Big Apple Anime Fest 2003

Day One

3:30 PM to 8:00 PM

Persocom
I actually started out the day at work. Since I didn't have all day to prepare for the convention, I decided to go as a generic persocom, from Chobits, since I could wear pieces of my costume to work and then put on the rest there. I went into work with my hair in Chun Li buns, heavy but natural looking makeup, a white blouse, red tie, black suit jacket, dark blue pleated skirt, stockings, and Mary Jane shoes.
Me and "Light" Chii and "Dark" Chii from Chobits
Luckily, my company let us out early for the holiday weekend, so at 3 o'clock, I pulled on my knee socks, put my red lipstick on, let down my hair and tied red ribbons in it, and off I went!
Some of the first cosplayers I saw, but I don't know who they are dressed as.

It was HUMID out! Another bad weather con. ::sob:: By the time I got to the Marriott, my pigtails were virtual puffballs. I picked up my tickets and started walking around. The first person I saw I recognized was Kevin Lillard! He made it! So there were pictures of me on A Fan's View the very first night of the convention.

Not a whole lot of people stopped me for my photograph, possibly because I wasn't wearing a "real" costume, but still, quite a few were taken. (Mainly by men, tee hee.) After a few boring standing ones, I perfect the art of the "pouting kneel" which I will hopefully have a few of.
I don't know the character names, but I think the girl is from Magic Users Club.
There were quite a few pairs of Chiis (always light and dark together) and a few I got a picture with.
Dark and Light Chii again

I found Ranma pretty quickly, who was wearing a sign, "The principal made me cut off my pony tail." Heh heh heh. The line for the dealer's roomm was HORRENDOUS, so I decided to start just snapping photos, and looking for Usagi Kou.

Well, I went through ONE WHOLE ROLL OF FILM in only like an hour! So I opened another camera and resolved to save this one only for Sailor Moon cosplayers, and other costumes I actually recognized. I found three that day: Professor Tomoe, Sailor Saturn (I got a cute pic of them together hugging!) and a Sailor Galaxia.
DJ Ranma S as Ranma Saotome from Ranma 1/2
(If you're looking for them, they will be up on the character pages of this website as soon as I'm done creating profiles for the cosplayers and all that.)
Ken from Street Fighter, and someone else I don't know.

I started finding a few other people I knew (DDR Boy, the guy who was Tuxedo Kamen last year--again, look for him on the Tuxedo Kamen page) but STILL no Usagi! I had searched each floor about three times by this point, so I sat down to see if she would walk by. Fifteen minutes later, STILL no Usagi. So I went back to searching.

The dealer's room had really thinned out by this point, so I decided to go in there to browse, and to see if I could find her there. Now, I normally have the resolution that I never buy anything the first day, as those are almost always impulse buys, and if I wait until the second or even third day, then it means that I really want them (and if you wait until the last minute, often they are marked down.)

DDR Boy! Gomen, I forget who you were dressed as!

But then I found the Sailor Moon booth. And there were the ADORABLE little figures that you put together yourself, of all the Inners in bathing suits. I tried to buy them all (and then I caved on a miko Rei) but they were out of one of the senshi, and then the guy accidentally gave me two Rei's, one of which I was going to return, but Vlad accidentally opened the bag, so now Alex is going to take it to work and put it on his computer (because I'm Mars.) So I resolved to go back the next day.

So, then, since I had just spent $25 on silly little figures, there was no reason to deny myself the perfectly practical $80 Utena box set. So I went from spending no money to spending over $100.
No clue who they are cosplaying. Sorry. Neato costumes, though!
I found a Terry Bogard cosplayer whom I glomped, and he seemed less then thrilled. What the hell? You can't tell me these guys get glomped all the time, I'M the only one with a Terry obsession!
Terry Bogard from Fatal Fury
(I only mention it because in case you didn't know, last year this guy seemed really put out that I glomped him.)
GLOMP!

However, I found THREE Miroku's, from Inu Yasha, to feed Hime-chan's obsession. Gentlemen (and cross-dressing ladies), she will bear your children ANY day!
Miroku 1
I had a lot of fun convincing the Miroku's to give me their sexiest pose.
Miroku 2
I'd have to say that Inu Yasha seemed to be the most popular series to cosplay from this year.
Miroku 3
But after all this searching, I still couldn't find Usagi!
A group of mostly Inu Yasha cosplayers, although I think there are some characters from other series mixed in there as well.
I found Ranma, who had changed into Barrett (good look for him, though he's rather thin) and he said he had seen her, but I missed her. I watched the Final Fantasy shoot, met up with a lot of the members of Cosplay.com and NYO!, and was just generally chatting, when I pouted to Ranma that I couldn't find Usa.
Ranma as "Beach" Barrett from Final Fantasy VII
He told me to close my eyes, which I did, and when I opened them, he was holding a (also closed-eyes) Usagi by her elbows in front of me! (She's rather tiny.)
Carrie as Aeris from Kingdom Hearts
We both screamed loud enough to deafen dogs in a five mile radius, and then for the rest of the con I got to sit down with her and Seiya and all of our friends and just take pictures--our friend David Ng (I'm Rei-chan on his page) got some BEAUTIFUL ones of us, and you know what's funny? Even though I was dressed like a persocom with curly hair...I still look like Mars when I'm next to her. ::grin:: I would be almost tempted to dress as Mars again just for her, but she only brought school uniform Usagi to BAAF, and I don't have a school uniform Rei.
Wee! Usa and me!
So we might as well wait until we can get together for an all day photo shoot.
Chii has an odd effect on persocoms...
I had bought a microphone for us to record our lines for our cosplay skit on Sunday, but I was pretty shaky from hunger and exhaustion by this point, and our skit leader wasn't planning to get started until 9 PM, so I begged off and asked him to find someone to dub me. They made plans to meet the next day at NINE AM to start the cosplay rehearsal, but considering I wasn't staying at the hotel, I really didn't want to make the trek in.
Mages! From several Final Fantasy games.
I gave our skit leader my home phone number in case they won't let him register without me, but I really wanted to just sleep in. After all, I had to get ready to dress as Tomoyo the next day...
I think she's from Angelic Layer...?

More Photos (I ran out of commentary!)
A group of J-Pop cosplayers, I believe.
Don't know who this is.
Kaneda from Akira
Bowser! Scourge of many Mario games.
Selphie from Final Fantasy 8
A Chocobo girl! She later had a sign that read, "Will Whark for Food"
Kingdom Hearts Yuffie and Aeris
Kingdom Hearts Yuffie, Squall, and Rinoa
A kick-ass Tifa cosplayer!
Another one! I was studying the Tifa cosplayers very carefully because of my own costume on Sunday...
You know, I don't think the girl in the blue hair was in costume, because she seemed very surprised when I asked to take her picture...
Dark Vash from Trigun
I don't know this costume, unfortunately
A female Wolfwood from Trigun
Team Rocket from Pokèmon
Cammy from Street Fighter
I think that's Julia, but why does she have wings? and Spike from Cowboy Bebop
The student council from Revolutionary Girl Utena! Squee!
And in a bizarre ending to a wonderful day, when I left the con at 8 PM, there were about one MILLION bicyclists riding down Broadway! When I asked them, they said it wasn't for a cause, it wasn't a prank, they just do it for fun.