CN ANIME 2004
PAN'S CON REPORT


It occurs to me now, as I sit here a month after the fact trying to write this report, how little I have to say about CN Anime 2004. There's only so much you can say about a con before you've said everything before. With that said, it's the unique experiences and the people you spend time with that make a con special.

So why then do I have so little to say? The answer here is twofold. Firstly, I spent a good chuck of this convention relaxing and hanging out with friends and acquaintances. These people deserve not to have their lives posted on the internet. The second is that my memory has failed me completely. No, seriously. Even looking at photos isn't helping. And what I do remember, I don't really have much to say about.

That aside, I'm going to try and write a report anyway. Will it be coherent? No. Will this cover everything? Heck no. Does it matter at this point? I don't know, but I'm going to try my best to string together something coherent.

And so, let's all return back to that magical time of the year that marks the one and only CN Anime.


FRIDAY


Photos photos everywhere

The Friday of CN started much like most other Friday of cons, and that is with the photographing of cosplayers. I ran around and took hundreds of photos of every cosplayer I could track down and stop for a photo. I saw quite a few familiar faces everywhere I went and socialized a bit, but spent most of my Friday night running around clicking pictures of all the shiny costumes.


Chatting

This CN, I decided to do something I don't normally get to do at conventions, and that is sit down and actually talk to people. I spend so much time running around from place to place that I rarely get a chance to get to know anyone. This con, I tried my hardest not to be too distracted, sat down and actually had semi-meaningful conversations with people.

On Friday night I had one of these conversation with Tamer Brad, who I hadn't seen since Anime North. After torturing his Kai plushie, we got talking about all sorts of things. Ben (I remembered your name this time!) came by and hung out for a bit. He gave me Sabba -- the white ranger sword from Mighty Morphin Power Rangers -- that he found in his house as a gift. It's so bloody awesome and went surprisingly well with my Jam costume. ^^ Thanks, Ben!


Guilty Gear, the Assassin, and the Visitor

On Friday, I was running around dressed as Jam from Guilty Gear. She's not very well known and I was rather surprised by the amount of people that recognized me. Moreover, Jam's not cosplayed nearly enough, so imagine my surprise when I found out the D2R cosplay group would be cosplaying not one or two, but every main Guilty Gear character the next day.

One of the members of this cosplay group recognized me as the girl that attacks his friend. It took me awhile to realize he was speaking of the guy that cosplayed the assassin from Ragnarok Online last year that I've attacked politely glomped at a few cons now.

Soon after, I found my assassin dressed as a Crazy 88 from Kill Bill, and after glomping him (much to his friends' amusement), I ran off.

Then I met up with the lovely Bianco who was dressed as Sol Badguy from Guilty Gear and we took some photos together. ^^ Bianco joined me afterwards and helped me get a ton of cosplay photos from the dealer's room.

On the way back down from the dealer's room I spotted someone in line that I recognized instantly although I had never met him before. An online friend of mine named Taji contacted me before the con letting me know he was planning to come, and I was excited to meet him. So without confirming that the guy in line was Taji, I glomped the poor boy, leaving Bianco really confused. ^^;

Sure enough, it was Taji. ^^ We spent a good chuck of the evening together talking and taking all sorts of shiny cosplay pictures. ^^


Cosplay 101

Amanda and I gave a panel on "Cosplay 101", in which we discussed how to get started in cosplaying, as well as tips and tricks for costume making. It was a fun panel, and we had a good turn out. Props to the Ninja Turtle and the Allen Schezar cosplayers for their inputs. ^^ Overall, it was a great panel. I'm thrilled at how well it went.

After the panel was over, Amanda and I attacked a poor soul and turned him into a random Naruto ninja using only bandages and a Naruto headband we made out of a cookie sheet, some fabric and a sharpie in about three minutes. All this happened in the middle of the lobby while Amanda read the Rules on how to make a Naruto costume in 15 minutes. ^^;


Randomness Abounds

The rest of the evening was spent filled with (gasp) cosplay photos and randomness. Cooro videotaped me for Lexi (♥), and I arrived upstairs in time to watch the weapon's booth be taken apart by police officers. I found this amusing since they've been coming for five years and passed through customs, and all sorts of other things. The incident made all sorts of headlines, which was also amusing since it really wasn't such a big deal.

After making Captain Jack Sparrow pose with Iced Tea, Ritchie came up to me, got down on one knee, and holding a Pocky box, proposes me to me. And so we were married and Ritchie became by fourth wifey. ^^ *huggles Ritchie*


The joys of the Toronto transit system

Friday ended on a rather interesting note.

Toronto is a large and diverse city. It's one of those places where one can expect to see all sorts of weird things -- like cosplayers on the subway and InuYasha wandering around Queen Street. But I digress, there was nothing more amusing than entering the Toronto subway system to find Scott McNeil (surrounded by his legion of fans) trying to buy subway tokens.




SATURDAY


Bow to the Pharaoh

My Saturday costume is what I've nicknamed my "suicidal costume" for good reason. It's my Pharaoh Yami (Atemu, technically) costume from Yu-Gi-Oh, and although it's pretty tough, I was paranoid that it would get destroyed. Considering how much work I put into it, I didn't want anything to happen to it.

It also meant I was on the look out for Yu-Gi-Oh cosplayers, and wandering around the lobby taking photos, I found quite a few. ^^ I ran into a Kaiba cosplayer named Archy and followed him through the crowd and met up with his Yu-Gi-Oh group. We snuck out of line and took some photos, and I took a few with the Yugi cosplayer. It completely slipped my mind to get photos with the Anzu (mimiKat). ><; Oops.

My pharaoh costume was surprisingly popular. Tons of people recognized me, although lots of people didn't seem to know who the pharaoh was. I'm assuming they recognized me by my hair, since I don't really have any other explanation. Actually, most people seemed to think my wig was my real hair. o___O; I think it's because my eyebrows look synthetic. ><; Errr... moving on...

In other news, there's nothing quite like kids running away from you screaming, "Yugi's a girl!" Lots of little kids seemed to like my costume. I haven't has so many family photos taken in my life! O_O!

If he was nearby, I grabbed Kaiba (Archy) into a bunch of the photos. I'd tell the kids to hold on so I could go get Kaiba, and then come back dragging Archy behind me. It worked really really well since Archy stayed in character, so lots of the kids though we were really Kaiba and Yugi. ^^;;;


Smile, kids

On Friday night, P-chan came up with the brilliant plan to dress Chapel up as the Laraku smile box. So we forced Chapel to bring a suit to the convention (without telling him what it was for) and my friend Sakura brought her smile box. We shoved it on Chapel, and while he was confused, dragged him to the Laraku display so he could act as a posterboy for the new CD. ^^;

After a panic over Amanda and her music video panel, a bunch of us hung out under the escalators downstairs. Amanda put eye makeup on me (thank you, Amanda!) because it wouldn't be a Yu-Gi-Oh costume without it and because I was incapable of doing it myself. While this was going on I got to talk to Miroki (the Malik cosplayer). After some photos with Miroki and Sakura (who was dressed as Duke), a Li cosplayer and I got married and he became my forty-fifth husband. Bwah~! ^^

And then Brad ran by being chased by rabid fangirls. Actually, the rabid fangirls came after me to show me some photos of Brad that he'd kill me if I talked about. ^^;


Lost in a crowd

Much of Saturday was a blur of photos and people. I must have met/talked to over a hundred people. O_O!

While I was leaving the dealer's room, this girl came up to me and asked me if I was "Pan-chan of LELOLA". I said that I was and she freaked out saying how much she like my site and how happy she was to meet me. ^^ She was pretty cool, and wanted my autograph, which honestly shocked me. ^^; Then I had someone take a photo of the two of us. Sadly I didn't see her again for the rest of the day.

I met up with GLAY and that guy (your name completely escapes me) who were dressed as Tyson and Kai from Beyblade, and after some photos and Utena-ness, I ran into a Ken (Weiss Kreuz Gluhen) cosplayer. I adore Gluhen Ken, so I glomped the poor guy. Sadly, when I went to take his photo, my camera decided to run out of batteries. ;____; Thankfully, I ran into him later and managed to snap a picture. ^^

I found Utena and Anthy cosplayers downstairs and got a photo of them. At some point, Anthy and I random attacked a Vash cosplayer, because that makes perfect sense.

I found the giant (and I stress the word giant) Guilty Gear group, but I couldn't get all of them to be in the same place at the same time. ><; Ah well. On the plus side, there were two Jam cosplayers. ^^

The afternoon can be summarized by Bianco saving my wig from being crushed by the record breaking 20,000+ people in the dealer's room (I love you, Bianco!) and I scared some poor little kid wearing a Power Rangers Ninja Storm shirt.

Ed the Sock's comic villain girls came up to me at some point and talked to me about Yu-Gi-Oh and card games. On an amusing sidenote, a week or so after the convention, the Catwoman recognized me in a washroom at the CNE. ^^;;;


Link Mania

Seven of my friends were dressed as Link from various Zelda games on Saturday. I kid you not. If you add in the other Link cosplayers there, we had a truckload of Links. ^^;

Out of my friends, Kira was Link, Becky was dance!Link, Amanda was Dark Link, and Hannah, Jen, Bonnie and Lauren were the four variations of Link from the Four Swords game. We grabbed the infamous Link cosplayer and a few others and when we finally managed to get all of them in the same place at the same time, we had a Linkified photoshoot.

The greatest moment had to be hen we had the Links link arms. Oh, what a bad pun. *gets kicked in the head* But it was a lot of fun. ^^ Go team Link!


Stuff happened (Yay for creative titles!)

Somewhere in the course of the afternoon, I married Brad. *huggles her forty sixth husband*

I somehow ended up near this Kakashi (Naruto) cosplayer who looked freakishly like Kakashi. I soon found a group of fangirls nearby and, let's just say they were very amusing. ^^

I headed downstairs to the masquerade area and met up with some of my friends for the first real time that day. After a search for an electrical outlet, I explored the line and talked to quite of few people there.

There were a lot of Sublunary cosplayers on Saturday and since I know the girls behind the webcomic, I tried to track as many of them as I could down. I finally found them all while they were in line for the masquerade and took photos of all of them.

I ran into a Nightcrawler cosplayer. She was awesome, down to the blue skin! ^^ It turns out she was also the Ninja Turtle cosplayer. Now that's awesome. ^^ She also owned the best umbrella ever.


The handstamp fiasco

The masquerade line turned into a huge mess when it was announced that only those with handstamps could get into the masquerade.

To get a handstamp, one had to go to the dealer's room and get stamped on their way out. So why was this an issue? Some people simply don't go up to the dealer's room. They paid full prince for admission but hang around the lobby or in panels and showings. Moreover, a lot of the costumers who go to the dealer's room don't get handstamped because of their costumes. Furthermore, some people I knew working in the dealer's room didn't get a handstamp because they didn't leave until the dealer's room was closed.

Because they didn't get a handstamp, these people weren't allowed into the masquerade. The reasoning behind it was to prevent people from sharing passes. Sadly, because no warning was given, a bunch of full paying con goers couldn't get in. The outrage shown by the line was understandable. They weren't even given a warning that this would be happening.

They also made it so that anime and all access passes got in first, leaving a lot of the sci-fi and comic con-goers waiting outside.

I'm not even going to go into how they yelled at me, since I fear it hurts my point. But the handstamp issue was horrible and made a lot of people very very very angry. I hope they do something about it.


Masquerading

The masquerade was a lot of fun with tons of really shiny costumes. Gord was the lovely and talented host and kept control of the crowd really well. The crowd was apparently much more mature than the crowd from the year before.

Some notable occurrences had to be Heki's Gingerbreadman, and the NiGHTS cosplayer (I didn't think anyone else knew that old Sega game existed). Five of the seven Links I know did the "Link Dance", which was basically the dance from a 1990 Japanese Nintendo commercial. They preformed it wonderfully. Dance, Links, dance!

Archy (the Kaiba cosplayer) preformed a great and entertaining number, and there was an awesome anime infomercial. Actually, the acts were all really good. Props to them all. ^^


Aftermath in the lobby

After talking to the awesome Wolverine cosplayer, I ended up in the lobby along with most other people there. Kira and Amanda (Link and Dark Link) battled it out while Death watched on in the background. After Link announced he was going to Mexico, Chapel somehow ended up sitting on an inflatable dolphin holding a red baseball bat and wearing a sombrero. o___O;

After some tennising (it's a word, I swear!), we headed back for the night. The subway voyage was really amusing since there were two Links and Bonnie had her "bomb". After some little kids on the subway had their photo taken with me (the amount of parents with cameras is frightening), and after a quick stop at a car wash, we went to bed, knowing Sunday was just a few hours away.




SUNDAY


Blackout in the sun

Sunday started with more cosplay photos. I ran into a Mariemaia (Gundam Wing) cosplayer who was walking around with a little globe with a bow around it reading, "Mariemaia, Merry Christmas, Love Daddy". *heh*

Then there was a power outage. It was bright outside and there were backup lights so it wasn't too bad, but it was amusing. A good chunk of downtown Toronto was affected. Long story short, a group of us ended up sitting in a circle to kill time. I had lunch with Taji at a hotdog vender, and talked to a lady I see at cons about her FoxKids bag. Lalalala~ stuff happened.


Kill Bill Chapel

Sunday was the day of our Kill Bill group organized by my brother friend Chapel, who decided at the last minute that he didn't want to cosplay anymore. Since Sakura, Bianco and I put a lot into our costumes, we were less than pleased by this news, so we decided to rename the group, "Kill Chapel" instead of "Kill Bill".

I was dressed as Gogo Yubari and although I'm not an Asian schoolgirl, people seemed to like the costume. ^^; I had my photo taken quite a bit. Sakura's O-ren costume was also really popular. It was her first time making a kimono and it turned out amazing. ^^ Bianco was a Crazy 88, so between Sakura, Bianco and I we had a mini group.

Kenney was dressed as Buck. I keep forgetting him. Sorry Kenney! But anyway, we ran into Louise who was dressed as the Bride and took a truckload of photos with her. During which, she shoved Kenney's head into the door, and then some girl asked Kenney about his nametag that said "Buck" on it.

Girl: Isn't that just a Tim Hortons nametag with tape on it?
Kenney: ...*shifty eyes*

Long story short, we all managed to track Chapel down and killed him good. ^^


Come on! It was a Sunday!

I spent a good chunk of Sunday with Brad (who isn't allowed to die!). I need to hang out with him more often. *nodnod*

Amanda wore her Telulu wig and her Heero jacket. By the end of the day she was covered in makeup, but that's another story. ^^;

And of course, the "information booth" was totally ruined by the end of Sunday. I never understood why they made the booth in the first place. No one mans it, there's never information available in it, and by the end of the con, it's gone through so many name changes I'm not sure what booth it is anymore. This con, it spent most of the time with the word "NOT" shoved on it before the word "information". By this point on Sunday, it was acting as a kissing booth. ^^;

I also took another photo of this guy's hair for no real reason. I took one on Saturday too. *shrugs* I don't know. On the plus side, Miaka and I ran around terrorizing people, and I got to see Taji a bit more before he left.


Back to normal...?

At the end of the day, the con was over and the crowds had dwindled down to almost nothing. I went to change back into semi-normal clothing and let my hair out due to the lack of a proper hair elastic. Anyway, when my friends and I went back to the main convention area, someone behind me yelled, "Another costume!? You made four costume for this convention?"

Miaka, who was walking next to me at the time, broke out laughing when I had to reply that I wasn't in costume. ><;

After an interesting scene which can only be described as Colin running over to play with my hair (don't ask) and Scott McNeil playing "gay hairdresser", a group of us headed down the street for dinner to a restaurant in which we made too much noise, ate lots of food, and marveled at the weird things glued to the ceiling.

Somewhere between the pasta and the ice cream, I realized that although Ed and Roy were sitting across the table from me, CN Anime had come to a close for yet another year. But there was no reason to feel sad. CN Anime 2005 was less than a year away.