London MCM Expo Review // Life

LONDON EXPO

Two weeks isn't too late for a review from me as of late, so I'm going to pretend that this shouldn't have been written at least a week ago, heh. London MCM Expo was pretty legit - I had a really great weekend, and it felt a lot like FanExpo Canada, ironically. I think that's because 'expos' are very different from 'conventions' - more emphasis on dealer's rooms and previews of video games than on cosplay/panels/workshops and such. And more sci-fi and comic stuff. But that's okay, it makes for a nice change, and the video games...well. Let's get on to the actual review, shall we?

THURSDAY
I only include Thursday because I woke up Thursday morning and it felt like my brain was coming out my nose - seriously, unbelievably sick with another bout of the dreaded Fresher's flu that I have been unable to shake x_x But I went to class valiantly all the same, and that night boarded the incredibly long bus to go from Dundee to London and everywhere in between.....
...and didn't sleep at all because I was too busy coughing and dry heaving from Glasgow onwards.

FRIDAY
Upon arriving in London with no sleep and finding out we were unable to check into our hotel room for another six hours, I literally laid on the floor in the lobby and coughed and gagged and generally upset people that were going in and out of the hotel like a winner. And ended up in hospital. Good times....

....but after some good medicine from a very confused doctor and a bit of real sleep, it was time to change into my Shizuo Heiwajima cosplay and go rock the Expo! xD I'm going to be really arrogant for a moment here and just say that I'm super committed and hardcore because I legitimately went from hospital to a convention xD Lolz. I wasn't about to miss it.

So Friday was basically a pre-show - not everyone was allowed in, and there wasn't a schedule of events really and most stands were still setting up. However, we got a bit of shopping done and entered NEO Magazine's Cosplay Idol contest and basically killed time until the last-minute workshop that I was given. However, tragically without a schedule available no one knew the workshop was going on so it was a general failure, though the Totally Cosplay team promised to make it up to be in the spring Expo, and they were really, really nice, so I didn't mind. Probably couldn't have efficiently danced in my state of health at the time anyway to be honest...

SATURDAY
This was the first time in my life that I was legitimately afraid to walk around a city in cosplay, simply because I was Jin Kisaragi, which doesn't even begin to blend into a crowd, and we were over ten miles from the ExCeL Centre and four changes on the London Underground, and my companion was Doctor Who which is much less conspicuous and more socially acceptable. However, London ended up being awesome because no one even looked twice at me - and one random guy actually asked me for directions. So that was really cool.

Saturday was about 100000x busier than Friday had been - there were people EVERYWHERE. And I ran a panel that morning that was fantastically well-attended, and loads of people asked me questions, which was really awesome. Kudos to the cool Belgian girls in the front that asked loads of things and then chatted with me for ages afterwards as well. They were my favourites.

My Jin outfit continued to prove to be generally not popular - people recognize it and say, "Oh, Jin," but no one likes him apparently. Everyone usually told me what character they liked better, actually. But whatever, I really love the outfit and the character, so I'll continue to persevere through the hate, heh. Vic Mignogna told me I looked awesome, so that's all that matters *cough* And we chatted about American cons and all that business, so that was pretty cool. He signed my Soul Eater box set, yay!

There was a stand set up by the company that does BlazBlue, Guilty Gear, and Arcana Heart as well that was heavily promoting BlazBlue: Continuum Shift II for the portable systems which apparently doesn't come out in the UK until sometime this month and they were really excited about it - until I told them that I have the PSP copy in my dorm room here because it came out the first week of June in the United States xD Hehe. Yeah, I ruin everyone's dreams, apparently, with my American-ness.....

That night we also went to the after party (I changed into my Shizuo outfit again because it's more mobile for dancing) and hung out with Vic a bit more (he was dressed as Captain Kirk from Star Trek, haha) and saw Beckii Cruel, but generally the party kind of sucked - mainly because they hardly played any J-Pop or anime themes. If I wanted to listen to crap club music, I would have gone to a crap club. We left early.

SUNDAY
I had the chance to revive my Ciel Phantomhive cosplay after a long hiatus and enjoyed it very much (except the stupid shoes, which still hurt, especially after Jin and Shizuo's shoes also not being comfortable at all x_x). The Expo continued to be crazy busy, but I had basically bought everything I wanted to (including birthday presents for !) so we were able to do things like play Final Fantasy XIII-2 (YES I STILL WANNA COSPLAY NOEL REALLY BAD) and check out Assassin's Creed Brotherhood and that sort of thing.

I also met Adam Howden, who voices Anders in Dragon Age II and is my favourite character! He was awesome to chat to, actually, and was really happy that I liked his character, because apparently everyone prefers Fenris, who I hated quite frankly (though I did meet Gideon Emery as well...I didn't tell him I hated his character though, heh). But he wrote me a personal autograph and all that, so it was a great experience.

Otherwise, we had a great time shopping in Camden Town that night and buying visual kei stuff (I got amazing things, I promise) and checking out places like CyberDog, and then that night boarded the last bus to Aberdeen and settled in for a long bus ride back...

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HALLOWEEN

Halloween was serious business, and I unveiled my really ghetto but still awesome outfit of Ash Ketchum! I felt really cool crashing two parties and wandering all over town with a giant talking stuffed Pikachu and singing the Pokemon theme all night. I actually was pretty popular with total strangers that laughed and smiled and always yelled my character name, so it was a good outfit to do - still showed my inner nerd, but was recognizable by just about everyone. Halloween was fun despite having only gotten home that morning from Expo and running on basically no sleep until about 3.00 AM xD And having early class the next day........

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COSPLAY PLANS // LIFE

Well, it looks like my next convention is going to be D-Con in Dundee in late February/early March (here's hoping it's not while I'm on Sarajevo....) and I'll be hopefully premièring a new cosplay for it - Len Magane, from VOCALOID M-Style. It's like, the heavy metal version of Kagamine Len or something, but I'm really excited about it! Plus, my friend is hopefully going to be doing Rin Magane, so we're going to create a scandal or at least make a serious statement on the city buses together.

I'm also helping to promote K-Pop and J-Pop love at Anime Society here at university - it's a perk of being vice-president because you have the chance to really throw things at people, haha, so we're going to be doing some simple dance workshops for society members as well as cosplay workshops, which I'm really excited to have the chance to run. Yay! Promoting awesome stuff outside of cons!

I might also be able to go to Otakon next summer despite my dissertation work - and bring my friend from here with me! More news on that if it becomes more solid, but I really hope that I can go and spend time with everyone back in the 'states again....

Speaking of, I'll be back home in about another month for Christmas, so and I will be back to making as many epic videos in a month as we can!!! O_O It's gonna be intense. I just have to remember that after Christmas break I still have final exams for this semester, so I need to make time to study, but there will just be so many people to see and so much stuff to do....

....oh my. Meanwhile, two more giant essays and a presentation to do in the next three weeks, auditions for a local film, and starting a huge research project on disarmament in the Congo/Sudan?

Yeah. Bring it on.