Animation Supercon (October 2 – 4, 2009) was held this year at the Doubletree Miami Mart Convention Center. This years convention was especially exciting because of the reunion of the cast of FUTURAMA and PINKY & THE BRAIN. When we first got there on Saturday we were surprised to note that the convention was strangely empty this year   and it stayed that way throughout the day!

     Anyway, we started the day by joining the Fancy Onigiri making panel. It took us two hours to make the Onigiri, and guess what? We still don’t understand why those Japanese girls spend hours making Onigiri for the guys they like! Its a lot of hard work just to make a small ball of rice, that tastes like…okay. However, we would love to try Onigiri made in Japan, to see what it really tastes like. But i will say that it was a lot of fun to make the Onigiri.

     After making Onigiri we went to the first floor to meet Billy West. He is the Star of Futurama, Ren and Stimpy, Looney Tunes and lots of other cartoons. It was so cool to get to hear him do the voice of Bugs Bunny (what’s up doc?) and lots of others voices from Futurama. He talked about his career as a Voice Actor, and how he started his career by doing voices on a radio show. Eventually, he started auditioning to do voices in cartoons, and that’s how it all started. It was really cool to meet him, he seems like a really fun person.

     We then went to have lunch at the hotel mart and looked around the shops. When we got tired we went back to the Convention to see some Anime. We got to see a hot guy in the Anime Needless. We didn’t get to see much although the end credits was a bit weird with the girls making out. Afterwards, For the first time ever we tried to play a game for the DreamCast at the game room (it was some kind of fighting game with weird girls fighting with a violin and a tennis racket).

     There is an interesting artist we met that we were very impressed by his artwork. He is called Alfonso and we find his artwork to be one of the best among the other artist at the convention, check out our picture gallery to see an example of his art work. We also came across an interesting panel hosted by four girls that tried to teach the guys how to pick up girls at an anime convention. It was interesting to say the least, but since we’re girls we don’t really need tips on how to pick up girls!

     There was a great band called “Select Star” that played songs from video games. It was nostalgic to hear songs from some of my favorite video games. We even took a video of them playing Aerith’s Theme, from FF7. At the end of the day we saw the cosplay contest, there were so many interesting costumes. Our favorite was a cute little boy who was dressed as Ash Ketchum from Pokemon, he couldn’t have been more than 5 but he was so brave to go up there and pose for everyone.

     Although, there weren’t many people at the convention, it wasn’t any less fun. It actually felt good not to wait in line for anything. For example to buy food, to play games in the game room panel or to find a seat to watch the Cosplay contest. Overall we had fun as always!

Some Pictures from the Convention:

Video of Select Star band performing Aerith’s Theme song:

      YasumiCon held in F.I.U.(Florida International University) is on its seventh year and is one of South Florida’s biggest Free anime conventions. We were able to see comedian Aaron Pabon. He hosted the Costume contest along side character Mario and did a stand up show later in the evening that was both funny and entertaining.

     This was our first Free anime convention we have been to, I was curious to see what a group of volunteers from the Japanese Animation and Film Club at FIU have put together in order to form an event for anime lovers to come together to enjoy and share their common interests.

     They had a game room and room panels showing interesting information about anime. For example, anime of the 80’s, bad anime titles and Yuri 101. They also had Costume Contests, Vendors such as our favorite Tate’s Comics, Artists Alley, a small dealer room and a Maids Cafe.

     We started out by walking down the Artist Alley and saw some interesting drawings then headed towards the costume contest that was about to start and was a little over crowded for the small auditorium being held at. Luckily we had found a spot close to the stage. they even closed the doors to stop others from coming in. The costumes were interesting and there were several that we had already seen from previous conventions.

     We then headed towards the game room but they were not letting anyone in of how crowded it was. So we decided to try the panel rooms to see what they were giving but it was also crowded and some people were left standing. On one panel they were giving Yuri 101 and the other panel info. on bad anime titles.

     We also tried getting into the Maids Cafe but there was a waiting line since there were already people seated inside eating. They had waiters dressed as maids and the food they had to offer was Miso soup, rice balls, sweets and etc. Our last stop was at the dealer room and bought some Pocky sticks from Tate’s Comics and looked around at what other vendors had.

     Overall, we thought the convention was good, there was a lot more people than we had anticipated and enough entertainment to believe it to be a true anime convention.

-Pictures taken at the Costume Contest event and others were taken while we walked around

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-Both videos were recorded before the Contestants came up the stage