write down the name of the character in the comments section. Thank you.

Okay, with that out of the way ...

Anime Iowa officially began for me sometime Thursday afternoon. My old college buddy --and fellow anime fan--Jared was coming down from St. Cloud to pick me up and we'd be traveling down to Cedar Rapids in his car (seeing as how it was more gas efficient and less inclined-to-crumble-into-a-pile-of-rust than my car.) He told me over the phone that, as he was packing light this year, I could have the entire backseat of the car for myself. I told him that, due to time constraints, I only had time to make one new costume and that was all I would be bringing.

Of course, I didn't tell him what character I was cosplaying...

...or that the costume had at least 15 different pieces...

...or that it took up about half a city block....

Needless to say, when he parked his car and saw the sheer amount of CRAP I began shoving into the backseat, he was a bit...surprised.....

shocked....

petulant.....

Okay, he was MAD. I know in hindsight I should have told him what I was up to, but honestly, I wasn't even sure if I was going to finish the costume in time. (Nor did I know how much space it was going to take up until the very end...... He DID say I could have the entire backseat for myself...)


See Jared? PLENTY of room left....Um... you weren't planning on actually buying anything in the Dealer's Room this year, were you?....

After a few tense moments, things smoothed down enough for us to get on the road. Thanks to some new construction being done between now and the last time we went to Cedar Rapids, the trip to AnimeIowa was pretty much a straight shot. It wasn't an entirely smooth trip, however, and there were quite a few things we learned (or were, at least, reminded about) about the Iowa highway system...

There are no U-turns. Anywhere. So YOU CAN'T MISS YOUR DAMN EXITS AND INTERSECTIONS...

There are no gas stations. Anywhere. (Okay, there ARE gas stations, but they largely exist in the realm of myth and fable. Whereas in most other states gas stations are splayed prominently along the highway, in Iowa for the most part, they're nestled deep within the core of every town, safe in the knowledge that when the apocalypse comes and the cornfields are turned to dust, and insane leather-clad motorcycle gangs start ravaging the land ala Mad Max, they'll be well protected.) Oh, and for some reason,( probably the same reason,) Iowa doesn't like to put its towns close to its highways either. If your fuel light comes on and you see a sign that says "GAS...THIS EXIT" , expect that when you get to the top of the exit, you'll see a sign like this:

GAS

(Town name) 20 miles ->
<- 18 miles (Town Name)
(Town name) 16 miles ->

Of course, if you happen to run out of gas before getting to the nearest town, don't worry.
You'll have plenty of lovely scenery to look at while you trudge the remaining ten or so miles to what passes in Iowa for civillization...



Now cut and paste this picture end to end along the highway for 400 miles in every direction, and you've got a pretty good idea of what Iowa looks like...


(In Iowa's defense, it actually does have some pretty scenery along the Mississippi River, but we weren't going anywhere near there this trip so we had to suffer through 5 hours of corn.) Eventually, we got to Cedar Rapids. Due to the convention being moved to an earlier date (a fact we didn't realize until after the con hotel had been filled to capacity), we could only find rooms in the overflow hotel across the river-- The Cooper's Mill Inn. (It was a nice hotel, and considerably cheaper- which is nice if you're a starving artist like me with an annual income of mostly rocks and leaves.) Jared and I ate out, I did some adjusting and readjusting to my costume, sewing various doohickeys onto it (and RE-sewing others that had fallen off), and then we retired for the night.

DAY ONE OF THE CON--FRIDAY

I had chosen not to cosplay this day, instead choosing to conserve my cosplay energy for the
tribulations I knew I was certain to face the next day. Jared and I managed to find the
convention hotel and get our car parked in the correct ramp. (I'll say one thing for Iowa, - they do make it so that it's easy to find things in their towns--so long as they don't happen to be gas stations.)



Iowa's Tallest Building

We entered the hotel and came across the registration line in the lobby...



Meep.


We decided to hold off registration until after breakfast. Breakfast took place at the Blue
Strawberry Coffee Company, a jazz club/art house/deli/cafe a couple of blocks away from the hotel.



Make something blue and you make it cool.

I went to the deli counter and immediately ordered the greasiest thing on the menu. (Hey, calories don't count when you're on vacation...) The interior of the cafe was covered with technicolor abstract paintings and comfy couches.




There is one thing in this picture which isn't cool. Can you find what it is? (Sorry, Jared...)

There was art everywhere in this town, even on the riverfront.



Ahhh! It's the attack of the 50-foot Spirograph!

On the way back to the hotel, we found some more...


The black fleshy thing in the middle is me in all my puffy, pseudo-clever t-shirt wearing otaku glory...

Most of the day we spent wandering from one panel to the next. At one point, we attempted to play a game of airhockey in the hotel rec area only to discover (after we had gotten the paddles from the front desk and hauled them all the way to the 3rd floor) that someone had stolen the puck. (What sort of mouth-breathing, no-lifed dumbass steals a PUCK from a hotel, anyway?)


Curse you, quarter-gobbling, no-puck-having air hockey table! You mock me with your silence!

Jared and I split up at one point and while he was standing in line for the dealer's room, I attended Steve Bennett's panel on cel-painting (only it became Steve Bennett's panel on the piquant telling of stories of his boyhood in Japan thanks to the cel-paints not arriving in time.) At some point, Jared and I hooked up again and we went out to dinner at some Chinese restaurant close to the hotel. The food wasn't spectacular, but it was good enough to keep us going and, as usual, we ordered way too much of it for us to eat in one sitting. We brought the leftovers to the Consuite, where they vanished in about .2 nanoseconds. It wasn't hard to see why as there was relatively little to eat there. Now, I'm sure a lot of hard work went into the Consuite, --and for that I'm grateful--, but I wasn't all that happy with it. Aside from the fruit and rice (and some pasta and ramen packages that appeared later) there wasn't much, foodwise. And the snacks were all lame. (Ginger wafers? Shrimp fries? Wasabi peas? Where are the cheesy poofs? Where are the doritos? Where's the CANDY?) It looked like a Consuite run by someone's health-conscious mom. Feh.

There's not that much more to report for Friday. We went to a couple more panels (The one on "How to Cosplay" ran very late but I found parts of it very helpful). Around midnight, we went back to the hotel, I did some more doo-hickey sewing and touch-up painting, and then it was time to sleep again. What would tomorrow bring, I wondered, as I stared at the gigantic behemoth of a costume which had taken up half my hotel room..

And just how the HELL was I going to get that thing to the Cosplay Contest in one piece?....

Next update: Saturday and Sunday.....

Anime Iowa was a hoot and I've got lots to tell. (But not now, as I just spent a gazillion hours posting my con pictures online. ) Since we took over 200 pics, I've had to break them up into 3 separate galleries...


My regular AI 2006 pics:

http://images.cosplay.com/gallery.php?cat=49078&member=1255


My Naruto Gathering pics:

http://images.cosplay.com/gallery.php?cat=49341&member=1255


My Masquerade pics:

http://images.cosplay.com/gallery.php?cat=49336&member=1255

I did manage to get my super-duper ultra top secret cosplay project finished just a few hours before leaving for the convention. It's a good thing too, because if I hadn't this glorious picture would have never come to pass...

And now that I've short-circuited your brains with color and madness, I'm going to bed and sleep for the next hundred years or so. (Or not...)

Here are some pics.

http://images.cosplay.com/gallery.php?cat=49078&member=1255

More later. Stay tuned...