My favorite anime guy

When we finally got in, the staff broke down and said they'd set up mics. I'm glad everyone got to do their lines. Some thoughts about prerecorded dialogue and live dialogue:

You CAN hear prerecorded dialogue. You can't usually hear live dialogue, even with mics. People are not used to mics, and especially people who want to move around and talk from everywhere. BUT prerecorded dialogue sucks because, for one thing, ours got a little messed up (not too bad though) AND it doesn't allow for audience reaction, so stuff gets missed. PLUS we didn't get to rehearse with it, and we had all recorded our lines separately, so we weren't really sure when things would be said.

I don't know if cosplayers are just overly sensitive, especially right before they know they are going to go onstage, or if I'm just used to putting up and shutting up from dealing with directors. But it was better than BAAF's cosplay last year--at least they had judges beforehand.

BUT all of the skits were really good. I won't go into who all won, since I couldn't take any pics from where we were seated (but at least we could see the whole thing on a screen) but everyone who won deserved to win. The level of professionalism was very high. Many skits were hilarious, and the dancing ones were beautiful. Our skit made people laugh, which made me feel great, but I think next year I will either cosplay alone, or in a very well organized group, or not at all, depending. Oh, and they played fanmade anime music videos, one of which (Sailor Moon on Jerry Springer) made me laugh so hard I cried, to keep us entertained while they judged--very smart. Widya looked dashing in a tux as emcee.