Sakura-Con 2009

Sakura-Con took place last weekend, from 10 – 12 April in Seattle. I took a bunch of pictures, and met up with some friends.

I didn't buy anything. I wasn't even remotely tempted to buy anything. I haven't been watching much anime in recent years, and a lot of the merchandise was related to anime that I'm not familiar with. These days I try to be selective about the merchandise I purchase, not just because I'm trying to watch my expenses, but after two long-distance relocations, as well as a slight shift in attitude away from the collector mentality, I just feel less inclined to accumulate a lot of the stuff I would have bought in a heartbeat five or ten years ago.

I didn't even recognise half the costumes at the con. Sometimes I wonder whether I should keep going to anime conventions, given the fact that I'm out of touch with what's popular these days.

There were several anime series that were well-represented in terms of cosplayers, and they decided to take group photos.

This is the Bleach group:

This is the Pokemon group:

I do really like seeing people dressed up in costumes. This is one of my favourite parts about attending fandom conventions, and I think anime cons are amongst the best in terms of quality and quantity of cosplayers. I certainly think that the calibre of costumes at Sakura-Con outshone the cosplay at Emerald City ComiCon 2009. In general, I think that anime cons are much better places to go if you're interested in looking at people dressed-up in costume, than comic book, science fiction, or gaming conventions. Fewer people at the other types of fandom conventions seem to dress-up, but I am biased since I've been attending anime cons for a very long time so I'm most familiar with the culture there.

There are loads more photos in the Flickr photoset I created.

Related posts:

1. PAX 2007 Pics
2. X-Strikes the Spot
3. East Coast PAX in 2008