Sunday, February 26th found me massively unprepared for MangaNEXT 2012. For one thing, I hadn't made up my mind about which costume I was going to wear until the day before, although I had been leaning towards Other Worlds Umi pretty much the entire time. For another thing, I had gone to JenyBean's band's gig on Friday night, and had stayed out incredibly late partying, so I didn't get as much done on Saturday as I would have liked. Sunday morning, I paid the price for that unpreparedness while trying to get ready. I forgot I had let people draw on my lower back the other night. My blue contact lenses had dried out and I had to hunt up a new pair. But I was determined, and I perservered and was ready to leave the house by about 11 AM. I kissed Louis goodbye and hit the road—it was so much nicer to be able to just get in the car and drive, rather than take public transportation in costume!

It was a beautiful sunny day for a drive (and if other drivers reacted to the chick with the baby blue hair and the sunglasses on the road, I didn't notice), and I hit almost no traffic on my way out to East Rutherford. I found the Sheraton Meadowland Hotel & Conference Center with the help of my GPS, and I found a parking spot with almost no problem. I should have realized I was about to pay for all of that good luck. It was cool out, but I was only a short distance from the door, so I left my coat in the car so I wouldn't have to carry it with me all day, and I headed inside. Almost as soon as I walked into the lobby, a very sweet girl asked me for my photo. I did that thing that all cosplayers do, where you start to adjust your costume, and particularly in Umi's case I wanted to make sure the white skirt's waistband didn't show above my belt…my belt? What belt? I wasn't wearing a belt! I let the girl take a photo, since I didn't want to make her wait, and I then I high-tailed it back out to my car, certain that the belt had come off when I was taking off my jacket. No dice. Sigh. I would spend the rest of the day missing a fairly obvious part of my costume, and trying not to let it get me into a bad mood.

I headed upstairs to buy my badge, and ran into my second problem of the day: registration was closed! So they sent me over to Con Ops. Con Ops was busy with all of the tables that were closing, so they told me to head to registration…luckily, con staff are a lot more helpful and sympathetic than your average customer service rep, so rather than shuttling me back and forth, Con Ops let me register, AND gave me a $5 discount because, and I had not known this previously, MangaNEXT was only open until 3 PM on Sunday! Ah, well. A discount is a discount, and I had driven all the way out there, so I might as well enjoy it. My first stop was Artists' Alley, and true to most of the local cons I visit the first friend I got to see was Carrie! She was selling her hats as well as a few other homemade wares, and quite a few people had recognized the quality work that she does and shopped at her booth. We chatted for a bit, and then I moved on to see what else the con had to offer. There wasn't much else in the Artists' Alley to pique my interest, but I did meet a very nice (and VERY pretty) Hikaru! Yay for Magic Knight Rayearth cosplay!

Next stop was the Dealer's Room, although I was actually spending more time looking for people I knew than looking at the wares. (Not the Dealer's Room's fault, I'm just on a fairly strict budget. Hey, some of us are still paying off Christmas!) In the back of the room I saw DJ Ranma S and Patti. Ranma whipped out his camera, and I posed, and then I saw him looking at me more closely. “What, no hug for your little sister?”, I asked him, and he almost hit the floor. He hadn't recognized me! I think that counts as leveling up in cosplay. I took a picture of him and Patti together, but just as I handed my camera to Patti to get a picture of Ranma and I together, my battery died! Yes, yet another thing I had forgotten to take care of in preparation for the con. Ranma told me not to worry about it, that I could use any of his pictures for my convention report. I hope he hasn't regretted that.

I wanted to see a bit more of the convention, so we decided to head on again. Ranma warned me there wasn't much more to see, but agreed to play tour guide. Like the RPG playing nerds that we were, we formed a party--I was the Warrior, due to my love of hacking and slashing and my complete ignorance of concepts such as "blocking" or "healing", Patti was our Black Mage with her destructive magic, and as Taiki put it, there was really no one else she could be but the Tank. We headed up to some of the game rooms. I asked Ranma to take some pictures for me, and after checking out some of the different consoles they had set up, we watched some of the boys play video games.

We walked back to the main entrance, and talked for a bit, with Ranma taking pictures as we went. Since he knows just about everyone, it wasn't long before another convention attendee came over to say hi. It turned out he was in charge of running the Match Game, due to start in a little while, but some of his celebrity panelists hadn't shown, and he was looking for volunteers. I had vaguely heard of the Match Game, but I had never seen an episode, so Ranma volunteered to be on the panel, and went off with the host and Patti to prepare. Taiki and I stayed behind, and ended up talking to Lawrence Brenner, who I had met previously (at least at Japan Day, if not at other events) for a while.

Before too long, Ranma and Patti came back, and it was time to make our way over to the Match Game. In case you're unfamiliar with it, the object of the Match Game is for contestants to match the celebrity panelists' answers to fill-in-the-blank questions asked by the host--and since this was a manga convention, all of the questions were anime and manga themed. The difficulty lies in the fact that the celebrity panelists are also being as rowdy and humorous as possible, and the fact that some of them were cosplaying meant that they would also probably be answering in character. And believe me, during the first round alone they had me really cracking up. I could never be that witty on the fly!

I was given my chance, though. After watching a round or two to make sure I understood how the game was played, I raised my hand and was called up to be a contestant versus Stocking of Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt fame. I don't think I scored a single point (I'm not very good at guessing what other people will answer!) and I inevitably lost to Stocking, but we both had an awful lot of fun.

After my turn, I returned to my seat, and watched the rest of the game next to Patti (Taiki was filming the entire game for Ranma's convention coverage.) Patti got her chance to be a contestant next, and was the only contestant of the entire game who definitively won (ask her what they should rename Tokyo Tower sometime). After her turn, she and I kept whispering our answers to the next contestants's questions, and let me tell you, Patti was the funniest out of all of them. I would have enjoyed watching the game anyway, but watching it with her was incredibly hilarious.

After the end of the Match Game, we all trickled back into the hallway, and joined Ranma as he searched the halls to get a few last pictures and interviews for Anime Jam Session--in fact, all of the photos in this con report after the first four are courtesy of Anime Jam Session. Ranma's been doing this for a lot of years now and he has gathered some wonderful convention coverage during that time. It was fun to be able to watch him work.

By this point, the con was serious about closing up, so we knew that we would have to leave, but we were all having so much fun, we decided to head over to Harmon Cove where AnimeNEXT used to be back in the day, and grab some food together. Since we had four people and two cars between us, and we really had no reason to come back to the Sheraton, we decided to head out in two cars, with Taiki traveling with Patti in her car, and Ranma in my car with me. I warned Ranma that I still consider myself a fairly new driver, but if he was nervous, he didn't show it.

Before we headed out, our first stop was Patti's car, so Ranma could get some of his stuff. (Including his jacket—--the wind was a lot worse when we left the hotel, and my costume wasn't made for warmth, so he gallantly lent me his.) And Patti's car was so incredibly awesome, I had to get pictures of it. The decals of Clerks: The Animated Series (my favorite incarnation of the Clerks characters, hands down) alone would have sold me! Taiki also took some close ups of the car just for me. After everyone was situated, I had the fun of playing follow the leader as the leader for the first time ever--meeting up in the parking lot without blocking traffic, trying to get the GPS to cooperate, and then trying not to lose Patti in traffic on our way over. It was really challenging! But I don't think I did too badly, and really, I think she knew the way better than I did anyway.

Once we were in the outlet mall area of Harmon Cove, we took a look at the available restaurants and decided on Chili's. While we were there, everyone except for me loaded up Four Square, but once I saw that we could get discounts for checking in…well, I have to admit I signed up. But of course, I ended up not using my discounts (I can't have a free appetizer, I'm watching my weight!) and I haven't logged in since. It was a little hard for all of us to hear each other, because we were seated at the bar (if not, we would have had to wait over 20 minutes for a table), but even with that, we all had a fabulous time.

By the time we had finished our late lunch, it was getting late, and Louis had woken up and was waiting for me at home. We passed a theater on the way back to our cars and briefly entertained the idea of seeing Ghost Rider 2, but as I had seen it earlier in the week I knew there wasn't enough liquor in New Jersey to make it watchable. As I was heading back to New York I offered Ranma and Taiki a ride home, so we said our goodbyes to Patti, and then hit the road. Ranma, Taiki, and I had the most wonderful talk on the way back, ranging in topics from anime and manga of course, to politics and philosophy, and with Ranma showing me a better route than the GPS would have taken us, it was scenic as well. Fortunately I made it all the way to their place safe and sound, and then it was time to head home myself.

Where my belt was waiting for me. Of course.