Article: London Anime Con 2012

London Anime Con 5 - What's going on?

I then made my way upstairs (upstairs was also a sauna) to find lot and lots of cool things going on, including a small amount of vendors with various figures and plushies (I picked up a nice 1/7 scale Saber, a really cool Mio figure and Tsukasa and Kagami from Lucky Star; I was a very happy chappy), the very talented artist Destiny Blue (who was in NEO) and some aspiring mangakas. The main attraction for the male masses was the presence of a few girls from Spirit Models walking around in various latex outfits, with lots of people getting their photos taken with the cosplayers and the girls from Spirit.

The event most people were looking forward to, the "Otaku Fashion Show" with various girls showing off styles ranging from Sweet Lolita and Gothic Lolita through to Steampunk andHarajuku (oh, and a girl dressed as a pirate...) - all of this was very well received by the crowd, most of whom had brought cameras themselves. The Spirit models then came on stage in all their latex glory. We were treated to latex Jill Valentine, latex Sailor Mars even latex Super Mario. Some hadn't used the latex to cosplay but I don't think anyone cared, they were just happy to see some girls in latex. The show was good, even though it started late each girl was presented individually and the various clothing styles were read out to the crowd.

My only gripe about the whole thing was one of the organizers shouting “YU-GI-OH TOURNAMENT SIGN UPS”, and other general loud noises. This happened on quite a few occasions throughout - one very determined Yu Gi Oh player repeatedly shouting to everyone in the hall about his various victories; maybe it would have been better to have a room dedicated to the card players and not in front of the stage? Again, it all looked a little jumbled up.

After shooting the Spirit girls individually and having a good old chinwag about the modeling industry, I was in just enough time to catch "Kimonotime" on stage. For those of you in the dark on Kimonotime I shall fill you in - Kimonotime or "Kelsey" is a British YouTube sensation; she dances and sings to J-Pop and K-Pop. She has over 16,000 subscribers and more than three million views on YouTube and it's easy to see why - this girl is so energetic! she put on a really fun performance, vocally she can sing really well, dances in time with the music and you can see just exactly how much she loves doing what she does on stage (my personal favourite being the Hare Hare Yukai dance from Haruhi Suzumiya). She sings in Japanese, so well that you could tell a lot of people were having a hard time figuring out if she was actually Japanese. I had a brief chat with her after the show:

UKA: A lot of your songs are sung in Japanese, are you fluent?

K: Ha! No, not quite, I've been learning for about five months now, I think I could get by there quite well though!

UKA: So how long have you been singing and dancing on YouTube for?

K: Since about September 2010, so I'm quite new to everything at the moment!

UKA: do you have any major inspirations?

K: Well mainly anime dances, I started watching AMV's (Anime Music Videos) and I saw people dancing to them, especially Hare Hare Yukai. There is a girl called Aikawa Kozue who is really big and I took a lot of inspiration from her.

After that, I realized I had taken in more than a few pints of beer and that I hadn’t eaten all day! So I decided to take it easy and watch what was going on stage downstairs... a big mistake. I don’t know who the girl singing was but I’m afraid it was pretty bad; there really weren’t that many people there either. Her attempts to get people singing along fell on deaf ears and after about twenty minutes she scarpered off. Probably for the best.

The events for the rest of the day were quite hit and miss, I feel that with a little more planning some of them would have worked a lot better. They had a room at the back with a projector for example - why was this not used for anime screenings or for games? Kimonotime would have gone down a treat later on in the afternoon and moved downstairs where they had good lighting. Clearer signage around the event would have helped a lot as well; not just an A4 piece of paper stuck on a door. Even announcing the events as they were about to start would have also helped. I think some things had over-run, forcing some pretty poor improvisation on stage which didn’t help at all.

All in all I did have a good time though; I met some very nice people indeed and got some great photos.

Would I recommend you go to LAC6? Yes - go with friends and drink, simple!