I went to Acen this past weekend, had a good time, got lots of street passes, met some nice people, and saw an amazing variety of cosplay.
It was as varied as anything I’ve seen at Halloween, and much more elaborate. I’ve been to many cons before, so I’m no stranger to cosplay. Even though the content of the convention was very anime centric (although the Renaissance Faire was represented, that’s still pretty close), the cosplay was interestingly not.
I only took a few pictures there. I was focusing on StreetPass, but I’ll run down a list of things I saw and include the one picture I did take.
Lots of Marios, Luigis, Links, and Princesses (male and female varieties of the latter two); two cloth denizens of the game Journey; a Ringwraith; some Alchemists along with Lust, Envy, and Gluttony; a Ghostbuster; two “Ghostbusters” who had Pokeballs in their packs; several Jokers and Harley Quinns; a Batman that looked 60s-era to me; a baby dressed up as Pikachu; various other Pokémon; a couple people who had Portal guns; a guy with Chell-style spring boots; that Payday guy with the creepy American flag clown mask; several Matt Smith Doctors and/or people with fezes; a Tom Baker Doctor; a Dalek dress; Deadmou5; Sailors Moon ad infinitum; that guy from Trigun with the cross; a fox; a wolf or several; a guy that looked a lot like Ironman; some people with wings; male and female versions of Fay Valentine (not together); Chewbacca; a guy with a Han Solo shirt that said “Damn right I shot first”; Slave Leia; Pyramid head; Skinless Lara Croft Doppelgangers; a guy in a black Blackhawks jersey (not actual cosplay, but go ‘Hawks!); probably just as many other neat costumes from stuff I was not familiar with; surely some things I’m forgetting; and some Martians from Sesame Street yep yep yep yep uh-huh:
That one I had to stop and take a picture of.
I’ve been aware of Acen for a few years now, and this is the first time I’ve gone. my initial interest for going this year was to get this StreetPass accomplishment:
Which I could have done just hanging out in the lobby.
When I went to the site to see when it was and if it was worth attending or just lurking, I saw that my favorite Japanese music group “angela” was going to be there. I still had to think about it as I had to get the time off work and coordinate with the family, but I ended up attending.
I didn’t realize you had to get tickets to the concert separately, so I missed out on the concert, but I was able to get an autograph:
I even got a CD at their booth later. They were very nice and friendly.
Unfortunately, due to personal constraints I wasn’t able to spend as much time there as I might have liked, but all in all it was a wonderful experience.