July 1-4, 2005. This is the second time I've been to Anime Expo. A friend
who was working staff this year got me a 4 day pass for free, and so all
I need to get was a pass for the girlfriend. Below are pictures I took
over the 4 day period (I only attended 3 of the 4 days)
Below are pictures of the "Modeling" contest held. I didn't
really know what to expect, and what I saw surprised me. There were a
total of 4 categories and one best of show award. The categories are as
follows: Mechanized, Mechanized Custom, Character, and Character Custom.
Side note: camera's were not allowed into this thing, but I took these
on the setup day, and I ended up missing a picture of the MG Sentinel
Gundam (which took the prize for Best Mechanized) Best Mechanized custom
was the Votom's Diorama. I spent some time talking to the modeler who
also did the Kodomas' Dio and Jin Roh dio (which I saw at the first Anime
Expo I attended a couple of years back held at Long Beach Convention Center).
The guy's from Walnut and teaches (I believe) and also heads the Anime
Club at Mt. San Antonio Collage. Most of his stuff is scratch built.
Below are the character models. I'm not familiar with any
of these, and I don't remember which ones won what, but some were fairly
impressive. There's one picture that should be added to the mecha section,
but I just don't know what the hell it is so I'm putting it here as well.
It looks like something out of Evangelion. Also, some folks brought kits
that have won at previous Anime Expos' which I found to be odd as well.
I only know this because of the awards that were sitting right next to
the figures.
Below are the kits I entered. Well, minue the SV-51, another
part broke on it so I had to take it out (no CA glue on hand) so I took
it home. Also below is a 1/275 scale Salamis Kai class ship from Zeta
Gundam built entirely from Legos; that some guy from D.C brought. You
folks going to Otakon will probably see this there, the guy told me he
was going to be going. This thing won best of show. This raised another
question for me, this was a modeling contest. Granted there's stuff involved
in putting together a bunch of legos to form anything, it just seemed
that the categories were just too damn broad and the definitions of "model"
were very different from what I'm used to (blame the damn IPSM I guess)
The rest of the pictures are random cosplay and things I
thought were kinda cool. Yeah, that's ManFaye... I thought he was um..
chubbier? There were also a faction of Star Wars cosplayers which seemed
a bit out of place, but they were here for the "City of Hope"
charity and such. All in all, I had a fun time. There were a few things
that left a bad taste in my mouth; the 3+ hour wait for a pre-registered
badge on the day before the event began and the modeling contest stuff.
I'm sure I'll attend again next year, but probably going to not join the
modeling contest. A general lack of interests, participants, and clarification.
There were more gundam/sci-fi related "models" at the last couple
of IPMS competitions I attended.
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Update Information:
Oh yeah, least I forget the little video of a bunch of cosplayers playing
"Duck, Duck, Goose" and um losers get a paddling... the video
explains this all too well: <<CLICK
HERE>>
Anime Expo 2005
