Our Saturday was spent at the Tampa Convention Center for Metrocon.
Wow at the number of people. Seriously. I know Saturday is the busiest day, but really, every Metrocon area of the Center (except maybe the video rooms and the table game room) was packed. Dodging the glompers (or rather, the glompees falling) started to feel a bit like Frogger at some points (along with dodging wings and pointy things).
I went mostly for costume gawking and to buy things. I had three things on my to-buy list (besides Pocky, which, in the end, I didn't get any of), and only walked out with one of them, but got a few other things instead. Shawn picked up a pair of display sais, which made me really happy.
We'd also planned on the human chess match, and saw it... kinda. We got there late enough that we were far back enough that I couldn't see or hear much. I'd hoped to see the costume contest, but missed it in the end. I also didn't think about the AMV contest until it was too late, for some reason. Shawn skipped out on playing anything in the video game room because he was too hungry to wait in line.
Going to the chess match this year was probably the most appropriate year, not being into many of the more popular anime, the Anime vs. Video Games match let us recognize many of the characters -- on the games side, at least. On the anime side only Vampire Hunter D, Sailor Moon, and Nausicaä were familar. Nausicaä being the only one I cared about. The guy playing Link was actually really good at the mock-battling. He kept up a real-time speed, which many of the others weren't (the innovation and humor more than made up for it, though). I also gotta hand it to the guy playing Cloud for managing to wield the humongo-sword. It was really exciting to have Sephiroth and Cloud, actually, and I'm not even a big FF7 fan. All in all, even not seeing or hearing much was okay, and even the length (around 2 hours). The death of Sailor Moon was too over-the-top for me, though, and very disturbing. It started out funny, but veered into brutally violent very quickly.
I saw a quite a few FF costumes (beyond the Con characters) - Yuna, Riku, Squall, Cactar, two Lulus, tons of moogles running about. I saw a white Mokona and black Mokona pair that I thought were Chi and Freya from the back, but they were well done. There were a few Mokona, actually. I only caught one (Tsubasa) Sayoran, and one (CCS) Sakura in a yukata (Shawn said he saw another in her school outfit). About four WoW peoples (undead, troll, and two night elves). There were two of the Kaonashi from Spirited Away - both really well done - especially because of the stilts.
We also sat in on Vic Mignogna's panel. I don't watch dubs, generally, so I'm not really a fan of any of the English voice actors (could be they're great, I just can't sit through dubs without wincing), but he voices Fai, so I figured I would. Of course, he only really talked about his other jobs (FMA, mostly), since really, that's what people asked about.
I left my camera on auto all day, and still took crap for pictures (my zoom sucks). Sill, I posted what I had. Shawn wished I'd taken the picture of the dude with the Free Sex sign (as opposed to the many with Free Hugs, Free Glomps, and even $1 Hugs), I wish I hadn't been too shy to ask people to pose or too tired to stand in front of the shooting gallery and snap from there.
Next year I hope to pre-register early enough that we can get weekend passes for not much more than we paid for day passes this year, and hit the shopping stuff on Friday (before it's been picked through), and then just focus on events on Saturday so we can see everything we want to. Also, I'm bringing snacks and drinks in my bag. We were starving by the end of the day and the Center's food (even vending machine food) is no cheap thing.
Also, I don't know if this is generally true of the Center's parking garage, but we got there in the morning and parking was $5, but by the evening it was $10 (perhaps because of something going on at the Times Forum next door at that point).
There's one more day of it (Sunday), and $25 a person to get in ($10 for kids). The conclusion of the chess match is tomorrow, along with tons of other fun stuff (including a fan film festival and leatherworking class). I'd really recommend it for anyone into costumes or anime. If you're just going for the costume-gawking, I'd not even pay, but just sit in the lobby watching. They only checked our wristbands for events and the dealer room. But it's well worth the $25 for the full(ish) experience.
