The promised wind-down day finally arrived, and while some parts of this ‘con felt painfully grueling, Day 4 came and went nearly in the blink of an eye. All the halls close earlier and the crowds grow thinner, with less cosplayers and events sprinkled throughout the day.
Our most pressing matter today was a special concert we had bought separate tickets for that started at around noon. Since we got to the ‘con a little before that, we decided to take a stroll through the Entertainment Hall first.
You know it’s Day 4 when you wonder where everyone went and why it’s suddenly so much easier to breathe without throngs of people buffering you left and right.
Highlights from a Blizzard booth in a corner of the Entertainment Hall.
Other Entertainment Hall sights. If you’re not here to game on the free-to-use PC’s and consoles or take pictures at the cosplay booths, there’s generally little to do.
And then it was time for our concert. I don’t normally do these sorts of things, especially since this event required an extra $25 ticket, but it was a live performance tribute to Code Geass – if there was ever a live performance to go to, this would be it.
I think we got bamboozled with this show though. It was slated to be from 12pm – 1:30pm. They got started 20 minutes late and ended at just past 1pm. There seemed to be tones of disorganization among those on stage and with the organizing staff, so I have suspicions that the show didn’t go completely as planned. At the very least I feel jilted that I paid for an hour and a half performance and barely got an hour out of it.
The performance also wasn’t what I expected – the description said it would be a live singing of Code Geass’ iconic music, including several openings like COLORS and WORLD END. It also mentioned that a portion of the new opening for Code Geass R3 would be revealed at the end, but that never happened.
The singing wasn’t bad by any means, but it definitely wasn’t what I expected. I was aware that the band on stage wasn’t the original group that did the series openings, but I was hoping for some more hype and soul in the music.
They won by stabbing me right in the feels with a few particularly beautiful movements like a live rendition of If I were a Bird though – no lie I got a little sweat in my eye, especially since it’s been a while since I’ve rewatched the series.
After the concert we only had two hours to comb the Exhibit Hall and make our last purchases. I’m pretty sure the hall closes earlier this year.
Most of that time was spent trying to help my friend find a nice sub-$30 PVC figurine, since he’s been itching for one. We combed just about every single shop up, down, and around the corner, but to no avail. Whenever we did find something nice, it was just ever so slightly out of our budget, and the merchants were surprisingly inflexible even on the fourth day at the final hour.
I managed to pick up exactly what I wanted – even though I don’t collect Figmas anymore (I sold just about everything from my old collection) I have a soft spot for these Nintendo icons and their Figma iterations are actually excellent representations of the characters, so I didn’t see why not.
Not a huge haul, but I’m more than satisfied. I was super debating between re-buying the Figma Skyward Sword Link, since I had sold my original one a while back, but I would’ve only been getting it for the sake of having it in the collection, rather than actually wanting the figure itself, so I passed on it for now.
No surprise that there were barely any cosplayers today, since it was probably wind-down day for most people.
And that was it. Anime Expo 2017 is past, and despite the constant exhaustion these past four days, I think our entire crew came out of it more satisfied than previous years.
I’m particularly glad we got to attend quite a few events and panels this time, since we’ve always complained before that we didn’t really do anything here except wander around the Exhibit and Entertainment Halls. Ironically this year we went to so many things (and of course also cosplayed as usual) that we didn’t get as much time in the Exhibit Hall as we would’ve liked, and we ended up never visiting Artist Alley altogether simply because we just didn’t have the time.
But that’s not the end of the story yet. After we got home it was time to tear down the workplace we had so proudly set up back when we first started building the Quanta about a month ago.
After clearing the garage floor my partner brought last year’s Barbatos armor from home over to lay out next to our just-decommissioned Quanta for a side-by-side yearly armor juxtapose.
It’s super cool seeing the progress we’ve made, and just a giant wave of nostalgia seeing Barbatos complete again.
Interesting small changes like more segregated fingers.
And more drastic ones like these hilarious feet comparisons.
I talked during Quanta’s build log about how we always had to make the feet gigantic every year because of the wood block design, and how Quanta’s tiny feet were revolutionary. I never realized the weight of my own words until seeing them juxtaposed like this in front of me myself – it’s hilarious how gigantic Barbatos’ feet are.
We never miss a chance to get a signature.
As much as I like Quanta a bit more, I can’t confidently say it would win in a fight, just because Barbatos has a bit of an unfair weapon advantage.
Now we just need to figure out a way to get these suits onto a display stand or mannequin so we can build our own Gundam Hall of Armor. We’re actually already tossing ideas around for what suit we want to build next year – a tough decision to make when Quanta taught us so much about avoiding mecha designs that have stupidly gigantic add-ons like a massive shield hung over the shoulder.
Read on the rest of the Expo:
