Kin-Yoobi Con 2011 (Days 1 & 2)

I attended Kin-Yoobi Con as a staff member on Friday, August 5th and Saturday, August 7th with my boyfriend Ed, my friends Perla and Monica, and my mom. The convention was held in the main cafeteria of Chabot Collage in Hayward. I cosplayed at Yoko from Gurren Lagann on both days and had an Artist's Alley table to sell fleece hats and various jewelry.

Day 1, Friday - We arrived at the convention some time between 9am and 10am. The convention officially opened at 10am, but as staff and an Artist, I got in early. My boyfriend is also staff, and since my friends and mom were helping me with my booth, so they all got in early as well.

The first thing we did was set up my booth, which took longer than expected (it did last year too). This year, I had wire shelves to put some things on and more wig heads than I did last year. I wish I had pictures, maybe someone else got one that I can use, because I really liked the way my booth looked this year. It still kind of looked amateur, since it was crowded, didn't have a sign, and nothing had price tags on it, but I still liked it a lot. It was a huge improvement over last year, when I had no shelves and only a couple of wig heads, and everything was just laid on the table. Unfortunately, this year my table skirt didn't want to stay on. Ah well, I still had a tablecloth.

The convention opened at 10am, but it was hard to tell that it was open until about 10:30-ish when there were more attendees. The first thing that I actually did for the convention was host the panel "Magikarp: A History" with my boyfriend. Compared to the response at Fanime and even AoD, the turnout at Kin-Yoobi left much to be desired. The room was pretty much filled, but it was a very small room. Also, I can no longer stand hecklers or people who sass-back. At the beginning of the panel, a kid asked "Is sassing-back allowed?" and, trying to be a good sport, I told him "Keep it to a minimum." I could say two sentences without him interrupting me. I felt like he interrupted Ed less, but maybe that's just my imagination. Other than that, the panel went pretty well. Of course there was lag on one of the videos, it seems to be unavoidable, if it isn't one video, it's another. So that's something we still need to work on. Also, we still talk to fast. I have no idea how that happens, because when I rehearse on my own, I go really slow. I can only assume that it's nerves. That, and I feel bored talking about the same thing for the 3rd or so time, so I tend to speed through it.

Ed and I hosted what was supposed to be "Anime Improv" but we decided would be a better time slot for the Anime Dating Show Game, which somehow didn't get scheduled. It's a game show based on old 70's dating game shows, where there's one bachelor and three bachelorettes (or vice verse). In the original version, the bachelor and bachelorettes cannot see each-other, but in our version, the bachelorettes can see the bachelor. It's just easier to pull off that way. The game started off a bit slow, it was difficult to get volunteers, I think because the implications of a "dating" game can be quite heavy, but after the first round, people got more into it. It was the same way last year as well. It's a fun time, it's really just for laughs, no real date involved.

After a few rounds of this, another staff member, DC, asked if he could do Anime Improv. I was previously told that DC had an interest in helping out on the main stage more this year, and I was glad to have someone else run Anime Improv, as it did not go so well last year when Ed and I ran it. I believe the attendees had a good time last year, it was just not up to Ed's and my standards of improv, which are apparently pretty high. DC didn't do what we thought he meant, but it still turned out well. Instead of having the audience come up and play improv games (which is what we expected), he improvised a comedy routine and basically told jokes the entire time. He's really amazing at it, and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. Ed and I were happy to be able to get off stage and not have to deal with an event that we weren't looking forward too, so it went well.

Somehow, we ended up not having Anime Feud, which was sort of fine with me, since I didn't have much of anything that I needed to run it (this is why I don't do things 90% of the time). We ran Anime Jeopardy, which is exactly what it sounds like. We played two rounds with a different set of contestants each time. The questions were from last year, so they were out-dated, but that didn't seem to matter. here's a video of part of it that I found on YouTube.


We also hosted Anime Word, an anime/video game spin on the show "Password". Participants are split into two teams of two, a guesser and a hinter. The hinter is given one word to make the guesser guess and a list of words that they (the hinter) is not allowed to say. It sounds a lot more complicated than it is. Last year and at previous events I hosted while someone else ran the technical side, but this time, I just wasn't into it, so I decided to run the tech while Ed hosted. As per usual, it didn't go as I had imagined, but people once again seemed to have fun, and that's what counts.

Around 4:30pm, I began to get the lolitas organized for the fashion show. Originally, I was told that the fashion show was going to be at 5pm, however for some reason, on the schedule posting the the mail hall, it said that the lolita fashion show was at 6pm. So I talked to the girls that showed up at 4:30 for instructions. I told them how the show was going to be run, that they would be allowed to talk about their outfits themselves after being introduced, and where to walk. After this, a couple of more girls dressed in lolita showed up and were directed to me for instructions. In total, I think we had seven girls.

The fashion show went more or less without a hitch, it definitely was not anywhere near a professional level, and I'm hoping that no one expected it to be. After the fashion show, the girls and I moved to the panel room for a Q&A session. Audience members could ask the lolita girls questions about lolita fashion. The girls actually ran the session the session themselves, I stayed in the room with them to supervise, since I wasn't sure that the girls were prepared to do Q&A, and because I was interested in what they had to say. I've had a mild interest in lolita for a while now, and I really enjoy learning about the fashion. I'd like to be able to make my own lolita dress, but there seem to be so many rules, I still can't get a grasp of it all. Also, I don't know if I was surprised or not, but after a while, a majority of the Q&A attendees were men. Now, giving them the benefit of the doubt and trying to assume that they weren't perverts with a fetish for lolita, fashion can be confusing to men (or anyone, really), and lolita is even more confusing, at least to me, than regular Western fashion. So maybe these men were actually looking to educate themselves. I think three of the seven or eight men in the room asked questions, and one man was a videographer recording various parts of the convention.

After the fashion show, I didn't really have much else to do. I sat around at my booth, wandered some, packed up, and went home. Another notable event of the day was the Fan Art Competition, though I can't remember when exactly it took place. One of my friends competed, but unfortunately didn't win. She seemed to have fun at least! I almsot wanted to compete, but I really can't draw and didn't want to embarrass myself.

Day 2, Saturday - I woke up on Saturday feeling incredibly sick. I can only assume that since I didn't get enough sleep Thursday night, my immune system was down on Friday, and I rapidly caught Con Plague. My throat hurt and I was nauseous. My friends and mom went to the convention without me around 11am, I think. I wanted them to go and have fun, but they wanted to set up my booth for me so that I had more of an opportunity to sell things. (I have such good friends.)

I finally got up around 1pm and slowly got dressed. We (my mom and I) left the house around 1:30pm, but then had to go back because I forgot things (and then it turned out that I didn't need those things anyway). We arrived at the convention around 2:30, and I had to immediately get on stage to help with the Wheel of Fandom. Wheel of Fandom is essentially "Wheel of Fortune" where contestants spin a wheel to determine points and then guess a letter to try to form a word or phrase. In Wheel of Fandom, there are only phrases (no single words), and they're all from anime shows. We've been using the same phrases for three years (this was the third year), and they're still just as difficult for contestants every time. Earlier this year, we had come up with new phrases, but they weren't implemented, presumably because we weren't sure whether or not we had all of the letters we needed for the new phrases, and nothing was done to update the game.

In any case, I didn't have to host the game, I only turned the letters over and set up the phrases. By the way, that's the worst job to give to a dyslexic. I somehow managed to put three T's into the word "Rotten" (put R-O-T-T-T-E-N), which really threw off the contestants. At some point during one of the games, another girl joined me on stage to help turn letters and set up puzzles. I was confused until I realized that she was the same girl that turned letters with me last year, though I'm still not entirely sure who she is, I've only seen her during Wheel of Fandom.

Immediately after Wheel of Fandom (4pm), I began getting ready for the cosplay contest. I feel so incredibly grateful that I had the help of FoxBerry and Natalie (and later Kris). They basically ran all of the judging and got all of the contestants numbered and in order like I asked. On the other end of the brilliance spectrum, I'm not sure who did it, but when I asked for one side of the room to be cleared so that I could seat contestants, all of the chairs were taken away, leaving me nowhere to actually seat contestants. Luckily, my cosplay group helped set up the chairs, as did a ton of random people. I hit a snag when for some reason it was assumed that our guests judges would sit in the back of the audience, but they did end up sitting up front where I had originally wanted them to.

The cosplay contest went alright, it's hard to say whether or not it was better than last year's. I feel like it was run better, but that was definitely because of FoxBerry and Natalie. Our guest judges were Travis Willingham and Laura Bailey. Laura was surprisingly very into the judging (though she and Travis couldn't make it to the pre-judging because they were hosting an event). She really took an interest in the costumes and seemed to enjoy herself. Travis didn't seem as into it, but it could be that he was just very laid-back, because once deliberating started, he showed interest and was very fun when presenting the awards.

I had the judges (FoxBerry, Natalie, Travis, and Laura) present the awards on stage. I haven't seen this done at conventions before, usually the Emcee announces, but I really liked the way that it worked. I liked how it let the judges interact with the contestants as opposed to being faces behind a desk. My cosplay group won Best In Show, though I didn't compete, I was still very proud, I helped with the prop! Haha.

7pm was the beginning of the Anime Date Auction. Participating in the auction is pretty fun, seeing how much you're "worth" is fun, and this year, the money was being sent to Japan. However, being half-dressed (as Yoko), I didn't want to go alone. I was going to buy my friend Harmony (dressed as Nia from Gurren Lagann), but instead we decided to be sold together as a pair. The first couple of acts had really well planned-out performances, as good as, if not better than most acts in the cosplay contest. So my friend and I got a little uncomfortable, as we didn't have anything planned. After a quick discussion and a brilliant idea on Harmony's part, we ran to the computer, pulled up a song, and asked for it to be played when we went on stage.

Our names were called and we held hands as we ran on stage. We took our places and waited for the music to start...

We were perfectly adorable, if I do say so myself. However, things went downhill from there. The bidding began and went up fairly quickly. We ended up being sold for $40 (the same price I went for last year) to a guy that I was none to happy to have to spend time with. After getting off of the stage, the guy that bought us didn't budge from his seat to pay, and I was going nowhere until he did. As far as I was concerned, he owed $40 to Japan, and he was going to pay it.

I took this awkward pause to explain to Harmony that I didn't have a good history with this guy. We ended up calling him out on not paying, so he had to get up and pay before we would sit with him. I was pretty much unaware of her intentions at this point, but Harmony was an amazing bro and took it upon herself to try and distract the guy from me. She did this the entire time, as I tried to stay as far away as I could while still trying not to ditch her. It was an extremely awkward time. We went to the back hall where there was an unofficial party going on, but we eventually went back to the main hall to see how our friends' date was going. (Three of our group members had been auctioned off together and were bought by a large group.) At some point, we half over-heard, half were told that this one girl was sold for $123, because she said that she would go on a date, liked bondage, and had lots of "cute outfits". I'll admit, part of me is just plain jealous that she god sold for so much. However, I still call shenanigans, because well that's not the kind of service Kin-Yoobi is running, quite frankly.

We watched the dating auction for a while, and a photographer got on stage to be auctioned. Harmony and I decided to pool our money and bought him for $7. Somehow, the evening got both more awkward and less awkward at this point. it was really awkward when we couldn't entirely figure out what to do with the guy that bought us. Harmony was ready to leave him (as was I, honestly), but he did pay $40, so we took him with us to hang out with the guy we bought. The guy we bought was very nice, we took a photo with him and just talked. He even at least attempted to make conversation with the guy that bought us. Turns out the photographer lives in the same city that we do!

I left for a while to check on my booth and ended up doing a short interview with the videographer that I mentioned earlier. He had talked to my mom at some point when she was at my booth, and she directed him toward me. It's unfortunate that he had to wait so long to talk to me, but it was a very busy weekend.

I came back to find that the cosplay group was doing a photoshoot with the photographer that Harmony and I bought, so I joined in. The guy that bought me and Harmony lurked awkwardly to the side. It was a very fun photoshoot though, the photographer had a lot of good photo ideas, and we all had fun.

My friends had packed up my booth for me and my mom showed up to take us home. It was an exhausting weekend with many ups and downs, but as always, Kin-Yoobi had a very friendly, high-energy feel to it, and kept me in a fairly good mood almost the entire weekend.

Pictures coming as soon as I can find them!