Aya Revolution 09 - Looking Back

Last weekend was the second weekend of August, which meant that it was also time for what has become known as the 'big summer convention' in the UK. For the last three years this has been Amecon, held in Leicester, but returning this year after a prolonged absence was Ayacon, rebadged this year as "Aya Revolution 09". Formerly Amecon and Ayacon shared the big summer slot, each hosting a convention every other year, but for whatever reason Ayacon couldn't be held in 2007, so Amecon picked up the slack and did three consecutive events.

Ayacon is held at the Warwick Arts Centre, within the University of Warwick. Despite the name, the university is actually on the outskirts of Coventry rather than Warwick. The main positive of the venue being in Coventry is that it was within the West Midlands county. This meant that both my travel costs and time were lower than those for Amecon, but this was offset by the higher price of on-site accomodation this year.


Day One

I arrived at the convention much earlier than I had originally planned to. Loaded down with a suitcase and three bags full of items to sell at the event's "Bring and Buy" I had worried about how long it would take me to travel between bus to train, and later train to bus, but I was supremely lucky with only a 10 minute wait for the train to leave being the worst of my travel delays. Registration was scheduled to open for the first day at 11am, yet when I arrived at 9.30 it had already opened and to my surprise there was literally no queues. I then had two and a half hours to loiter in the venue's entrance whilst waiting for the university to allow people to pick up their room keys. This gave me time to chat to people and take a few photos. I met Spirit of the Stage and Danj while waiting, and several other people from various forums.

Eventually I got my key, and found myself dragging my belongings to the furthest of the accomodation blocks they were using, but the room was very nice. It was basic University accomodation, but it had an en suite bathroom (shared between two rooms) and a tray with a kettle and various biscuits and hot drinks packets. I did myself a cup of tea while I unpacked my stuff, and decided what to do and when for the rest of the day.

After a while, I decided to start out again, this time without suitcase but again with my three bags of DVDs and manga to sell. After dropping them off at the Bring & Buy I found myself again with plenty of time to kill, so I wandered around the place and took some cosplay photos. Before long it was time for the opening ceremony, so we all found our way to Butterworth Hall, I got myself a very good seat towards the front, and the ceremonies begun. We were welcomed to Aya Revolution, told of what was going on and introduced to the guests. This year the guests were Matthew Mercer and JoEllen Elam from "There Will Be Brawl", UK Convention regular and Japanese Culture queen, Akemi Solloway, and the multi-talented Japanese idol, Momoi Haruko. There was some bouncing by Haruko Momoi, followed by some bouncing by Matthew Mercer.

Next up was the highlight of the first day for myself, the ever popular Name That Tune quiz. Hosted by some weirdo in Mario cosplay, the idea was for teams to guess what anime the music comes from, with the winning team winning a huge stack of pocky to share between themselves. As I was there on my own, I grabbed the front table (all the better to heckle Spirit of the Stage from) and people who I had either said hello to earlier, or people who didn't have a team, and formed a team that we called, "I don't know these guys". We did well in the quiz, so much so that we actually won it, not that the quiz was easy. Spirit had devised a feindishly evil track list for this year's event, but the large variance in tastes in our team allowed us to succeed.

I could have gone to the Haruko Momoi concert, but instead I decided to relax for the evening at the karaoke, and decide whether or not I had the balls to get up there and sing something myself. In the end I didn't, but for the songs that I knew I was sitting in my seat, drink in one hand, singing along with the tune. By the time the room shut at 2am my voice was gone, and I was tired, so I slouched back to my room for the night.


Day Two

The day started without a lie in after the previous day's activities, as I wanted to get to the site in time to get a good seat for the first panel of the day - the Haruko Momoi Q&A. I arrived with time to spare, and had time to get myself a couple of bottles of Ribena to keep me hydrated through the day. The panel itself was great, with Matthew Mercer being the host, and questions being fed through one translator, whilst another translated her answers. She cited The Beatles as being one of her biggest musical influences, and said that one of the things she wanted to do while she was in the UK was to have a cup of English Tea. I wont go through the entire Q&A, since Danj was at the panel liveblogging it. Needless to say, Haruko was a really fun and interesting person to listen to.


After her panel came an impromtu photo oportunity, as Haruko spotted a Komugi Cosplayer and wanted her photograph taken with her. A mob of camera boys (and girls) joined in, and the Komugi cosplayer found herself the centre of attention along with the Japanese Idol. The crowd then congregated downstairs where Haruko was doing a signing. I got my copies of Final Fantasy Unlimited volume one, Nurse Witch Komugi, and Magikano artbox signed, as well as a photo of her. I also posed for a photo with her. It struck me how nice and wonderful she was, despite having a queue longer than any other queue of the weekend she was so nice with everybody and was happy to pose with everybody who asked.

After mocking Spirit of the Stage who was much further back in the queue than I was, I made my way up to the dealer's room for the first time of the weekend. I had brought £120 with me to spend, as well as any money I made from my Bring and Buy items, but I wouldn't know that until the third day. I greeted Andrew Partridge of Beez Entertainment, Hugh David, formerly of ADV, and Tony of MVM. I did pick up a few items on the first day. I got myself the Azumanga Daioh box set (the UK one with the pad and pencil and really nice box) as well as the obligatory copy of Megami Magazine and some models (Meyrin Hawke and a Tieren Taozi kit).

With more time to kill, I got myself some lunch and sat in on the Matthew Mercer Q&A, where he told some stories of his time in Shanghai recording for Star Ocean: The Last Hope with New Generation Pictures. Should anybody ever meet him at a convention, they should ask him about his "Special Massage" story...

The next panel I really had to attend was a last minute addition to the schedule. People had spotted that there was a yaoi panel being organised, and felt agreived that the yaoi fangirls were being catered for, yet people who enjoyed a bit of girl on girl action weren't. The Yuri Panel was a fun afair, and I'm told that it was much better received than the yaoi one. The first half was a basic presentation introducing people to yuri, what shows there are, and things like that, but it was the second half where things got fun. The panel had prepared a cosplay skit where it turned into a version of classic UK TV show "Blind Date". For those who have never seen that show, three batchellors sit behind a wall, whilst a single woman asks them questions about what they would do on dates, etc... She chooses one and they get a weekend break to a romantic destination. This was a yuri cosplay version.

The three bachelorettes were Nagisa Aoi from Strawberry Panic, an original steampunk dog-girl called "Puppy", and Anthy Himemiya from Revolutionary Girl Utena. The contestant was the host of the panel, and she was cosplaying as Nodoka Haramura of Saki. The crowd really got involved, giving whoops, applause, aws, and other noises when appropriate, and overall making the show seem more alive. In the end, Nodoka chose Nagisa as the person she wanted to have a blind date with, and as the other two were shown to her as a "look at what you could have won" style event, the crowd applauded. It may have been a last minute addition to this convention, but it's a panel that would be a welcome addition to any future cons.

A dramatic change in flavour came where Andrew Partridge of Beez Entertainmeny arrived for their panel. There wasn't really much to announce, and it was more general "how is Beez doing" chat, but it was informative and informal. Again, Danj was blogging live from the panel, so if you want to read his trascript I suggest you check it out.

Moving quickly on the main event of the day was the Masquerade, again held in Butterworth Hall. I wasn't as lucky this time, so instead of having a front row seat perfect for photos I got the next best option, a front row seat up to the side, looking down on the main stage. The cosplay was very high quality and very varied, but since my photo's weren't very good quality I can't prove that. There are a couple on my cosplay images page, but the rest are either too dark or too blurred, with the cosplayers not staying stationary to take a good picture in low light. The masquerade was well organised and punctuated by a surprise mini-concert by Haruko Momoi where she sung three songs, and a demonstration by some taiko drummers.

The last action of the middle day came in the form of the not at all serious pub quiz. Hosted by gaming journalist Rob Fahey, it was a very tongue in cheek affair, with rounds like "Trap or Not" and "Legal or Loli". Again my team was a grab bag of those who had only a handful of people, this time we were called "Chicks dig... I'm sorry, who were you again? p.s. Our Chairs are Taken", and somehow we came back from third place going into the last round to win on a tiebreaker. There was no prize, but we got to say that we won, and the three of us who were also on the winning team of the NTT, to say we won both!

I decided to leave the site earlier than the day before, to pack my suitcase and get some rest ready for my final day.


Day Three

My final day started with me taking my room key back to reception to check out, and storing my suitcase in the "Left Luggage" room whilst I enjoyed the day's events. I hung around the central sitting area where people gathered for a while and witnessed Haruko Momoi leaving the event in a pink Stretch Humvee Limo. After taking a few more cosplay pictures, and picking up some drink and snacks for the day at the on-site shop, I made my way first to the dealer's room, and then the State of the Industry.


From left to right, the panel was presented by Andrew (Beez), Tony (MVM), I can never remember his name (Manga), and Hugh (formerly ADV). It was a very casual panel, with chat often moving to how the industry compares to other industries, and how western people view the anime industry rather than the state of the UK anime industry, but the panel was very interesting. Again, Danj was there liveblogging the panel, so if you want to see what was said, just check out his transcript.

Following immediatly from the State of the Industry panel was a live podcast recording for the gaming podcast, Stage Clear. The aformentioned Rob Fahey records it with independant games developer Richard Perrin, and they say that they prefer to talk about things they like, rather than just blindly criticise games. Despite that, they set up a topic which would have them talking about and criticising five "sacred lambs" of gaming, games that are held with such high regard that it is silly, hoping that the crowd would give them some really good whines or groans. Amusingly only one of the five got any sort of response, and even that was out-numbered by people agreeing that it is overrated (but good). The five games were Halo 2, Resident Evil 2, GoldenEye, Grand Theft Auto 3 onwards, and Final Fantasy 7.

After the recording I had decided that there was no other panels or things happening that I wanted to attend that afternoon, and with me unable to attend the evening's activities due to having to get home that day, decided that I'd give the dealer's room one more look over, pick up my bring and buy earnings and lefovers, and leave. I actually made £125 at the Bring and Buy after the convention took their 10% share, and spent most of that in the room. I got myself the new Kannazuki no Miko collection as well as several figures. I spotted a Kuroko Shirai (Magical Index) figure that I just had to buy, and was then talked into also buying a Yuki Nagato (Haruhi) catgirl figure which was heat sensitive. There were several smaller figures including a Haro, Kun-kun, Haruhi, and Tsuruya, as well as a Churuya Tshirt. I decided that I'd leave with £20 in my wallet and my Ayacon Loot in my bag, and head on home.




I had a lot of fun at Ayacon. It wasn't the cheapest weekend I've ever had, with me spending over £200 on stuff from the dealer's room, £100 on accomodation, plus the £45 registration fee for the event itself, but it was worth it. The big summer convention has now become a staple summer event for myself, and I'm already looking forward to heading to Leicester for next year's Amecon next August. Now excuse me while I get myself a well deserved cup of tea!