Today I hit up Anime North at the Toronto Convention Center and the adjacent Double Tree Hotel with accomplice Amy. Noor and Valeria (Amy’s school friends) also came, but were split up from them at the beginning, met up much later, and then went off separately again. We got a ride from Noor’s father in the morning and Amy’s dad was kind enough to drive us all back at night.
The convention was what I’d call “when nerds come out to play” and it was literally packed with cosplayers and fan-artists selling their wares for some very reasonable and some very ridiculous prices. I found myself almost buying many very cool (but expensive) things and actually paying for a few also very cool (but slightly less expensive) things like buttons and a change purse. A lot of the art prints (that for some reason I had not thought of being there) could, according to DeviantArt frequenter Amy, be found on DeviantArt for viewing since the vendors were the artists themselves in blood and flesh. I decided to spend my money on the indie artists and their works instead of on the company manufactured (i.e. professional retailers of such goods) since the indie stuff was cooler and less mass-produced.
We also went over to see a few screenings of old anime at the viewing rooms in the Double Tree Hotel. The dimly lit rooms were filled with quite a few viewers and it was a neat experience, sampling anime that I had previously never thought of seeing or even heard of along with a load of others. Might sound like I enjoyed it a little too much for what it was at face-value, but it was definitely a different experience doing something like anime sampling with a room full of other people sampling just like you.
Anyway, something like Anime North must be seen and explored in-person and can’t really be described. Below I’ve assembled a gallery of mostly safe photos (except maybe one PG13 picture) so enjoy and have a look through. Sorry for the lack of lightbox support, but the pictures are too big for lightbox.
Edit: Amy and I also counted the number of Haruhi cosplays and we counted a total of 28 Haruhi cosplayers, with most of them being the school-girl uniform and a daring two of them being the skimpy bunny-suit version.