Daisho Con 2009

Around 2:00, Sarah and Evan had to go to their masquerade pre-judging appointments. The rest of us were off to check out a slightly different kind of costume contest.

Saturday
The Fall

It's a pretty set-up for the cosplay swimsuit contest, where assorted cosplayers would show off their character's bathing attire. On paper, it sounds about as creepy as Anime Milwaukee's infamous character auction. In reality...

...well, it was actually one of those "draw your own conclusions" type things. With the obvious caveat of there being lotsa girls in swimsuits posing for pictures, the host treated it with an appropriately casual reverence and everybody involved seemed to have a lot of fun... including the late-entry Pyramid Head that jumped into the pool. I'll put it in the "Mostly Harmless" folder.

For no particular reason, Nick K. as Captain Hammer.

Some friendly uniformed officials and one annoying kid kindly retrieved Evan for us so we could continue our quest for the magenta pen.

Since we pointed Sir Catherine's team in the right direction to find the secret portal code, she returned the favor by helping us with this- namely that the prisoner arrested by the Badger for fleeing Minnesota (can't say I blame him) had a magenta pen and a penchant for forging officer signatures. It's always in the most obvious place. With dynamite secured, we settled into the AMV Contest and readied our minds and bodies for an assault on the spider's lair.

The AMV Contest... um, yeah. Factor in the delay and the move into an anime viewing room (sorry if you wanted to see Outlaw Star, folks) and the whole thing was a fiasco. The audio in the room was something of an afterthought as the projection speakers didn't project (and one video set its sound level to "barely audible"). The projector's video had a funny tint, as if the red forgot to show up for work. And the judging could be described as anywhere from misguided to "holy crap, have you ever watched an AMV before?" The winner was obvious: that awesome Beck video that took Best in Show at Detour. It was the second and third place videos that got WTF looks. One was a ho-hum action video that never really evoked any emotion. I'd give that the benefit of the doubt, but the third place video was so pixellated that Nick F. and I were in the back shuddering at it, barely able to discern what the hell the video was actually about. There were several better videos in that contest and with judging like that, I'm glad I didn't submit anything. It's joining Anime Iowa on the blacklist until further notice.

Hey hey! Another Persona 3 cosplayer! And Chihiro and Mitsuru even have an in-game connection, being part of the most badass student council this side of Molly and Claude. Well, not so much now if you've been following MST.

Regardless, armed with cloaks, passwords, codes, a cheap plastic spider ring and a nautical crapton of dynamite, it was time to enter the realm of spider god Arderath.

Wish I had a picture, because it was freaking sweet.

We set the code to turn the portal on, entered a tunnel and followed a path to a pit of death. Evan needed all the ammo in a provided Nerf gun to shoot the control to lower the bridge on the gun (later we found out that if he had missed his last shot, his dead orange carcass would have been a bridge for the rest of us). Then came the Indiana Jones ~~ripoff~~ homage where we had to cross a path by stepping on letters that spelled Arderath. Evan decided that following the fuse meant for the dynamite was sufficient and died a horrible death. Then we encountered an impassible wall and two cups. Erin picked one up that had a fragment that fit into the wall. In need of a second, I picked the other cup... and died a horrible death. That alone wasn't bad, but it meant watching Sarah, Erin and AJ try to figure out how to open the wall, while Arderath grew impatient, and hungry, on the other side. It woke up and ate them all. Ouch.

Turns out we missed the second fragment between the pit of death and the Indy tiles. Oops.

Sarah and I headed back to our room to chill for a second. The place was dark, creepy and utilized strategic strobe effects, leaving us a tad off. Demon realms do that to people; it's part of the territory. The break also gave me a chance to get out of cosplay before the Steam Century reveal and masquerade. Sarah jumped into line for that, giving me time to wander into the realm as they were striking the set. Scott gave me the inside tour, particularly the spider that didn't look nearly as fearsome in the light. Turns out he was the one playing the spider while we were in there. Had our survivors gotten past the wall and tied the dynamite to the fuse, he would have chased them back through the path while Evan and I got to watch as ghosts. Words can't stress how much I wanted to witness that.

There's our Arderath. Who's a good boy?

And more of the crew on hand to pass out medals... many of them posthumous.

Only problem was that the Steam Century wrap-up was right before the masquerade started, which meant we were stuck with bad seats for the cosplay.

Thankfully Richard came through with the "holy crap must have" picture of the assorted homunculi.

And one of the steampunk cosplayers treats us to an homage to Rick Astley. Even as RickRolling becomes increasingly passé, it was a delightful performance.

The masquerade itself was all right, except for couple nagging issues. Most notably, the tech guys only adjusted the sound level for host Nick Izumi and not co-host Kara Kuro. And she is much louder. So whenever she took the mic... yeah, it was bad. Adjusted mics for both of them would have helped immensely. I'm also growing leery of the interaction between hosts and cosplayers, particularly a couple instances that seemed scripted out ahead of time (only one entry had sound, for example... and others could have used it), which jeopardizes impartiality. The continued goofy pace of it was entertaining enough though, despite of (or possibly due to) the constant attempts on Nick's life. And people wonder why I play it straight hosting at Geek.Kon.

On the plus side, Evan won an award for his Arcanine.

Next stop... dodgeball. Something else I haven't played in a decade.

The story, as I remember it, had something to do with the whole Ed vs. Roy thing, and a battle between their followers.

It's doubly enhanced this year with Travis Willingham on hand to witness the event. About one-third of the players were actually concerned with all this. The rest were just there because it was dodgeball and that meant throwing stuff at people. Count me in the latter group.

Funny thing is, I remember being quite bad at dodgeball back in the day, but was surprisingly level here, eliminating a fair share of opponents, despite a couple embarrassing failures to catch easy balls. Another thing- for a convention full of anime geeks not trained by Rip Torn, a lot of us sure know how to throw.

Apparently I was playing on Ed's side. During one game we were winning handily, Travis himself entered the fray and grabbed a ball to the cheers of everybody on his side.

I nailed him in the chin fifteen seconds later... to the cheers of everybody on my side. One poor girl held out single-handedly for a good five minutes and earning Travis's respect and admiration in the process. But I got her too.

Funny thing was, Travis said he wasn't planning on playing due to liability issues. Yeah... for him.

The only side effect of this awesome game of dodgeball was that I jammed my thumb something fierce. Not from playing... from high-fiving a guy after a victory. It wasn't one of my finer moments.

Kefka laughed at me. But that's okay, because any time a VI character can barge into a Final Fantasy photoshoot, it's a good thing.

Next Up- Even More Apples to Apples! Con Veterans! A Hallway Summit!