My Weekend at AWA 2009

This past weekend I unexpectedly went off with a large group of friends to Amine Weekend Atlanta (AWA) in... well Atlanta. AWA is some kind of 3 day anime, video game, pop culture convention that one of my friends go to every year and this year I was invited to go with him and his friends at the cost of 70 bucks. So I figured "what the hell", I've never been to anything like this before and it's been years since I've been on anything even remotely resembling a vacation. What followed may as well have been the most fun I've have all year.

("Part of my motley crew")

There were 12 of us on this trip, a few I've met before (most of them only a week ago) and we plowed into 2 vans and spent about 5 hours on the road heading to Atlanta. The hotel we spent our weekend at was ritzy, but cheap, charging five dollars for some stupid bottle of water and fifteen bucks a night for an internet connection. While in our conjoining rooms, I slowly but surely started bonding with these people. We all had similar interest and attitudes and just had a blast screwing around with each other. The day before leaving I bought the new Mario & Luigi game with intention of playing it when there was dull down-time between events, but I barely touched the thing as I was spending all my time laughing and messing around with my new friends in the room and during the convention itself. ("Various Kingdom Hearts Characters" )
("Angry Video Game Nerd Vs. Nostalgia Critic" )

The main attraction to this convention is seeing a bunch of people cos-play as bunch of different characters. Over the course of the weekend I saw a lot people dressed as my favorite characters: Mario Bros, Zelda, Pokemon, The Joker, and even The Angry Video Game Nerd and The Nostalgia Critic. The thing I learned from all of this is that cos-play is less about people actually wanting to be these characters and more about people just wanting to show off some cool stuff that they made. One of the only things my friends complained about that I noticed more towards the end of the convention is that the cos-players showed an over reliance on certain franchises. Well over 80% of the people dressed up as characters from Bleach, Naurto, or Kingdom Hearts. It would have been nice if there had been more variety of franchise representation.

(It's Over 9000!!!!)

(The Comedian(Justin) and Rorschach)
(The Mario Sisters)

There was quite a full list of events planned at this convention from watching various anime to pokemon trivia contest to cos-play 101, but I didn't attend most of them. Usually the lines to these things were too long for me to tolerate, so I usually spent most of time with one of my friends in the dealer's room where you can buy rare Japanese merchandise. There were action figures, DVDs, video games, dolls, and swords. I managed to walk out there with a Dragonball Z and Sonic the Hedgehog figure, a Kirby doll, and a couple of Mario Galaxy cards. The downside was that everything was overpriced, a side effect of most of the items being imported I suppose.

(Rikki Simons: the voice of GIR)

(Set phasers to stunning)

The place I spent a huge chunk of time at towards the end of the convention was the artist room where people can go and view and buy fan art. Nathan and I spent too much time and money here, but all of the drawings were just too good to pass up. The coolest thing we managed to do in this room was meet Rosearik Rikki Simons who did the voice of GIR from Invader Zim. We got pictures with him and he autographed some pictures and it was just too cool for words. I really wished I had job so I could buy some more stuff. (I think I just rediscovered my love of Pokemon)
(A yeti eating chris's head, a flamer, and Nathan)

Come Sunday afternoon it was time for us to depart this wonderful locale and head back to our dull reality. Overall I had a blast and have come to find the friends I roomed with as people I can't wait to see again. Nathan and I made plans to go another convention in November, but I seriously doubt that would actually come to be. I'll definitely go back to AWA next year if these people go as well.