Recently, I’ve begun to take a step behind the scenes of anime conventions. I have lent a hand at the following cons:

Panels, Events

AUSAM-Con 2008 – Cosplay Director, Cosplay 101 Panelist, Cosplay Workshop Panelist, Cosplay Contest Judge
Anime Boston 2008 – Cosplay Dating Game Contestant, Cosplay Chess Match
Anime Expo 2008 – Bandai Booth cosplay, Anime Singled Out Contestant
Anime Weekend Atlanta 2008 – Make-up for Cosplay panelist
Anime South 2009 – Sugar Hearts Maid Cafe
AUSAM-Con 2009 – Cosplay Director, Beginning Cosplay Make-up Techniques panelist
Anime Alabama 2009 – Cosplay Events Coordinator, Macross Frontier Maid Cafe
Anime Weekend Atlanta 2009 – Helped run the Make Your Own Cosplay event as an official “Tim Gunn”
Anime South V – Cosplay Events Coordinator, Charming Fairy Maid Cafe

For years, I’ve been participating in masquerades and writing skits for my group, Coconut Bubble Sex Cosplay. All together, we performed in 9 costume contests (with at least two members present) before the group went on hiatus in 2009 after Anime Expo’s masquerade.

Skits

Anime Expo 2009 – Errors in the skit audio encoding led to us not being able to perform our full skit onstage.

New York Anime Festival 2008 – Diana and I used the name “Coconut Bubble Sex Cosplay” to compete for the US World Cosplay Summit preliminaries that year. We won a Judge’s Award for our performance.

Anime Expo 2008 – The Black Lagoon company and friends investigate the deepest, darkest parts of the internet with one mission… Destroy 4chan. We took a Judge’s Award.

Anime Boston 2008 – The Goddesses prepare to battle with the power of song! Wait… how does someone battle with the power of song? Won Best Choreography.

Anime Expo 2007 – The cast of Excel Saga does their best to take over the con the only way they know how. Won Best Group Performance.

Anime Central 2007 – The members of Coconut Bubble Sex Cosplay join forces with WeGo4Kyo Cosplay to bring you Princess Tutu: abridged. Won Best in Show Performance.

Anime Expo 2006 – Using the name Coconut Bubble Sex Cosplay for the first time, the girls of Final Fantasy X-2 (minus Paine, she was sick and could not make it) bring you a musical about what it means to be a female Final Fantasy character. Won Best Group Performance Runner-up.

Megacon 2006 – It’s orange-Ulala vs. white-Ulala in this Space Channel 5 face-off: LET’S DANCE! (Note: Clearly, we did not choreograph this, but instead just prepared some audio and got onstage and danced. lol)

Anime Expo 2005 – Before they were Coconut Bubble Sex Cosplay, they were a group of Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children cosplayers months before the movie came out, trying to answer some of the questions raised by the trailer. Hey, it was the only plot we had to go on!

All masquerade footage (save for Megacon) is uploaded courtesy of ACParadise! <3

Other Video Footage

Bandai had a Haruhi dance contest at Anime Expo 2007, and myself, Diana, and Alli all decided to enter. We didn’t win, but that’s okay, because we didn’t even go to the concert anyway! lol

Anime Expo 2007 Pop Shock Masquerade – Velvy and I performed in AX’s J-rock/J-pop and Japanese subculture masquerade dressed as W from their Koi no Fuga PV. Pardon my dancing, it’s pretty pathetic!

At Anime Expo 2008, Alli and JJ put together a Genderbend Haruhi group, and conveniently, all of us knew the Haruhi dance (except for poor Jessie/Kyonko, who I bopped on the head 6 seconds in!!)! However, D and I were a little rusty, because it’d been a year since we’d done it, and we were no longer doing the parts we knew. Also, my performance is purposely REALLY lackluster because I was trying to look disinterested like Yuki and not move my hips around like a girl. So I just look kind of lackadaisical. lol

This is a video of the AUSAM-Con 2009 Costume Contest, which I MC’d. I don’t really like MCing. I’m not very funny or charming when I have a mic in my hands.

Megacon 2006 – Sarah (formerly known as “Princess_Garnet”) and I decided it would be fun to sing a duet of Part of Your World. I am a terrible singer even in the best of circumstances, and by the end of the night (it was probably 11pm, the rave was just starting), I’m DAMN shitty. Sarah, however, is vocally-trained and has a beeeeeeautiful voice, so it’s kind of a shame that I was singing, too, but just do your best to tune me out. lol

At Anime Expo 2006, Velvy and I came up with the ~brilliant~ idea to do a Mean Girls parody using Final Fantasy characters. We roped in our friend Bara to be Ashe (Cady/Lindsay Lohan) and Christina to be Rinoa (Gretchen/Lacey Chabert), and I wore Rikku (Karen/Amanda Seyfried) while Velvy played queen-bee Yuna (the Regina George/Rachel McAdams character). We actually drafted 4 or 5 script parodies, but this is the only one we found time to record.

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/ann-tv/2008-04-19

A feature by AnimeNewsNetworkTV: Behind the Masquerade at Anime Boston 2008. Look for me in Yoko at 4:50 and a disheveled Belldandy singing at 12:08!