Rain and more rain. The streets of San Francisco was full of the wet stuff and hardly any cars on the road. The halls of AOD Sunday were deserted. This could only mean one thing: I arrived way too early.

The final day of AOD had a slow start, but had plenty of events, attendees, and cosplayers present. Jonas was still alive and walking around despite his display of "IWBTG." And when OniCourseMusha brought up that game spawned from Satan's rectum, both had to die.



Then Jonas had to die once again for blocking my view of some prime scenery.


Photo courtesy of Jonas' camera.

I ran into Ken Pontac outside the coffee shop. He was discussing his work with a fan and I joined in the "Happy Tree Friends" discussion. Being a small con, AOD allowed guests to have such intimate sit-downs over coffee and discussions of the art. All we needed was coffee. The Guests of Honor (the ones who were awake at this ridiculous hour) gave an encore autograph session so I got my Lupin movie autographed by Jigen. And I was decked out in Lupin for the occasion. The mousse worked a lot better for my hair than gel.

I had to juggle a couple of events to cover at the same time. Cherry Tea Girl and Janelle Ann of the Platinum Stars had a scheduled Para Para performance while Yukie Dong had an ani-music performance. The best I could do was cover Yukie for as long as I could until the Para Para performance before returning to Yukie and the Para Para workshop that followed.

Yukie's ani-music performance was a medley of songs from anime and video games with accompanied footage. During intermissions and costume changes the audience had a chance to win prizes by identifying theme songs. I participated and won a nice "DiGi Charat" poster among other things. I got lucky to know a Gundam theme song, but not enough to know which Gundam it was. My favorite performance of Yukie's was the old-school "Ah My Goddess" and "Ranma 1/2" openings. You just can't beat old-school. It's against the law or something.

 

Then I ran over to the Para Para performance.


The Para Para workshop followed. The Platinum Stars gave a brief history of the dance craze followed with a tutorial of the basic moves. Then the pair got the audience out of their seats and taught them the "Ale Japan" routine before performing in front of a camera that would post them on Youtube; like my camera.



After that double dose of musical fun, I needed a break and hit the game room to... play "Dance Dance Revolution" and sample Janelle Ann's bacon chocolate cupcakes. Those cupcakes were freaking good. And while "House of the Dead: Overkill" would encourage me to get a Wii, the Haruhi dance game would discourage me from getting one. If the frustrating game play was not dicouraging enough, the dance routines resulting in cord strangulation would seal that deal. Perhaps this was a mechanism to kill off newbies.



When the socializing among the attendees grew too tiresome, I retreated to the Volunteer Center for a cold drink, some "Resident Evil" animated movie, and socializing with the Staff. Upon word that Johnny Yong Bosch was nearby signing autographs and posing for pictures, several of us left to partake.


Recharged and possibly drunk, I was ready for more of the convention. Between photo shoots, JoJo style photography poses, and the occasional orgy, perhaps the best of the AOD had come.




But it was not over yet.

Pictures are copyright by Traveling Valentine. If we took your picture, feel free to use it on your site or cosplay gallery. While you're here, do sign the guestbook. This site was brought to you by the font Lovitz Many thanks to Chaz Boston Baden for the image resizing and watermarking program.