Fan Expo 2015 (Last time I went before this was 2008)

Yo! How has everyone been? Con season is almost over and it has me thinking about what I should focus on after. Twitch? Youtube? blog about different topics? make a comic? write a script? make skits? these are all things I've been contemplating but I haven't decided yet. Anyways, I went to Fan Expo yesterday (Sunday) for the first time in 7 years. The reason I didn't go for so long is because it was really disorganized and overcrowded. Plus, the staff seemed like they weren't properly trained to deal with so much people. The only reason I went this year was because my friend wanted to meet PJ Phil (he's a YTV host from back in the day) and since I grew up watching Phil as well, I decided to tag along. I was sceptical going in to this con because of my past experiences, so I was prepared for the worst.

My friend and I went on Sunday because we knew it would be the least packed that day. The good thing about this year was the fact that they used both the South and North parts of the Metro Convention Centre (it's about a 15 minute walk between the buildings but they really needed it with their huge crowd). In 2008 when we first attended, the convention was only in the South building which caused overcrowding, so it was good to see that they got more room for the event.  We entered the North building first and this area had the celebrity signing, horror and community sections. The vendors there all had great products to check out and take pictures of. Here are some of my pictures from the North building:

This was a signed poster from the group Goblin. I wanted to ask if it was the same Goblin that worked on the Suspiria soundtrack but forgot to go back.

Just some random props I saw hanging around the horror section.

Had to take a picture with Jason! This was selling for 350 which is a pretty good price.

Those were all the pictures I got at the horror section. They also had free face painting for kids in that area which I thought was a good idea. Now I will show some of the stuff that was being sold in the North building.

I have a lot of friends that play League of Legends (I play as well sometimes) so I had to get pics for them.

Had to take a picture of all these great banners!

Some artwork that was in the area. I never seen this Army of Darkness one before.

Some street fighter and Simpsons figures. I got the Honda one in a Street Fighter surprise bag that I bought at Unplugged Expo.

These were probably the greatest find at the expo. Unfortunately they weren't being sold because of how rare they are to get nowadays.

I didn't take pictures at the celebrity section because I planned to come back to the North building and get the autographs at 3 PM; Unfortunately, Tara Strong and Nolan North left before then and Gillian Anderson costs 90 dollars for a personalised photo and 80 dollars for a photo-op...so those didn't happen. I did manage to get Steve Blum's autograph and it was great to meet him.

I was really impressed with everything that I saw in the North building and it got me wondering...what could be in the South building? So my friend and I walked there (took about 15 minutes) and this area had the artist alley, video games and movies. To my surprise, they also had a Street Fighter V beta with all the announced characters so far! Unfortunately, they didn't have arcade sticks and we weren't allowed to record any game-play. I picked R.Mika both times and lost but she seems to play really different in this game. Also, it's going to take a while to get familiar with the new mechanics but I had a blast trying it out. My friend did manage to get some footage before we were shut down:

I didn't take much pictures on this side because I was too busy playing the games lol. Here are the few I did take:

Doing the signature pose near a Halo Lego Figure

The Witcher trying to stop the signature post

Had to get the power rangers and TMNT in there

Can't forget Deadpool!

And of course, I have to include the whole reason we went to this expo...to meet PJ Phil!:

It was a pleasure meeting him and it brought back memories of watching the Zone when I saw his table lol. He's a genuinely funny person and you could tell he enjoys meeting everyone that grew up watching YTV back in the day.

 All in all, I would say I was pleasantly surprised with how good this event is now compared to the last time I went. They have really come a long way and hopefully they can find ways to continuously improve this event. They also had other attractions that I took pictures with but didn't include in this blog (you can always check out my Instagram if you want to see more). There was one problem and it was the fact that it was almost impossible to leave their official parking area near the North Building. We waited about an hour and a half before we went back to the car to exit and there were still problems. I would suggest getting some workers to help remind people to pay before they exit and to help them out by the exit bars so that they can leave with little issue. Other then that, it was a great expo; This pretty much sums up my feelings:

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Two cons left and then it's back to hibernating lol. Until next time!

Going to ConBravo for the First Time

Hey guys! As you all know, I have been going to a lot of cons this summer and I recently went to two that I haven't attended before. These cons are both still fairly new and don't have much guests appearing at them. Fist, I will talk about ConBravo, let's get started!

I initially wasn't going to go to this event because I had a wedding to go to the previous day. I thought I would be tired, but I wasn't, so we headed to the event a little late (around 3 hours late). I had no goal at this con, mainly because I didn't know any of the guests there (they were all youtubers that I was unaware of) so I was just following my friend to see how the con was. My friends goal was to meet the Black Nerd and he did just that at the TMNT panel. The TMNT panel that was hosted by the Black Nerd and his colleagues was handled really well. They talked about the good memories:

And the bad memories:

I didn't take much pics at this con because it was fairly small and I wasn't there for a long period, so taking pictures wasn't really on my mind. In addition to that, when I found the game room, I didn't leave that area. I had low expectations going into this con, so when I found the game room and it had a Street Fighter and King of Fighters arcade cab, I was like:

At first, I thought you had to pay 25 cents to use the arcade cabinets but then I found out you didn't have to pay anything! This was pretty awesome because I doubt people would've been playing otherwise. Some of the arcade cabs that were there were: Street Fighter Alpha, Street Fighter 3, Mortal Kombat 3 and a Neo-Geo collection one.

They also had a set up for Ultra Street Fighter 4, Killer Instinct and CVS2. It was my first time playing Killer Instinct and it seems like a fairly easy game to jump into (I was beating people that played the game before). I still don't know how to play that game but it was fun and the people that I played were all really nice. The guys that were good at fighting games were pretty much crowded around the Third Strike cab (I got some wins and losses there).

You could tell whoever was in charge of setting up this area was a big fighting game fan and knew exactly how to set up a gaming area. There were all types of games including: dancing, mixing, fighting, retro and the list goes on. 

Now I will show some of the stuff I saw in the video game area:

This is the E.T videogame that is famous for being terrible. I played it for about 3 minutes and couldn't get out that area. I have to say they might be right about this one lol.

Of course I had to hit the classic SF2 for Super Nintendo. Props to the guys that still have a working SNES from back in the day (I don't sadly).

This was the retro area that had SNES, Atari, PS2 and other retro systems running the classics.

This was a mixing game that I didn't get to try out but it looked awesome! Overall, ConBravo did exceed my expectations because of the one gaming area. This con had the best gaming area I have seen at any of these events. The con itself is small but for 20 dollars admission, there's not much to complain about. This is a con I would visit again for the games. Hopefully they get more guests that I know of in the future.

That's pretty much my experience at ConBravo. I will try to get my post about Unplugged Expo (the second con I attended recently) up soon. Until then,

 Peace!

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!