After retrieving our Press passes, the first panel we decided to see was entitled “Kaiju and Art of Making Monsters”, with guest speaker Hideo Okamoto. I don’t know how many of you are monster movie fans, but I was stoked to see him. Okamoto has designed monsters for films like Godzilla vs. Destroyer, and the Mothra movies. We arrived a little late and missed a portion of it, but it was very exciting to see some of the sketches he had done for various anime and movies.
We then made our way to one of the main events of the day: The Cosplay Contest. Like I mentioned before, I’d never been to anything like this before, so I didn’t know what to expect. The first chunk of the contest consisted of various cosplayers catwalking on and off the stage. Some of them were obviously very impressive, while others really just looked like they could be picked up at a Japanese 7-11. Though the cosplays were definitely awesome, the latter half of the contest was where things really picked up.
For me, the skits were really what it was all about. For the last 2 hours or so, the stage was graced with shakespearean tragedies, epic battles, truly random encounters and downright silliness. The skits definitely had a lot of surprises. It was very entertaining to see Sora embark on an adventure in search of Kairi, while bumping into familiar faces like Naruto, Snake, and even the hammer dude from Silent Hill. Another memorable scene was Master Chief hitting on Samus. That is quite a couple. It was pretty hilarious.
And the contest held even more surprises at the end! Nozomu Sasaki was there! As ClassicMoments has already posted, Nozomu Sasaki is a famous Japanese voice actor for such anime like Akira, Yu Yu Hakusho, Deathnote, and Rurouni Kenshin. At first, I didn’t recognize him, but when I heard that he had done the voice of Urameshi Yusuke, I was SO excited!
I was also very impressed with Mr. Sasaki. His English was excellent! It was actually funny because on stage were the two MCs introducing him, Nozomu Sasaki, and a lady in a suit. At first I figured she was the interpreter. But then Mr. Sasaki started speaking in English, and it was very very good. I suppose she might have been there just in case, but still, I felt kinda sorry for her, just standing there in her suit, with nothing to do.
Anyhoo, he performed two songs; one was the ending theme song to Yu Yu Hakusho, and another from an anime called Ushio to Tora. It was sweet.
After the Cosplay Contest, we decided to hit the streets!… of the Convention Center to scout some cosplayers!
