Anime North 2015

Hey guys! What's up? I know it's been a couple of weeks since Anime North finished but I've just been too busy to update this thing in a timely manner. Still, I would like to cover my Anime North experience!

I wasn't planning to go to Anime North this year but decided last minute that I would go for Sunday. Anime North is a really popular convention that is over-packed whenever I go. The time you have to wait in line and the space you have to walk around could both use some improvement. That aside, I did have fun at this expo and got some really good deals on books. When I first entered the con, I saw an anime kigurumi booth and had to take a pic!

 I left and eventually came back to their booth to get a group shot:

Their booth was called 'Rise the Pig Studios' so check them out for some cool outfits. While walking around I ran into two people I had to take a picture with (Lord Zedd and Deadpool)

Unfortunately the Lord Zedd picture came out blurry but it was cool to see someone dressed up as him nonetheless. I also thought the Kingdom Hearts x Deadpool concept was a great idea for a costume. Next up, I'll cover some of the cool items that I ran into. First up are two horror collectibles that have Jason and Freddy as women? Or women cos-playing as Jason and Freddy? Either way......they look great!

I also ran into some Power Ranger items. I didn't buy any of them for one reason or another (size, price, not the version I wanted, etc..) Still, I got to support the Power Rangers and show off those products.

As many of you know, I am a big fighting game fan. As such, I took some pics of characters from different fighting games. We got Shermie (one of my favourite character designs), Poison and Akira (I think Virtua Fighter doesn't get as much attention as it should).

I also found a figure for my favourite X-Men (Jubilee) but held off because I think I can get a better price down the road. I was surprise they made a figure for her since she isn't the most popular character and I will definitely be getting it down the road.

My cousin was searching for this Pikachu x Charizard plushie the whole con but unfortunately couldn't find the real one for a good price. I have to say, I wasn't too impressed with the prices because I thought they would be better on Sunday. According to my people; the prices were better for certain things but not for much.

Next up is just a batch of photos I took of things that looked cool:

I was surprised to see an Aeris figure worth 1000 dollars! I'd be more surprised if someone bought it but then again FF7 is the most popular in the series. After browsing around the con we decided to head to the Sheraton hotel because that's where the gaming goes down.

If I was staying in a hotel for Anime North then this would definitely be the spot for me. They had a bunch of TV's set up for different games (Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Smash Bros, Miku Dance Something, etc...) They also had a projector that had a live tournaments shown on it.

There were also Indie developers showing off their games in the main lobby. The first game is a puzzle game reminiscent to megaman and the second game is one where you have to work with your team-mate to keep the ball in your area for a certain amount of time. Both these games were fun to try out and it was nice that we got to play them before they were released.

They also had a bunch of rooms that were dedicated to certain things (one room was Rockband another was retro games etc...). I was surprised to see this room which had a DDR machine aswell as a Japanese DJ game that I never seen before! Not only that but they had a mixer game that seemed to be from Japan (if anyone knows the name of the games then feel free to let me know!)

We eventually went back to the con and decided to do one more walk around before we left. During that time. my friend noticed a black ranger picture and we decided to head over there to find out more about it. We found out that this artist was Kurt Lehner and he was commissioned to do some work for the second black ranger. After talking to him some more we found out he designed Franklin the turtle and did some work on Gargoyles. After talking to him for a while I decided to show that support and pick up some of his work (had to get the black ranger because of Power Rangers and of course Gargoyles because I watched that all the time back in the day).

 I also picked up a bunch of books that were a dollar each! This was the best deal at the con and I was surprised there were so much good titles left over.

That was pretty much all I did at Anime North. It was a fun convention and I saw a lot of really great costumes. There are some areas the event organizers can work on like space and line management but all-in-all it was a good experience. That's it for now though, until next time!