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Ah yes, Katsucon '04. Quite an interesting experience for me this time around... Not the least of which being that it was opened on a Friday the 13th, and boy did my luck get smacked around. Talk about bad luck: it actually extended itself over the entire four-day con period!!
I was originally planning on taking several friends along with me to this. All the others in my cosplay group that were coming, however, suddenly had bizzare last-minute things that popped up right on Thursday night so that they couldn't come save one: Thao. I thought "okay, no big deal, stuff like that happens all the time, right?" Well, come the time for Cosplay.com's Thursday's photo shoot, Thao and I left in enough time and got there okay (I was Sally- Dhalsim's wife from Street Fighter Alpha 3 and she was Tekken 4's Julia Chang, by the way), but we got MAJORLY lost in trying to find where the heck we were parked in the underground visitor's parking lot of the shopping center across from the hotel. We wandered around for *HOURS*- yes, I said "HOURS"- until it was well past dark, but we stopped for help several times and finally this really nice security guy actually wandered around with us. Turns out where I parked was a good mile away from where we stopped to ask him (!!), so he walked with us until we finally found the comforting sight of my car. To top it all off, my sari unravelled while we were walking through the mall so I had to scoop it all up as best I could while we were trekking about in the cold air... And that was just Thursday night, folks!! (-_-);;
Friday the 13th, Thao and I actually found a parking space right next to the hotel in the adjacent lot, so I figured our luck had changed, right?... WRONG. We entered the hotel and quickly changed into our costumes, Thao went as Julia Chang and I wore my updated Rumi from Perfect Blue complete with art-pallette-knife and bloody glass sticking out from my stomach (You need to have seen Perfect Blue to understand the ingenuity behind all that, ;-P). Unfortunately, I didn't count on my costume- which by the way was absolutely fine when I tested it out at home numerous times to see how it would wear- having difficulty. Apparently the "glass" shards in the special effects panel of my dress's top weakened the stitching on the side making it come apart somehow. Alot of people wanted to take my picture, but I only got through one photographer when Thao threw my coat on me and whispered in my ear, "Hey, I think your outfit's falling off up there!! You might need to wear this!!" Sure enough, no sooner had I put on my coat and zipped it up then the entire thing split open all the way down to my skirt and just hung down out the bottom of the coat!!! (-_-);;
Thao and I quickly ran into the bathroom on that floor of the con and tried to salvage it as best we could with the emergency repair sewing kit I brought along, but no go. I am *SO* lucky a lady from one of the booths selling anime costumes in the Dealers Hall just happened to be in there with us!! She saw we were in a bind and graciously offered to help fix it back up for us... only thing was it would have to wait until Sunday before I could pick it up, meaning my prize costume I spent so much effort on couldn't be entered into the Masquerade or the Hall Cosplay contest for the entire con!! (;_;) I didn't mind though, I was grateful for the help!! In the meantime, I went about the con with my pink sleeveless top that I wore on the car ride over, which actually went with my dress skirt quite well so I kept the skirt and wore it around with my makeup still intact, so I still looked like "Rumi-chan" albeit an interesting spin-off on her outfit.
Much more happened that day and the following two days, like our car getting a dead battery Friday night and my mother having to come pick us up cause we got stranded at the hotel after a tow truck came to tow my car home, but I won't get into all of that... (-_-);;
This is the ONLY shot taken of my Rumi-chan costume by the con-going people. Thanks to Fansview.com for the pic!!The following pics were all taken on Friday, just after my costume inexplicably fell to pieces on me. Click on each preview pic to see the full-size photo. Hope you like these!!
This is me letting the camera know what I thought of Friday the 13th... :-P
Thao as Julia Chang! She was the *ONLY* Tekken cosplayer there for the entire con!!
Not even a fraction of all the people there at KatsuCon. Can you identify all the characters being cosplayed here?
Ryoga and Ranma going head-to-head at DDR in the Video Gaming room!! (^_^)
Even stormtroopers love playing DDR!! This was the guy going around the con with a granny cane as an "Imperial Walker". X-D
MORTAL KOMBAT!!! Scorpion and Sub-Zero posing in the Gaming Room, too cool!!
I just had to get a full-body shot of this costume. The gun even lit up with effects!!
A friend from Cosplay.com as a crossplay Ash Crimson from King of Fighters 2004. She looked so awesome!!
Crossplay and regular Ash Crimsons back-to-back during the big King of Fighters photoshoot on Friday. Too bad no one was cosplaying Shen Wu or Duo Lon, otherwise I'd have been in heaven... And Shen's not that hard to cosplay as, either!
Two of my fave King of Fighters characters, Maxima and K'. They were really funny! Yuki (Kyo's girlfriend) and one of the Ash cosplayers are in the background of this...
I asked if they could both do K' and Maxima's special intro poses with each other, and they said "sure"! I managed to get an Iori in the shot as well this time, (the thing on his back is a boombox).
Big group shot of many of the King of Fighters cosplayers there for the photoshoot.
Chars from left to right: Mature, Yuki, Seth, Maxima, Iori, Ryuji, two Ashs, and Xiangfei.
Dizzy from Guilty Gear X!! Too bad she left her wings up in her hotel room, that would've been a neat shot...
Cloud and Sephiroth from Final Fantasy 7 battle it out. I loved the swords, they did a really nice job on them!!
Who ya gonna call? GHOSTBUSTERS!! The packs had all these neat light-up and sound effects, very cool.
"Shinobi's back!!" Ninja Gaiden never looked so cool in cosplay, and this was definitely a great costume!
I'm a big fan of "looking the part" in cosplay. (Must be due to all those "fat Mai Shiranui"s I've seen over the years...) You don't have to look just like the one you're cosplaying as, just get as close as possible. Case in point: these two Cutey Honey and Captain Jack cosplayers. They looked FANTASTIC, both for the resemblance as well as the costuming. Very nice. Oh, and as for that weird guy in the background, yeah I tried to crop him out of the pic, but he just kept hopping into the camera viewfinder like a retarded monkey, so in the end I had to snap the photo with him in there anyway. I chose not to edit him out in order to show everyone how much he looks like an absolute dork for doing that. Word of advice: NEVER try to jump-in while someone's taking photos of someone else; it's quite rude and you end up looking like an ass, so DON'T DO IT.
Excel Excel and Hyatt of Excel Saga!! Wheeeee!! The Hyatt is very pretty, plus she's the best I've ever seen of anyone cosplaying her!!
From a fave anime of mine- Outlaw Star, here's Twilight Suzuka and a fabulous Aisha Clan-Clan!!
When it comes to Big O cosplays, you see plenty of Roger Smiths and R. Dorothys, but you hardly ever see Schwartzroth cosplayers, especially ones this good!! You can tell he really spent alot of time on his costume.
Group pic with Naruto's Gaara of the Desert and who I at first thought was FFVI's main boss Kafka, but then the cosplayer told me he was FFVI's Locke. Oops!! (The dark lipstick and pale makeup is what threw me off...)
Very nice pic. I know Ah Megami-Sama!'s Belldandy but I couldn't identify the horned red dude. I took the pic anyway because his costume was just too darn cool to pass over!! Anyone know who he's cosplaying as?? (^_^);;
Skuld in regular and battle armor modes from the Ah Megami-Sama! movies (I think). Very good job on the battle armor cosplay!!
Di Gi Charat's Dejiko, Rabi-en-Rose and Mr. Manager lounging on a couch in the hotel lobby. They made Mr. Manager out of a blue punching bag, too cute!! They were very nice, I think Thao and I met them at Thursday's photo shoot...That's all the pics!! Bye!! (^_^)
