Day 2 of Anime Weekend Atlanta!

I attended the second day of AWA today. The day got off to a rough start, but improved as time went on. First off, I neglected to look up the time for the meetup until (shock) it was 50 minutes until, so I ended up missing it thanks to horrific traffic (11 miles of ~5mph thanks to the 3 left lanes being closed for road work on the major interstate I have to take to get there. Also, I left behind my schedule, so I didn't know what was going on the whole day (luckily, I ran into my Canterlanta friends early and stuck with them all day), and I left behind my camera (derp), so there aren't as many pics this time around. I took some with my phone, but it was less convenient.

When I got there, I met up with my brony friends and we went to the Artist Alley, which, as its name implies, is a big room where artists set up stalls to sell their wares. The Luna and Twilight hats, and the Pinkie and Twilight badges and Pinkie keychain, and all the buttons I got yesterday were from Artist Alley. While there, I got some more buttons because they were awesome. After that, I attended a panel about E-Manga. Just as it sounds, E-Manga is manga made for electronic mediums, be it phones or computers. The concept of it is really cool and may get me back into paying for manga. It's manga, naturally, but manga that's FULLY VOICE ACTED. The manga they were demonstrating had both English and Japanese text and voice acting, and they're planning to expand to French and Chinese. You have the option of freely changing between any combination of voice acting and text languages. It sounded really awesome and I'm looking forward to seeing where this medium goes from here.

After that, I crashed with a bunch of the bronies in their hotel room, just sitting around talking (more accurately, sitting around listening to them talk). And then we went to a panel for Vic Mignogna. Now, many of you may not recognize the name, but if you're American or watch American anime dubs, you've most likely heard his voice. Most prevalently, he was the voice of Edward Elric (Fullmetal Alchemist), Broly (Dragonball Z), Tamaki Suou (Ouran High School Host Club), Yoshimori Sumimura (Kekkaishi), Kurz Weber (Full Metal Panic!), Ikkaku Madarame (Bleach), Mao (Disgaea 3), and Junpei Iori (Persona 3). This panel was a BLAST! This guy is really awesome. Over the course of the hour, he publicly announced, "I am officially a brony!", sang happy birthday for a birthday guy using the voice of Tamaki in the style of Marilyn Monroe's "Happy Birthday Mr. President", answered the question of "How are babies made?" by beginning to list the molecular makeup of the human body (15 grams of salt, etc...) then clapping his hands together to transmute a homunculus baby, told many funny stories about acting and various roles he's played...

Then he said something really cool. He said he's a very religious guy (which is fine by me), but he said he was fired from being his church's music production job because of his role as Ed Elric, being a godless alchemist yada yada. He got down about it a bit, and at some point attended a convention as a guest. He said what he experienced there blew him away. All the fans, all the people appreciating his work as an actor, it just made him so happy that he's attended every convention he could since. he said it conflicted with church a lot on Sundays, and he's taken to choosing the cons over church and doesn't regret that decision in the slightest. This guy is just all around awesome.

To clarify: VIC MIGNOGNA. EDWARD ELRIC IS A BRONY.

He also talked about a web series he's in the works on called Star Trek Continues. It's a continuation of the original Star Trek series, where they're rebuilding exact replicas of all the sets used in Star Trek and recasting. Vic himself is playing Captain Kirk, and Chuck Doohan, son of the original Scotty, James Doohan, is cast to fill his father's old role as the new Scotty! Vic also mentioned that a character in from the original Star Trek is returning to play the same role in the web series, 46 years later. he didn't say who, but for some reason, I think it might be (and hope it is) John DeLancie as Q. That would just be so cool!

After the panel, we went to the Artist Alley again, where I bought a couple of really cool MLP-Pokemon crossover badges called My Little Eevee, which have the mane 6 redrawn as Eevee evolutions. I got Twilight, drawn as Umbreon, and Fluttershy, drawn as Leafeon. Then We had some dinner and went to my last panel for the night: a screening of Ponies the Anthology I and II. It was run by 7 or 8 of the creators of the well-known videos. It was really awesome to watch these videos with 200 other bronies; it made the funny parts even funnier. When it got to the part where Fluttershy does the stare at the viewer, many people lets out screams of terror or wept. I personally screamed at the top of my lungs: "NOOOOOOOOO!", "What did I do, Fluttershy!", and "I'm sorry, Fluttershy!" When the PMV segment done to the song "Rainbow in the Dark" came up, I led the crowd in clapping to the drum beat, which made me feel pretty special! <3

After all that, it was time to head home, and here I am. ^_^ Let me show you the pics I did take.

Spoiler: Some random unicorn dude that I found hilarious

Spoiler: Shining Armor, portrayed by one of our own from Canterlanta

Spoiler: Ryo-Oh-Ki from Tenchi Muyo!

Spoiler: Tsukune and Moka from Rosario+Vampire

Spoiler: Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff (for you, Zephyr!)

Spoiler: Swag