Hello once again everyone! Just like last year, this past weekend was the yearly gathering of otaku, gamers, and geeks of all nature in the central Oklahoma area for the Izumicon convention and I was yet again on hand to chronicle what went down.
This year the guest list was relatively short in terms of people involved in the anime industry with Doug Smith, the voice of Kontaro Oe from Golden Boy, returning this year. Coming along with him for the ride was Lisa Ortiz, a veteran voice actress most famously known for such roles as Amy Rose in Sonic X and the Sonic the Hedgehog games released from 2005 to 2010, Serenity Wheeler in the 4K!DS dub of Yu-Gi-Oh!, and a little known character named Lina Inverse in pretty much every single Slayers anime that has been dubbed in English.
The headlining guests this year, though, were Johnny Yong Bosch – a long time industry veteran known for voicing such roles as Vash the Stampede in Trigun, Ichigo Kurosaki in Bleach, Lelouch Lamperouge in Code Geass, and Itsuki Koizumi in The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, as well as playing Adam Park the second Black Ranger in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers – and his band Eyeshine.
Johnny Yong Bosch fielding a question at a Bleach Q&A panel.
Johnny realizing the horror of what he just said.
So, now that we got the guests out of the way, let’s get on to the real reason people tend to go to conventions and look at convention reports like this one, to see people in cosplay!
Toph Beifong from Avatar: The Last Airbender
Bolin from The Legend of Korra
Ichigo Kurosaki from Bleach and Glaceon from Pokemon
Ichigo Kurosaki in his Final Hollow Form
Tarma Roving and Fiolina Germi from the Metal Slug series being photobombed by Ada Wong from the Resident Evil series
Blu Spy from Team Fortress 2 disguised as Italy from Hetalia
Celty Sturluson from Durarara!!
Daft Punk
SPARTAN from Halo series
Ezio Auditore from Assassin's Creed series
Badass Steampunk Dude
Big Sister from BioShock 2
Naruto Uzumaki and various members of Akatsuki from Naruto Shippuden
Meganium from Pokemon
Nicholas D. Wolfwood from Trigun
Green Lantern Link
Fionna and Finn from Adventure Time
Dread Pirate Deadpool
Maya and Lilith from Borderlands 2
Chrona, Stein, and *sigh* Excalibur from Soul Eater
Shining Armor from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, and Applejack from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Wait......little girls dressing up as My Little Pony characters? The hell?
Photo Finish from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Several Homestuck characters
Even more Homestuck characters
And there you have it folks. I could have taken a lot more pics, but that would have resulted in a lot of redundancy in terms of costumes, as the majority of cosplayers at this year’s event were someone from Bleach, Adventure Time, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, or Homestuck. In fact there were so many Homestuck cosplayers in attendance one could be mistaken that Izumicon was a Homestuck convention rather than an anime/all purpose convention.