Thankful for...Anime?

 November tends to mean Thanksgiving, and Thanksgiving means...giving thanks.

Well, this November I got to go back to Anime NYC, my first big con since, well, the last one in 2019.

It was good to be home. Just hundreds of weebs out weebing it up.

And before I go any further, yes, someone going here tested positive for the new Omicron variant of Covid. I got myself tested, and I was negative. Frankly, it's been almost two weeks, if I was gonna get sick, I would've been already.

It was hard for me to GET sick, thanks to bringing back my cosplay of The Crawler from My Hero Academia: Vigilantes. Think about it: almost every surface of my body was covered, I almost never took off my mask, I stay away from people as much as possible, sanitized and washed my hands whenever I touched anything, the whole nine. I was most likely one of the safest people at that con.

It helps that there was a LOT more open space this time. Mostly. Artist's Alley was still stacked together, and I'm not even talking about the lines to get in to anything. I wasn't there for the horror show that was the line situation on Friday, but it was still pretty cramped at times. It's a miracle that there was only ONE public covid case out of this, and not several.

With that out of the way, here's some highlights!

There were a LOT of people cosplaying as Hawks from My Hero Academia this year, especially since his English voice actor Zeno Robinson was there. You could find most of them in his line. I counted no less than six on line at once on Saturday.

This pic was taken on Sunday while I was standing on said line. With several people cosplaying the same thing (ESPECIALLY if it was from Demon Slayer), the "Spider-Man pointing at each other" pose was inevitable, and I was able to snap this one with four of them doing it at once.

Since he's also the voice of Hunter (aka the Golden Guard) on The Owl House, I HAD to get something from that signed by him. He's a really cool guy.

The same goes for people cosplaying Mirko (also from My Hero Academia). She was a much easier cosplay to pull off than Hawks, and there was no shortage of those cosplayers. I met all of these on line for her English voice actor, Anaris Quinones.

Of course I had to get something signed by her, too. And she was also a lovely person to meet.

I got that print from Artists Alley, and the guy that made THIS awesome Boondocks/MHA crossover:

Was there, too, and I had to pick those up. You can find his work here.

I also got to meet one of my all time favorite voice actors, Richard Epcar. If you watched Fox Kids in the 90s, you most likely heard his voice. He voiced a ton of monsters on the original Mighty Morphin Power Rangers series, most notably my favorite one Shellshock:

I've talked about him before, but how awesome is this dude? Turtle with a traffic like sticking out of its back.

I also had to mention that he voiced one of my favorite anime characters, the lead in a lesser known one called Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo. I could post a pic of that, but why don't I just show you a clip?

I would say that it makes as much sense in context, but I don't think there ever was context in that show. In any case, he was more than happy to do a few lines in that voice, which really made my day.

He was there with the rest of the Lupin III dub cast (from L to R: Lex Lang, Tony Oliver, Michelle Ruff, Doug Erholtz, and Richard Epcar), and I managed to meet all of them, too. All of them were great and aside from Michelle Ruff (since she has several notable roles aside from Fujiko), none of them had any lines so you could hold actual conversations with them. Well, all of the other celebs liked to talk, too, and that's why their lines were so long.

I also got to meet up with Meatgirl, who'd been taking Simpsons Twitter by storm through her great artwork. She came to the con dressed as "Skinner, but a hot anime girl."

She called them Steamed Hams but they were obviously dog toys. These pictures are some of my favorites I've ever taken at a con and she was nothing but nice. I even got this great print:

True story, I kept getting lost trying to track her down that day, so the first thing I told her was "Well, I made it, despite your directions." We had a good laugh over it.

I'm honestly not a fan of all the booths selling mystery boxes at cons, but I finally caved and had to see what was inside this one.

I got this figure of Shinobu from Demon Slayer, plus a sweet Nezuko charm.

I definitely overpaid for what I got, but I honestly could've done worse than Shinobu. I knew exactly what I was going into this.

It, uh, really wouldn't be an anime con if there wasn't at least one booth selling awkward facemasks. The weird part was that the masks sold out by the time I got back to that booth at the end of the day.

I got to ring the bell. This was a fun booth.

And now some highlights of other stuff I saw that weekend:

Anime might be a mistake, but it's a fun mistake. And an expensive one.

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Happy Halloween!

 It's Halloween again!

This is usually when I share cosplay I saw at NYCC this year!

...But I didn't go this year. Yeah, big shocker.

I actually did other things this month!

In place of New York Comic Con, I spent that weekend on a trip to Kalahari Resorts in Pennsylvania! It's a giant indoor waterpark in the Poconos, and for once I was able to relax.

A few pics to show you just what was in store for me. I'm a colossal wimp when it comes to most water slides, I mostly vegged out in the two (yes two!) lazy rivers they had there. I haven't been to a water park in several, several years and this was the first one I've been to that was built in the past decade or so. Water parks have come so far, there were at least four giant slides with funnel elements.

I didn't go on those. I instead went on the smaller slides, and I liked the ones that needed innertubes better. And even then, I only rode those once each, because lugging up inner tubes up all those stairs gets pretty tiring when you're in your thirties. And if the water coaster they had there was running, I would've ridden that one, too. I guess I like being in control of something when I go on a ride? I was able to ride the "baby" slides, and those went really fast as it was! You wouldn't catch me dead on those two really tall slides that shot you straight down.

If I had to say a downside to the place, it's that it knows that you're a captive audience, and that you're more or less in the middle of nowhere in Pennsylvania and they charge you for everything like such. Prepare for three dollar sodas and forty dollar dinner buffets. Do you know what Sheetz is? If you don't, they won't tell you that there's one about ten minutes away. (It's kind of like Pennsylvania's answer to Wawa or 7-11 and way cheaper). And don't get me started on the price of booze.

It's also worth noting that by design, most of the water slides go out of the building before winding back inside, which makes the layout super confusing.

And it doesn't help that most of the slides have names like "The Smoke That Thunders," that don't really tell you what kind of ride you're in for.

It doesn't make for good pictures, anyway.

I DID, however, managed to snag these pictures a few weeks later when I took another trip to the area. This time it was for a buddy's bachelor party, the first one I've ever been to!

About a dozen of us went to this big farm house in the middle of nowhere for a weekend of fun.

Some nice views, if I may say so.

And drinking. Lots of drinking. Again, I was able to relax for once in my life and it was pretty nice to not have to care about any worries, at least for a weekend or two. Would highly recommend doing that.

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