Animefest Report

Last weekend I went to Animefest in Dallas, TX. It was my first anime convention, and I had a great time. I went with a friend, his wife, and a friend of hers, although the two ladies spent the weekend shopping around Dallas instead of attending the convention. The picture above is a shot of the Dealer room, which I spent a good deal of time in.



Here is a shot of the lobby near Artist alley. I attended a few panels while at the convention. Some of them were hit and miss as the very first panel of the day was cancelled because the guest artist, Matt Herms, was still driving to the con. The Webcomic panel didn't have a lot of people sitting in on Friday, so their weren't a a lot of questions asked. It was still enjoyable listening to the artist talk about their favorite comics, and how to get started in the webcomic industry. I sat in on the Visual Novel panel even though I'm not interested in actually making one myself. It was held by a group called Sake Visual who are attempting to make original English language VN's. They actually have 2 free to play ones they made on their site, but I haven't checked them out. It's good to know that there are groups trying to get more English VN's out there.

The last panel I attended on Friday was the Anime Club How To panel held by Mu Epsilon Kappa. Think their may of been 10 or so people there so one of the people giving it actually wanted to cancel it. He's co-presenter talked him into continuing since people had shown up. Instead of following their discussion outline he just asked everyone what they wanted to know about starting your own Anime Club. Learned some stuff, and will be looking into getting something started here.

Other than panels I walked around the dealer area for awhile. Saw several items I would of liked to get, but had to make sure I had enough to eat on for the weekend. Didn't make my major purchases until Saturday. Bought some Melon Pan, and Chocolate Cornets that had been made fresh by an Asian bakery in Plano, TX called Mozart. Was the first time having either item, and they were extremely good. Especially the chocolate cornet.


Started Saturday off wanting to attend the World of Bishoujo Games, but the presenter decided to sleep in since only a few people signed up for it on the Animefest website. Went and watched an episode of K-On! since that was canceled until the next panel started, Learn Japanese With Anime!. The panel was for advertising classes the presenter gives in Richardson, TX. He went over a bit how he uses anime to help you learn Japanese. We went over conjugating some verbs, and listening to clips in full speed then at a reduced speed to see if we could pick up what they were saying. He made understanding how to conjugate the -te form of the verbs we went over easier than some of the books I've looked at for self study.

After that I sat in on the voice actor panel. Lots of laughs were had as they talked about their favorite roles, favorite non-anime TV shows, and Chris Rager singing his favorite '80s song in the voice of Hercule Satan. The Funimation Industry panel showed off some trailers for upcoming releases, and gave away some DVD's They had an Urd Dakimakura which they hinted would be given away, but ended up not being given out. Of the new series they showed trailers for I think I'm most interested in Corpse Princess. After the Funimation panel I went and made my final purchase pictured further down and called it a day for the convention. Afterwards we all went to eat at a place called Sushi Yama. More on that below also. Now form some cosplay pictures. These were some of my favorite costumes.


Travis Touchdown from No More Heroes

This was probably the best costume I saw while at the convention. Unfortunately I took the picture with my camera which is why it's a bit blurry. My camera sucks. Was able to borrow my friends afterwards, so the other pictures are better.


Celty_Sturluson from Durarara!!

Haven't watched this series, but think I will now.


The Doctor and Rose from Doctor Who

I guess even Time Lords enjoy anime.


Nia Teppelin from Gurren Lagenn


DC Heroes vs DC Villians


Samurai


No clue who the characters are, but had to get a shot of this. Anyone care to fill me in?

As I mentioned above on Saturday we went to a place called Sushi Yama. I had come across mention of the place online when searching for Okonomiyaki recipes and saw lots of great reviews. But the two biggest selling points for trying the place was they served a lot of tradition Japanese food that you don't find in your typical American Japanese restaurants, at least here where I live. Also on Saturdays they have 1.00 sushi (min. 10 pieces) and all the reviews said it was the best Sushi in Dallas.

The place is small, and laid out like you might find in a mom and pop sushi restaurant in Japan. At least that's the feeling I got. I didn't take any pictures of the interior, but you can find some pics here as well as pictures of more of the food they serve. A scan of their menu can be found at SushiDallas.org

My 3 companions aren't really into Japanese food so they ordered "safe" items they were some what familiar with. One ordered Teriyaki chicken, one Teriyaki beef, and the other Tempura shrimp. I tried getting them to expand their culinary horizons, but failed miserably. One of them did try the ice cream with sweet beans.


For my meal I ordered Okonomiyaki, which I have made before myself. It was completely different from how mine turned out, and I was in such a hurry to try it I took a bite before remembering I wanted to photograph it for the blog. Probably the biggest turn off on trying to get my friends to try a piece was that the heat from the okonomiyaki was making the bonito flakes move on the plate.


The second item of the night was Takoyaki, or Octopus Balls. It's pieces of octopus mixed in a batter and then fried into the a ball. This also had bonito on top which brought up more "Ew! It's still moving" comments. Despite that they were quit good.


The first of my 10 pieces of 1.00 sushi they brought out were the 2 yellowtail, seared tuna, and tuna nigiri. Again in my rush to see if the sushi was as good as all the reviews said I ate the tuna nigiri before photographing the plate. Was it worth it? You bet. It was worlds better than any sushi I have had here my home town. Really wish there was a place like that here. You might notice the lack of rice in the photo. That's because the portion of rice is very small, probably has to do with it being 1.00 a piece. But skimping a little on the rice is fine by me, because as you can tell they don't skimp on the size of the piece of fish you get. And as I said each piece was better than any I've had here.


I also ordered 3 eel and 1 sea eel. I've had eel before, but never sea eel so wanted to see the difference. The sea eel had a different texture than the regular eel, and I a better taste in my opinion. I had never had salmon eggs or spicy tuna so gave them a try. The tuna was good, but salmon eggs don't have much of an actual taste. I didn't order the avocado slice nigiri, and assume the sushi chef put them on the plate to fill it out. Not really big on avocado so only ate one piece of it.


For dessert I had the Taiyaki with ice cream. They were very good, but all the sweet bean paste makes it a very heavy dessert.


Now onto the loot of the trip. I came back with the Kagami Miku Cosplay version Figma, and the Dark Saber Figma, as well as the Freeing 1/4 scale Kagami.


The booth I got the Kagami Figma at was selling 20.00 grab bags. They were putting some bags together while I was there and noticed they were putting some Revoltechs into them. So me and my friend both decided to buy one of the ones that were already made. I ended up with the above items. My friend didn't score a Revoltech in his, but did get a Midvalley the Hornfreak trading figure from Trigun, a trading figure from Tenjho Tenge, Reign the Conqueror DVD, volume 4 of Card Captore Sakura manga, a Sgt. Frog trading figure (which his wife didn't care for since it was a girl in a bikini), and a 3 pack of chibi style Tenchi Muyo characters.

Well that's it for now. I actually ordered a better camera yesterday. When it comes in I'll post some pictures of the figures I got. Until then.

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