Armageddon Expo, Melbourne 2012

This year I attended Armageddon Expo for the very first time, after wanting to go for several years. Armageddon is an Australia/New Zealand convention with a focus on sci-fi, comics, anime, gaming etc. The main attraction for me this year was voice actor Johnny Yong Bosch who you may know as the voice behind Ichigo Kurosaki from Bleach, Vash the Stampede from Trigun, Lelouch vi Britannia from Code Geass, or as the Black Power Ranger. Once I knew that Johnny was a confirmed guest, I just had to go. Being an artistic person, I decided to create my own artwork to have him sign - you can see it properly here on my deviantART (link). So in the weeks leading up to the convention I drew, scanned and digitally coloured an artwork of my 3 favourite characters voiced by Johnny - Ichigo (Bleach), Lelouch (Code Geass) and Izaya (Durarara!!). I'll talk more about that in a minute.

Exporing Chinatown the night before Armageddon.

Armageddon started off a little bumpy when my best friend who I traveled to Melbourne with the day before woke up on Saturday morning with a migraine. A legit, hardcore migraine. So she dossed herself up on her prescribed meds and went back to bed while I worried about what was to become of our weekend. It was a 6 hour drive from where we live to Melbourne, so we had traveled quite a long journey. But 4 hours later, she was awake and feeling human enough to make the journey to the Melbourne Exhibition and Convention Centre. We put off cosplaying until Sunday and went off to the convention dressed as civilians. We walked around, looked at all the exhibitors and the stalls. Straight away, I purchased 2 wall scrolls, which I ended up kinda regretting pretty quickly because they weren't easy to carry around in crowds of people. We checked out the Madman stall, where they were selling all their manga at $10 per issue, which is fairly cheap for Australian prices. I grabbed some Bleach, volumes 18, 20, 21, 23 and 24 because they had sold out of 19 and 22. I absolutely adore Bleach but I'm very behind on the manga so I need to fix that. I really want to get up to date because avoiding spoilers is getting harder and harder. We joined the autograph line for the animation guests early to get a decent spot, but not early enough to be close to the front of the line. I played with my 3DS and collected lots of Miis with StreetPass which is always a fun way to pass the time at a convention. A stranger in line noticed I was playing Mario Kart 7 at one point and we played together for a bit but he easily kicked my butt.


Figures at MoeMall 
Before I knew it, the guests returned to the signing table and the line was moving - slowly but surely. First up was Charles Martinet who is the voice of Mario! He was fantastic, he was so lovely to absolutely everyone. He signed my autograph to 'Princess Jena' followed by 'Mama Mia!' and 'You da best!'. He was a really great person. Next up was the one I have been looking most forward to - Johnny Yong Bosch. I don't get starstruck but I was flustered by the time I got to him and I was still struggling with my A3 folio in which my artwork was in, my purchases and my handbag because I'm a woman and that thing is a necessity! I tried to tell him that the characters I drew were my 3 favourites but it all came out jumbled but he knew exactly what I was trying to say because the next thing he said was "You drew this?!" so I told him that I spent quite a few hours working on it specifically to get him to sign it and he was just so impressed, he couldn't believe I drew it and at that point I handed over the one that I printed for him to have. He was like "Wait, this one is for me!?" - he was just so stoked and he said he was going to frame it. SO HAPPY! I was just so overjoyed. But as I sit down to write this all out, I realise that I wanted to get a photo of him holding it but in all the craziness I totally forgot! So bummed! But I still got it signed, he signed it in the empty space I left without me even needing to say anything. I tweeted a message of thanks to him later that afternoon to let him know how much I appreciated it and I was amazed to wake up the next morning to find that he had tweeted back to me! I hate to sound like a little teenybopper but it really just made me so happy that he loved it. That entire encounter was definitely the best part of the weekend for me. I tweeted him again yesterday to say that I forgot to ask for a picture of him holding it and I asked if he could take a picture for me but he replied saying he is twitter handicapped so I'm assuming that was a nice way of saying no. Bummer!

My friend and I walked back to the car to rid ourselves of my folio and shopping. We browsed some more once we returned to the convention centre and I spotted some stalls selling bootlegs. I saw some bootleg Miku's and a Sakura Miku. The worst part was that when I walked by later, I noticed that someone had purchased the Sakura bootleg. My inner bootleg alarm went off quite a few times over the weekend, it just goes to show that you have to be careful at conventions and know what to look for.

On Sunday we returned to Armageddon Expo but this time we were in cosplay. We were dressed as Matryoshka versions of Miku and Gumi. It was such a fun cosplay, I enjoyed doing the makeup and I liked the freedom that came with that cosplay because you can basically wear whatever you want on the lower half because it's never shown in the video. We were asked for a few photos and a few people told us we looked awesome which makes it all worth it. The sad part was that we didn't get the chance to get a photo together other than some crappy iPhone photos we took of ourselves at the apartment we were staying it, so now we're trying to hunt down some photos via Facebook. Fingers crossed!

The best part of Sunday was the Eyeshine performance. For those of you who aren't aware, Eyeshine is Johnny Yong Bosch's band. They were really fun, great tunes, awesome performers. They got everyone to come nice and close so it was super intimate. It's not every day you get to hear your favourite voice actor sing in his own band and stand super close as they perform. I shot some video with my DSLR although the audio isn't fantastic because I was right next to a paid of speakers. And the video has a few focus issues because it was the first time I'd ever filmed any video with my DSLR so I didn't really know what I was doing! The performance was awesome. A group photo was taken at the end so I'm looking forward to seeing that too. You can find my video here: (link)



I didn't buy any figures because there wasn't really any that I wanted and I didn't want to accidentally end up with a bootleg. But I did buy a few cool things. MoeMall had the Wonderfest K-ON! Nendoroid sets and oh boy those were hard to walk away from! Those little beauties. As mentioned above, I got Bleach and Code Geass wall scrolls, Bleach manga, Heroes & Heroines Character Design Book, Wacom Bamboo Stylus for drawing on the iPad and extra nibs, a Link plush, a Kon plush, a Zelda iPhone USB cable, a cute little keychain that looks like a gameboy, the Limited Edition 25th Anniversary Copic Marker set (link) (SO AMAZING!) and the lady gave me a free carry case that is some Japanese exclusive and a 'Keep Calm and Gangnam Style' pin even though I'm over that fad but I still find it funny. I think that's it.


I think that just about covers it! It was a great weekend.

You can find more pictures on my flickr.