This month: Some Convention-related Pages

I asked various people at Anime Expo for ideas for this month's column. The convention pages idea came from Jei Harvey himself, who attended for the first time. I'd always steered away from the convention sites before, because I found them to be, well, boring. The purpose of a convention site is to give you the information you need in order to attend, and most sites offer very little in the way of content.

Fortunately, there's more on the convention page than just convention info sites. First let me quickly run down what I found interesting on the info sites, then we'll get to the better stuff.

One of the most extensive of the con reports sites is . The site author, thanks to a job that allows him to travel, attends every notable anime convention and every notable event at each convention. Go to any important panel and you'll find him there, snapping away with his digital camera. In fact, look hard enough on this site, and you'll find pictures of me. I won't tell you where, though, because I don't show up on film. I get replaced by this fat, dorky-looking putz that looks nothing like my image in the mirror.

How's this for traveling? The has con reports from both the US east coast as well as Tokyo!

There are several great report pages from "Linus Lam" (who is really Lionel Lum, right?). The 'Pike has links to his reports for , , and . The pages are laid out well, and each page quickly pops up in its entirety before the images begin to load.

A few more interesting report pages:

was one of my favorite sites, mainly because of Alisa, the site's star. Alisa is blessed with both the skill to create great costumes and the figure to look good wearing them. Check out her appearances as Lum and as Freida from Bust-A-Move, my two favorites. Under each collection of poses is a link to a description of how the costume was made, as well as other cosplayers as the same character.

is another site populated with absolute babes wearing great looking costumes. The Sorceror Hunter costumes are just incredible! Yowza!!

Um, sorry about that. I'm supposed to reviewing websites, not women. And guys wear costumes too. Case in point: , the homepage for a man/woman team who have put on some of the most memorable performances at Anime Expo, as well as elsewhere. Who can forget the AX97 Masquerade, with Hikaru from Rayearth graphically disemboweling "Z-RAM"?

Two more good cosplay sites:

Every year when I return to the conventions, I'm a year older, but the girls stay the same age. This makes me feel like I'm slowly turning into a dirty old man. I've resisted the urge to say anything to the females, but if I did, I now know what they would say, thanks to . This site is a collection of searing quips that a woman can use to instantly emasculate any otaku who tries to pick her up. Example: "Fanboy: I've seen every Gundam TV episode, movie, and OVA. Some people call me The Newtype King. Fangirl: I'd call it the reason you've never been laid."

If you don't find the real con reports exciting enough, check out ONIcon: The Con of the CENTURY!, a report of the most exciting con that never really happened. 12,500 attendees gathered in an unknown location to hang with Rumiko Takahashi and Hayao Miyazaki. Shame I missed it.

Otakon! You've attended the con, now play the game. Download Otakon Doom, load the file into Doom and blow up Otakon!

And that's it. Hmm. I guess that wasn't too short, given what I had to work with.

Let's open the mailbag.
As expected, I received a deluge of mail after last month's editorial.