I had so much fun at the London Anime Convention that I ended up not taking many photos during the day. I did have a friend who borrowed my camera for a while to take some for me but pretty much 90% of those were too blurry to bother uploading. Here’s what’s left after scanning through the folder for post-worthy shots—not much to choose from I’m afraid.

The LAC was a blast and it was a lot of fun talking to fellow otaku and playing the various fighting games set up in the gaming room. I came fourth in the Super Street Fighter IV tournament, which I’m going to blame on luck plus the fact I was so bad that my opponents had trouble predicting what shit I was going to mash out during the matches we played. I had a chance to play some of the more obscure fighting games like Melty Blood, which actually looked really awesome and I’m looking to import that for my PS2 in the coming weeks.

Though I spent most of my time in the gaming room to take advantage of the fact I could play with fellow fighting game enthusiasts lag-free for a change, I did do a few other things at the con. We took part in the cosplay auction, where we get to bid on cosplayers who become our ‘slaves’ for the day, or something like that. We won the bid on Scorpion (Mortal Kombat) and Rude (Final Fantasy VII) cosplayers, who later ditched us to go have fun.

My diet that day was amusingly unhealthy. I had a slice of cheesecake and two cups of ice latte for breakfast. When we got there, I had four bottles of beer on that semi-empty stomach. We did go to McDonald’s, but after buying two burgers I realised I had no appetite at the time so literally took a bite and left it at that.

I was also surprised at just how many people I recognised from previous expos and online forums there, it was great catching up with people and talking about the stuff I have a big interest in—mostly video games of course. There were quite a few drawing classes and even a competition for artists, which my friend came second in because she’s godly with a pencil, this unfortunately clashed with my Super Street Fighter IV tournament so we couldn’t cheer for each other during these competitions but we both came close to winning!

All in all, I had a great time with very few issues throughout the day. The worst part was basically standing in line on Holloway Road with the fucking sun hitting us in the dick for thirty minutes. I couldn’t complain though, I felt bad for the people in cosplay that were probably twice as sweaty as me at the time. Shortly after the event, Anime League confirmed that the next London Anime Convention will take place in early 2011 and I’m definitely planning on attending once again. Maybe I’ll see you guys there next time, who knows?

I’m ridiculously late for work right now so I had to rush through this post quickly. As you can no doubt see, I’ve uploaded this year’s expo photos online (finally). DiabloCableGuy was also there with me and was kind enough to transfer his photos over to my netbook before we parted ways, so the gallery below contains photos from both of us. Anyway, check out the gallery below, I’ll edit this post properly when I’m not in a massive rush!

I admit, it’s kind of stupid that I’ve only just uploaded last year’s London Expo photos on the same day I’m leaving for this year’s one. Still, for the sake of keeping a record of my convention escapades, I say it’s better (super) late than never, right? I snapped about 500 photos, but I just picked out 70 of them to crop and upload because I’m far too lazy to crop that many images. You’ll see this year’s expo photos on the blog much, much sooner – promise. Anyway, get to da choppa after the jump for the gallery.

With my real life work (mostly) under control and the London MCM Expo being today, I think now is a good time to start blogging again. My updates will gradually become more frequent since right now I’m focusing my time on a new blog template which will be a lot less fail than the current one. Once that’s online, I can dedicate my time to writing ‘original’ content and not worry about how crap my blog looks to me. That’s a lie of course, because I still have to work the day job and write for DamnLag.com, but long story short you’ll be seeing more and more updates from now on… yay?

I’ve been poking around the forums to see if anyone would be interested in a Ventrilo server for Zetzio and the response has been quite positive. So as promised on the forum, I looked into purchasing a server for us as soon as I got back from the London MCM Expo. In case some people aren’t familiar with Ventrilo, it’s a VoIP program which lets you voice chat in a group, a little like party chat on Xbox Live. You can use it to communicate with your team on a PC game or just drop in for a friendly chat with other members of the community. Information on joining our server can be found after the jump.

You’ll need two important things to get you on Ventrilo, the client program which can be found on the Ventrilo website. The next is important but still somewhat optional, and that is of course a headset. Although there is a text chat room on the Ventrilo server, the main idea is to chat with your headset, thus bringing the Xbox Live shenanigans we have onto the PC. Once you’ve got the client program and a headset, you’ll need the following details to log into our server.

Server Hostname: ventrilo.pulsegaming.com
Port Number: 3859

There’s no password for now so anyone is welcome, but the server can only house 10 users at once which should be adequate for the time being.

I’m a little late with this explanation but better late than never I guess. Early in August my company went to court with another party over a dispute which has escalated and is still ongoing. Obviously, legal action is ‘srs bsns’ and I’ve had to take a break from the blog to focus on this case. Making matters worse is my computer dying on me roughly a month ago, my attempts at fixing it haven’t done much yet. I could have written some articles in my spare time but that isn’t going to happen until I can find a Phoenix Down for the PC, but for now all I can do is apologise and post an image of a cute puppy.

Neon Genesis Evangelion was the first series to truly push me into anime, and so it’s probably no surprise that Rei Ayanami is among my favourite characters in the medium. I bumped into this statue during the London MCM Expo in May this year, and it didn’t take much for me to make the impulse purchase. This 1/12 scale statue is based on a 2003 resin kit which was sculpted by Tsukuru Shirahige and manufactured by Kotobukiya. As Rei is on a BMX, the height comes in at 15cm and the whole statue is pre-painted PVC.

WIN

• Rei’s BMX steals the spotlight from the young Evangelion pilot thanks to the excellent detail from the frame to the wheels. It’s not just the detail on the bike, but the fact that Rei’s pulling off a trick with it which really makes this statue stand out from anything else I currently own.
• Every statue should come with a good display base, not just some plain black/white/transparent thing that looks like it was slapped on as an afterthought. Rei’s rocking out on tile pavement to give you the impression she’s somewhere outdoors, people don’t do tricks like that in their living rooms after all.
• So why am I impressed with the BMX and base details? It’s not as if this is the only detailed statue of Rei Ayanami available. It’s the price tag of course, I picked this up for £20.00 and for that price the attention to detail is quite satisfactory. Not incredible by any means, but it’s ‘bang for your buck’ as an American may have put it.

FAIL

• Easily my biggest gripe with this statue is the seam going right across the top of Rei’s head. This doesn’t seem to exist in the original resin kit that spurred the PVC statue. If there was one thing that made me think twice about the purchase, it was this issue but the good outweighs the bad in this case so I went for it regardless. Some may not be as forgiving however, so check the gallery to see how bad you think it looks.
• I look up the skirts of my statues, and I’m sure every other male otaku out there has done it at least once. I was a bit surprised to find a bit of thin plastic underneath Rei’s skirt that seemed to be attached to it pretty firmly. I have no idea why it’s there but I could not pull it out. I’ve decided to just leave it alone as it’s not noticeable unless you blatantly turn the statue upside down and stare right at her panties, which isn’t something my guests will try doing when complimenting me on my figures. At least I hope not, anyway.

Most of the time when I see a cool statue that’s actually interesting enough to warrant a purchase, it’s a pretty pricey one which is actually the main reason I’ve only recently started taking a real interest in collecting such things. As I mentioned, Rei stands out because of the statue’s unique pose, not to mention an orange BMX is quite hard to miss. Aside from the seam on Rei’s head, I really think this statue is a bargain for any Evangelion fan looking to pick up a good quality statue without spending too much. Even if you’re not familiar with the series, the statue looks good enough on its own merits.

Rei Ayanami BMX Trick Version is produced by Tsukuru Shirahige and manufactured by Kotobukiya. It was first released in June 2007 and is unfortunately sold out on most online retailers at the time. I was able to pick it up in May during the London MCM Expo ’09. Though this is my first Evangelion statue, I have a growing collection of videogame and anime figurines.

I’m really enjoying these Dead Fantasy videos from Monty Oum, but he may be going a little off track with the latest video. I’m interested in cool fight scenes with video game characters that are quite experienced in the art of ass-whooping, not scenes of Tifa being emotional and trying to unsuccessfully pull on my heart strings or something. Still, Monty slightly makes up for this with the fight scene in the garage which reminded me a little of Jackie Chan. How are you guys finding the Dead Fantast videos so far?

Some posters for the Halo anime that’s in production have surfaced, and if anything they’re a nice indication of the art style each studio is going for in the various shorts. Looking through each poster, the ones that catch my eye most are the one with the Master Chief going toe to toe with whatever the hell that giant thing is, and also the one I’ve used in the top image. I’m not too sure about the one by studio Bones which seems to have some sort of mecha Spartans in space or something.

I’m sure you’ve all laid your eyes upon the recently released Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer debut trailer, if not then you can watch it after the jump. There’s a lot to take in and it was only a matter of time before someone checked the footage frame by frame to see what’s new in this trailer. I’m far too lazy to analyse a trailer, but fortunately someone at Endsights.com wasn’t, so hit the jump on the interesting things they spotted in the new footage.

Rio de Janeiro appears to be confirmed as a location, as the “Christ the Redeemer” statue can be clearly seen in trailer.

You’ll now be able to stick foes with grenades.

There will be customized killstreak loadouts.

There are 15 different killstreak rewards for you to choose from.

One of the confirmed killstreak loadouts is the AC130 gunship, which was one of the highlights of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare

Ability to take out the AC130 gunship with an RPG

Ability to lock-onto targets with RPGs — in the trailer, you can see the missile that is headed towards the AC130 gunship curve. Also, notice the beeping sound it makes as the RPG is held in place.

At least one gun that will have radar-mounted on it — so when you bring up the iron sights, radar will be right in your field of vision.

“Buzzkilling” challenge — get points for killing someone on a killstreak.

“Payback” challenge — challenge that nets you points for killing a player that had killed you earlier in the match

Increase in points per kill. It appears that 50 points will now be rewarded per kill, as compared to Modern Warfare’s 10. It’s unclear whether that will have any impact on leveling quicker.

Footage is taken from the Xbox 360 version of the game.

You will be playing as a U.S. Army Ranger for at least part of the game — a U.S. Army Ranger symbol is present.