Anime Reactor 2004

This was my first non-ACEN anime convention. I went with my husband, Elon, and our friend Kevin for just the day on Saturday. Due to my sleeping in a bit, and having to put on my costume, we left a bit late and got down to Rosemont well after 9 A.M. Still, there was basically no registration line, and we were able to enter the con shortly after our arrival.

The con had a fairly different tone than ACEN. This was mostly due to it being much smaller in size and newer as an event. The programming was fairly sparce, but there were some big names in attendance, including character designer Kawamoto, which made Elon and Kevin very happy. And, since it was much smaller, there were no lines for practically any events. Also, it felt much more laid back with cosplay/prop rules, since the hallways weren't nearly as crowded. And, one last thing I noticed was there seemed to be a slightly older aged crowd on average.

After buying some pocky in the dealer's room I headed off to a cosplay group of fellow Cosplay.com'ers where I met some fellow members in person, including RenegadePocky and Lottie. After the group broke up I spent the rest of the afternoon hanging around the con, mostly in Artist's Alley. I stopped by some panels and finally got out my camera and took a (small) handful of cosplay pics.

I was wearing my Megumi from Nadesico costume for the day, and was surprised by how many people recognized the character (or at least the series) and/or took my photo. At least twice as many photos were taken of me as of my Kagura costume from ACEN earlier in the year. However, the shoes were evil and I could barely walk by the time dinner rolled around, so I had to change out of them.

We went out to dinner with our friend Dirk and a group of his friends from Artist's Alley. It was fun to spend some time with new geeks and Elon enjoyed meeting new indie comic peoples. When we got back to the con, we joined Dirk at his anime club's room party. Elon and I found it refreshing when we noticed that we were some of the *younger* people in the room. I was pretty much dead on my feet by that point, so basically I just sat around and watched people playing video games. There was this "sticky ball" strange game on the PS2 that was like a video game designed by software engineers on crack and then some DDR. We left for the drive home after midnight. A long, but fun, day. ^___^

Chigusa from Four Days in Ohtori

Yukino from Kare Kano

Ryo-Ohki from Tenchi

Tohru from Fruits Basket

Dirk in Artist's Alley

All photos on this page taken by Beth.

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