I had originally planned to wear my third opening Sakura outfit again, because it was only worn for one day at A-Kon, but as Animefest approached I really didn't feel like cosplaying and wasn't looking forward to wearing a costume. So I was looking at my closet when I realized that some things would look really cute if I did a black-and-white catgirl thing, and they went together so well that I decided to wear the outfit to Animefest. It was my black and white shirt, black pleated skirt with a white pleated skirt over it, white knee-high socks, black thick-heeled mary janes, black cat tail, and black cat ears. Waii, I love this outfit so much!
Saturday
The day of Animefest! I wasn't very happy when I woke up though, because I had to get up early on a day that I normally use to catch up on all the sleep I missed during the school week. But I got up, showered, and put on my outfit, which is described above. Then my mom took me and my sister over to Elsa's, where I woke everyone up by ringing the door.. apparently, Elsa's clock was about 30 minutes behind, so she thought it was 7:30 when it was really 8:00.. so while she got ready I sat around and looked at her photo album and got doubles of some of her cool pictures from A-Kon and stuff. THEN we went to Animefest.
It was being held at the Hotel Inter-Continental in Dallas, just like last year's, so I already knew where everything was, which was cool. We went up to the second-floor lobby, where we found Stephanie, Ashley and Stephen (Allison's boyfriend, who was Keitarou from Love Hina) and waited for Allison (who was Naru to match him), Kristy (as a random princess girl), Eryn (random forest fairy girl), and Amy (Puchiko from Digi Charat) to get there.. after they did, we kinda wandered around or something, I can't remember. We walked around looking at everything, and spent a little bit of time in the J-Pop room, which kicked all ass just like it did last year. I saw a lot of videos for artists that I already loved (like Shiina Ringo, Ayumi Hamasaki and Morning Musume), as well as some new videos which were really cool too (and in some cases, very amusing XD). I really could have spent all day in the J-Pop room...
But then we went over to the dealer's room, where over the course of the day I spent all my money. But it's all right, because I got some cool stuff for it, which I will now list here.
Fruits Basket shitajiki/pencil board (it's so cool! It has Tohru, Yuki, Kyoh, Uo-chan, Hana-chan, Momiji, and.. HATSUHARU!! ^__^)
Cardcaptor Sakura pencil boards (I kinda bought these when I was feeling sad/weird to cheer myself up, but it's okay because they worked. One is of all the cards and Sakura in her second movie fighting outfit that matches Syaoran's, and the other is double-sided, with both sides of stuff from the second movie. They're really cool ^.^)
Angelic Layer Vol. 1 manga (in Japanese, too!)
Saint Tail Vol. 2 DVD (yeay! Saint Tail is cool)
Tenshi ni Narumon/I'm Gonna Be An Angel Vol. 1 DVD (yeay!! We watched some of this at Ushicon. It looked freaky, but cool. And the dub is really good, which is really rare for me to be saying!)
Cardcaptor Sakura folder thing (it's a plastic folder with manga pictures on it, but it also has a sheet of labels! Two for floppy disks, one for a cassette tape [not a videotape, as I first thought! hehehe] and two for.. something. It doesn't say what they're for, so I don't know. Anyway, the whole thing is so pretty! I seriously started drooling when I saw it. Of course, I was very hungry at the time too, but you know.)
Box of strawberry pocky (aww yeah)
Small box of pudding-flavored pocky (it tastes like banana chocolate/coffee/caramel/butterscotch.. it's good, but in a weird way)
It was freaky though, cause while we were in the dealer's room Allison and Stephen kinda followed me around for awhile.. I'd go off and look at stuff, and then turn around and they'd be there! o_O freaky.. Anyway, then after the dealer's room we wandered some more.. sat around by a window and peopled played the piano and stuff.. that was pretty much what we did most of the con, walking around or sitting at tables looking at the stuff we'd bought and trying not to look at Allison and Stephen making out like there was no tomorrow. We didn't go to any panels or things because 1) we're too lazy and 2) nothing looked interesting.
After a while we all started getting hungry, which was when we ran into Zack and company, who were also hungry. He started getting people with cars together, and found two people willing to drive others to a restaurant. So it was like 15 people, 2 cars.. yeehhh.. we had to do some serious lap duty here. In our car (driven by this guy named Ben in a Kamui costume), it was Allison on Stephen's lap (of course), Elsa-or-Eryn squished in the middle, and me on Amy's lap (I'm so sorry Amy!). So we started to drive out of the parking garage, then realized that there is a fee for leaving.. Ben was like "I'm not gonna pay that" so Elsa, who was in the passenger seat, got out, lifted the rail thingy that was in the way, and we drove on out of there!! hehehehe!
The restaurant we went to was this Chinese place called Tong's House (which I thought was an actual person's house at first! hehe). We sat down, and the people there suggested this deal thingy because we're such a big party, where everyone pays like $11 to get a lot of food, only me, Eryn, and Kristy didn't want the deal thingy, and we were having a hard time explaining that we wanted our stuff to be separate, when all of a sudden Elsa busts out with the Chinese! It was so funny, the whole table went silent as Elsa starts talking Chinese to the lady and explaining stuff for us. It was freaky, but so cool! Go Elsa!!
Anyway, so we ate.. I had like, eggdrop soup and water because I don't really like Chinese.. and cause we finished before the other side of the table, Allison, Stephen, Eryn, Elsa, Kristy and I go walking around outside and we see this store across the parking lot called.. wait for it... CATS ONLY!! XD it was so cool! So first everyone took a picture of me in my catgirl gear in front of the store, and then we went inside, and it was so cool!! They had kitties walking around, and cat toys, and cat decorations, and all this awsome stuff!! We were about to go into the back and see all the kitties in cages they had back there (one was named Frodo!) but that was when everyone else came out of the restaurant, and we didn't really want to get left behind. So we ran back over there, squished into the car again, and drove back.. where we were again bored.
I don't know what we did between then and 11 pm.. a lot of general wandering and being bored ensued, I think. We saw Luke and Daniel, and Eryn put makeup on Daniel because his band had a gig that night. Then she put some on me too, black eyeliner around my eyes to look like a cat, it was cool. And Luke was wearing his trenchcoat of course, so Eryn stole it and was running around in it. I stole it too, which was fun, but not when he came after me to get it back. o.o;; There was also a DDR thing (someone had set up a hard mat on the floor and used their computer as a screen), which me and Elsa played, though the line was really long so we didn't play a lot. And at one point someone taped Allison and Stephen making out for like three minutes and then showed it to them.. it was hilarious until I found out they didn't even know the guy who had done it. o_O; But overall, things at night just weren't that cool. I'm not going into any details, but let's just say I was relieved when my mom came to take me, Elsa, and Bekah home.
Sunday
I really wasn't sure about going back today. Because yesterday ended kinda crappy, I didn't think today would be fun.. and it kinda wasn't, at first. Eryn, Bekah, and I wandered around and went to random panels (like Anime Match Game and the AMV awards), which weren't that fun.. but then when it got dark things got cool. We found Bridgette and Christina (our friends from Ushicon!) and got in line for cosplay with them, which was fun.. of course, cosplay ran an hour late (who is surprised? no one!) and when it finally started, it really, _REALLY_ sucked. Or at least the first 30 minutes, which was all we stayed for. The "comedian" guy (who has "only been doing the anime thing for eight months now") became quickly hated by the audience, and couldn't pronounce any of the names right. He was annoying, but I felt sorry for him because he knew everyone didn't like him.. and a lot of skits were corny and weird. One was funny though, it had two female Duo cosplayers, who were fighting over who was the real Duo, when this lady with long hair and a cross necklace came over and was like "Hey, I'm Duo's MOM!" (cheers) "What's all this about you stealing parts for your Hellsicle?" And one of the Duos was like, "It's Deathscythe, Mom!" and she was like, "And what's this I hear about this Hilde girl? WHAT ABOUT HEERO??" (cheers and applause from the female audience) Ahh, it was hilarious. Sadly, also one of the only funny skits we saw.
We didn't stay any longer because at that point, this boardie girl named Kiara who was rooming with Christina and Bridgette came back with the food we'd given her money to get, so we left to go eat. She had gotten McDonald's, and yum it was good (though I think anything would have been good after not eating practically all day, since we didn't have lunch at all). Then while we were eating, this guy who had apparently just gone grocery shopping and had a stick of French bread in one of the bags he was carrying came up to us and was like, "Would you like to have some of my long... hard.... stick of bread?" Ahh, it was so funny.. XDD
After we finished eating, we didn't want to go back to the cosplay, so we went up to Bridgette and Christina's room, where we hung out for awhile and had fun talking about stuff and looking at the anime things they'd bought. Whee, it was really fun! I liked it there. ^_^
Then me and Eryn jazzed on down to the dance, which was WOAH AWSOME.. all dark, with strobe lights and glowsticks (I bought one!) and.. most important.. GOOD MUSIC. Thank God it had good music (unlike some cons I could mention.. A-KON). So me and Eryn got down and danced, which was really really fun. Especially since there weren't that many people we knew there, so we didn't have to worry about people laughing or whatever (well, that's mostly me worrying about people laughing ^^;). But oh man, I love dancing at con dances. ^_^ I wanted to dance more, but after only thirty minutes or so it was time to go.. so we hugged Bridgette and Christina goodbye (and Daniel too.. he smelled like fanboy o_o) and left.. so I'm very glad I went on Sunday too. If I hadn't it would have left bad memories of Animefest in my mind.. and for about the last few precious hours that day, it was Ushicon all over again.. all cool con dances and hanging out in hotel rooms with people you wouldn't otherwise see. It was very, very cool. ^_^