The Anime Fans decamp onto the lawn as flames fail to engulf the building.

Batgirl! Her costume was fetchingly low-cut at the back, with little bat wings... Which I utterly failed to get a picture of.

The Fire Brigade arrives! We are saved!

Cosplay Contest

A rather good Vash the Stampede from Trigun, complete with cat.

Our bat-girl, showing off for the crowd.

Left to right: Umi, Hikaru and Fuu from Magic Knight Rayearth do their famous Dance Dance Revolution routine.

Miyu (right) and Larva (left) from Vampire Princess Miyu.

You need Yu-Gi-Oats!

Four girls and a guy from Gravitation.

Alucard from Hellsing.

One of the girls from Martian Successor Nadesico... I forget which one. A "bridge bunny".

Two of the girls from Azumanga Daioh sing Chiyo-chan's song. Aaaah! Cuteness attack!

Hey, we're on the big screen!

Um... Dejiko and Rabi-en-Rose from Digi Charat. Management takes no responsibility for any side-effects that may ensue.

The boy and girl (whose names I have utterly forgotten) from Hayao Miyazaki's Laputa: Castle in the Sky. Really nice costumes, these, simple but effective.

Just another random Yuna.

San from Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke.

Day two to follow...

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News and pictures once I'm dry and have had dinner and maybe a nap and caught up on blogging elsewhere and such.

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Well, and Street Fighter and Dance Dance Revolution... But we'll ignore that for the moment.

I missed the first couple of hours, since today was a Saturday, and I never get up on Saturday mornings if I can help it, and because Animania is being held this year at the University of New South Wales* which is miles from anywhere and rather a nuisance to get to.**

But I did get there in time to see Haibane Renmei, which I was quite enjoying, right up until the Bavarian Fire Drill. Complete with real fire engines! If you want to see what an anime convention looks like decamped onto the lawn outside the Scientia*** at UNSW, I've got pictures and will be posting them tomorrow.

Then, after the building spectacularly failed to burn down, back inside for a rather good panel on model making from an artist who's worked on the recent Star Wars and Matrix films, and then the Cosplay (costume) competition, the highlight of any anime convention.

One of the nice things about anime, as opposed to my other hobbies such as programming, computer and role-playing games, and science fiction, is that it is very popular with the other half of the species - you know, girls. In fact, the audience looked to me like about a 60:40 girl:guy ratio. Lots of cute girls, and even better, lots of cute girls in anime costumes.

Lots of photos of the cosplay contest, of course, and I'll post the best ones after the second round tomorrow. My favourite of the day was the girls from Magic Knight Rayearth doing their DDR routine. Cool!

The day ended with Who's Line is it Anime, a series of improvisational comic skits with an anime theme. It was during this that I started wondering why so many of the female contingent kept referring to yowies... Until I realised that I had never heard the word yaoi spoken before.

Anime... Truly something in it for everyone.

* A.k.a. Kenso Kindy, yes.
** I studied there for three years. Trust me on this.
*** That wasn't there fifteen years ago!

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(via Tim)

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* Okay, so Maze was originally a girl, and Hibiki is really just in disguise, and Birdy is really two people in one body. On the other hand, we have Nuriko from Fushigi Yuugi, Yakumo from 3x3 Eyes ("It's just a job!"), Tsubasa from Ranma, Makoto from El Hazard...

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What do you download?, they asked. Three gig seems plenty to us.

I pointed out that I download fan-subbed anime, since this is often the only way to get the less popular or older series - they simply aren't available to buy in English, neither dubbed nor subtitled. And my favourite site for finding new fansubs, AnimeSuki, often lists as much as a gigabyte of new anime a day.

Fair enough, they say, knowing well the depths of my addiction.

A gigabyte a day. Having said that, I became curious, and went and actually added the numbers up:

Sunday was busy - 1.8GB. Lots of fansubbers working on their projects over the weekend, perhaps.
Monday - 3.4GB. Yikes! I mean, wow! That's a lot! Presumably just a blip; that doesn't happen every day.
Tuesday - 4.8GB. Holy transatlantic cows, Batman! Where did that come from?
Wednesday - 1.3GB. Ah, a return to normalcy. But shortlived -
Thursday - 7.1GB. Nooo! My line's not fast enough! I can't download that much in a day!

Fortunately, people have started to collect the episodes of various series so that you can download four or five or ten episodes at once. Unfortunately, that means that a single click commits you to a twelve hour download. It's like being on dial-up again.

Now, you'll have to excuse me, as it's time for Kodocha.*

* That's the one with the squirrel, Susie.

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Episode 9 of Kodocha provides the answer to Mitch H.'s comment:

One can only hope that it's potty-trained.

As seen here.

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Maro-chan climbs back to the safety of his home after both Mama's (left) and Sana's (right) heads have exploded.

* Well, at least Maro-chan has a proper name, unlike Squirrelly the Squirrel in Saber Marionette J.**
** Currently back to watching Kodocha.

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Princess Aeka in Tenchi Muyo! had a song of that name, too.

* Roughly translated: Call me Princess!**
** Currently watching: Scrapped Princess.

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