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NDK 2005 ZeldaQueen Zelda Queen here: I can't believe another convention has just gone by and I'm eagerly awaiting the next one though barely a day has passed. ^.^; Once again I attended Denver 's local anime convention Nan Desu Kan and had a blast. I'm trying to remember exactly how many times I've been and it keeps getting harder every year. Trying to remember by the costumes one wears to such events shouldn't be the way to keep track, but it was the easiest way in the beginning so let's see.. 2005 - Easy. Just had it so.. Random gothy cat-girl. What else can I say. It's fun to be of the feline sort during the con. ^.^ 2004 - Haruko from Fooly Cooly. Good costume but pink hair color spray is very evil. >.< 2003 - Marinia from Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. I very much enjoy doing video game characters cause not as many people do them. 2002 - Zelda from the Legend of Zelda series. I focused more on her costume from SSBM. I loved doing that costume. ^.^ I think this one got the most pictures taken. 2001 - Utena from Revolutionary Girl Utena. It's a way cool series and not an overly complicated costume. 2000 - Lina from Slayers. It was my first costume ever and my first con. It wasn't the best costume mind you, but I still had fun. So it looks like this was year six. As normal though, there never seems to be enough time to do what I want every year, but I try to hit as much stuff as possible and enjoy what I do get to. ^.^ Friday Day number one. This year's con moved locations to my great joy. The Holiday Inn at the I-70 and Chambers location was nice because it was closer to where I lived, but the facilities could just not handle the sheer amount of con goers that started coming in the past two years. This year the con was moved to the Marriot in the Denver Tech Center near I-25 and 225. Only problem to get to this location is the drive. >.< Hooray for rush hour traffic. In any case, we (my boyfriend (Proteus) and cousin) arrived at a decent time between 5 and 6 for the con. After picking up our badges and waiting for Assimilator and his girlfriend, we began to wander around the Marriot's convention area. I must say that the lay out of this building makes a lot more sense and is much larger. We can actually walk down the hall ways with no problem and have places to stop and group with friends or take pictures of other fellow con goers. It just felt a lot more spacious than the past location. Since I arrived to late again to put up my own artwork for the Art and Model Show, I went anyways to see what art was on display this year. The gambit always ranges from the more professional to the beginner at this show, but this year I felt as if more beginners than professionals or more skilled artists were there. It's good to see new people start into the world of anime art, but some people I always look forward to seeing every year, had no art up this year. >.< Maybe they had problems like me getting there in time for space and such or they've been investing in getting a table at artist's row. There were also fewer models than what I've remembered in past cons. They were all nicely done though. After stopping at the art show, we continued to wander around just looking at the various areas and taking pictures of people in costume. Naruto and Full Metal Alchemist were the popular ones this year with a fair number of Inu-Yasha, Final Fantasy, and Resident Evil characters. We ate at the local restaurant/bar in the Marriot and I must say it was good to have real food so close. I have been to the con before when I was lucky to get in maybe a meal a day. >.< Trust me, take food breaks and drink plenty of water. You'll just feel better. We ended the night early though. We spent the rest of the evening people watching from our inside facing hotel balcony. Most of what we come to the con for occurs on Saturday. Day number two. We all get up at 8 and start getting ready. I of course have to take the longest, but that's only because I was in costume. It was a very easy costume being a cat girl and all. (There will be a picture posted later but not at this time) We decided to eat first before hitting anything and decided to go a local IHOP. Bit of a mistake. We spent 30 minutes driving around looking for it. >.<; But I did cause heads to turn in my getup there. Hooray for me being in costume in local unaware public places. ^.^; In any case we make it back to the con to await one of our favorite events: The Anime Music Videos Contest. It being a quarter to twelve, we decided to see if a line had started forming. Past con experience has always taught that if it's something popular, be prepared to wait in a line with something to read. Much to our surprise, there is no line yet and the event will be held in the main room, an amazing concept since past years the event was held in one or two of the smaller video viewing rooms which never had enough space. (I did sit along a wall in one the rooms one year cause there was no other place to go. >.<) We catch the tail end of the Anime Dating Contest and witness people stuffing as much Pocky into their mouths as possible. The wasted Pocky T.T . There is only one event we need to sit through before the AMVs and it was a quite enjoyable panel called Vocal Musing. The group of anime voice actors that were guests at this year's con had a free for all question and answer session about voice acting. The session was a very good laugh as it seems voice actors always love hamming it up, especially with their ability to change their voices at will. ^.^; After an hour of vocal musings, the AMVs kicked into full gear with a force of 33 videos; a full two hours worth of entertainment. While the theme seemed to be more seriously aimed music videos, the over all quality of this competition keeps getting better and better every year and this year was no exception. A few of my personal favorites: A horror/comedy themed video set to "This is Halloween" from "Nightmare Before Christmas", a collection of songs set to Azimanga-Diaoh, and a beautifully touching video set to heartbreaking relationships in various anime. (I'll reveal the winners in my blurb about Sunday which hosts the AMV Awards ^.^) It was a long sit so we had to get up and do something, so we finally went a hit the Dealer's Room. Hooray! The Dealer's Room was much larger this year and more navigatable, set up in a circuit array. There was actually space to walk between booths and there were all types of anime/Japanese goodies to be bought. I made it out the first visit somewhat light, only buying a pin, keychain and an art book with drawings from Cowboy Bebop. ^.^ I do have to buy a new art book every year I go and my $50 investment in this particular one was well worth it. Seeing preliminary sketches of what the Bebop characters looked like in conception and many other nicely finished works made my day, as well as having English translations of the artist's views of the work. Enough with my talks of my art book though. We took a breather after running around the dealer's room and chilled in our rooms, people watching again, until a newly discovered favorite crept closer to start time: Insane Anime Counting Contest. We happened (me, Proteus, and Assimilator) upon this contest last year by accident. We had been hanging out in a video room watching episodes of Fruit Basket when they announced the next item of business for the room. Curious as to what it was, we decided to stick around, and had an absolute blast. ^.^ The premises behind the Counting Contest is easy, count a prolifically reoccurring item in a particular anime. This can vary quite wide. Last year it was airplane fighters, cat girls, and cloaker bombs. But like I stated earlier, these are prolifically reoccurring items so at one time there could be more that 20 things in a shoot and you have to count them all, and they keep coming. It's hard to keep up. ^.^; This year had only two shows and the items to be counted were ninjas in one and the fan service panty shot in the other. Fun times were to be had again and our counting did improve this time. If you have been a regular attendee and have not checked out this contest, I suggest you go next year. The only problem with the counting contest is that it takes place the hour before the Costume Contest starts, and we didn't make it this year. The line starts like two hours before it as usual and the event itself goes on for about 3 hours, for the costume and cosplay contests together. We wandered around and took some people's pictures and retired to our rooms to people watch and relax. We being the geeks we are, Proteus breaks out d20 Modern and Lord of the Rings to set up new characters. After realizing important stuff for d20 was left out in the car, Proteus and Assimilator went to retrieve the items while my cousin and I went down to the lobby to take pictures of people leaving the Costume Contest. We encounter my friend again and her friends who were in elaborate inspired costumes based off Yoshitaka Amano's art work for Final Fantasy. After running around and taking some more pictures, we again went back to our rooms and watched Cartoon Network into the wee hours of the morning. Sunday will come all too soon. The final day of the con weekend always comes too soon. It makes it hard to when you stay up too late to go to any of the con activities on Sunday morning, and this morning was no exception. After final getting ourselves up we decide it is probably best to get all our junk together, check out of our rooms, and throw everything into our respective vehicles that way we can just focus on the con and leave when we want. Word of advice to those of you staying in the hotel next year; use the check out option on your television in your room. You’ll save yourself a whole lot of heartache and waiting in line in the long run. ^.^; Interesting side story though. Assimilator and his girlfriend needed a little cash from the ATM and there happened to be a line. Proteus, my cousin, and I are standing off to the side waiting for them and Proteus says out loud wondering how many people ended up sleeping in their costumes last night. Crazy thing is that the guy standing right behind Assimilator and his girlfriend slowly raises his hand. ^.^; I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that 10 or more people ended up crashing in one room. ^.^; We decide to hit the Dealer’s Room again after that. You can never go there too many times it seems and on Sunday it is sooo much easier getting around in the room than on Friday or Saturday. I don’t know if it’s because at least half the crowd needs to go home early or they are slower than us getting up, but there always is less people. Of course none of us can resist the urge to spend more money, most going to t-shirts this day. Pegasus Publishing (I believe this is correct ^.^;) has attended the con the past couple of years with their humors geeky t-shirts. An example of which would be the shirt Proteus bought last year from the Princess Bride that had the Dread Pirate Roberts recruiting you to become a Dread Pirate Roberts by contacting his 1-800 number. ^.^ Proteus this year had to buy the Local Mad Scientists’ Union shirt and Assimilator bought the GMs don’t kill player characters (insert long list of various things that do, slimes, anything with the word giant in front of it, unicorns on a bad day, etc.) kill player characters. ^.^ I on the other hand bought a Fooly Cooly t-shirt with the kitty Takkun on it. ^.^ Proteus was extra nice to me though because he bought me my own little Totoro. ^.^ He’s too cute. ^.^ We had lunch once again at the hotel for location and cost. We were also joined this day by Rampage. After lunch we headed to the main hall to see the Anime Music Video contest winners. It was a tough selection this year, but I think the judges and the audience did well in the ones that they choose. The ones I mentioned in Saturday’s blurb ended up winning. ^.^ It was also nice to see that the people who made the videos were actually present and able to collect their awards and give a brief acceptance speech. The videos always cause me to want to pursue doing ones of my own, but I think Proteus will get one done way before me. ^.^ I can at least help along with the creative process, not to mention go through hours of footage to match things up >.<; I just wish there were more music videos dealing for the video game award category. I love Final Fantasy, don’t get me wrong, but it is always Final Fantasy videos that win cause there isn’t any other entries into that category other than the Final Fantasy series. Maybe next year there will be a Zelda one thanks to Twilight Princess. ^.^ I sure hope so.^.^ My fan girl self loves that idea greatly. ^.^ Have to have a reason for my namesake on this site don’t I? Afterwards, we wandered around the Dealer’s Room for the third time to see if there is anything we really can’t live without, but I think we escape this time with minimal if no purchases because we have no more funds. ^.^; We wander around the con walkways for any more picture opportunities but we all agree that it’s time to leave this year’s con. It was another fun year and we can’t wait till next year’s. ^.^ The Marriot in the Tech Center was a wonderful choice for the con I must say again. Thank you for letting us have room to walk and actually be able to admire and take pictures of costumes. We’re already planning for next year’s con and I can’t wait. ^.^ Till next year! ^.^ Another year of NDK has come and gone, so how did it measure up to last year. I would have to say that it was better. Again there where lots of people in costumes and they had more room to display this year since they were at a new hotel. Also it was slightly cheaper to stay at this hotel, so that was nice. So what all did we do at NDK this year, well let’s recap: Friday: Friday was the starter day. We got out bearings and figured out were stuff was, such as our room. After getting our badges (with my name being misspelled on mine) we decided that the first order of business was to find real food. And we did manage to find it without having to leave the hotel and it was decently priced. A good thing for I wanted to spend my hard earned gains on other items then this food stuff that we are told we need. After that we just kind of wondered around the hotel looking at different stuff until we ended up at the art room. There were lots of nice things to look at there with a silent auction to sell the art work. After we left there we went back to our rooms and decided to call it a night so that we may refresh ourselves for the big day. Saturday: This was the day that most things happened. We started the morning with cat girl in tow and tried to find an IHOP to eat breakfast at. We started the search around 9:00 AM, found one at 11:00 AM, stupid phone directions. But we got back with more then enough time to see the AMV competition. Just before the AMV competition there was a panel with a few voice actors that was pretty funny to watch. Following that was the AMV competition. I did not think it was as good this year as it was last year but that could also be that last year I did not know what to expect and had the feeling of unexpected wow versus the feeling of knowing what is to come. But it was still a good competition. After that we hit the dealer room for a little while. Looked around and saw that there were many dealers returning from last year. Lots of neat stuff was there but we saved purchases for the next day. The last thing we did that day was go to the Anime Counting Contest. This year we were to count the number of ninjas in 2 x 2 Ninja and the number of panty shots in another show that I do not remember the name of right now. As one person said, “Only the counting contest could ruin fan service”. But all in all it was real fun. After that we called it a night and watched anime in our room till we all fell asleep. Sunday: This was the last day of the convention and we all slept a little later then we meant to so the dealers room was packed when we got in there. Spent more money then I should have, but the selection was quite nice and I finished off a few series that I had been collecting, so I was quite pleased with that. Then we went to the AMV awards. The winners really deserved it. The ones that won the audience vote were all from one guy, and he got over half the votes between 3 AMV’s, so congrats to him. From there on out we decided to call it a weekend and go home. So what am I saying here? I am saying that I had a lot of fun again. NDK did another great job and I was ecstatic that I could go and cannot wait for next year. So here is to you Nan Desu Kan and I hope to see you in 2006 for another year of fun. |
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October 19, 2008
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