SMASH!

For those who didn't know, SMASH! (Sydney Manga and Anime SHow) was held in the Sydney Convention Center in Darling Harbour last Saturday. This convention, unlike Supanova, is based entirely off anime, manga, and the occasional video game. Of course, I attended the con. Dressed as Suzaku again, no less (you expect me to not reuse the outfit after spending months worth of weekends working on it?).

The convention itself was quite well organised, with a couple of exceptions. These examples were, however, quite annoying. For example, Spritza and myself arrived quite early at the venue, and were in the queue to enter (we pre-purchased our tickets as usual). We were fairly close to the front of the third queue, which was good, since the queue got ridiculously large later on.
The powers that be decided to start scanning people's tickets and handing out the laniards that attendees were to wear before the show opened, therefore saving time for the people who had gone to the effort to pay before the day of the con.
Except that they neglected to do the same for the third line. Leaving this line to get in after the others had - regardless of arrival time. Of course, Murphy's Law dictates that this was the line that we were in. We still got in at a decent time (around 9.20 or so), but we were robbed of a good 20 minutes of time that the peons who didn't pre-purchase had no access to (and so actually having space to walk around the con unhindered).

On the other hand, the venue was set up well. All of the stalls and gaming was downstairs, while the activity rooms, the cosplay contest and chess, the workshops, panels etc were upstairs. This split meant that people weren't getting constantly clogged together trying to reach their desired events. The only criticism I'd ave of the venue itself was that the lights in the shopping area were quite dim, making any photos taken in there much more difficult to do right, as well as putting some minor strain on the eyes after a while.

Of course, a large portion of the day was taken up by posing for photos, taking part in the cosplay chess (we lost, although the game was entertaining and went a fair while thereby making up for it all). Part of the fun of the chess was that my cosplay group had booked a large chunk of the team for our spots - our Code Geass group (consisting of myself as Suzaku, Spritza as Euphemia, Mark as Gino, Juanita as Anya - although she didn't play chess, Lyndall as Nunnally, Brendon as Lloyd and Jamie as C.C) as well as two other random Code Geass cosplayers we managed to poach (Zero and another Suzaku) took up the entire back row of the black team. To make matters more entertaining, our entire front row consisted of Hetalia cosplayers.
All the countries of the world are as pawns to Britannia, clearly.

I was killed by a woman who threw CDs at me

After the chess, we dashed off for lunch, and some random photo taking around Darling Harbour, which was fun due to freaking out the "normal people" who were around. Only a small group of us went photoing, since some people were taking breaks and others had simply disappeared from view.

One of the many outside photos

Eventually, the convention had to end, so we changed into regular clothes, headed off for dinner, then returned for the Eminence concert. Eminence are an orchestral group that play predominantly video game and anime music - even being contracted to perform some songs for the shows and games themselves (they recently finished recording music for Diablo 3).
The concert was brilliant, even though I only recognised three songs (Aerith's Theme from FF7, the My Neighbour Totoro medley, and the Mario medley) it was entertaining nonetheless. They also had in attendance two video game composers, whose music they spent the majority of the time playing. These composers were Kenji Ito (Romancing Saga 1-3, Saga Frontier) and Hiroku Kikuta (Secret of Mana, Seiken Densetsu 3). They were both interviewed on stage, with entertaining results.

After the concert, I spent some time in line to buy a couple of CDs, and get some autographs. We then headed home for some rest. Great day, all in all.

Also, thanks to Oni-5 and Martzy for meeting up with us, and joining us in the photo frenzy. I'm a terrible photographer, so they wouldn't have been taken at all if it weren't for you guys :P

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On a semi-related note, today marks the release of the "Play for Japan" album - this album was a project headed up by Akira Yamaoka (Silent Hill's composer, among other things) as a charity album. This album features original tracks by a large selection of video game music composers - and after a single playthrough of the album today, I love it. There are only two of the eighteen tracks I can say I honestly did not enjoy, although that may change.
As an added bonus, people who buy it from iTunes get a Mario medley as a bonus track.
Also note that all proceeds from this album goes to the Japan recovery fund. Although it is no longer reported in the news, Japan hasn't exactly recovered fully yet (that'll take a LONG time), so spend some money people!

Also, cover art by Yoshitaka Amano