2006.05.23

All Fanboyed Out

Posted in Anime, Manga, Music at 10:53 pm by Jeremiah Wittevrongel

This weekend was Otafest 2006, and even though they’ve dropped the otaku no festival tag line from their promo material, otaku no festival it was.

First off, the costumes. It seemed like there were even more cosplayers than last year, and I really liked some of the costumes. My three favorites were as follows:

  1. Cloud Strife, from FF7 AC. The guy actually had a leather getup made to match what Cloud wore in the movie, and the buster sword mockup he was carrying was quite impressive. Even the hair was done well, though not quite as perfectly executed as the rest of the costume.
  2. Sora, from Kingdom Hearts (II). There were two Soras, but the best one was actually a female cosplayer. She had the costume pretty much nailed, down to the jewelery.
  3. Riza Hawkeye from Fullmetal Alchemist. Even at a casual glance I knew exactly who she was. Even the hair was right. Very impressive.

Okay, but this was really about the anime. While I watched a number of different things, a few stand out in my mind.

  1. Sukisyo – a sort of quirky shōnen-ai series. Much more suggestive than I was expecting, but I quite enjoyed it.
  2. Eureka Seven – sort of has a bit of a mecha slant to it, but what really struck me was that the main character was drawn a lot like the main character from the manga Off*beat.
  3. Fanboy Bebop – yes, you read that right. It’s a parody dub of Cowboy Bebop. In this retelling, it’s about anime fanboys attending a huge anime convention. It was off the wall, to say the least, but it managed to pack the room and everyone laughed constantly. It was hard not to laugh at some of the stuff they pulled, and the irony of the subject matter and the setting in which I watched it made it extra delicious. My favorite line: “bishōnen, bishōnen, bishōnen!” OK, maybe you had to be there.

In addition to watching anime, I picked up the Chrono Cross Original Soundtrack (OST). I’ve heard it before, and I was a little apprehensive since I wasn’t sure I liked the whole soundtrack that much, but it turns out I love it. It’s great for work, and for relaxing at home.

I also stumbled across a couple of manga series I’m interested in trying out. First, I have to do a bit of research to learn a bit more about the series, but I’ll probably end up picking the first issues of each series up to give them a try at some point.

Not bad for a Monday.