Moon Chase at Anime Blitz 2010!

Moonie1995 and I had the opportunity to appear as guests and present at Saskatchewan's first ever anime mini-convention - and we had a blast! We'd like to thank the Saskatoon Love Love Anime Group for letting us be a part of this event! In true Moon Chase fashion, I sported a small set of odangoes atop my head (which took me over a half an hour to get right) and a Sailor Moon T-shirt. Moonie1995 also followed the "makeshift uniform" (sans odangoes) and we painted purple moons on our heads with an eyeliner pencil for Moon Chase. Quick and simple con attire that worked for us!

This was a smaller event, but it had a lot of heart. It was held in a small public auditorium at a civic center in a room that only had a capacity for 80 people, but 100 were let in (and we actually had to turn people away, sadly). After the opening address from the Convention Chair, we made a short presentation about our site to introduce it to the fans and we talked a little bit about our campaign. Everyone raised their hand when we asked them if they remembered Sailor Moon - which was a good sign, because there were so many cosplayers from newer anime that we definitely couldn't identify! We were featured as the con's special guests and are providing independent press coverage for the event. We've uploaded our presentation with a few notes on what we said.


Introduced the site, and the staff, and who we were!









We just briefly introduced what PGSM and Sera Myu were to the congoers here, and mentioned that we cover just about anything we find related to Sailor Moon, including pop culture sightings.







We just talked briefly about the campaign and what we wanted to achieve. Some of the fans were astounded, especially when we told them of where in the world we had participants from!






Here we talked about the international revival, highlighted the new logo, talked a little about the DVD launch event & reunion, and the charaben class! We think everyone in the room probably wanted to see what the bento looked like in real life!






And then, a few AMV and Dance Video entries were shown, as well as a FUNImation screening. We sat with the con chair and the event director to judge close to 30 cosplayers! There were a lot of really great costumes and it was hard to pick. We ended up choosing a very well done Batman and Zatanna (they were a husband and wife team!) as the overall winner, but chose runners up and honorable mentions for anime and video game characters. Had I had known that there were going to be Batman cosplayers, I'd have pulled out my Batgirl costume and joined in! We sponsored a prize for the top cosplayers, which included a $15 gift card to a local anime, manga, and comics store, some old holographic Sailor Moon Dart FlipCards, 4 big Sailor Moon Stickers (2 with the Sailor Moon Salute that said Moon Prism Power, and 2 that are just of the 5 Senshi), and a box of Pink Marshmallow Bunny Peeps for good measure, along with this lovely explanation (above) of what bunnies have to do with Sailor Moon! It's hard to put together a Sailor Moon themed-prize pack that jives well with the blog's themes, but this comes pretty close! Both of us did speak to a lot of the congoers and getting the word out about the revival definitely provoked a lot of questions! Everyone remembered Sailor Moon but like we've said before, sometimes it's hard to wake up the fandom after so many years.

And then we presented again to end the con:

We took some questions - we had one very young congoer ask if it was true that someone from YTV voiced a character in Sailor Moon, and a question about the musicals and PGSM from a fan that didn't know that there were other versions from the cartoon! Another fan also asked about the possibility of the manga returning.


We made our interview announcements here, and we haven't stopped there. We're working to get a few more as we speak right now!







We just ended with where fans can find us on the web - each congoer also got a little tag with our website listed on it.







Cleanup went pretty smoothly and after a great event, we went out to a Chinese food restaurant to celebrate. Moonie1995 and I bid farewell as he drove back home (2 hours away), after a fun day at AnimeBlitz - well, almost. Since we were still in the beginning stages of getting this report organized, we snuck in some planning when we had a few moments to!

At this time I want to once again give a huge thanks for a job well done to the Saskatoon Love Love Anime Group for putting this together. Also, a big thank you to FUNImation (more specifically Joel Rodriguez and Justin Rojas) for allowing for an anime screening at Anime Blitz, and for sending me a big logo at short notice :). And thanks to Moonie1995 who made the trip up at short notice! And last but not least, a big thank you to each of the fans who helped to make this event a success - we look forward to more events for the Otaku in Saskatchewan, and we'll be there to support you as much as we can!



NOTE: We restricted photos of ourselves at this convention, and therefore we will not be posting any images of anyone. However, some images of the convention have been posted on the SLLAG Facebook Page. Visit the SLAAG blog for more information on this and other upcoming events!