Ohayocon 2012: My First Anime Convention! - Day 2

On the way in, there were a lot more cosplayers than yesterday. Here, we have a different rendition of Sailor Moon.

I believe this is how Sailor Moon appeared in Sailor Moon R...though I'm pretty sure her weapon wasn't a staff.

Impa and Link from The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword!

After beating the game in early January, Skyward Sword is probably the best Zelda game I have ever played. It has a great story, decent controls, and is pretty challenging at times.

I later saw Fi on the convention floor with another Link cosplayer.

Looking down at the stairs, there were a lot more people than yesterday. So many cosplayers, from the recognizable to the obscure.

I was one of the more obscure cosplayers.

It seems there is some activity over by the unofficial cosplay group photo area near the stairs. I'll check it out later in the day.

One of several great Medic cosplayers from Team Fortress 2. His medigun even had a light!

I was wondering where the other Vocaloids were hiding! Here we have Kagamine Rin, Kamui Gakupo (whose existence I learned about at the Wide World of Vocaloid panel later in the day), Megurine Luka, and Kaito.

At the Portal panel I attended, there were lots of Portal cosplayers. Before the panel started, they all lined up so we could take photos.

From left to right: Wheatley, GLaDOS, Aperture Science scientist, Chell (Portal 1), Chell (Portal 2), and a male test subject.

There were so many of them!

From left to right: Aperture Science scientist, Chell (Portal 1), Chell (Portal 2), male test subject, the corrupted Space Personality Core, Chell, and three Aperture Science scientists.

And there's the last of them!

Two more Chell cosplayers...with Combustible Lemons! There were quite a few people who had them.

In all, there were about fourteen Portal cosplayers!

This guy's Portal gun was awesome. Not only was it well-made and lit up with the two portal colors, it also featured the GLaDOS potato.

And that potato could talk! Somehow, he used the GLaDOS audio files from Portal 2 and incorporated them into a speaker system inside the Portal gun. With the push of a button, you could hear one of GLaDOS's remarks from that point in the game.

This guy also dragged around a Weighted Companion Cube that he somehow extracted from the Aperture Science testing areas.

As the Portal panel drew to a close, we all joined in for a rousing rendition of "Still Alive," the song that plays during the end credits of the first Portal game. The panelist even used a lighter application on her smartphone and waved it around!

While passing the unofficial cosplay group photo area near the stairs, I caught the last bit of a Kingdom Hearts group posing for photos. In particular, this was Organization XIII.

Many groups would follow after them, and it was cool just how organized they were.

The next group up was a collection of Princess Zeldas and other significant female characters from The Legend of Zelda series.

Hey, there's Impa again!

Amidst the confusion brought upon by others wanting to join the group, I spotted the Hyrule Mailman in the background.

Get back to Hyrule! Those important messages won't deliver themselves, you know.

What follows was a huge group of Team Fortress 2 cosplayers. I think this was practically every TF2 cosplayer at the convention. They were the most organized group by far. Each class had a set time limit to pose for photos before moving on to the next group. It was very crowded!

First up, the Pyros!

Following the Pyros were the Engineers. Only two BLU Engineers...how sad.

The Heavys. Only one of them had Sasha, and I couldn't figure out what that duct tape box thing was. If that was supposed to be some kind of alternate minigun, it was kind of bizarre.

At least the BLU Heavy had a minigun that could spin up...though I think that's a Nerf gun. The "unarmed" Heavy was just taunting.

"POW! Ha ha!"

The Medics.

Wait a minute...that Medic is a Spy!

The Snipers. The guy on the left did an excellent job; he even stayed in character!

Watch out for that Jarate. It's nasty stuff.

I see Spies! Every Spy I saw at the convention (except for one) was a BLU Spy. Maybe it's because the BLU Spy was the star in the Meet The Spy video.

The middle Spy with the tentacles made no sense to me at first. Then I figured he was doing a funny take on the whole "Spy Crab" thing.

The Dynamic Duos: Medic + Heavy. The Medic on the left replicated the tower of hats item and a working syringe gun!

Snipers and Spies: Always engaged in a never-ending battle of who is the best Support class.

Soldiers and Scouts: The tough guys versus the little guys.

Spies and Engineers: Sap the Teleporter, destroy the Sappers, sap the Dispenser, destroy the Sappers, sap the Sentry Gun, backstab the Engineer (or Spy meets giant wrench), repeat.

Moving away from the large cosplay groups, I found Darth Malak from Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (right) and Darth Nihilus from Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords (left).

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic was an amazing game, the first game that truly surprised me when the big plot twist happened. That, and many other things are what make it a great game to play again and again. In stark contrast, The Sith Lords was one of the most disappointing games I have ever played. When I finished the game, my first thought was, "That's it? That's it?! That can't be it! There has to be more to the story than this! What an anticlimactic ending!" Plus, it was a pain to get running due to bugs and compatibility issues.

But I digress. More cosplay!

Now here's a dynamic duo: Sailor Moon (Usagi Tsukino) and Tuxedo Kamen (Mamoru Chiba)!

Sailor Moon was the first anime I watched completely with English subtitles (up through the end of Sailor Moon S at least). It made me laugh, cry, and cheer for the main characters, even though Tuxedo Kamen saved Sailor Moon's behind for the majority of the episodes. Still, that's part of what made things so funny. That, and Usagi's laughter. It is downright hysterical!

Yes, it appears no anime convention or any convention for that matter is complete without some Star Trek cosplayers.

I was a little surprised to find Trekkies at an anime convention.

This was all sorts of awesome: a Zora Tunic Link and Dark Link Face-Off!

These guys did an awesome job with their costumes and props, not to mention that they got this fact right: Link is actually left-handed...at least up until Skyward Sword and the Wii version of Twilight Princess.

Shizuo Heiwajima from Durarara!!, complete with a street sign recently yanked out of the ground. Izaya Orihara must be close by.

I found this lying around outside the convention floor. It looks like someone was trying to cosplay as one of those huge abominations from BioShock and BioShock 2. I guess it was too big and too cumbersome to walk around in. Then again, it may have violated the rules for cosplay outfits. Who knows?

What matters is it looked awesome!

Not sure who these people were cosplaying as. Does anyone have any ideas?

Believe it or not, this person was cosplaying as the Enchantress seen on the stained glass window at the start of the Disney film "Beauty and the Beast." When asked if anyone recognized her character, she told me that only 2 people had correctly done so.

That's better than I did. No one knew who Eiji Seiun was...or who Danny Choo was for that matter...

At the end of the Avatar: The Last Airbender panel, all of the Avatar cosplayers gathered together for us to take photos. Aang walked in halfway through the panel and got into an amusing standoff with Firelord Ozai, which ultimately led to this. At one point, there was a Katara and a Toph, but they had since left. There were even rumors that Princess Azula herself was roaming around the convention, but she was not at the panel (and so, no Fire Nation family photo).

From left to right, we have Prince Zuko, Firelord Ozai, Avatar Aang, and two Appas.

At the end of the day, I was mildly disappointed that no one recognized my cosplay, and everyone I talked to had never heard of Danny Choo or Culture Japan. But I wasn't expecting too much. I didn't run into any comrades from the dannychoo.com/figure.fm community either. Maybe there aren't that many comrades in my neck of the woods...or I'm just not looking hard enough.

Regardless, I had a blast at Ohayocon 2012! I wish I could have gone for the third and final day, but I had previous commitments, most of which were related to my college studies.

The next batch of photos will be my loot from Ohayocon 2012. I will get those photos up soon.

My photos from the first day of Ohaycon 2012 can be found here.