In the moment comment: I just changed my desktop wallpaper to Alucard (Hellsing), and I have Bush playing for background music while I type. How could I have a better atmosphere for creative con reporting? *rocks out*

This is the safe version of my con report of Anime Banzai (AB), a convention held in Salt Lake City at the Community College on the dates of October 20 and 21, 2006. (Don't ask me what I mean by "safe", that's all you need to know ^_~) The convention overall was really pleasing for me. I didn't experience any negativities caused by the con, its attendees, its staff, or any other related parties. I had a great time and was never bored no matter what I was doing. Not to mention the fact that I adore Spike Spencer's voice work; he was the guest voice actor. So, let's get down to the details!

I spent the whole week prior getting stuff for AB prepared, mostly my artwork for selling in the Artist's Alley. I didn't get my Orihime skirt refitted, but I did bring a bunch of saftey pins to tighten it up. We left Friday morning at around 10am. We had a three hour drive, and we also wanted to catch The Nightmare Before Christmas in 3D. There aren't any 3D-supportive theaters in our area, and all of us are huge fans of Tim Burton's work, so it was a must. The movie was great, and we checked into our hotel afterwards. I reserved a room at the Homestead Suites, an extended stay hotel that was one minute away from the con, driving. The hotel was nice; I had never been to an extended stay hotel before, but I would definitely stay at one again! It had a full kitchen, with a microwave, sink, dishes, and a full-sized refrigerator. And of course, its location was impeccable, being right on the same street as the community college where AB was being held.

Once we got all of our stuff moved into the room, my little sisters and I began getting into our cosplays. I decided to go as Vivi (One Piece), my first little sister went as Sexy-no-Jutsu Naruto in his regular outfit, and my littlest sister was Chopper (One Piece). After we left the hotel, we found the community college easily, but had a small amount of trouble finding which side of the campus we needed to enter. It took us a few minutes, but with a little driving and help from some signs we saw, we found the correct area. The registration line was HUGE! I haven't been to any big cons, and I can say with certainty that this was the biggest I have attended with over 1,000 people! Instead of standing in line for twenty minutes, though, my two little sisters, my mother, and I discovered the prereg line ^___^ It was was hilariously short; I thanked myself for always preregistering. We still waited around the normal registration line after that, because my little brother, who had decided last minute that he wanted to come to Anime Banzai, needed to register still. We had plenty of fun looking at all of the cosplays in the meantime. My first sister and I kept whispering excitedly to each other whenever we saw an awesome cosplay or a character we recognized. The most memorable ones we saw were an amazing Gaara, who became famous (to us anyway) over the course of the con, and a man who was cosplaying the hero from my favorite video game, Genso Suikoden. I asked him for a glomp, of course! It was cool because his wife and daughter were also cosplaying from video games.

The next good bit of time was spent sqealing at cosplayers (people sqealed at us, sometimes, hee hee) and taking lots of pictures. My mom took all the pictures because she was using her boyfriend's expensive camera, and didn't want us to touch it. Eventually we found our way into the Oak Room. We arrived just in time for Hollywood Squares, which seemed funny based on the audience reactions, but we were sitting directly perpendicular to the stage. The people who were projecting their voices couldn't reach us, and the microphones kept glitching, so we couldn't hear most of the show. But, as I said earlier, we weren't bored because some of our friends, who had come to the con separately (they are members of Ichidan), met up with us. It was great to see them because we live across state, so conventions are almost the only time we do meet.

Once Hollywood Squares ended, we moved to a better spot in the Oak Room and enjoyed a hilarious performance of "Who's Line is it Anime?" featuring audience members (Vash and Tenten were among them), select members of Ichidan, and the witty Spike Spencer as guest host. They went through all the classic bits, including scenes from a hat ("What is Spike Spencer thinking right now?") and props ("Hey, where's my sword?!"). At one point, my sister was about to have a cardiac arrest because Spike offered up Little Boy's voice (Spriggan); Little Boy is her favorite ^^ When "Whose Line is it Anime?" was over, I gathered up my courage and went on stage to ask Spike for an autograph. Someone, my first sister I think, told me he was just a normal person, so I shouldn't be nervous. But I must contend! Do throngs of fan girls gather around and ask autographs of normal people? I think not.

To be honest, I said an autograph, but I actually got three. I was first going to ask him to autograph my End of Evangelion DVD cover and my friend's Evangelion DVD cover with Shinji on it, but I also saw lots of people pulling out their con badges to have signed, so I followed suit. Spike signed my badge and movie cover with his regular signature, but when he got to my friend's cover, he said something like "Oh this is my favorite!" and began to draw glasses, mustache and beard, chest hair, and pubic hair on Shinji!! It was hilarious! I KNOW that it's not what my friend was expecting. As of this writing, I haven't mailed the cover back to him, but I am sure he will be surprised, heh heh heh.

After that, my brother, littlest sister, and I went downstairs to check out the cosplay cafe. We were slightly disappointed because it was closed an hour before the time listed on the schedule. But it didn't upset us, since we soon after discovered the DDR freeplay! I was sooo happy because they had hard pads ^___^ I played on a soft pad at one convention and actually destroyed it after two songs on standard mode...so I don't play on anything but hard pads, but not a single con had them until AB. It was surprisingly empty, with about four or five other people playing at any given time, so we took turns and it ran very smoothly. The only problem I had was personal because I had never played a Playstation version of DDR, so I didn't now how to select the equivalent of Standard mode in the PS2 versions. I eventually figured it out though, and the rest of the players were very kind when I asked them if it would be ok if my brother and I waited out our turns until a time came that we could choose a more difficult setting. Unfortunately, my mom wanted to go back to the hotel after that, so we only got in one good dance =\ At least it was "Butterfly", my favorite DDR song!

When we got back to the hotel, I pinned my Orihime skirt, took a shower, and had a look at the convention schedule. My first sister and I had to decide in advance what we were going to do because we paid for an Artist Alley table, so we wanted to sell our art and make a few bucks, while still being able to attended some events.

We eventually decided to do a five hour stint in the Artist Alley, then attend events after that. So on Saturday morning, we packed up our stuff, I got into my Orihime costume, and my mom drove the two of us to the con. We weren't sure how long set up would take, so we got there right when it opened. It didn't take that long though, so we made some quick signs to hang on our table and drew some more art. I was afraid of not having enough one dollar bills for change, but my mother got some change and my little brother delivered it to us before we had any problems. I would say that our art sales were disappointing, but neither of us had done any serious artist alley selling before, so we were just winging it. Now we know what people like, what they'd be willing to spend their money on, and what we can do as far as on-the-spot commissions go. I did manage to make a profit though. I sold a fanart of Knuckles the Echidna, an on-the-spot commission of the Phantom of the Opera in anime and chibi style, and a little chibi Gaara that I did right there. My little sister sold some art, but had a loss because she didn't bring anything to sell that she had already done.

We closed up our table at around 2pm so that we could see Spike Spencer's voice acting workshop. It was very interesting and I learned some new things as well as comfirmed some of my own ideas about acting. My sister wanted to get her Spriggan DVD cover signed, but he had such a huge throng of people all buying his book so we felt overwhelmed and a little embarrassed (silly emotion to have, but if everyone else is giving him money and we are the only ones who want to take something, I guess it makes a little sense...). So we tried out the cosplay cafe again, with success! It was open for business and was very fun. I bought a green tea and my sister got a toriniku no onigiri (chicken riceball). The waitress was fantastic, she spoke excellent Japanese, and I felt really good finally putting my six years of Japanese language classes to good use XD

After that we headed to the dealer's room. I had very little money this time around, so I was very, very careful about what I bought. I usually save up every extra penny I get so I can go on sprees at the conventions I attend, so it was kind of hard to resist everything! I ended up buying a demon Naruto plushie, a Death Note wallscroll (there was a Naruto one I reaaaaalllly wanted but I didn't see it until later, so I told my sister that she now knew what I wanted for Christmas XD), and a Bleach wallet with Bankai Ichigo on it. It is a SUPER COOL wallet, with tons of pockets and things so I can hold all of my cards without doubling up. The only thing it was missing (I noticed when I switched out wallets) was a coin holder. So it was back to the dealer's room! There had been a Death Note coin purse I liked, so I had a good excuse to get it as well =3

We spent so much time in the dealer's room that we missed the first fifteen minutes of the Iron Fanart Contest III. I had been looking forward to trying to be a participant, but since that wasn't a possibility, we went to Spike's book panel. It was after that that my sister was able to get her DVD cover signed, but not before I bothered him again ^_~ See, the night before, I asked him for an autograph on my VHS of Nadesico (Akito is my favorite Spike role, hee hee), but the pen he had wouldn't write on the shiny surface. He said he needed a Sharpie, so this time I delivered! Kind of, I actually brought a Marks-A-Lot marker, and Mr. Spencer made a point about that! Then I asked him for a hug, being the über fangirl that I am, and he gave it to me =D He even forgot to ask me for my ID, lol~ Of course, after that my sister got his autograph. There wasn't much to do after that, while we waited for the cosplay competition to start, so my two little sisters and I headed out to the van for a snack.

This is where the trouble started. My sister accidentally pulled the van keys out of her pocket when her cell phone rang, and they got locked in! I have to say thank you to my grandma, because she had paid for a year subscribtion to AAA for me so we got them out for free. We called them, and had a little fun trying to tell the locksmith where exactly we were. It was a stressful half-hour until the van was unlocked, but after that we were still able to see the greater part of the cosplay competition. One of the highlights I'd like to mention was the Pyramid Head cosplayer. He was absolutely great! I have a friend who would have soiled himself at the sight (not from fear, but from fandom). I, on the other hand, screamed and jumped behind my sister when I saw Pyramid Head around the con ^^; The judging time was taken up by the finalists from Anime Idol and a Full Metal Alchemist skit by Ichidan. The idol contestants were all good, but I think it was a little unfair that the first performers had to project their voices while the second got a microphone. Ichidan's performance was excellent. I saw the same skit at Anime Oasis, but it was changed. They had better stage props, and it was extended by ten or fiffteen minutes. It also had two new characters, Armstrong and Gluttony. Earlier, when I saw Armstrong walk by me in the hall, I cried out "Armstrong, woot!" and then he turned around and lifted me right off the floor! I had to have been three or four feet up. It was probably the best glomp-type thing I've ever gotten XD I mean usually the fans glomp the characters, not the other way round ^^

We wanted to stay for closing ceremonies, but they weren't going to be held for another hour. We had to drive home that night so we said goodbye to our friends, headed to Carl's Jr. (our traditional after-con eatery, and my favorite fast food restaurant), then took off for home.

My overall feeling from Anime Banzai 2006 was good. It would be nice if they held it at a hotel sometime in the future, just because it's so much more convenient for us cosplayers, but if they don't I will still come back! There were tons of energetic, fun people there this year, not to mention the fun I had glomping people (I hope I didn't scare L, and I hope I didn't make Greed angry!). So until AB 2007!!