Another day of anime geekiness.

I woke up at like 6:30am after getting about 5 hours sleep. As I couldn't return to sleep I decided to start running around and acting like an anime idiot.

From now on I decided to take pictures of cosplayers doing normal daily activities unless I was a particular fan of the series. This is Tsukasa from .hack//sign eating breakfast. Awesome.

I'm a One Piece fan though, so I had to get Luffy posing. I don't know what this guy had done, but he somehow had a paper tissue plugged in his nose to stop a nosebleed. Perhaps he'd been testing his devil fruit ability?

Monica Rial's panel began and instead of taking pictures of her walking on to a stage, I took a picture of the audience which seemed to be, I think, Tidus from a Final Fantasy game, and a surprised looking dude. There weren't that many people there but more turned up later on as the panel was kind of early. The panel was very interesting.

Here is a short video clip of the panel. Ms Rial said a lot of humourous things and came across as a very charismatic person. Unfortunately it's rather hard to anticipate when someone is going to say something really funny so I just took a random movie towards then end which I didn't think was too great but still maybe of interest. She did shout out at one point that "THE BBFC ARE RETARDED" and Danj, who was sitting behind me held up a sign saying exactly the same thing. It was awesome.

I must say that listening to Monica Rial's panel made me even perhaps apprecaite the skill which goes in to it. But I still hate some dubs (Love Hina?) And I'm a sub watcher anyway, so yeah. It was still interesting stuff.

This pic is a bit strange. Sannosuke is talking to Cloud about something, but look in the background. Why is that guy standing there facing the wall? I mean, he's obviously walked around the flowers to get there but there's no reason to be on that particular stretch of concrete because if I remember rightly it didn't lead anywhere which wouldn't be faster to take the sheltered pathway to anyway. He looks suspicious to me.

Hooray, it's Alucard from Glasgow! That's his name, not his costume. Here he is dressed as some... dude... from Gundam something.

Three Edwards from Fullmetal Alchemist. The guy seems happy. Back left is the Black Mage, and back right is Zoro from One Piece. Why were all the Ed cosplayers girls? Not that there's anything wrong with that by any means, but don't guys want to give it a shot?

A Kaworu cosplayer. Not really a difficult costume so what can I say.

Here starts the terror campaign against Arwyn! Here he is through a window. He was my special subject for the weekend from now on. Watch and learn as he progresses from his already frail and geeky health to the absolute pits of deprived sugar-powered comatose.

Zoro was waiting in the dealer's room queue.

108 on a poster. Either this will make sense to you or it won't.

After a while of queueing I got in to the dealers room and bought a single tshirt. That would be my entire purchasing for the weekend other than food. My budget: £16! It is possible to go cheap at the con and still enjoy oneself. Of course, having £400 to spend is good too...

Someone had an SNK tshirt. I'm not a big fan of SNK but I do like to see people who like games. And that doesn't mean Final Fantasy cosplayers.

Nabeshin failed to pull any machine guns out of his hair but he was cool none the less. In fact, this guy just probably spent about three hundred quid in the dealers room as he looks a bit spent, and almost as if the loss is setting in a little.

A dealer who had a Hyatt cosplay. This costume was... hot. Pity the picture ended up so silhouetted.

Woot! Nami found some treasure in the dealer's room. Totally sweet and awesome. Actually I think I've just decided that this was also hot.

Arwyn update: Arwyn is feeling a bit tired now and doesn't want his picture taken.

Yuffie from FF7. Looking back at this, the cross boomerang thing is freaking amazing. I don't think I congratulated her enough on how well that is done, but hopefully plenty of other people did.

Legato from Trigun. A very intricate costume and it's done pretty well.

Oh no! They started posing so I took a picture. I don't know the character though.

Arwyn update: Arwyn's brain is now running at 40% normal speed. He is trying to stimulate it with muffins. In the meantime, Kneebone chooses Lilt for stimulation and it works a lot better.

A bit further up the path, Kneebone and Arwyn and I met some cosplayers who started posing. A passing security guard stepped out the way and commented that nobody would want him in the picture, so just to make him feel better I took a picture of him exclusively instead of the cosplayers. He laughed a bit, but hey, let's all give a cheer to the secutiy guard people for allowing us to have this convention reassured that we are in a relatively safe environment. Hooray!

I just took this picture because at this point we were stalking cosplayers. Only about a day later did I notice that it's Ginji from Getbackers! The costume is really accurate as well.

This dude said something about going to the west to get some sacred scrolls or something.

In the background, Kneebone uses Lilt stimulation to take pictures of some more cosplayers. Foreground is obviously Ceres Victoria from Hellsing.

Detail of previous pic. She has red eyes! A number of cosplayers had contact lenses but this was the first one I really noticed.

I couldn't capture this guy for $$60,000,000,000. His costume was really good but I have to say there was an even better Vash cosplayer about.

Shaman King character Horo Horo. I don't know if many people recognised this dude, but I certainly did.

HOORAY!! Elie cosplayer! Rave! Groove Adventure! Also, really hot! I never actually got a chance to speak to her. This might be my favourite picture of the convention.

Myst on DDR. He did some stuff that was better than this I guess but I couldn't stick around all day waiting. This was pretty fast, he got 200 combo then broke and got 300 combo. I think he was annoyed at the end too.

Gendo eats crisps. It's a well known fact that Hideaki Anno likes crisps. Coincidence?

Link! Game cosplayer that isn't Final Fantasy = hooray. Nice guy too, but I don't know if many people liked his costume.

What can I say, a Sexy Commando cosplay group. This is the best ever.

The cosplay masquerade took place about now, which I watched through a video link in another building. There were some good costumes and such, but it wasn't half as interesting as just seeing the floor costumes. Also I don't have any pictures anyway.

Um, I took a picture then ran away at maximum speed.

ONE PIECE GROUP! This is probably the best picture I took because it's well set and such. Thus I have made it the biggest size I can. The Luffy cosplayer really did look like a real life Luffy, it was surreal. His face and hair were uncannily what I would imagine Luffy's to be like.

Oh my GOD. That's why Hunter had pink hair. It's the Graviation Guy at his gayest. Awesome.

I have no idea how I managed to blur this in direct sunlight but never mind. This is the other vash who actually did the hair which is very impressive.

Here he is again with his buddy Wolfwood. Nabeshin looks worried again. Maybe he finally realised how much he spent in the dealer's room. (Actually it might be a different Nabeshin, there were two I think.)

Tiger Tiger reveals his other cosplay. I made the image smaller out of disrepesct to Final Fantasy cosplayers, but I think he did a good job. The gun in particular was good and I can tell you he had fun clearing that with airport security.

Kenshin's drink of choice is Coca Cola. He drinks from a reverse-rimmed plastic cup, which he proceeds to kill absolutely nobody with.

Guts takes recon pics for the Hawks. Then decides to mess around with his camera.

"Are you still on for killing me next week?"

Eyebrows...

Fangirls seem to have taped a gay-based sign on to the back of this person. This is only the start of what fangirls will do when they contemplate gay-based scenarios.

Gay warning! Body shots of the gayest costume on earth. This might be for tab, who claims to like gay things.

A Naruto group. At the far left is Lucyjin as Orochimaru.

Uhhh, almost exactly the same as the previous picture.

WHEN NINJAS START TO KISS???

Scrapped Princess coolness. There was also a Shannon who was about six foot eight.

I went to the auction to see people spending with reckless abandon. The auctioneer made it incredibly boring so I panicked and eventually took a picture of myself and left. There were a couple of semi-interesting items but really the host dragged it out at an incredibly slow pace and really killed the enjoyment for me.

This is hilarious. The incredibly evil Legato chats idly with the incredible Masaru, who has his trousers down. Also at the left see Fuumin practicing the moment of shame.

It's the Jin Roh guy! This dude has the most amazing costume, I can't believe he really made it himself and didn't just half inch it from somewhere. Unfortunately he didn't have his gun so made do with fingerguns. Later on he was walking around with a bottle of Fanta in his holster, it was hilarious.

Is it skill or is it just luck? Actually I don't think Vash was terribly good at pool, but people kept paying to play him so he got his money's worth.

Yes that really is his hair. Apparently he had to hang upside down and kill it with chemicals to get it that way but from the looks of it, it worked.

Lucyjin is actually a despicable ninja.

Seriously. Six foot eight. At least. I wouldn't want to get in to a sword fight with this guy.

One of the Sailors of Sailor Moon gives up stupid magical attacks and decides to borrow Wolfwood's Punisher. That's what I call a positive development.

Arwyn update: I seriously think Arwyn is about to die around now.

Kenshin gets some MORE coke. I guess this is the most boring photograph of all, but the Kenshin guitar stuff totally makes up for it.

After all that, there was the quiz. The team was me, Toothball, Arwyn (dying), another dude and Roomproject. We formed the moustache club and totally started owning. With the last round to go we were out in first by 9 whole points. The last round, however, was a bunch of stupid stuff about the convention committee's personal lives, so we got trashed by another team who had one of the committee on their team. Oh well, it was still great fun and our amazing talent was recognised... almost.

Well, the night ended with Kokoro Library on the big screen. After two episodes I was blindingly happy.

I went home and fell asleep DEAD. Almost.

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