AniNite06 and Vienna Story

Okay, so AniNite’06 has finished, we are all back and had lots of fun seeing different cosplayers, read new manga, played DDR, tried singing and well had a great time

Thursday, 24.8.06
First day we came late afternoon on thursday so we had a whole evening to go around looking at Vienna. Well actually when we got to Vienna we were sooo hungry that as soon as we checked into the hostel we went to the centre and found a restaurant.

Where did we go? Well to a japanese one of course, what else if you are in Austria

After a nice explanation of what we can get, we decided to go with a sushi for starters and a Sukiyaki for the main course. We needed a demonstration on how to prepare the thing, so the lady kindly showed us. (There weren’t a lot of customers at the time so she took her time). Of course you can’t eat the food without something to drink so we tried Sake, which really went well with the food. As seen from the pictures it is probably needless to say that the Sukiyaki was so good that we were stuffed full. But not full enough, so for the desert we picked Mancha icecream and some fruits and some japanese cakes. It was a really wonderful ending of the dinner.

If you are ever in the Vienna centre I really recommend the Japanisches restaurant Tenmaya. It was definitely worth the price we payed. Which was not really cheap.

Later that the day we more or less toured around the centre looking at buildings and found the WUK centre where the festival was taking place the next day.

Friday, 25.8.06
Waking up was ok, then had to pack again and move to another hostel a little out of the centre. Why, well we had an unfortunate complication and we booked only a days stay, but luckily the other hostel had spare rooms so we went there first to check in again. The new hostel was also much prettier to look at, so we were actually pleased to move when we saw it.

The festival didn’t start until 4 or 5 o’clock that day so we had lots of time.

This time we went bookhunting throughout Vienna. For which books? Why Mangas of course We went into every bookshop we could find. And took especially a lot time in Morawa at the centre where they had lots of different Mangas. Everybody bought something and we went on. We got an address of a comic shop in a part of Vienna so we decided, why not go there. The Comic Treff shop was like heaven. They got a whole wall full of Manga comics and a lot of toys and stuff. We left a lot of money there too. The owner was a really great guy and he gave us some free cards as we bought so much.

We made a quick stop at the hostel to put our new bought stuff down and hop next stop AniNite’06.

You could really see the anime convention the minute you got in. Cosplayers sitting on the benches. Naurto people everywhere, it was like why oh why But it was nice, half of the girls where cosplaying male characters which made it funny at times

First we looked a little around the place.

Found the selling stands, with really lots of Final Fantasy stuff and other things too. From figures, plushies, keyrings, necklaces, cards, DVDs, posters, Mangas… Most of it was really little stuff, but some of it was also quite expensive. Still some of the things you just had to have when you saw them on the table (Not good for your wallet).

Manga corner had i’d say around 100 Deutsches Mangas that you could picku up and just read there. There were nice sofas where you could really relax and took your time with reading.

Next spot was the drawing section. Lots of tables and people were constantly drawing their favourite characters from anime series or mangas. Some of them were just outstanding. They also had boxes of Copic markers for tryout at the tables. The pens really rock. The feeling is really more that you are painting rather than drawing. Really a must have markers for drawing people.

On the other side was the bar with a Japanese kitchen where you could get baked noodles and some quick food to eat. And of course drinks, some of them japanese. The best what they were is if you asked what is in Lychee drink. Hmm lets see there’s Lychee saft, Soda and loooooots of sugar. Other were practicly the same only the first ingridient was different. And it actually tasted more or less just sugar and juice with soda, can’t really understand how Japanese drink so much of this stuff.

Next to the bar was a place where you could sing Karaoke in the evening. Of course they were from your favourite Anime series and some people really know the lyrics by heart, regardless that they are japanese Well I know it’s really not that difficult as I’m one of them

On the other side of the building there was the info point. For random users as myself who tend to get lost on the first day and can not find the door that they are standing in front of And for any info you needed.

There was also a video game room, with 3 TV sets, where you could play your favourite fighting game with anime characters. Or a game on a few PSPs. More or less for anti socialising

Then also a projection room. Where there you could sit down and watch a part of different anime shows. There were also talks about different topics and stuff. To tell the truth I was in it for about 2min at the whole festival As it was lots of other more interesting stuff to do, then to watch anime. I can do that at home anytime.

A floor lower there was a hall where the DDR was placed. A huge projection and two Cobalt Flux dance pads. There was lag, but still you could play on it allright. This was all provided by the Austrian Vierpfeile. They also had DrumMania and GuitarFreaks with them. And ParaPara Paradise. Waaa, it’s the best thing after DDR that I tried, it’s almost the same as DDR, the difference is that you have 5 arrows and 5 sensors on the floor in a half circle. Then you have to dance with your hands, when you go over the sensors it makes a pulse and if you hit an arrow you rock. Tons of fun, just like DDR, I’m seriously thinking about getting one of those for fun

Well this much was about the space what you could do. And now to the actuall performances.

In the evening the first event was J-Pop-Rock Visual Kei party with Lillians Lane. You can imagine, playback, girls cosplaying as a japanese rock band and fun. Hmm well at least it could be fun, if they were actually singing. But all they did was imitate the band on the stage and the music came from the background. I have lots of pictures of them as it was more or less boring to just stand there and listen and look at them jumping up and down. They could at least learn one song from the band. Oh well, can’t say that the actual Visal Kei wasn’t good, it was nice.

That was actually all from that day. The main thing was the party.

Saturday, 26.8.06
First event of the day was the Single Cosplay. Wiii, we saw the homemade cosplayers, err. costumes Some where really good and also kawaii

That day there was also the Go tournament and DDR tournament. I was on the DDR one, but got beaten at the first stage Well no shame it wasn’t a total defeat, once for about 1% and once for around 10%, plus i haven’t played it in about a month so it was not as bad

In the evening was another nice event. The fanmade AMV (AnimeMusicVideos) which really rocked. Some of them were so good you just wanted to go and look at the whole anime series. The most remembered one was a sick one that had a metal soundtrack and over it an anime that had little girls that were all bloody and ecchi and like that. It was really a friky one, but also so cool

That was about it for the day. You can be shure that we were all exhausted at the end of it.

Sunday, 26.8.06
In the morning we were there already before 10 o’clock which was really wierd as we were all still sleepy

As we were waiting for Kendo in the main hall, we watched as the Vierpfeile folks were preparing a new thing that was not DDR. Guess what it was? Yes Para Para Paradise. After about 10min of preperations they let us play. This thing is so great, after a few trys you get the feeling quick as it has the same principle as DDR. So we tried it a little better and put it on hard mode, and we still cleared the song, woohoo which was really great as we played it the first time Damn I really want one of those things for home ^^

After a little working out dancing Para Para we went in to look at the Kendo preformance. The first part was a standardand Kendo katas, which were done really quickly and not as focused as they could be on real trainings. But the other part was really groovy. It was an Inuyasha theater performance Inuyasha has to fight the bad guys and they were acting the fighitng on the stage, and Kagome was there also and it was really funny and cool Plus the I want to Change the world song in the background it really made you laugh.

We went for a quick look at the Doujinshi market near the Info point. But all they had was more or less sugary things and some Shonen-Ai and Yaoi things, so it was really nothing really worth buying for if you were male. That probably explains why there were only girls in the crows trying to look at the Doujinshis

In about an hour the next event was Group Cosplay. There were lots of different groups. The most were Naruto and Inuyasha ones. Then there were the Final Fantasy ones, and others were in minority.

Well as pictures tell you more there are more lower for you to see (There should be comments with quotes next to them, but I don’t remember them exactly^^; gomen ne)

The only thing left then was the Austrian Otaku Of The Year, where the contestans had to eat something really spicey at first and then answer different questions about Anime. The winner was Maria “Pillowmonk” Sendlhofer, which was very Süss all the time, even in the other performances at cosplay also ^^

In the end there were the prize giveaways for the different tournament winners and with that the festival ended. We slowly made our way back to the centre of Vienna as we had our train the next day. All of us agreed that it was a really great festival and it was a shame it was over so quickly, if it would be 5 days we would gladly stayed longer as it was fun.

Back in the hostel we had a nice photoshoot of the things we bought. The total for the day the convention ended was a lot of stuff, I don’t want to count everything again so I’ll just leave you with a picture

We also made resolutions for the next year. Definitely a group or single Cosplays, if you weren’t something you were so Out, well not really but it would really be cool to cosplay some anime character (I’m thinking of Kenshin, mmm Katana ^^). We’ll also try out in the AMV section and other stuff that we will manage, as most of it wasn’t so hard. And we had been here for the first time more or less just looking around, probably doing something should be even more fun

Hmm, yes the story till end. On Monday we checked out of the hostel, went to the train station and left our luggage there as we had the train in the afternoon. Then we went on another walk around the city. We couldn’t manage not to go into another few bookstores and around 3 comic shops We thought we couldn’t buy anything else but well we proved us wrong, I managed to buy 3more manga and others bought some more too. The count of our Mangas for back home then came to 80. ^^ As our last stop was the comic shop near the train station, next thing was just hopping on the train and a long ride back home to Slovenia.

AniNite06, yes, no, maybe? Definitely again

Cheers,
Skatey

*oh yeah, anyone interested in more pics AniNite06 pics@marela

**Comments welcomed