Toronto Anime Con

December 3rd 2006

Prologue

Sundays aren't the best time to travel for me. For one, bus fares are higher for one day trip to Toronto. Though being at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre it's make it easier to get to due the Greyhound stop at Royal York Hotel. It's short walk to the con. A quick stop at Tim Hortons, then I headed to the convention.

Line-up had already started as 11 am rolled around the line-up grew and grew. Being a free event without having a guest, the fees for the dealer's room paid for the event itself. As with every year, the initial rush for the dealer's room was crushing with people. Table layout was better with larger isles with breaks within the centre.

Photo shoots

Events like D-TAC bring fans together. Some to organized photo shoots based on a theme or anime. The central lobby became a photo shoot area for various groups.

 

Black Moon	BLEACH	Death Note	X

Can I (help) Take Your Picture

   

I never been the only one taking pictures at events but not all the pictures I take are mine. As in the case with this group of girls trying to get a group photo of themselves in the mirror side of the escalators.  I ended offering to use their cameras to take a group shot for them as well as some of my own. It wasn't the only time that day. Another group were taking turns but it meant one person would be out of the photo.  Hopefully their pictures turned out better than mine.

You might wonder why it takes so long to get the pictures up. There is alot of post-production work in getting the pictures and the pages up. Like below, you can see how bad are the pictures I have to work with. The mixed lighting of the MTCC being fluorescent, incandescent, incoming sunlight and whatever the lighted displays around cause havoc with the light metering of my small lens camera.

 

Untouched

Edited

Sometimes the shutter speed is way off and I end up with ghosting, double images or downright blurred photos. Which is why I take many photos of the same subject to increase my odds of getting at least one usable photo. Sometimes even with photo editing software there is no way of correcting some photos.  If I could afford a better camera I would but this year I opted for a miniDV camcorder which has paid off for recording the masquerade.

 

COSPLAY FOR SALE Toronto is rapidly becoming Tokyo North with Maid's (cosplay) Cafe and now a cosplay shop.  Pacific Mall seems to be a mecca for Northern Otaku so it's no wonder that costume speciality shop to exist. It is unusual to see full costumes for sale at a con. Plenty of polar fleece mimi caps and Kingdom Hearts necklaces or Naruto props. Still it was impressive display and use of the space as I needed to stitch together to fully show their booth. Check out their site at www.coscatlove.com

GAMES PEOPLE PLAYED

 

No end to fun or how people had fun as people bought or brought games to play. Board games have made a comeback and are hip again. Twister was played all day in the halls as was Mario Monopoly which a pair bought in the dealer's room  then promptly had a game outside in the hall.

 

DOLLS ON DISPLAY Increasing numbers of girls are getting into dolls. Bishonen Dolls that is. D-TAC was no exception a testament to this growing fad. The display was underneath the escalator in the front lobby which seems to be the meeting spot for this group for years as I've seen them around that spot for couple of years.

VIPpers of D-TAC

   

I would say December TAC had it share of cosplayers but the ECO friendly cosplay of Ms. Brown Bag with interchangeable expressions and the human Wii controller gets my thumbs up.

Aftermath

 

Many people had organized dinner at local restaurants. For me, I met with Andrew Nagy (4 Koma Artist) and Risu-chan from our forums. We walked from Front Street to a little Mom and Pop style Japanese Restaurant on Younge Street which had more traditional menu than the sushi bar fare. I had deep bowl of Chicken Udon which help fend off  the cold as we talked about art, video games the infamous Zanta and of course, anime.