GreyFinch as Gankotsuou at Fanime 2010
Just as we felt last year, Fanime is an all around fun con. There is a definite vibe to Fanime that sets it apart from other cons. While it it isn’t too large like AX and it a little too small like ALA, Fanime still has the cozy small con feel while housing several thousand anime fans and many of the best cosplayers in the US. Unlike most cons, Fanime offers a wide variety of photoshoot areas, places to eat and even hangout outside of the con area. For cosplayers, the con is a dream come true since the convention center is literally attached to two hotels, making costume changes a cinch. That, and with the gorgeous park only a couple blocks away, you don’t have to settle for those boring con photos with a wall of cement behind you. The weather in San Jose during this time is perfect for light cosplay or heavy and sweaty armored pieces.
One interesting aspect that was new to Fanime this year was that is was host to the US preliminaries for the Wold Cosplay Summit, a huge cosplay event where each participating country sends winning cosplayers over to Japan to compete against each other for huge prizes. That being said, the preliminaries ere a huge deal especially since fr many years it had been at East Coast cons, not on the West. Many great cosplayers entered, some of which we know such as Pikminlink, Sai, Daydreamernessa and Winofthestars. We were lucky enough to view many of the entries and were amazed at what we saw. The catch with WCS is that not only must your costume be incredible but your skit must be too. The winners ended up being two girls cosplaying from Fushigi Yugi. Unfortunately, we missed their skit but we heard great reviews from the judges themselves. We hope they do well in Japan during the finals and represent the US with pride.
Again, Fanime remains to be one of our favorite cons to attend. From a large dealers room to their expansive artist ally which included a purikura machine to the wonderful Fanimaids and all the amazing cosplayers, Fanime is a con definitely worth attending. We’ll gladly be retuning next year.
