Now that I finally have home Internet access again, I thought I’d do a quick anime report from Starfest 2008.

Because Starfest is primarily a sci-fi convention with a helping of fantasy on the side (there’s also Horrorfest which is run at the same time, but it quite literally is a side feature), anime has a very small presence at the convention. There are two main anime-related things that happen. The first is that Denver Anime International plays anime videos in a small room. Most of them are fansubs of more current titles out of Japan, but sometimes they aren’t and will include things like Voltron and anime music videos. For me, that’s not appealing (at my first convention, I did stay and watch an episode of Full Metal Panic: The Second Raid, where it appeared that most of the people watching had not seen it before even though it had been out quite some time as a fansub, but I found it really not to my liking). I did pop my head in a few times just to see what kind of draw they were getting though.

The other anime-related item at Starfest is the small booth that Gimme Anime, a local anime retail store, runs.

That said, there is the occasional cosplayer who will who up. I saw four this year. The first is this mecha unit, which I’m told is from Gundam but if you know what its from, please let me know.

The next cosplayer I saw was in an Inuyasha outfit. Sadly, he looked pretty scary and I didn’t get a picture of him. ^_^;

Finally, there was this pair of young guys, who did an excellent Trigun cosplay (Vash the Stampede and Nicholas D. Wolfwood respectively).

I made mention on the Starfest site of my desire to have more anime-related stuff there. The response was that I could (1) make my own panel or (2) attend Nan Desu Kan, which is the local anime convention. Well, I won’t be doing the first and as for the second, if they had the big companies attend and have panels, I’d be somewhat tempted. Heck, if they scored HAYASHIBARA Megumi, I’d be there in a heartbeat (Lord willing, of course).

My attendance to next year’s Starfest is dependent on my job situation and the guest that come. If I attend, I’ll keep my eye open for anime-related cosplayers and events.