Manila Con Hopping: Anicon 2008

Children, this is a telltale sign that you are in the wrong place in the con.

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After much dorama (If you are not a privy to it, live in blissful ignorance.), Anicon 2008 finally pushed through October 5, 2008 at The Megatrade Hall 3 of SM Megamall in Manila, Philippines.

Anicon, apparently means Anime, Console, and On-Line Games according to the organizers. Anyway, it still has all the elements of a regular con like artist tables, merchants, food, cosplay, and lots and lots of games. I really didn’t know where the anime came in. The place was crawling with nothing but huge monitors, computers and all the stuff that makes any avid gamer weep in joy.

Anyway, this con is the first event that my business partner and I sell off our stuff. Since it’s food, we were placed in The Maid Café, a small walled nook where we slummed with Yoshinoya and five underaged (well, I can confirm at least one of them was underaged since I asked her) girls in meido costumes fawn over, sing, dance, and take pictures with their 90% male customers. For a price. I think my friend and I were placed there to police any abusive pedobears who went too far (apart from overstaying, nothing much happened) since she’s considered a sempai of sorts and we’re, like, old.

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lolibaits.

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To be honest, I know that maid cafés are a big thing in Japan… I really didn’t know if that type of gimmick would work with the generally cheap Filipinos. But was I wrong!!! From our corner, hormonally charged mans throw money around to have these girls sing and dance while they eat their beef gyudon, cupcakes and cookies and finish off with a picture of themselves with the five. The girls were hands off of course, and many of the boys just like the novelty and were generally gentlemen, even if the maid’s jobs include fawning over them in the cute, twelve-year old way they were required to act.

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Who they should have recuited to be a server in the Maid Café.

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I really don’t have that much to report about the happenings in the con since I was pretty much stuck inside the Maid Café and didn’t get to get around much. Maybe usagijen and/or hazy_undercover would be making posts on their first con experience ~I hope they do. I would love to see what I missed. (EDIT: hazy_undercover write about the loot she has/wants to have.)

The cosplay was small compared to other cons and since I didn’t get to go around much, I was only able to get a handful of pictures. And since I got zero sleep the night before, I became a terrible photographer… not that I was a good one in the first place.

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Still not devoid of the Note-tards and Narutards.

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Ugh…. That sucks not having so many pictures. (More pictures will be available, if not already, at the Gallery of cosplay.ph because a lot of the coslayers post their cosplay resume there.. Anyway, the only other highlight of my day (other than making profit from our stint preparing sweets in the Maid Café – Yay! Money!) was finally getting to meet a some Filipino anibloggers – usagijen, hazy_undercover, and kaeboo. Kanzeon… why didn’t you go??? :’(

Other than a compilation of the episodes of Macross Frontier episodes (which would take forever to DL with my crap ISP) and a free six-pack of Yakult since the lactobacilli shirota strain microbe is good for you, the only other thing I got was a cute little Shugo Chara cellphone hanging thingie that usagijen gave me – (Thanks! It was really sweet ^^) I should really re-pick up that show again since it’s over.

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Well, I finally got Anicon over with. The next event my friend and I are going to do would be Cosmania the coming Sunday. My friend and I will also be selling stuff off, but this time, we will be in the con itself, not stuck in an enclosed food stalls! Hooray! Oh well, until Thursday, I can finally catch up with my first episode impressions of fall season shows ^^