I arrived at Toronto Congress Centre (TCC) where Anime North (AN) is usually held around 6pm and quickly went to Harvey’s to grab a bite. Long line-ups is really unavoidable in any restaurants around the convention so sometimes it’s better to bring your own food and drink. I always buy 12-pack bottle water and put them in my car to make sure I have enough water supply . Not to mention food and drink inside the convention is tend to be a rip off.

A typical line up on Friday at Anime North. Saturday’s line up will be at least twice much worse than this.

The line up continued inside but it’s moving quite fast so the waiting time was not that bad. Overall, there were less people that I had expected them to be in comparison to last year.

I grabbed my badge from Rin at Double Tree hotel and went straight back to TCC. Nia, from Gurren Lagann, was lucky to be the first cosplayer I took photo of . On a side note, I still haven’t finished watching Gurren Lagann lol.

Moving on to the artist alley area and I looked left and right for cosplayers that caught my eyes.

I bumped into this pair of “Magnet” Miku and Luka who were nice enough to do a kissing pose

It’s quite rare to a Lancer cosplayer from Fate Stay/Night and he did very well. One of my favourite in this year Anime North.

I have seen this group in previous anime cons and their cosplays are always nicely done. Kureha, name this character, Houmei and  Ryuna from Shining Tears series. I couldn’t recognize the 2nd character from the left for some reasons.

Shippo from Inuyasha. When I was about to take a picture,  he’s little bit shy in the beginning.

And he tried to avoid looking at my camera desperately

He finally gave up and looked at my camera.

No more shyness anymore as he seems to be enjoying his picture taken by many people. I was the first one to initiate to take his picture and five seconds later, a crowd people started taking his picture.

One thing that it’s great about this year Anime North was that people finally let go Final Fantasy 7 and began cosplaying Final Fantasy 13. I lost count how many FF13 cosplayers there were.

Nel from Bleach. Great smile

Ouran Host Club group cosplayer. If you know the names for each character please let me know

Line-ups on Saturday morning.

Another FF13 cosplayers. Nice Sarah cosplay.

Not sure from what series they are Ace Attorney group photo (Thanks, Shi Rose).

Characters from Bioshock. Name these characters.

And more from Bioshock. I didn’t play the game so I don’t know who they are. If you do, please let me know and will credit accordingly.

Ladies from Persona 3/4 and again I failed to name these characters but they all look great especially the girl on the left.

Ryder and Saber from Fate Stay/Night.

Lovely sisters from Trinity Blood. I have seen them before in major anime cons and they always caught my attention

Chise from Saikano. Quite a big gun she got there .

Persona group.

Name these characters/series

Zidane from FFIX. Awesome cosplay of Zidane.

Saber from Fate/Stay Night. I love her hair antenna thingy on her head

Ichigo(middle) and Zakuro(right) from Tokyo Mew Mew. Who’s the girl in red ? I couldn’t recall any Tokyo Mew Mew characters with red colour. Does anyone know?

Kaede-chan from Shuffle. She was so happy when I took her picture because I heard her saying that finally someone knew this character. How I could not have known anyways since Shuffle! is in my favourite anime list.

Yukari from Persona 3.

Another group shot from Persona series. I saw quite a few cosplayers from Persona in AN this year.

Sailor Pluto, Venus, Saturn, Moon, Mars, Mercury and Jupiter from Sailor Moon series.

Name this character.

Rachel Alucard from Blaz Blue. I love her umbrella <3

Name these characters/series

Yoko and Nia from Gurren Lagann. It’s not an anime convention without Yoko/Nia cosplayers

Oh my gosh, this was one of my favourite cosplayers in AN this year especially Suiseiseki cosplayer. I have seen her in multiple anime conventions and just love her cosplay as Suiseiseki (my favourite characters in Rozen Maiden). She had a watering can and it’s really well made. Hinaichigo, Suiseiseki and Suigintou. Awesome cosplays, ladies .

Gundam group photo. What kind of Gundam was that ? does anyone know ? Gundam MKII (Thanks Ichi, I knew I can depend on you on Gundam stuff )

Character from Halo

Ita-bike ?

Great cosplayers from Soul Calibur. Talim (Left), Yun Seong(Top-Middle), Tira (Bottom-Middle) and Amy(Right).

More cosplayers from FFXIII . Readers, are you getting sick of seeing FFXIII yet ? Snow, Lightning and Sarah.

Three Toyota Truenoswwd were on display at Anime North in front of main TCC entrance.

Any Initial D fans can confirm if these are the same as the one in Initial D (aside from colour of course). I vaguely remembered watching the first season of Initial D and I think these are pretty similar to the one that Takumi drives in Initial D series.

Closer shot of the Ita-bike that I found earlier. Name that character/series.

She just made my day. My favourite character in Shuffle!, Shigure Asa. I called her ‘Asa-senpai’ when I asked if I could take a photo of her . Nice pose from Asa-senpai. I just love it when cosplayers from favourite characters/series pose similarly to the characters themselves.

Cosplayers from Valkyria Chronicles. Where is my Alicia ?

Quite a rare sight to see Syaoran with his board and Sakura with her clow card book. Nice cosplay.

Moarrrrrrr!!!! FFXIII. Sarah and Snow. Snow cosplayer is just perfect since he is a big guy and it’s how I imagine Snow would be in real life.

The guy asked if I wanted him to carry her and I was like …. “Can you ?” and he said of course. I was like ‘sweettttt….’, I got another pose.

You may not want to mess around with her, Rank 4 Claymore, Ophelia. I have seen her before in previous conventions as she always cosplays as Ophelia.

Many people were hanging around outside TCC. Hot weather didn’t prevent them from cosplaying and having fun.

First time I have seen full Red Mage AF1 armor (Final Fantasy 11) that were nicely done and not to mention he’s a mithra and has an Excalibur. Awesome cosplay.

Lovely Sakura from Card Captor Sakura. I have seen her in previous conventions cosplayed as Sakura. Nicely done .

Bayonetta from Bayonetta (PS3 games)

Bleach group photo

More Saber cosplay. I think she is better than the previous one that I took. Her armor is not reflective so it’s easy to take a picture of her. Overall , she did a good job but Maridah is still my number 1 Saber cosplayer <3

Marisa Kirisame from Touhou. First time , I have seen Marisa Kirisame in anime convention. Great cosplay.

Usagi Tsukino from Sailor Moon. Nice dress.

Sakura vs Ryu in a Hadouken battle.

Group cosplay from Code Geass.

Is this some kind of Digimon ? I cannot remember the name.

Name these characters (I know they are from Naruto but are they all Kakashi ?)

Asuka from NGE. Nicely done.

Thanks to Tim for letting me know about them. I was waiting outside TTC and hopefully they passed by and they sure did. Lovely ladies from Bible Black.

Saber from Fate Stay / Night. I chuckled when I saw her head lol.

Characters from Sengoku Basara. From left, Yukimura, Name this character Chosokabe Motochika(Thanks Ichi) and Dante.

Vanille from FFXIII. Her staff was nicely done  and her voice was very pleasant unlike the one in the game (English version) .

Name this character/series

Arale and Arale’s dad from Dr. Slump

Just in case you all are wondering what the pink-candy like is, it’s actually a poo. Arale likes poking at a poo.

This is ACG’s trademark pose.

They are from Luminous Arc (I asked them since I had no idea what they were cosplaying as). This group has always an awesome cosplay. I can see a lot of effort was put in their costumes. Name these characters Roland Rina and Rasche (Thanks, Rinaa) .

Name this character. Remilia Scarlet from Touhou Project (Thanks, Makushiiin)

Name this character.

Black Rock Shooter

Celty from Durarara!

Nice pair of Edward and Major Armstrong from Full Metal Alchemist.

Bayonetta and name this character from Bayonetta.

Cloud’s riding a bike.

Another girl from Bible Black. Too bad I don’t know which girl is which

Hiyori from Bleach. Quite rare to see Hiyori cosplay in an anime convention and it’s nicely done too.

Name these characters Astharoshe Asran (Wine Dress ver)

Marisa Kirisame from Touhou.

Miku group photo ^^

“Magnet” Miku and Luka from Vocaloid.

Meroko from Full Moon wo Sagashite.

Maid with a sword ?

Another trademark pose of ACG.

Gin from Gintama. Nice cosplay, Tim

And of course, we cannot forget our trademark pose.

I just had to join them

Name these characters. Correct me if I am wrong, I believe the left one is Len from Vocaloid.

Our ACG mascot, Ansu. For some reasons, I just love this shot.

That basically wrapped up my Anime North 2010 coverage. It’s no doubt that it’s another great convention, although, it could have been better. Better japanese guest of honours would be nice although, I don’t see it happening since it’s a convention ran by fans for fans so no budget ^^;;. Despite that, I still enjoyed it and look forward to next year.

In case you are expecting a loot post, there won’t be any loot post since the only thing I bought was Claymore blu-ray for $72 after tax ^^.

Related posts:

1. March Toronto Anime Convention 2010
2. ACG NA Launch Party Mini Con
3. December Toronto Anime Con (DTAC)

For this month of April, to promote reading and celebrate City of Toronto’s 175th Anniversary , City of Toronto and Toronto Public Library are collaborating a showcase called Keep Toronto Reading 2009. Many free events, performances and discussions are available at library branches and participating partners.

One of the library branches, North York Central Library, partnered with Anime North staffs holding an Anime Bash. It’s the first time that an event like that was being held at a public library. I think they did a good job on trying to promote reading and advertise Anime North at the same time. Not to mention the event was free.

I stumbled this event by accident when I was browsing Toronto Public Library’s website. If only this event was known more, I bet there would be a lot more people attending it. The event started around 2pm and when I got there with my gf, there were barely 10 people aside from the staffs.

The anime bash only consisted of two parts. Firstly, a presentation by Jacqueline M. Ward, a world-class costume designer and anime showing, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (時をかける少女 ,Toki o Kakeru Shōjo). I had not watched before and it turned out to be pretty good.

During the presentation by Jacqueline, she gave us some useful tips about costume designs which I am sure that a lot of cosplayers would be interested in. There were two types of costume design; the first one is an original work where you design the costume by yourself and the second one is a derivative work where the design is already there so you just need to create it. For most cosplayers, it falls into the derivative type since the designs are already there (in manga or anime), although, if you come up with your own costume for the anime character that you are cosplaying for, it becomes an original work.

She also talked materials and her experiences in countless costume cons around the world. At the end of the presentation, she closed it with an interesting story when she went shopping at a fabric store and bought some really unusual materials. The cashier lady asked her what she was planning to do with all of these materials then she started explaining about what she does. The cashier lady could not understand why she’s doing all of this (a similar question for us, otaku ^^) and suddenly, an old italian lady said that it’s for the heart. If you are not sure about the meaning, it’s “passion” ^^. It’s something that we all otakus have, whether it’s for anime, figures, japanese’s culture, etc. A good example would be Danny Choo and his passion which bring him to where he is now and I couldn’t remember how many times his story always inspire me.

Some of Jacqueline’s works can be seen above and I think they look amazing ^^. Her presentation or info session is quite informative and I learn a thing or two about costume design even though I am not a cosplayer (yet).

Some nice views from inside the library.

Before the anime showing, all cosplayers gathered together and took a group picture. Since I went to many anime related events, I met so many familiar con-goers. One of them was Amanda (known as Elemental). She is a professional cosplay photographer who gave out a presentation about cosplay photography in Con-G.

Related posts:

1. Anime North 2008
2. ACG Random Pairs Party
3. Anzu Chigusa Birthday Party