Abunai! 2011 - Looking for group -- Blog -- PatrickBregman.EU

Abunai! 2011 - Looking for group

Looking back at an awesome Abunai!

Written on 09/08/2011 by Patrick Bregman

Abunai! is already a few weeks ago, so I thought it might be a nice moment to make a little write up of it. This is a little bit later than my other con reviews, but better late than never, right? Zo, let's get to it.

Before going to Abunai! I picked up a few friends who live close by, since we were all going. The plan was to arrive at Abunai! around 2PM since that was when it started. Little did we know that they already opened at noon because of the bad weather. The big advantage of this was that there was no line to wait in. This was also the biggest disadvantage, since I had a VIP ticket so there was no line to speak of that I could skip. After a bit of uncertainty of where I should be to check in to the convention I managed to get my wristband and my VIP badge, so I was ready to go. Or was I? The moment that I grabbed my camera I noticed that the LCD display was off. I managed to forget the battery for it >_<

After fixing that, I was all ready to go and have fun at Abunai! Or so I thought. Because we switched rooms kinda last-minute, there was a bit of a mess with the rooms. This took a bit of effort to fix, and in the end we had 3 single person rooms and 1 two person room for 3 people to sleep in. Being the honest people we are, we contacted Abunai! staff and everything was fixed so that everyone had the room they booked. The other room was given to a gopher who ordered a room and paid for it, but didn't get it after all. With all of this fixed, there was nothing that stood in the way of having a great weekend!

Friday

Friday was the day of the opening and the AMV compo. After fixing all the stuff with the hotel rooms I got some staff to get me into the opening, and I was just in time to see the announcement of the MangaKissa. They are opening in a matter of weeks, the 18th of September to be precise. After this, I went to grab something to eat, which I didn't even manage to finish halfway, I am still trying to figure out why I couldn't. I stayed for some time in the MangaKissa to hang out with friends, and then I went to the AMV compo. I managed to be half an hour late, so I decided to skip the line and enter the dealerroom then. On Sunday I learned that I should have simply knocked on the door 'cuz I was a VIP... After walking through the dealerroom, I went back to the MangaKissa for some more manga and their Silent Library 2.0. Pictures of that will be online shortly.

Saturday

Well, actually the Silent Library lasted till Saturday, but... Anyway, after having breakfast and rushing to get in my cosplay, I ran off to the Yakitate Abunai! workshop, where a good friend of mine, Ellen, helped with the workshop which taught us how to make Melonpan. After this, I went to the Cosplay Act Competition, which I also missed because I just couldn't stand my cosplay anymore. The worst part? I probably left 5 minutes before it opened. I made another strawl through the dealerroom, and I remembered that I still had to pickup an order from Archonia. So, after doing this I saw some more nice magazines which contained lots of pictures of Strike Witches and, to my surprise, Sky Girls!

I have absolutely no idea what I did in the afternoon on Saturday, but before I knew it, it was time for diner again. I asked around for more people who were going for diner, and I managed to find a few who where also going for diner. After diner it was time to rush to the concert, which was actually very nice! I didn't expect that when listening to the samples on Ryo Fujimura's MySpace. After this, it was time for another round of Silent Library 2.0. During this, I was actually amazed by the Abunai! photographer who actually managed to stay less than 15 minutes, I wonder how many pictures he made...

Anyway, this Silent Library was just as much fun as the one on Friday, so I had loads of fun.

Sunday

Sunday was already the last day of the con, and the day of the Cosplay Fashion Show. It was also the first time since I bought my new camera that I actually managed to fill up the card, I have about 16GB of photos. Most of them where made during the Cosplay Fashion Show (CFS) and Eurocos preliminaries. But before I was able to go to the CFS we had to clean up our room so that we could turn in the key of it. This managed to be quite difficult since it took a little bit more time to pack everything, so in the end I didn't really have enough time for breakfast, I just munched some croisants and was done with it.

The CFS and Eurocos where as awesome as always, and I just love shooting pictures of all the awesome cosplayers. After this, I went on a last walk through the dealerroom, since lots of dealers have nice discounts because they don't want to take stuff back. There was very little of this to be found to be honest. Though I did manage to find a few nice doujinshi cirlces who were selling manga and posters. Since I really liked the manga, I bought it. Same goes for the "poster", but that one was only on A4. There was no viable option to get it on A2 or even A1 or A0 format because it was drawn very small. To support them so they are able to get this done next year, I decided to buy it.

After this, it was already time to return home, so that concluded Abunai! 2011 for me. I did really like it, even though I spend more time running around for people than doing the stuff I wanted to do. But hey, that's something I really like to do since it makes me feel that I am actually doing something nice.

I did take lots and lots of pictures, about 4500 in total. Those will be online sometime soon, since I still need to filter then (I shot about 1000 during the concert, and another 1000 during both Silent Libraries) and post process them. Once they're up, I'll be sure to put a link on my Twitter so everyone can see it.

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