Pictures from Anime USA 2001

     A convention in the heart of the DC Metro area, Anime USA fell on the second weekend of October. It was a nice quiet con, and I heard a few times that the size had improved significantly over last year's. I wouldn't know, I didn't feel up to it last year when some friends tried talking me into going. I did enjoy myself, especially hanging out until after 4 in the morning on Saturday. One thing that seemed noticable was the sheer presence of music videos and their creators at this convention. It seemed like there was a showing of anime music videos somewhere in the convention at all times, and that was a major reason why my friend Omar had come for it. This was good, as he was the one who had a hotel room for me to split. ^_^

I guess things started for me on Thursday, when I popped by the hotel after I got off work (I only work ten minutes away). I offered to help the staff for a while, there wasn't much setup to do at the time, but Marc and Steve were thankful for the offer. I went home and slept in for the next day. Not too much happened on Friday either, though I didn't get off work and over to the convention until nearly 6PM. I looked around and discovered that Tikki had held an impromptu costuming workshop at 5, and people had all been staying around and talking about random topics. This continued until nearly 7:30 when I was getting hungry and asked if anybody else wanted to get food. Nobody else was that hungry, though, so I grabbed a snack from the hotel cafeteria. It didn't seem like much else would be going on that night, so I set off (I was staying at my place for Friday night).

I returned on Saturday morning, maybe around 10 or so. At this point, some people I know were hanging around the Artist Alley/Ironcat tables, so I joined them. I ended up spending the better part of the convention in that area. I was dressed as Carrot from Bakuretsu Hunters at this point. To be honest, the top didn't look so great as it was rushed and was made from cheap material, but I was still proud of it as it was the first piece of clothing I had made myself in nearly ten years. Don't remember much of what I did for the rest of the day apart from going out with Omar to an Italian restaurant near work and doing some AMV stuff. The Cosplay was short and sweet, and afterwards Ollie, Iris, Khourey, and some others of us were goofing off and talking in the Artist Alley area. Five of us danced in a group together at the dance and had a good time while Andrew DJ'ed. A few people went off to the party on the 4th floor while I talked with Derek and Duane downstairs. As time went on, Tikki, Steve and Scott joined us, and Omar and Mikhail also popped in. We traded con stories and jokes, and I finally went up to the room to crash around 4:15 or 4:30. On Sunday I was around the focal point of the Ironcat table for a few hours, and left in the early afternoon to drop stuff off before Terrapin Anime Society. All in all, it was a great time, and I got to know Tikki and Duane a lot better, which was cool. And I finally found the DVD of Iria, which I had spent a while tracking down, which makes me a very happy Zeiram. ^_^

     Picture time. My photos are posted along with notes and random thoughts that I spent way too much time writing. ;-p If you would like any pictures in higher resolution than the 640x427 versions I posted, email me at zeiram@zort.net Or email me if you have any comments, suggestions, would like to use one of my photos, want a picture of yourself taken down, know the capitol of Sudan, etc.