TFA Cosplay

So after opening up Sankaku Complex and noting that there’s a second season of Seikon no Qwaser as the first article, the picture of which made me blue screen (and no, I’m not going to link that), my mind rebooted and I recalled that Mayhem had made his pics of the Summer 2010 Sac Anime convention available.

I’ve gone through some of my older pics, and I have to note just how much improved the quality of all our pics have been from when we first started. Not just in terms of better available technology, but also in terms of how well we use that technology and our general eye for good pictures all around…most times MAKING that not so optimal picture that much better with an increased ability to compose those shots better. You can certainly see it here with his current ones as opposed to the ones just a couple of years ago from Mayhem, as well as the rest of us.

As always if you’re one of the cosplayers, and you want a larger pic, let us know and we’ll make it available.

This may be my last release for this year; I’m uncertain if I’ll release the other two in their uncompleted form, but I’ll debate the merits of that with myself later. Still, why taint what is truly a most awesome release with such bad news? So, may I present this year’s historic Anime Expo Idol competition. Historic in that what I often said could not possibly come to pass, did, in fact, come to pass: A guy won both the voice acting portion AND the singing portion. While last year we had the first ever guy to win the contest with the voice acting competition in what was a stand up performance of a part of Rurouni Kenshin (which earned him an actual standing ovation from the audience), this year we had a gentleman get up and obliterate everyone by singing the living Hell out of Nokia plaza. I could tell the guy who usually picks girls was about to do it again this year, but I think he could feel his likely doom approaching from that man’s newly acquired fangirls if he dared do so. Even so, it was damn well earned, but you’ll see shortly.

Thanks again to Nyaa Torrents for being our tracker.

Greetings one and all. Originally I was going to do a review of Ladies vs. Butlers, but the whole thing eventually devolved into two words: Softcore Porn. It was obvious I was going to need to be in a slightly inebriated frame of mind for that one. Next up was Fate – Stay/Night’s Unlimited Blade Works movie. However, I kept on weeping blood and spitting bile calling the producers various names synonymous with ‘coward’, so I’m probably going to need to calm down a bit before I type out 280kb of text stating what utter losers the producers were for the whole Rin thing, but I digress. Given all that I figured I should probably encode the rest of the video that I can. Then I catch a nice little cold.

Anyway, after suffering from both illness and technical difficulties as my Windows machine decides it’s had enough of my tinkering and bluescreened every five seconds, I present to you the Anime Expo 2010 Battle of the Bands as I recorded it from my body harness. Yes, that’s why it shakes so much…a few hours of maintaining that posture really does wonders for your ability to stand much less hold a camera steady.

I’m not sure if I’m ever going to have the video I need for ACEN or Anime Expo’s Masquerades. I’ll need to decide later if I’m going to release them incomplete like that; so it could be awhile before I get to them. Still, download and enjoy the Battle of the Bands, for it is complete and fun…if a little bit shaky, heh.

Well, after some serious problems with Toei and Funimation copyright robots scouring everything that even remotely has a wiff of their content despite whatever fair use is of being made of it, the numerous technical problems, and only the Forces of Darkness know what else, we’ve finally gotten One Piece: The Abridged Series back up and operation for episode three, which I’ve embedded at the end.

This is it for the character I primarily play, which is Koby, but it looks like I’ll remain gainfully employed to play other characters in the near future. Can’t wait for some of them, heheheh. But what are you listening to me for? Click on it and check it out!

I am the king of procrastination! Fear my ability to put off to tomorrow what I can do today! Failing that, check out what I did a couple months ago at Anime Expo 2010 and Club 2 The Maxx, a competing one day event to Anime Expo.

Despite the initial prediction of looming disaster, I have to admit, this Anime Expo was quite fun, though I doubt it would have been as fun without the Club 2 The Maxx event. It’s something to consider that maybe there needs to be a few competing events during a convention; meaning the convention and someone putting on something else similar right next to it, so if the party is going bad in one, you can bail to the other. It may work out better in the long run, but regardless it certainly did this year. Still, go ahead and check it out, maybe you’ll come to the same conclusion.

I’ve also updated the ACEN 2010 report to include the location to the entertaining AMV “The Cyrus Virus” which was the AMV that perked me up at the end of the convention after suffering from serious burnout.

Because I am the biggest slacker of all time, it’s taken me this long to note that Beacon has uploaded his 2010 San Diego Comic Con photos to TFA Cosplay; check ’em out, they’re quite something.

Also, due to the fact it’s going to take me some further time to deal with the ACEN Masquerade issues, not to mention the Anime Expo Masquerade issues, I’m going out of order and making the Fanime 2010 Masquerade available which is, as has been for a few years, hosted by Nyaa Torrents.

Hopefully in a few days I’ll have the Anime Expo article written and gotten something concrete on the ACEN video. Enjoy!

Someone had the bright idea to release a kick ass Transformers game and a Dragon Quest game recently.  I must find these people and both thank them profusely and beat them to death, because I have work to do, damnit!

On the subject of work, I’ve finally processed the nearly 400 pics I took for Anime Expo 2010.  You can either click on the link up top or just click right here if you want.  And now I have to go and see about so much much more…oh Lord what did I do to deserve this?  Oh, right, I volunteered.

So, back from Anime Expo and finally got some information on one of the most screwed up technical problems I’ve ever seen in video editing software of any sort. Simple little problems like…oh…I dunno…ADDING A WATERMARK?! Anyway, after going through several solutions which plain flat out just don’t work (not working on linux…gee, that sounds familiar) I find myself back at Avidemux using a plugin designed to work with wine, avisynth. A powerful scripting tool to be sure, but being a scripting tool with a hacked in plugin solution, getting the right verbage down for certain plugins is…harrowing to say the least.

Regardless, I’ve got it. So, without further ado, here’s the Anime Central 2010 Fashion Show torrent as recorded by yours truly, and hosted by Nyaa Torrents. Now all I have to do is figure out how I’m going to deal with this Maquerade video. I’ve got an in with another person who filmed most of the Yoshiki thing in the middle. I only hope we all have enough to hack together the whole thing.

Could it be? Am I sick? Have I ceased procrastination? Hell if I know, but in any event, the Fanime 2010 Report is up for viewing.

As in all the previous years, this one was a great convention, though I may have over-scheduled myself a bit. Probably wasn’t the best of ideas with the lingering traces of the stuff I was suffering from at ACEN still in my system. Thankfully they’d opened up a Safeway supermarket right near the convention which was a great place for food, drugs, and other essentials which reduced so many of the problems we usually have to far more manageable levels…and then we fill up our time at the convention with other things to do, heh. But why am I telling you here? Click up on that link and check out all the fun stuff I saw and took part in.

Wow, I’m getting faster. Maybe I can get the Fanime report out sometime soon too? In any event, here’s the Anime Central 2010 Writeup at Dragons Anime that I’ve been planning to get done for awhile now.

As it was in the past two years, I’ve got nothing but good things to say about the convention. If you’re ever looking for a good time, this is the place to go (though maybe they should think about adding a day), I guarantee, so I hope I did the experience justice. But don’t just take my word for it, click on that link up there and check out my full thoughts on it which includes some news items for those looking for the videos from this year’s convention.