I was at A-kon last weekend! It’s an Anime convention in Dallas, which is 3 hours away by car from Austin. I went with three of my coworkers, and it’s been a tiring and fun weekend.
This time around, I picked my Tashigi (One Piece) and Rhyme (TWEWY) cosplays to wear. Tashigi is my newest one, which I finished only a month ago. Though I was originally going to make another One Piece cosplay for A-kon, I ended up getting burnt out. I just couldn’t focus on another costume, so I brought my Rhyme cosplay instead.
In hindsight, I’m glad I didn’t do another One Piece cosplay because I got to spend more time as Tashigi. Here’s a recap of how my weekend was!
Running into cosplay buddies
One of my favorite things at Anime cons is running into cosplayers I’ve met or worked with before. We live in different cities, so Anime cons are really the only places I run into them. One even told me I first took his photo 4 years ago, and we’ve been running into each other at cons ever since! I didn’t realize it’s been that long!
And of course, with cosplay, sometimes confusions happen, and it can be hard to recognize each other. Then something like this happens:
Trauma-tize is a cosplayer I photographed last year. She saw me in cosplay, I saw her out of cosplay, and we just kind of… stared at each other. Both of us weren’t sure if we had the right person and were too afraid to speak up. So, she looked up my Instagram to see what I was cosplaying, and when I saw her comment, I went back to look for her. We were able to meet up, so yay for happy endings!
Cosplay photoshoots
At big cons like A-kon, I like to debut new costumes and spend more time in cosplay, so I do less photoshoots. This time I only did two photoshoots, one of which was for Michelle! I photographed her Kazuhira Miller cosplay, and it was great to see her again 🙂
My next photoshoot was immediately afterwards, so I had to get to that next. That one was with Ari, who is another cosplayer I’ve photographed before. This time, it was for her Inu x Boku SS cosplay.
Oh, and I had a photoshoot done myself! I wanted good photos of my Tashigi cosplay, so I booked with BTse Photography, who was great to work with. He even printed me a polaroid after our shoot, so I have a preview from it. I can’t wait to get the full set of photos later!
One Piece meet-ups
Since I cosplayed from a popular Anime this time, there were meet-ups that I was able to go to. The first One Piece meet-up was on Saturday, which was a lot of fun! There were soooo many One Piece cosplayers, and everyone was so friendly and nice. It was the highlight of the con for me.
I was the only Tashigi and also one of the few who decided to cosplay a Marine/Navy character. To give some context, One Piece is an Anime about pirates, and the Navy is one of their enemies. While some Navy characters are jerks, there are some who will always strive to do the right thing, even if it means helping pirates. Tashigi is one of them! She’s helped out the Straw Hat pirates (main characters) in two major story arcs already.
I had people compliment my costume and tell me that I’m the first Tashigi cosplay they’ve seen. It’s true that she isn’t cosplayed as much, which is the same for most of the Navy characters. Most of the characters in the show are pirates after all! So, I have to admit that was kind of cool 😉
The second one was on Sunday, which wasn’t as big since that’s when many people leave. I also didn’t find it as organized since the meeting location changed multiple times. I was able to get photos with a couple characters I didn’t see before, so I was excited about that at least.
As an ending note, here are more awesome cosplays I saw. Check out my Flickr album for even more cosplay photos from the con!
I’ve always wanted to go to A-kon!
It looks like you had an amazing time and wow, your cosplay costumes look fantastic!
I often find that there are a lot of people who cosplay the main characters and very little who cosplay as either enemy chaarcters or what I call “one hit wonder” characters. That said, it’s awesome when you end up doing that and people appreciate and recognize you for it!
Gah, I love all the pictures! I hope you have a great week! ^^
I love how crisp your pictures are! You got the focus part on point ;).
It’s pretty cool how you meet people in these cons! The Inu x Boku SS cosplay looks amazing! The One Piece meet-up is hilarious! It’s funny to see all of these Luffy’s in one picture! It’s pretty cool to be unique, and even more with the story behind your cosplay! Glad to see you had fun!
Anime cons look like so much fun because everyone is really into them and look like their character – obviously working really hard as you have on costumes!
It is so nice to hear that you got to meet up with her at the end, I always message people when a similar thing happens to me and we always plan to meet up because of the missed opportunity so that’s nice you caught up! I bet it’s a really nice feeling going to these cons and seeing people you’ve seen before and only see them there everytime you go – sounds super exciting!
Glad you had fun! 🙂 Both you and Michelle and everyone else looks amazing!
Yay for doing another con 😀 I’m glad you share your experiences and photos because it allows me to live through them since I don’t have the opportunity to go to any cons myself XD
It’s great you got to meet so many people who share your interests, including old friends ^_^
And your costume looks awesome! You did a fantastic job with it, as usual! ^^
You guys look fun! I always adore people who do cosplays because I’m a frustrated one before and then I eventually stopped due to lack of time. But your costume is just <333
It looks like you had a great time! It’s great that you’ve built such a network of friends through cosplaying. Your pictures of Michelle are great! Can’t wait to see your pictures from BTse – your Tashigi is brilliant – you must be very proud after all the work you put in!
I cannot believe how many One Piece cosplayers there were! I knew it was popular, but that is amazing. So many Luffys! The Skull Kid cosplay is incredible!
It was great seeing you and enjoying the time we spent <3 Awesome photos!
THAT RAPUNZEL COUPLE IS SOOOO CUTE!!! Your finished Tashigi cosplay looks amazing! As always I’m a big fan of your cosplay photography! I haven’t been to a con in a looong time (last was February) but I have one coming up this August, so reading this has made me even more excited 😀
That is so funny about you meeting Trauma-tize after you saw each other and weren’t sure!
Love the photo of Michelle! And I can’t wait to see the results of the photoshoot you had done!