Anime North 2016. Pretty standard overall, not too good, not too bad, pretty alright, or as the swedes would call it “lagom”. Seeing as how there was nothing really super popular in the anime scene right now everyone seemed to be doing their own thing with cosplays, artists alley and whatnot, which is how it should be I suppose. Of course I for one have a certain degree of bias when expressing interest when taking pictures so expect to see boats and some oldschool or derpy shits, but honestly I didn’t take too much photos worthy of note, but here are some that I found interesting; although my photos are pretty shit here, I didn’t really do any processing or enhancements, unlike what I usually do for figure photos but yea, whatever.

So I heard that the Power Rangers are getting a hollywood reboot movie. Hmm..I’ve seen the new costumes online somewhere but nothing beats the nostalgia of the oldschool green and red bros yo.

This Shimakaze cosplayer was pretty good, even so much as willing to tug on her thong underwear string things but just as I was ready to go, some bandana dude and irish faggot walk into the background. Man, Fuck, photography fail on my part. Ahwell, still ok, maybe I can blur those dudes faces out or put that famous “thought I’d be a deaf mute” logo on their heads to ease my pain ( fuck, I went out of my way to do it for the featured version of this photo at the top…)

This bro must be like super hot inside of that armor. I’m pretty sure this is from the Garo series of live-action/anime because of the lion-like helmet but maybe wrong.

Spirited away is probably my favorite Ghibli movie so I had to take these two. Not the best no face i’ve seen but, well, kinda bad actually but still worth since both are probably girls. Suitable cosplay for those who wear a burka. Oh yeaaa, anime so inclusive.

Not as good as the Yamato with full ship parts I saw last year but still solidly good. She was with some guy dressed up as Admiral but dude was like whatever, I don’t want be beside this hotel, bad boyfriend yo.

Snapshot of some cult-ish gathering celebrating the harvest of the wild animals or some shit. Strange, people were dressed up like turtles, dinosaurs, plants and all that wild shit but these fools have the audacity to hold a sign asking me if I was a boy or girl? Wut u fukin lukking @ mat8?

One Punch Man. Needs to get a better pair of sneakers, actually dude should have had like red boots if he wanted to be legit. Not the best but gotta give the man credit for doing this. I like how the cape looks so straight, making it look like he’s coming from another dimension.

Apparently I’ve learned that this cosplay is a character from the new Blizzard multi-player shooter Overwatch, which is getting pretty popular. Character’s name is D-Va, oh yea, that’s right DIVA, which from character bios is something like the game’s mech pop idol, from south korea, who was formerly a pro gamer, GG bitch. Blizzard, you know your demographic well.

I didn’t watch Monster Musume enough to watch past like the first or second episode but I do know that this is the main default win lamia girl. Done amazing well. It takes a lot of effort and time to pull this off, doesn’t hurt that she looks pretty good too. Nice.

Saber is just too solid. As a favorite cosplay choice for over ten years now, you would think that people get tired of saber but apparently as illustrated above, far from the case. This example here is very well done. I like how her dress is not too over saturated blue and the white frill parts doesn’t look to ghetto fake, it actually…looks like a real dress. Good.

Link just got burned in the sun or something. Dude should have had a sword and shield, like a real man, not some sissy oak bow.

…

Not racist.

When I read One Punch Man ghetto original comics I originally thought Speed of Sound Sonic was a girl, but this was not the case as later the story would illustrate. However, due to the slim girly build of the character, it’s perfect for females to pick up this character very easily as seen above. Pretty solid.

Dealers area’s only “18+” booth, featuring a number of ero-games and pick of assorted doujinshi, they also had a lot of touhou stuff and music cd’s too, although I’m sure that’s not the reason this stall always has people browsing. What we see here is a box full of kancolle books, which surprisingly I think were all safe, kinda strange.

Even more strange/funny to me was that they sorted this box based on the class of boats. Looks like destroyers and heavy cruisers have the most stuff.

Sitting down on some table in the “gaming” area for table top card games and such. They expanded this section considerably this year by actually starting to put card-related stores in the game table area, I guess in case people need a quick boost or power pack whatever. People at the other end of the table looking pretty tired too.

Standard artist alley kind of display. The past few years they have been calling this the “Comic Market” for whatever reason but most people still refer to it as artists alley, guess that’s what happens when you go to this thing for so long. The layout of artist alley this year was confusing as fuck, there is an illusion that everything is in nice even rows. Wrong, if you try to do the rounds thinking everything is symmetrical, you’ll somehow end up going in a circle, at least that’s what it felt like to me.

Wood mushroom mascot things. The two girls are like, “wut are you doing” bro. Whatever, I just took this in passing while walking.

Front-view of bad-ass Hydralisk. Extremely well done. I kind of feel bad for the guy inside, since he couldn’t move and people were all like, standing beside him and doing douche poses and shit with little kids in front.

Side view of this crazy beast. Great looking spined tail. Hail Hydra bitch.

Typical scene in artists alley. For a Sunday, the crowds were still very packed in some rows due to the popularity of some artists, which for some reason had the most narrow walking paths. Hmm..

The quality of the artists/art in artist’s alley this year is about the same since last time, which is pretty good but for some reason this year’s seemed a bit lacking. Yea, there was good arts but a lot of the same ol’ usual faces you see if you go to enough conventions. If this was your first AN you be like omg so good, but as a long time attendee, I’m a lot harder to impress. Corruption too deep, too many same old good artists, too many crappy artists getting in through the cracks through lottery. Ah-well, still brought some prints.

HEY BABY.

Said reaction to “HEY BABY”.

Making mai way out. Some dude is all running and shit. Why the hurry bro?

The popularity and presence of league has diminished considerably over the years although there is still alot of fans and cosplayers doing their thing. Even if the game is shit at least you can fall back on good character designs/skins.

Squirtle cowabunga squirt dude motherfucker bitch.

I saw this guy walking with a Hiei banner from Lawson. In my mind I was like yo, wtf did this dude come from? Did he steal that shit when he was in Japan, did he buy it? Not sure but i wanted to follow him.

On our way out. Our Hiei flag carrying friend here seem to be looking for something. usual end of the day crowds and fatigue people. That guy walking past me with his hand on his face is probably all like, shit should have brought more shows, gotta cover my face.

For some reason this dude Kongo cosplayer was standing beside some crazy bubble making bro, doing his mad craft. I believe his hat reads, “Make Idols Great Again”; that’s something I can get behind I suppose. But still, what’s with the bubbles?

Kongo: I wish mai waifu was real, then I wouldn’t have to be mai waifu.

Bubble man: I wish Idols were real, then I wouldn’t have to make bubbles great again.

Finally caught up, or rather Hiei flag man caught me and decided to strike a pose for me with his mad warez. True fan man. He’s wearing a Poi shirt that reads “Nightmare of Soloman” shit, that’s tight bro, although it does seem a bit faded, wear that shit too much man; need more shirts.

Some of my loot. Top three prints are from an artist named Of Sky Society I think, even asked her to sign them; I brought from her before, probably one of the more popular artists. Prints are from, some random/original piece, Shiro from No Game No Life, and Mumei from Kabaneri, top new show of the season. Bottom row is Ginko from Mushishi then Murokumo from Kancolle.

I also decided to buy some buttons from the same artist I got the Murokumo print from; got Nagato, Prinz and Kashima; she had a Iowa button which I would have gotten but she said it was sold out, ah well. I Also brought for fun Kancolle Weiss Schwarz English TCG cards, it’s not like I have any intention of playing this shit but for 5 bucks what the hell. My pull here was pretty awesome actually. Got Poi, Murasame, Uzuki, Irako, blueprints, Inazuma and even a holographic shiny Kaga, wow. I just ruined some guy’s life.

A collection of manga I picked up. I have been picking up DMC books over the course of many years in reverse. Oishinbo is oldschool food cool manga but I though they weren’t publishing anymore English collections so a pleasant surprise to find this one about Izakaya. 2 random books that just look so jokes, like come on shit’s called “I’ll give it My all…Tomorrow”. Shit, that face on the second book is so good. Top right is Senran Kagura manga, I think this is done, only 1-3 ghetto series boob ninjas. Vol 2-3 of non-non biyori and random Nichijou 2. The deals from stores this year is pretty shit, stuff like buy 5 books, pay US cover price or by 5 books, minus 2 dollars from each book from CND price. Bullshit but I guess it’s better than nothing.

Official booklet and papers for AN 2016. Cover art for book pretty shit, previous years was better. Uncle Tetsu actually had a promotional booth trying to advertise their newly opened maid cafe, which is kind of neat and were handing out these newspaper looking fliers parodying The Sun and offering free photos with maids and such, whatever but still cool. On the right is some flier for some anime card game called Tanto Cuore, below it is some promotional card they give you at AN, whatever.

Overall like I said at the start, this Anime North was pretty lagom. The artists alley is decent, layout worse, dealers room layout worse but staff and organization way better. The guests were decent this year but personally I don’t really care too much about autographs or meet and greet fare. Cosplay decent, loot decent. Well, maybe things will pick up once another new hype train show rolls in, I would think that would be Macross or Kabaneri but maybe it’s way to early/soon, maybe next event.