By kmurabe Posted on

Kumoricon 2014

This past weekend has been one of the nerdiest weekend’s I’ve had in a long, LONG time.
A group of friends and I all decided to go to Kumoricon (an anime convention) in Vancouver, WA.

The weekend was full of cosplay, guests, amazing artists, and awkward games. Pretty exhausting, but it was GREAT!

Here are my Top 3 highlights:

Cosplay!
This was the first time that I have EVER done cosplay at a convention. I ended up dressing up for 2 days. One of those days included dressing up in the waitress costume from Azumanga Daioh, and then the next day reusing my Link costume from last year’s Halloween. I was a little nervous no one would recognize what I was when I was wearing my Azumanga Daioh costume. The show is pretty old, but to my surprise (maybe I shouldn’t be surprised), people did recognize it! Those that did made me feel really good about my attempt to create the costume.

Holding up “my” manga.
Zelda asked me to rescue her! Instead we posed for a picture.

My Link costume made me pretty nervous too, since I feel that more people would be critical of it since it’s so iconic. However, people gave out compliments and took photos xD. Overall my first cosplay experience was a very positive one! It was nice to be in a space where things like this are widely accepted.

Artist Alley
If there’s one place that I spent most of my time (and my money), it’s the artist alley. So many inspiring people with different styles and product ideas. I feel that it is important for artist to be supporting other artists by sharing their work with people you know.
Here are a few business cards that I snagged from various booths there.

Someday, when I have time, money and products, I want to try and have a booth at a con too. We’ll see someday though.

Meeting Cool Voice Actors
When we first arrived at Kumoricon, I had no intention of going to any of the voice actor meet and greets. Most of the time they have English voice actors from shows that I have never seen. Even more so, I would likely never be watching it in English to begin with, so that’s why I was about to pass. BUT, during our first night in Vancouver, I started reading the guest bios and realized that the voice of Hiei from Yu Yu Hakusho (Chuck Huber) would be visiting. This may not seem like a big deal to some, but I used to watch Yu Yu Hakusho EVERY weekday afternoon after school on Toonami, in English… and Hiei was one of my favorite characters. Yu Yu Hakusho is my all time favorite anime too. So I HAD to go.

Another person that was going to be there was Christopher Sabat, who is the voice of various characters of Dragonball Z. DRAGONBALL Z! Including Piccolo and Vegeta. I don’t know who in America (at least in my generation) has NOT watched DBZ in English. So of course, I HAD to go see him too.

Chuck Huber (left) Chris Sabat (right)

Anyway, my friend and I didn’t have anything for them to sign in particular, but being the growing artists that we are, we took some paper from the arts and crafts room and doodled some of their characters in our hotel room. We then took those to have them sign them.

Chris Sabat liked my doodles!!! He even took a picture of them before signing them. I was so SO cool! He even did a Kuwabara impression for me (who is also from Yu Yu Hakusho & he is the I later tweeted him and Chuck Huber to thank him, and HE REPLIED & RETWEETED! I’m totally geeking out right now, but honestly, this was probably the biggest highlight of Kumoricon for me.

Anyway, that’s my wrap up of Kumoricon 2014.

Thanks for reading my geekdom!

One Reply to “Kumoricon 2014”

  1. Pingback: Anime Expo 2017 – Kelli Urabe

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