As a celebration for handing everything in a few weeks ago, me and Morti took a group of ‘special ed’ kids (affectionately known as Anicom) down south for the weekend for the MCM London Expo, and it actually went pretty well. It’s a success if nobody gets fatally wounded, in my book. I spend the weekend getting drunk, laughing at hilariously bad cosplay, and gaming – At DDR:UK‘s stall on Saturday, and at Funland in the Trocadero on Sunday. Boy, the latter place is big, and I wouldn’t mind going back there again the next time I head to the capital. The convention itself was okay, but maybe a little too big for my tastes. I definitely preferred Auchinawa and Kitacon because they feel so small and cosy, and it would be great it we can get some small groups going to other conventions over the coming year.

Haum, I seem to be going a little hyperlink crazy, but never mind. As for Anicom in general this year… *sigh*. It’s a shame it ended up like this, I was hoping we could have a good year. Several things went wrong – I fucked up the shows at the beginning, we got bad opinions from some of our advertising materials, and I ended up pretty much on my own after Christmas running the society, with the other two dealing with personal issues / work / no motivation to help the society at all. Hopefully an all-new committee should be able to sort things next year (Mole, Mizzy and Alex) and restore Anicom to it’s former glory like it was in my first year. I’ll be sticking around to help the new committee out wherever I can (although does Mole really need help? Probably not.), and no doubt I’ll be lurking around in Middlesbrough until the end of time itself.

Oh and a final note: Other people seem to be writing blogs too, so go and say hi to Allan, Dave, Kai and Emily for me :3

Turns out that I had a fantastic time over the three days. I was right about the whole crazed otaku thing, but it wasn’t really that bad. Nobody tried to stab anyone with a cardboard weapon or pretended they had super powers, so any disasters were averted. Most of my time was just spent socialising with the Anicom lot, or slowly melting on the DDR machine (Damn you, DDR:UK!), but the events were kinda fun. Here’s a few highlights that you won’t get unless you were there with us:

• Elevators and alcohol bring out Rob’s bad side… apologies to the Canadian cosplayer.
• Bunnies are bad. Very, very bad.
• We’re very susceptible to advertising, and the Glasgow Airport area is now Pimms-free. Bolly good.
• PBC is the society’s ‘drunken uncle’ when it comes to dancing.
• Pictochat is sadistically hilarious at times when you’re in a room full of retards.

So, yeah, good times. Made a few new friends, did some animu-related things, and had a good time overall. But compared to everyone else attending, our society sucks when it comes to liking anime. Oh well, at least we know our drinks.