Two things struck me about the scheduling of this year's Tekkoshocon X. First, that it was scheduled about a week earlier than last year, and second, that it was scheduled over a five day period.
The local Comicon I had gotten used to attending before I discovered Tekkoshocon had a habit of occurring during the last weekend in April. Tekko, on the other hand, had in my experience had a habit of occurring at the beginning of April. So, almost a month earlier. Which means, in general, colder weather. This year, in particular, I had a kind of skimpy cosplay planned, so I was disappointed to learn that this year's Tekko was pushed back to practically the middle of March! We had had frigid winds and rain in past years, and it puts a real damper on any plans one might have to take cosplay pictures outdoors, which is always a nice deviation from the usual hotel/convention center hallways you see in the background of con cosplay pictures.
Ironically - being that it was the middle of March - this year's con weather was warmer and milder than usual! All on account of an unseasonable warm spell that stretched just long enough to make the first two (full) days of the con feel almost like summer! Saturday was considerably cooler and even a bit wet (and was unfortunately the day for my skimpy costume), but it was at least mild enough during part of the day to go outside and still get some pictures. I couldn't have been happier about that!
The other strange thing about this year's scheduling was that the con was planned for five days. It seems to be becoming standard for big anime cons to stretch out to include the Thursday of the weekend, so that's something to get used to, but Tekko X had some programming planned for Wednesday, which was just bizarre. They could have been a lot clearer about just what their plans were, but Wednesday was sort of a non-day, where they had some vaguely con-related programming at a location far removed from the main hotel.
In any case, the con really began on Thursday, and my travel group had planned to attend on Thursday - which I think is a first for me. Moreover, my regular sleep schedule had been readjusted to a point that I could actually comfortably make it to the con before noon for once. So what was an anime con like on a Thursday, when a lot of people planning to attend later that weekend were still in school or at work?
Well, there was actually a lot of good programming planned for Thursday, even though I had to miss most of it for a very special reason. I think Thursday is probably a good day to go in the afternoon/evening rather than the morning, although my schedule this year required the opposite, seeing as I had dinner plans, followed by a midnight viewing of the opening premiere of the first movie of The Hunger Games series! But that's a topic for another post...
Crowd-wise, Thursday was expectedly thin. Even so, it wasn't exactly dead, and there were still some impressive cosplays - just not a whole lot of them. I picked out my Thursday cosplay based on which of the two I had planned for Thursday and Friday (I had to save my big cosplay for Saturday, obviously) that was easiest to change in and out of, since I could only spend half of the day at the con. So for Thursday I cosplayed as Chii, from the series Chobits. Last year, I did an incredibly elaborate Chii cosplay in her elegant pink dress (more about that here), which was a big hit. Chii is one of my favorite anime girls, so it's an honor for me to cosplay her. What's more, we have very similar hairstyles, so it's like fate that I should cosplay her.
But I wanted something a little simpler this year, to give me a break from the elaborateness of last year's pink dress cosplay. So instead of formal wear, I decided to cosplay as Chii in her pajamas this year. Simple, yet still cute & sexy. The costume officially consists of only a large shirt (the kind a girl would borrow from her boyfriend to wear to bed), and the ears & hair spools that are characteristic of Chii's look. Technically, Chii should be either naked, or just wearing cute panties underneath, but because there are rules, I wore a pair of really short white shorts that (usually) couldn't be seen due to the length of the shirt I was wearing. And for shoes - since you're not allowed to roam the hotel barefoot - I had a pair of fuzzy pink flip flops, which are cute, totally in Chii's style, and the sort of thing a girl might wear as bedroom slippers if she were obsessed with flip flops (the way I kinda am).
Well the cosplay was a hit. As I found myself saying, everybody loves Chii. And she's not only a popular character, but pretty easy to recognize due to her ears and hair and general style sense, despite appearing in a remarkable variety of outfits. I went outside across the street to the Point State Park to take some outdoors pictures, and among a group of students walking through the park (who to my knowledge were not convention attendees), a couple of them even recognized and/or complimented me on my cosplay! For the small amount of effort I put into that cosplay, it was a lot of fun to wear, and I think I might wear it again sometime in the future if I need an extra cosplay at the last minute.
I actually didn't do a whole lot at the con on Thursday other than take pictures of myself in my cosplay. My traveling companions watched some AMVs (past years' contest winners), and I got a few pictures of some of the few awesome cosplayers roaming the halls on the first full day of the con. But there was much more in store for me (for better and worse) on Friday!
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