Anime Oasis: Past and Future

One of the few decent photos from my first AO.

With Sakura Con now firmly out of the way, it's time to set my sights on the next convention on my calendar: Anime Oasis. This convention has a special place in my heart, as it was the first one I ever attended, back in 2011. Back then, I was still  living in Rock Springs and knew next to nothing about conventions or cosplay. Two of my costumes were essentially pulled straight from my closet, one was borrowed, and the other was so-so at best. In addition to my pretty lackluster costumes, I was pretty awkward there, as it was not only my first convention, but my first time out of town by "myself". (Meaning without my family. I did go with a friend.) I had little idea what one did at a convention, or how to interact there. I did have fun, for the most part, but a lot of it was me simply being drunk off of the experience. Even though I know looking back that there a lot of things I did not understand then, I still loved it. I wouldn't say "instantly", though, as it took me several hours to start warming up to the atmosphere and come out of my shell. Being at the convention just felt right. There were people there who I could talk to about my interests (video game, and anime to a lesser extent) without having to explain them first, because they shared those interests. I had never been very social before, and it was a very freeing experience, partly due to a "Who cares if I horribly embarrass myself in front of these people? I never have to deal with them again!" mentality I had talked myself into. It was also horribly overwhelming at times, and I spent most of the third day (Saturday) sitting in an elevator, riding it up and down. While, if I had to do it all over again, there would be a number of things I would likely do differently, I am really happy with how everything turned out. My only real regret is that I didn't take more photos, on a better camera. (I took less photos during the entirety of my first AO than I usually take in a day now. Most of them didn't turn out all that well, either.)

The first Resident Evil photo shoot. Literally a
life-changing event.

My second Anime Oasis went much better. By that point, I had been to conventions before (the previous AO, and Anime Banzai.), and was much better able to handle it. I was far more relaxed than I had been the previous year, though I did have my moments. (every fangirl does.) One of these moments was when I found a Carlos (Leo, far left in the photo) cosplayer in the Artists' Alley. For those of you who don't know, Carlos is a fairly obscure character from the Resident Evil series of games, specifically the third game, one of my two favorites from the series. I was quite excited, as I'd never seen a Carlos cosplayer before. I asked him and the Leon cosplayer (Steve, second from the left) he was with if they were still going to be those characters on Saturday, as I was going to be Rebecca that day. He said they were, and that they might know some other people who were going to be Resident Evil characters. So we decided to set up a Resident Evil photo shoot for Saturday. Over the course of that day and the next, word spread to some other Resident Evil fans, and I spent time off and on with Leo. I spent a good chunk of the day of the photo shoot around other Resident Evil fans, talking about it and our other fandoms, and playing the Resident Evil card game. The photo shoot itself was two hours or so of taking photos with and talking to the other people there. I absolutely loved it and, even though I had fun on all three of the other days, nothing else from the convention even came close to to it in terms of how much I enjoyed it.

After the convention, when I had returned home to Rock Springs, I did keep in contact with some of the people I had met at AO that year, to varying degrees. The main person I kept in contact with was Leo. We talked just about every day over the Internet. We quickly developed a relationship, and have now been dating for almost two years. Likewise, Steve and the Fairytale Sheve (Judy, second from the right) also started dating soon after AO. Over the next few months, I would become friends with both of them, as well as some of Leo and Steve's other friends. As the year drew to a close, I had decided to move to Boise. By this point, Rock Springs held almost nothing for me anymore. My parents had moved to Kansas, and my grandparents were planning to move to Pennsylvania in the near future. I still had a couple friends left there, as well as two step siblings, but I wasn't as close to any of them as I was to my Boise friends. It was the only option I could see working out in the long run, and I haven't regretted it for even a moment.

The second Resident Evil photo shoot.  I am very close to
most of these people.

By the time the next AO rolled around, I had been living in Boise for about five months. It was the first convention I'd been to since moving here, and though not the first convention I'd gone to since I started dating Leo, it was the first convention where I felt like I was starting to become a real part of the Boise convention crowd. I knew a number of people there outside of my immediate circle of friends, and ran a panel with Leo and some of our friends. Additionally, this AO was when I debuted my Arcade Sona, which is, to date, the costume I have made the most things for. This was for the League of Legends photo shoot that I participated in, in addition to the Resident Evil photo shoot that we did again that year. I had a ton of fun at this AO as well, and probably more so than at either of the previous two, but there's not quite as much to say about it.

No matter how many conventions I go to, Anime Oasis will always have a meaning to me beyond what other ones ever could. I look forward to seeing what this AO will bring. But before that, I have some work to do on costumes. Join me next time when I'll be discussing the projects I want to get done for this coming up Anime Oasis.