AUSA 2011 Recap

I spent my weekend at Anime USA, an anime convention located in the Washington D.C. area, with my husband, two good friends, Kevin and Melissa, and my middle son, Luke. This is why there was a gap in posting here. ^_^ Just a heads up, but this week is likely to be rocky for posts too given the holiday, plus we're moving, so there may be a few days where I just don't have access to a computer or internet.

Onto the AUSA recap. This convention went off a lot more smoothly than AWA. We only had a few hitches getting the new bookmarks printed, but things came together, and we were actually on the road by 2:00 p.m. Thursday, which was awesome. The trip was easy, especially since no one was exhausted. We ate a leisurely dinner on the road to avoid most of rush hour traffic and pulled into our hotel a little after 7:00. We spent the evening playing cards (Munchkin mostly). It was nice not to be working on last minute laminating or costuming details--this doesn't happen very often.

Friday morning, we got to take our time waking up and dragging our butts downstairs to set up. My table ended up being in a slightly awkward location--it was right in the middle of a walkway that was only about 3-4 feet wide, which didn't leave a lot of room for people if they wanted to stop and look. I spent most of the weekend at my table--no surprise there, right? I did leave Friday evening to go see the Trigun movie with Luke, which was awesome, except for the fact that we got there late and couldn't really see the screen.

Saturday, my husband took Luke to see Godzilla vs. Mothra. Luke absolutely loved it, and apparently, near the end of the movie when Mothra was destroying a large chunk of the city, right after an especially large explosion, someone in the back yelled: "My cabbages!!!" Shaun said that got cheers from the audience. I kind of wish I'd been there to hear that one. For those who don't know what the cabbage reference is from, go watch the Avatar: The Last Airbender tv series. It's well worth watching.

Sunday was quiet, relatively. Overall, I had a blast at the convention. I really enjoyed talking with a lot of people who came by the table. I got to see some great costumes--there were tons of Miyazaki cosplays there this year, which I loved. My favorites were the girl dressed as Sheeta from Castle in the Sky and the couple dressed as Haru--in her yellow gown that she wears in the Cat Kingdom--and Baron from The Cat Returns. I also saw several Howl cosplays (Howl's Moving Castle), San (Princess Mononoke), Ponyo, and the two girls from My Neighbor Totoro--I don't remember their names. There was one particularly well-done Howl who went around Saturday with a Jack Sparrow taking votes as to who was more of a "lady's man." I, of course, voted for Howl. Jack's good, and this particular cosplayer did a great job of playing the role, but he can't compare to Howl, at least in my opinion. I found out Sunday from Howl that he won that contest by one vote. There wasn't really anything spectacular going on at AUSA this year, but the people really made it a great con.