Another Anime North has come and gone. It’s amazing how fast those three days whirl by but it’s always a lot of fun!

On Friday evening PlasticFantastic and I hosted 2 panels as part of Doll North – which is Anime North’s programming division dedicated to ABJD’s and other related import dolls. We had a nice turnout for our panels, despite the fact that quite a few people missed it because they were still in line trying to pick up their per-registered passes! The first panel we presented was an “Introduction to Dollfie Dreams.” This had been at the request of the Doll North co-coordinators because there had been requests for more info about DD’s and vinyl dolls from members of the community in the past few months. PlasticFantastic was also on hand before our panel to offer some general DD Doctor care. I brought Hinata, Gabrielle, Mélisande, Médée and KOS-MOS with me – which is the most I’ve ever had out of the house in one outing!

The second panel “How to Survive a Dolpa” which was based on our recent adventures at the Volks Dolpa 27. We dedicated it to our friend D.ark Dollhouse who passed away earlier this month. Her Dolpa For Dummies guide proved extremely useful to us when we were preparing for our trip and was an invaluable tool.

Thank you to everyone that came, and to everyone that brought their Dollfie Dreams with them! I hope you found our panels informative! And if you weren’t able to make it, Meo was awesome enough to video the panels so hopefully we’ll have them online at some point so that we can share our knowledge!

Here are some of the awesome DD’s that were on display at our panel. Special guest is the DD custom of Momiji, Anime North’s mascot!

And a funny photo of us during the DD panel –

I’ll have some more photos from Doll North up in the next couple of days.

On Saturday, it was get-up and go to start setting up for Café Delish – Anime North’s maid café. The lineup started really early and con-ops had to weave the line outside and it wove it’s way along the front of the hotel and around the corner before we even started selling tickets! We sold out all of our seatings within a couple of hours – apologies to those who couldn’t make it in! I hope that you at least stopped by the PuriMeido photo booth in the TCC to take a photo with your favourite maid!

I had lots of people asking me – what exactly IS the PuriMeido booth? It’s our own photobooth (yup, our staff built it from scratch!) in the style of the fun purikura booths that you find at arcades in Japan. You get to chose which maid you’d like a photo with, and then you and a friend get to take 4 fun photos, and then your maid hand decorates the photo for you. Here are Susu, Misa and Akane looking adorable at the PuriMeido booth –

Photo by Derwin Mak

If you had a ticket for a seating at the café, it was also a voucher for free photo set at the PuriMeido booth ^__^”

The café went very smoothly this year – there was only 1 behind-the-scenes hiccup regarding catering from the hotel, but overall I think we created a nice, fun oasis from the crazy of the convention for our guests to relax in. Here are Momoko, Misa, Susu, Yumi, Keiko, Chiyou and Akane dancing one of their routines.

Photo by Derwin Mak

Thank you to every for coming to the café and supporting the Hospital for Sick Children. I look forward to seeing you next year!

♥ Archangeli