Bostonist arrived at the Prudential on Saturday ready to be let down. The gatekeepers at Anime Boston 2008 had not issued us a press pass, and our +20 Cloak of Belonging is, shall we say, somewhat out of date. But, to our great pleasure, the grim, unreachable confines of Hynes Convention Center could not contain Anime Boston's faithful, who erupted into the Shops at Prudential Center. Hey, they've got to eat sometime, right?
We caught them on their lunch break, an army of convention goers. Their costumes were homemade—labors of love—and they carried enough fake weaponry to alarm even a Mooninite. (To their credit, the Pru's security detail remained unfazed—possibly the result of advanced training in hoax device recognition.) We took pictures. We asked questions. We were held at plastic gunpoint.
Joey Birthiaume poses at Canti from FLCL, or Furi Curi, which he says "is the only anime I really like." His helmet took him a week to build. The rest of the costume he finished in a day.
Lora Colose (left) and Lauren Powzyk were in town from upstate New York. This was their fourth Anime Boston convention, and they waited longer than eight hours to register. "It's like a tradition to come here now," said Powzyk, dressed as a character from Kingdom Hearts. Colose added the blue bow tie to her Pokemon Pikachu costume because she "just wanted to make it different."
More photos and captions after the cut! See the whole gallery on Flickr.
Rick Sawyer is responsible for the bulk of the text in this post. C. Fernsebner took the photographs and Rick took the meticulous notes (and a bullet).
Angelica Ruiz (far left), Ashley Chadwick, and Megan Mitchell (far right) dressed as characters from Kingdom Hearts, and Scott Mitchell (back) was Tobi from Naruto. Three of them were four year veterans, but this was Ruiz's first convention. "We kidnapped her," Chadwick said. It was a selfless abduction: Chadwick built Ruiz's sword from solid pine, magic clay, and paper clay. The weapon was a sight to behold. "It's also very heavy," noted Ruiz.
The Evil Dead franchise had its share of stop-motion animation, so Erik Hartenstein (right) can be excused his choice of Ash, Bruce Campbell's character from those movies (specifically Evil Dead II in this case). Kimberly Measor, however, was putting one over on the convention. "I'm waiting for people to say who I am," she said. "I know I've got to look like some anime character; I'm just not sure which one."
Bobby MacGibbon (left) got the drop on us. It was his third year at the convention and his third different character: Hunk from Resident Evil. The costume took him a year to put together. The hardest part? His gas mask, an official SAS issue from the UK. (What if he hadn't found one in the nick of time? Back to being Spider-Man.)
Stacy Johnson haunted the convention as Pyramid Head, a character from Silent Hill. "A pyramid. That's what he has for a head," she said. "He's just evil. He's a demon who pops out of nowhere and just kills you." The helmet took her a couple of days to make. Johnson has been coming to Anime Boston since 2001. "I just like making costumes," she said. "One of my hobbies is sewing, and here, you get to dress like a nerd and hang out with friends."
Maureen Smith is a second generation convention goer. At twelve, she was already attending conventions with her family. Since starting college, she's come on her own. She wore the costume of Lambo from Katekyo Hitman Reborn. "He has a 'fro that's a little smaller than this," she confessed. "I haven't cut the wig just yet, and I've been dying from heat."
Kristen White chose Chaos, a character from Final Fantasy: Dirge of Cerberus, whose mantle she donned for the second year. Last year, the costume took 80 hours to construct. This year, her modifications and repairs took more than 20 hours. Her philosophy: "Find the material you can afford." She made the costume out of a table tarp and "a lot of duct tape," among other things.
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