A-Kon 21 Day 1: The Real Version...

So, our day 1 at A-Kon.  It started at 8 am, but somehow we didn't leave the house until 11...

We styled Daniel's wig roughly like Ragna's, but in the end he looked like Riku from Kingdom Hearts XD;;  He made Ragna's gloves, though, which was cool.  We turned Jordan into a JRocker with straightened/spiked hair, foundation, and fancy eyeliner~  Well, it really just looked like Rachel and Noel with three JRockers by the time we were all ready.

lol i think rachel can have a JRocker harem.

i did not expect A-kon to be so tiring. we were bombarded almost every second at A-Kon with flashes of light and cameras once we stepped into the con. it got old after a bit since we couldn't look at anything :( It took 2 or 3 times as long to get to places just because we stopped so much. As much as i was surprised with the number of people who knew about blazblue, i think it was just the fact that Christine's dress  was absolutely gorgeous :D and big and showstopping haha case in point--



man: please tell me you're who i think you are
christine: who do you think i am?
man: mina....from revenge of the vampire bunnies
LOL christine and i just look at each other...

christine's rachel was one of the only 3 there and I think it was the best :) not bc i'm biased (because i am lol) but objectively, it was made well and faithful to the original artwork hehe
there were several other noel's at the convention as well. mine's wasn't bad in comparison, considering it's my first costume ever.  Definitely had lots of wardrobe malfunctions lol it's a good thing we packed up a emergency con kit.  I lost a gold button and my spray paint rubbed off on my outfit giving me terrible deodorant-looking marks (grrrrrrrr.....), people kept stepping on my streamers, deflating the metal tips etc. lesson learned--i'm top coatiing future metal pieces and lol by the end of the night, i pretty much perfected my streamer wrap/unwrap process so that i wouldn't get stepped on.

Personally, I think that Tiffy's Noel was the best of those there.  Both the hair and costume fit her well, and she just sort of had a video game character feel, you know?  Okay, maybe I'm biased too, but really -- Tiffy looked good as Noel.  Two others had a light blue that didn't look quite right.  Lots of people stopped her for her picture, too ^^  And she definitely had that fight pose perfected by the end, even if she didn't have the guns.  The only problems we had, I think, were that my ears kept flopping over and one of Tiffy's buttons fell off on her sleeve.  

I'm sad that I didn't have Nago and Gii, though TwT  One Rachel had Nago, and the other Gii.  The one with Gii had incorrect hair styling and her costume was not terribly well made, but she was so cute that she probably fit Rachel the best of the three of us.  I'm going to make Nago and Gii for our next round, definitely~  And Tiffy will make her guns, and we'll be even better v(^w^)v

i definitely have to make the guns...otherwise ran will just keep making fun =/

in the afternoon, wei and faruk arrived as carl clover and arakune. together with ran as hazama, we were a pretty good set :D i think by the next con, with daniel as ragna and jordan as jin or hakumen, we'll be awesome!

christine, i think we'll have to make a special post about our costume construction :P  Yeah, probably XD  Or else this post will be too long.

Due to the paparazzi crowd, we only made it through about 1 row of the Dealers' Room today.  After we ate lunch at a Chinese food place in Plaza of the Americas, we headed to stand in line for the opening ceremony.  Unfortunately, the ceremony consisted primarily of them thanking this or that person, and then bringing up a bunch of the guests that none of us knew because most of us only do anime/manga in Japanese.  (Well, scanlated mangas, but not webcomics or anything.)   The only person I recognized was Inugami Circus-Dan, a visual kei/J-Rock band.  Here, a picture:

They're an interesting group, although I don't really listen to their music.  A friend in high school introduced me to them, but I think I wasn't as interested in their style as some others back then.  (Subsequently, I forgot what they sound like.)  They were pretty cute, though.  They came on stage, and Kyouko (the singer, female) said a few things in English but seemed really embarrassed and shy.  Then one of the guys whispered in her ear for every line in Japanese she said after that XD

she really was cute :D "tonight we have a live" hehehehe

After that, we were thinking to go into line to see Inugami perform, but we had to wait an hour, so we wandered around for a while before getting back in line.  We were all pretty tired and gross, so we just stayed for one song.  Their music is interesting -- it's borderline hard rock music background, with guitars and drums, with a sort of old Japanese (maybe enka?) sound for the vocals.  I really liked the background music, but the vocals were so-so (just not my style, that is).  I'd like to look back into their music, though ^^

Somehow, we decided to go to King Spa Sauna, a Korean bath house that Wei has been talking about forever.  It was authentic Korean... which means getting nekked all together (with the genders separated, of course) and showering/sitting in hot baths together.  Tiffy and I had not been expecting to go on Friday, so we didn't bring extra clothes or shoes... it was kind of weird.  But we took our contacts off and couldn't see anything XD  Wen-shin, another girl who came to join our group (we went to middle school together, and she knows Scott C) as Tsubaki Yayoi, came with us.

Yeah i'm not sure why the boys were so adamant on going to the bathhouse...maybe there's something going on that we don't know about christine :P jk! but for once, i'm glad i have terrible vision. if you really think about it, there's something strange about stripping down with your friends and strangers o_O

As we were very awkwardly stripping down in front of the lockers, Wen-shin got us two towels each... but the towels were so tiny!  So, stifling embarrassed laughter, we shed our clothes and attempted to cover ourselves with those towels.  All three of us came out clinging onto those towels, and the Korean ladies there were laughing so much at us (=w=;;;)a  I'd have to admit, it must have been a pretty funny scene, though.

i'd liken it to a scene in some cheesy movie. i wonder how it's going to be when we go in japan...probably not any less awkward lol

We showered at these little stalls, sitting down.  It's pretty similar to the Japanese hot springs, actually.  After that, we all went into the hot (103 degrees) green tea bath for a while, then to the regular bath of the same temperature.  There was also a hotter bath (106 degrees), which I tried after that, and then Tiffy and I both went into the cold bath (73ish degrees).  We got separated from Wen-shin, but went together to the wet sauna, back to the cold bath, and then finally into the green tea bath.  It was actually pretty nice, once you get over the being unclothed part.  Though when we showered at the end, we were sitting on opposite sides (backs to each other), and Tiffy asked me if people ever have shower wars  XD  She then proceeded to spray me with her shower.  After a while we were just spraying each other over our shoulders... haha, the ladies probably thought we were so immature.

lol i couldn't resist. there are all these shower stall things with showerheads...it's hard to believe that not one person thought of doing that

When we finally came out, we wore these pink clothes they had available, and went outside to the common  area.  It turns out we were the last to come out (no concept of time in those spas), and we ran into Jordan.  The others were at a table in the corner eating (we totally missed them when we came out somehow).  Jordan showed us to all the interesting rooms they had: the Volcano Room, Ice Room, Salt Room, Pyramid Room... what else... there were a lot of rooms with different healing/cleansing powers.  The Ice Room felt pretty nice~  They claimed that it feels like the North Pole but... no, no it doesn't >__<;;

We got back and ended up sleeping at 4 am again...sigh