Warning- this is an exhaustive report of the weekend. It might get tedious. But there are pictures!

AOD 2006 (AODSF) took place in San Francisco on the three dates of the 4th, 5th, and 6th of August. I went for each day, and, as I live in Berkeley (across a small body of water from SF) I took public transportation into the city each morning. On the first day, I walked to BART.

Along the way, I encountered this sign. And misread it as “manko japanese cuisine”… damn you danbooru and your bad influence on me!

Anyway. My buddies on the first day were as follows:

Shinsuke, Japanese exchange student. He laughed pretty damn hard each time I said “kawaiisugi~”. He was a machine of pleasurableness and laughter. It was great. Like Pip in skype. Except Japanese. And less emo.

Marcos, who didn’t want his picture taken. He plays eroge. He WANTS to play eroge. It’s his life-long yume, gooru, etc. and he’ll zettai make it come true.

Ben, the one friend of mine who’s anywhere close to being at my level when it comes to understanding of anime. He knows the bliss of loliyuri, the beauty of Last Exile, the cool of Cowboy Bebop. And he LARPs.

Jacob, the Best Salesman Ever. He didn’t actually go with us, he was just there. He saw my sign, fell in love, and we talked about loliyuri, not4chan, and various other things for the hour and a half that we waited to pick up our badges.

President, who prefers to go unnamed. I couldn’t blur out that lovely face, so I’ll end up facing her wrath somewhere down the line. She was attempting a Subaru cosplay(?) but it was hot out and her costume involved woolen sweaters. Bien jou√©.

So that’s it for our group. For the first day, that is. Now for random pictures taken before entering the Dealer’s room. Basically, while we were loitering in the mezzanine. Before they confiscated my “<3 me i’m lolicon” sign.

Ben’s shirt, and hip-thrusting technique, in one compact picture! For the record, he knows that sporks are cool. There’s some backstory to the text on this shirt, and it ties into his LARPing. And it’s like, two hours of storytelling long.

Taking pictures of people taking pictures amuses me to no end. There’s something that’s pure gold about it. Comedy gold.

Out the window of the hotel in which the convention was held.

After finding that the Dealer’s room held just about nothing of any interest (save for those hentai manga I couldn’t get my hands on, of course!) I took Marcos to the gaming room, which occupied his interests for a good couple hours whilst President and I opened grabbags. I still need to assemble that Sakura figurine.

- assembled -

Here’re the interesting things I got in grabbags, be it for wtfness, loliness, or panstu-flashingness.

President and Shinsuke went off home to have some wild butthsecks and Ben, Marcos, and I hurried off to Japantown where I bought Ichigo Mashimaro manga, anime, and the best ramen I’ve had in my whole life. We met up with another party member, Ben’s friend Nate, who was cosplaying Warakia of Tsukihime/Melty Blood/etc fame. I described Nate in IRC the other day- 13 (well, he’s 14 now I guess, but 13 at the time) super mature-looking and super-bishie.

Then we went back to the convention and went to the game show, which was awesome. It was basically two hours of comedy and testing of anime knowledge. There, Ben convinced me to wear my sign despite the fact that the convention had not approved it. There, a staff member named Tommy (who, I should add, is super cool aside from this one role he played- and he’s a lolicon!) confiscated it. Curse you and your righteousness, Tommy!

Oh, and there I saw Dom of Megatokyo for the first time. Did I mention that he’s ninjawesome?

Best cosplay of the day goes to…

Tamaki-sama and Honey-kun of Ouran!

That’s all the photos from Friday. Now, after the game show, Ben, Nate, Marcos, and I walked down to the ferry building. Marcos dismissed himself and was never seen again. Ben, Nate, and I took a ferry to Sauce-a-leet-o, where Nate lives in a boat. Something about snakes. On a boat.

One funny side thing to know about me is that I love wind, more than just about anything else. It was chilly aboard the ferry, and there was a lot of wind. I was in ecstasy for the whole ride. And on some 80-something grams of sugar. Yummy 20 oz bottles of Fanta…

So, we meet up with Nate’s mom and visit his house boat for a bit. I discover that he’s obsessed with Noir’s OST, which is good, as it’s the best AOST. Ever. Then we go to eat with the parents of Ben. At this place Hana Japan in the Berkeley Marina. Fucking awesome I say. Best restaurant experience in my life. When the lady at the door inclined her head and said “irasshaimasen” it was Neko Mimi Mode all over again. I’m referring to my immediate lapse into a comatose state.

We then head back to Ben’s, were we spend the night. I introduce my two buddies to Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu, which is so good that it put them to sleep! I kid, of course, but we only got through two episodes before they got sleepy. And went to bed. With eachother. And I was like WTFNUKE!!!

And I kept my distance. I really, really, don’t want to become shotakitsune.

Come Saturday, we were off to SF once more, this time with friends of Ben’s Josh and Jamie (pardon me if my spelling’s off, guys. I’ve only ever heard these names.) Josh cosplayed Assassin, the sexy swordsman of Fate/Stay-night fame (an awesome costume of which I unfortunately have no pictures) and Jamie cosplayed Kotomine, the not-so-Catholic priest of Fate/Stay-night fame who molests Ilya with supernatural tentacle magic.

On the way to the convention I had to explain to them why FSN sucked. I had to explain it a second time on the way back. And again coming back on Sunday. They’re kind of dull. And stubborn. And are incapable of judging anime correctly. But that’s that, and this is THIS:

In the foreground- Kadaj cosplay is Nate, master of changing cosplay outfits from one day to the next, dude in black coat is Jamie’s Kotomine.

Let’s see, on Saturday… we watched an episode of dubbed Kono Minikuku mou Utsukushii Sekai. We went to a presentation about writer’s block in fanfiction, done by a Mr. Savage (of 7th Sanctum fame) who is one of the most brilliant men I know. Up there with lovelykitsune and jason miao. Later on, thinking there was a panel about CLAMP, we returned to the room only to find it had turned into a webcomics panel! The event deteriorated into virtually a one-on-one Q+A session between Ben and Dom. The whole thing was very amusing. Dom even tried to take his pants off.

Now, the highlight of this event, at least in terms of me being made to look megas crappy, was when Tommy comes in with a projector for the next event, about 2/3 into the panel. He starts setting up, doesn’t even notice me, and tests it by putting up on the wall his list of signs he’s had to make people take off. In other words, there on the big projected image behind four webcomic artists was a pad with the words of my sign on it. Incorrectly written, too- maybe the guy misread my sign?

At first, I didn’t realize it was my sign the pad was referring to. I mean, that wasn’t what my sign said, and my sign wasn’t technically /confiscated/. So I blunder and ask “was there really a sign like that that got taken away?” And the guy turns to me, recognizes me, and Dom boos the sign and Tommy starts laughing his ass off at me and my friends are cackling and I’m just feeling like shit.

Good times. Good fucking times.

Then Dom and Greg Dean and the other two make up some anime involving lolis dual-wielding tambourines and panda-suited evil girls who turn good because they love the harem leader.

And then we got Mr. Savage round 2- the Create That Anime event in the same room. This activity involves a prize being announced and two people from the audience being selected to fight for it. They fight by being given an anime title randomly generated from words of pre-existing anime titles (and believe me, a lot of these are so bad they sound like they might have already been made) and a list of stereotypes. And then, in under 2 minutes, each combatant must describe their own anime. The crowd votes on whoever’s anime was more compelling and the winner gets the prize. Simple enough.

Oh man.

Such a fun activity. There were some lame fanfiction writers participating. I wonder if they’re an inferior species. Their anime descriptions were so incredibly stupid in comparison to, say, mine, or Ben’s, or Dom’s, that it blew my mind away. So, Ben went up to someone using Planetary Thunder Saori to win an Azumanga DVD. He made Dom laugh out loud. Josh went up to someone else using… I don’t remember what, but he got an ROD DVD. I lost to Tommy’s Energized Agent Trinity in the final round, for the sole reason that his fucking space pope garnered more love than my “And thusly… motorize hate turned to motorized love.” line, completing a stereotype, a Star Wars Parody, and Motorized Vortex Defenders all in one.

It should be noted that, after I said the “and thusly…” line, Mr. Savage burst out laughing and remarked that that beat “snakes on a plane”… I replied with “motorized snakes on a motorized plane”, which has apparently become a new forced meme amongst my friends.

That night, Nate and I slept over at Ben’s place once again. He went to sleep early once again. Nate and I did not.

*ahem*

Nice Yuuko cosplay I took a pic of on Saturday. I didn’t take many pics Sat. I didn’t take any Sunday.

Oh, and we listened to Ramen and Rice in the mezzanine on Saturday, too. Like, 10 pieces of anime/game music. Quite awesome, but so many people gathered to them that it became a fire hazard.

Friday was much shorter, but had the best event of the con, imho. Ben, if you read this and wish to correct me, go ahead.

I heard Canta Per Me. Live. So fucking beautiful. So. Fucking. Beautiful.

Ramen and Rice 1-hour long concert. A track from each Final Fantasy 6-10, 4 Kingdom Hearts tracks, 4 Miyazki film tracks, the OPs and EDs of several anime (which all sounded much better as string pieces without vocals), and finally, requests. And I requested Canta Per Me. It was exquisite.

Then we went to Sunday’s game show, where Ben won some random volume of Gundam manga (“to prop his couch up”). Finally it was time for me to split, as I had to get up at 6 the next morning for the car ride down to Port Hueneme. I said adios and got back to Berkeley in about an hour. And that is the con.

I plan to go again next year, even if those fuckers don’t like my sign.

I’ll write it on my chest.

Love me, bitches. I AM lolicon.