Lord of the Rings Artwork from Exile Into Imagination

So the annoying skin tag on my finger from me stabbing myself with a screwdriver whilst hanging up some art FINALLY fell off. Then I thought – I didn’t tell my blogging friends all about our newest wall art! So… SHOW AND TELL TIME!!! Wheeeeee!!! *runs around in circles*

When we were at FANdom Con here in Pensacola, Florida a few weeks ago we gave in and bought a sketch of Gollum printed out over Lord of the Rings sheet music from Exile Into Imagination. No, it’s not original artwork. Yes, it’s just a copy. No, it’s not autographed. But we just couldn’t help ourselves. Lord of the Rings is just SO underrepresented in our home!

Jonathan and I have a huge autographed wall art collection. I mean HUGE. A combination of our mutual desire to collect rarities – and our love of conventions where autographs from nerdy idols abound – has resulted in our literally having too many framed art pieces to fit our walls. Most of our collection is sitting in storage back in California collecting dust till we can have a place with enough wall space to display them without it looking jumbled and tacky.

While I am an anime / sci-fi / fantasy / video game / pop culture nerd, I’m also a sucker for order and interior design. I try to walk that fine line between fine art display and nerdy man cave exploding on the walls.

Just a sampling of some of our framed artwork:

Autographed Chris McGrath Dresden Files cover art, autographed Star Wars poster, autographed Hatsune Miku Vocaloid poster, autographed Captain EO poster, autographed Tron: Legacy limited edition art, autographed limited edition Brian Froud Labyrinth concept art, limited edition Blizzard World of Warcraft art, autographed MST3K poster, autographed original Mickey Mouse drawing from Disney animation, autographed Firefly artwork, autographed Rurouni Kenshin art from Nobuhiro Watsuki… so on and so on and so on…

Because of our growing pile of autographed swag, we’ve decided to limit our artwork purchases to only original and extremely rare pieces of art.

For instance, one of the last art purchases we made were some original hand drawn Fruits Basket artwork and painted backdrops from the original FUNimation anime. Whenever you see the Sohma kitchen scenes.. yeah, I OWN the kitchen. It’s hung up in my dining room. (This is seriously my most prized possession, wall-wise.)

So while we’ve laid down the “no more prints, copies, or unoriginal art purchases” rule, we caved when it came to Gollum leering out at us from sheet music. How could we say no?! Now we just need to get it autographed by Andy Serkis (voice of Gollum) the next time he’s stateside for San Diego Comic Con.

Okay, that’s it for show and tell. Gonna go drown myself in some more coffee. Seriously guys, I have a problem. I need a coffee intervention or something….

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya Cosplay Photoshoot

I took to the beach with some new friends from the Pensacola Costumers Guild for a mini cosplay photoshoot this morning!

The beach we were at was called Chicken Bone Beach in Gulf Breeze, here in Pensacola. It was freezing cold, there were jellyfish EVERYWHERE and I stepped on a bunch of evil devil stickers that I STILL have in my feet. (First I mash my finger with a screwdriver, then this? I’m a rugged man-woman… lady. Or something.)

Anyway, we had a lot of fun taking pictures of their characters from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. Aren’t these gals LOVELY?!?!

By the way, I just learned that the name Chicken Bone Beach is derived from the practice of Pensacola’s black peoples inability to pick up their chicken, but instead leave the bones spread around the sand in a most ignominious tomb. However, prior to knowing this interesting and highly racist factoid, I had the song Chicken Bone from the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack stuck in my head. Still do, as a matter of fact.

Dreamin’, dreamin’, dreamin’ of the chicken bone…. happy, happy, happy with the chicken bone….

American Cosplay Experience Pick of the Month

I always get fangirly giddy whenever one of our cosplays get’s featured, or reblogged, or mentioned in some random way or whatever. I was just talking about that not too long ago.

Anyway, it looks like Jonathan’s Spike Spiegel cosplay from Cowboy Bebop is the American Cosplay Experience pick for the month of November. If you go to the main website here, you’ll see his pic in the top right corner, in a little window of awesome.

So every time fellow nerds log in to troll cosplay photos, upload their own works, yadda yadda, they’ll be assaulted by my handsome hubbies awesomeness. Considering there’s like a bajillion registered costumes on that site, and only a handful of “Pick of the Month”s, I think it’s pretty frikkin’ sweet. (Oh, the things I swoon over as a doting wife….)

You can see our full Cowboy Bebop cosplays and photoshoot here. It was one of our best shoots, if I do say so myself. ^_^

FANdom Anime Con in Pensacola

It felt SO GOOD to be back into the nerdy scene with my handsome husband, and this time we had our little nerdling in tow! This was Tessa’s very first convention, and we dressed her in her pink Superman onesie that one of our Ani-Jam overlords back home bought for her baby shower. Jonathan and I threw together some Closet Cosplays (cosplays we could just pull out of our regular wardrobe), and went as Spike and Dark Willow from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Since Dark Willow wears black pants, black top and a dark denim jacket, and her only iconic feature is black veins on her face, I doubted anyone would recognize me. So I was very surprised when not only did people recognize my character, but one gal had even dressed as Dark Willow the day before! Cra-za-zee! We spent today doing a photoshoot of our Buffy cosplays, so I’ll be posting those once I’m done touching them up.

Anyhoo, at the risk of sounding like a convention snob, Jonathan and I were not terribly impressed with this anime con – it was extremely small (the smallest con we’ve ever been to) and there really wasn’t much to do outside of hanging out with friends – and having just moved to the area, those weren’t exactly in abundance for us. The Pensacola Costume Guild were kind enough to let us troll their booth and let me get my photography jollies out and snap some pictures of their shenanigans, but I think knowing dozens upon dozens of people at mega cons back in California has spoiled us.

Regardless, we had a really fun time. We met some new people, bought some fun shwag, and got to spend a fun outing with our daughter. Here are some photos from the convention!

The Cosplay Couple Is Back

My friend Khristine posted this link on my Facebook wall yesterday… it’s a little collection of 15 Great Disney Cosplays on likes.com and our TRON cosplay is featured as #2!

Every once in awhile we stumble upon our cosplay photos being featured on various websites, or reblogged, or occasionally mistaken for screen caps from the movie, or mashed up into desktop backgrounds… it’s fun to occasionally do Google image searches of the costumes we’ve done and find whats out there and the comments our photos get. Sometimes we find some really interesting results. For instance, just a couple of weeks ago I found these photos on polyvore.com of people using our Princess Bride cosplay kissing photo:

 

 

I really miss cosplaying as much as we used to! We churned out 33 costumes in just four years of cosplaying together.. and that’s not counting generic pirate and Renaissance and miscellaneous costumes for parties.

This past week, Jonathan and I whipped up some last minute cosplays for Pensacola’s FANdom Con and went as Spike and Dark Willow from Buffy the Vampire Slayer today. We plan on recruiting one of Jonathans friends from the base and taking some photos of the costumes sometime soon. Even though these costumes were “Closet Cosplays” as we like to call them – mostly clothes we pulled out of our closet – it feels good to be “the cosplay couple” again.

I’ll be posting our next cosplay photoshoot and photos from our anime convention weekend – Tessa’s FIRST EVER convention! – soon! It’s been 10 months, but Everythingman and AnimeWench are finally back. ^_^

Our Cosplay Photoshoot Showcase

Last Friday Jonathan and I attended a meeting with the Pensacola Costumers Guild at the local Books a Million.  While indulging in some nerdy “you show me yours I’ll show you mine” with some of the other costumers, we realized our cosplays are scattered all over the interwebs and not easily accessible for show and tell.

I mean, I have them all loaded here on my blog, but when you click on the “Cosplay” category on my blog sidebar, you have to scroll for a small eternity to look through my posts. Then there’s our cosplay group on Facebook, which is annoying and awkward to navigate through on a smart phone. We also have our photoshoots on cosplay.com, but that site has gone crazy downhill with the website administrators going AWOL. And finally we also have photos on acparadise.com, but the site is super anal about having profiles featuring ONLY photos of the cosplayer the page is for. So basically, Jonathans page features only pictures of him, and my page features only pictures of me. Which makes showing off full shoots nigh impossible.

So! I wanted to post a blog with links to all of our costumes and photoshoots for ready reference and bragging sessions. ^_^ So here is the full list of our cosplays as a couple, in chronological order, starting with the summer of 2009!

CLICK ON THE SERIES TITLE TO SEE THE FULL COSPLAY PHOTOSHOOT.

The X-Files

Snow White and the Seven Dwarves

The Dresden Files

Avatar: The Last Airbender

The Princess Bride

Firefly

Alice in Wonderland

Tank Girl

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

TRON

Dance Dance Revolution 4th Mix

X-Men

Cowboy Bebop

Pirates of the Caribbean

Trigun

Spiderman

Vocaloid

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Spaceballs

101 Dalmations

Absolute Boyfriend

Aladdin

Sherlock Holmes

Interview With The Vampire

Fruits Basket

Thor

Rurouni Kenshin

Final Fantasy X-2

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Twilight

American Dad

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Amnesia Anime Series Review

Amnesia is a Japanese anime that released January through March of 2013. I feel awesome for finally – FINALLY – watching an anime as it releases and not waiting till it’s a decade old, like every other anime I watch. I am chronically behind the times in my anime viewing. *hangs head in shame*

Anyhoo, the basic premise of this story: On the morning of August 1st, a girl wakes up to find she has lost all her memories before that day. Suddenly a boy appears in front of her and tells her that he is a fairy named Orion, whose spirit collided with hers and caused her amnesia, and he wants to help her collect her lost memories. The catch is, she can’t let anyone know she has amnesia.

So! The amnesia girl is surrounded by a cast of really hot guys, all of whom have some connection with her, and she has to figure out who she’s dating and what her relationship is with each guy without letting on that she’s got amnesia.

This is another typical harem anime, with a single strong female character surrounded by a kaleidoscope of male characters to suit just about any twisted Japanese schoolgirl fetish. There’s the shy, androgynous type that is a veritable wilting flower. Then there’s the domineering abusive type that likes to lock his girlfriend in a cage. And so on and so on.

Right when she figures out who she is dating, she ends up dying, just to wake up on August 1st again, all Groundhogs Day style. Only this time the world is slightly different. She still has to hide her amnesia, and she still has to find out who she is dating.. and each episode she’s dating a different guy in the cast of characters.

I thought I’d eat this pre-teen drama up, since I loooooove me my harem animes. I’m always rooting for the girl to get with ALL OF DA GUYS! But the guys were all too freaky Japanese fetish-y for my tastes. I didn’t find myself rooting for any one guy, since each episode they all had major personality shifts, and almost every single guy was creepy and / or downright abusive. And the girl just takes it! Seriously, what this anime needed was a sassy gay friend telling this chick to grow a spine and garner some modicum of self-respect. (And no, the fairy-boy Orion was neither sassy, nor gay.) And while the mystery of her amnesia was supposed to be the central story theme, I just found it confusing and irritating.

It wasn’t until the last two episodes, when they actually EXPLAIN her amnesia, that I found myself really liking the series. Basically, (SPOILERS!) in one of the many worlds she’s flitting between, she died in a fire, and her boyfriend tried to save her. He made a deal with a fairy to be able to travel between worlds to find a world where his girlfriend doesn’t die. But each world he finds her, she never remembers him, and she always end up dying. It’s not till the last episode that she manages to live, (he sacrifices his life for hers) and he can pass on, and only then can she have her memories restored and move beyond August 1st. Or something like that.

At the end, she gets to pick which world to go back to and who to end up with. While I normally have an unhealthy attachment to hot anime guys, I was left kind of blinking at the screen, doing a mental recap of the guys in the series and thinking, “Wow. Sucky choices there.”

The series moves at a REALLY slow pace, and when it’s not confusing it’s just eye candy. And the main character – the nameless girl – is just so BLAND. Kristen Stewart bland. And boring. And compliant. Ugh! Anyway, I wouldn’t recommend it, but I’m not ruing the time spent watching it either. I just really, really, really, REALLY wish I had another Fruits Basket-esque anime to dive into. *le sigh*

AKB0048 Anime Review

AKB0048 is a two season long 2012 Japanese anime based on the popular JPop music group, AKB48. All of the characters in the anime are named after and voiced by the actual members of the pop group. I watched it because I heard someone say they were cosplaying as a girl from the series. Being home alone for weeks on end without my husband I intended to watch as much anime as I could, and always being woefully behind on the anime scene, I thought, “Hmm. It’s newish. It’s cute looking. It’s apparently cosplay worthy. Let’s give it a go.”

The basic story starts like every futuristic multi-world story begins: At the start of the 21st century, an interplanetary war broke out. Earth’s ecosystem was severely damaged, and humanity was forced to flee the planet. (So far I’ve just described Firefly, Trigun, Treasure Planet, and a bazillion other futuristic sci-fi flicks.)

The gimmick with this series is that in several planets of this new society, things that “disturb the heart” like music and art are forbidden. Think Footloose, but with anorexic Japanese pre-teens and robotic mecha warriors. Anyway, to combat the “no entertainment” ban, the legendary pop singer group AKB48 is resurrected as the all new interplanetary troupe AKB0048, made up of girls who carry on the title and spirit of the original members. Held as heroines by some and labeled as terrorists by others, they must take up arms to bring their music to their fans.

The first season follows a group of young hopefuls as they train to become the next generation of AKB0048, right as the Deep Galactic Trade Organization [DGTO] have stepped up their attacks on entertainment. The girls have to learn to fight while learning to sing and dance and be perfect little pop stars. It’s cheesy, feel good fun where thousands of bullets are fired and no one actually dies.

The second season gets a little… weird. As all Japanese animes eventually do. The story culminates in the pop stars transcending time and space with their power of music, and converting the hearts of the most cold-blooded anti-entertainment warriors through song and dance. In a classic Captain EO rainbows and sparkles finale, the girls sing to angry soldiers pointing guns at their heads, and the guys collapse into shudders of overwhelming love because the music is just too irresistible. Or something like that. Anyway.

Overall, I enjoyed watching this anime. Mostly because I really enjoyed the music and the animated choreography. I ended up downloading most of the soundtrack onto my iPod, especially the song “Beginner” (YouTube video of the song is posted above.) I got that stuck in my head for longer than I’d like to admit. And the marketing behind this anime? Genius. By modeling the anime pop singer group after a real, current JPop group, it’s a perfect blend of nerdtastic synergy. And it was all advertised prior to the anime’s release through four manga publications leading up to the pilot of AKB0048. So they’re selling the manga, the anime, the singers, the music, and the performance group, all at once.

Not gonna lie, I wouldn’t even call myself a fan of this anime, but if I hear that AKB48 is going to be playing at a stateside anime convention, I’ll most likely show up with glow sticks and pretend to be a member of OTA (a group of fans that fight alongside AKB members, using glow stick swords).

Will I cosplay from this series? Probably not, though the outfits are redunkulously cute. Would I rewatch it? Maybe. But not likely. There has to be a bit more romance or twincest to trigger my re-watch impulse. Will I be listening to the soundtrack? Absolutely. I already have the soundtrack on my iPod and have infected others with the songs that are stuck in my head.

So between the music and this anime not sucking as bad as the last few lemons I’ve been unfortunate enough to watch, I’m pleasantly surprised with this series. I’d recommend it if you’re into the girly animes.

Fruits Basket Cosplay in Hanford, California

YAY!!! FRUITS BASKET COSPLAY!!!!! This is my FAVORITE FAVORITE FAVORITE ALL TIME FAVORITE anime and manga series EVAR. And this was simply a dream cosplay!! My handsome and shmexy husband Jonathan did Kyo Sohma and our roommate at the time Sean did Yuki Sohma and I was, of course, Tohru Honda.

Our cat Kyo and our pet rat Yuki (yes, those are their actual names) were the animal forms in these photos. We took the images in and around the bonsai garden at the Clark Center for Japanese Art and Culture in Hanford, CA in January of 2012.

We made the costumes ourselves, and we had a BLAST. Some of my favorite cosplay pix of me and the hubby to date. ^_^

Ani-Me Con at Fresno Manchester Mall

I spent the majority of yesterday snapping photos at the Ani-Me Con at Fresno’s Manchester Mall yesterday while helping at the Ani-Jam booth. And by “helping” I mean wandering by every few minutes complaining about my back aching and sitting on the floor by the table. Being pregnant and puffy and unable to squeeze into my cosplays, I wore my Think Geek “Now Loading… Please Wait” maternity shirt that my mum got me so I could self-identify as a fellow geekling. But there’s always a frustrating “naked” feeling with being at a con and not in cosplay.

So! I got my cosplay jollies out by taking pictures of friends and con-goers in costume. Since I don’t charge for my photos and I don’t really care to be one of the “cosplay photographers” that lurks around a pretty or neutral background, I tend to be rather timid about approaching cosplayers to pose for me when the photo bug bites. So I mostly just grabbed my friends Will, Dani, (Neeka Cosplay) and Kelly and made them pose for me so I could enjoy an evening of photoshopping cosplay photos while watching High School Musical.

Also, my good friend Will – who cosplays Captain Jack Sparrow – took first place in the cosplay contest! Check out our Pirates of the Caribbean photoshoot at Cypress Cove, California here.

I can’t wait for Ani-Jam this August 17 + 18th. With so many things being up in the air with Jonathan in the Navy- (we don’t even know where we’ll be after this August!) – Ani-Jam will be my last convention of the year. I’ve really enjoyed being adopted into the AJ family. Ever since they took me on as Cosplay Coordinator last year, I’ve made some amazing friends and adopted family, and I can’t imagine my convention year being complete without the delightful madness of Ani-Jam, my AJ Overlords and the rest of the gang. If you haven’t pre-registered for this convention (and the Cosplay Masquerade being organized by yours truly) DO SO NOW!