Exhibition Hall
Like every other year, the exhibition hall part of Otakuthon offered a variety of not only awesome merchandises, but also some amazing fan-made artworks put up for sale, though I did not feel like buying any fan-made artwork this year.
On the Friday of the con, I entered my entire "Anime Icons" fan art series in the art gallery for showing. Plus, I took the option to have each installment on sale, and each was placed by me at a price of $5.00. Ironically, none of the participants who had their artworks up for sale at the gallery had theirs purchased, not even my own works.
One the dealers tables had on sale some well-detailed figuring replicas of Leiji Matsumoto-created manga characters Harlock and Emeraldas and in looking at the design, it was easy for me to tell they were based on the OVA miniseries "Queen Emeraldas" (1998). I was going to buy me one of those, but it turned out the dealer sold out while I was taking my time browse around to see what else was on sale, but there's always next year to find "Harlock" figurines. Fortunately, I was able to buy from dealers table operated by the storerunners of The Anime Stop, the 1:1,000 Scale Space Cruiser Argo model kit I mentioned about in an earlier post, and although it was not based on any Harlock/GE999 anime, it does relate to the subject of Leiji Matsumoto's visual work in the anime and manga industries. Though a smale scale model, it was cool that I was able to purchse it at a cheap price (I paid 15 dollars for it) because although the owner of the Montreal-based store Sci-Fi Anime had on sale at his dealers table a model kit to build the same anime ship, the one he was selling was a larger scale and at a way more expensive price.
As for manga, I was going to purchase the sixth book of the "Gurren Lagann" manga adaptation as I so far have the first five books of it, but I decided to buy it at another time so as to focus more on hard-to-find stuff. This year, I bought book one of "Speed Racer: The Original Manga", DC/Wildstorm's English language version of the "Mach Go Go Go" manga series, at the manga sale table runned by staff members from Montreal Comic-Con. It is the first piece of "Speed Racer" merhcandise I bought sicne 2008 when I bought the small-scalled die-cast replicas of Speed Racer's Mach 5 and Racer X's Shooting Star.
As for "Gurren Lagann", my luck had turned up as I had finally bought from the dealers table runned by owners of Anime Toys, the super-deformed trade figurine of Kiyal Bachika, which I had hoped to purchase at Sci-Fi Anime (where I bought the trade figurine replicas of the other Bachika sibs in "Gurren Lagann": Kittan, Kiyoh, and Kinon) until the store ran out.
In addition to the dealers, I checked out the gararge sale segment of the exhibition hall, which as usal gave me a chance to find old and rare items. From there, I got me an action figure replica of the MS-07B Gouf from "Mobile Suit Gundam" (1979) and "Entertainment Bible" books 22 and 26, which contain production artwork and mecha model and interior illustrations from the "Space Battleship Yamato" anime that predate 1994's "Yamato 2520". Though the model sheets weren't colored and the books are in Japanese text, it's nice that I now have a closer look at all the mecha from those old school "Space Battleship Yamato" and the fact is I spent a difficult time searching in stores for books on "Space Battleship Yamato". Too bad the "Space Battleship Yamato" model book by Hobby Japan was not available on any store shelves in where I live or on the convention dealers tables, and still it ain't available now.
I took some time to browse around at the DVD dealers tables, hoping to find DVDs related to "Space Battleship Yamato", "Captain Harlock", and "Galaxy Express 999", but unfortunately none were available. Therefore, I have hit rock bottom in my search for not only the "Space Battleship Yamato" films I don't have on DVD and VHS, but also "Galaxy Express 999" (1979 film version) and "Adieu Galaxy Express 999" in my home town, despite that their U.S. distributors still currently own license to them.
