Okay, now comes my Comic Con happenings. And now you see what my costume of Leon Magnus looks like with me wearing it.  And I'm not making it private.  Here goes me flying under the radar...and find out not really.

Now, the con I wandered around by myself for the most part. Just to let you know. Also, I really need to learn to be steady with the camera. Some photo did not come out as expected.

So, I'll start with Preview Night:

Preview Night
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I knew the first thing I was going to do was head to the Capcom booth to play the final arcade build of Street Fighter IV. My friends and I came late at 5 and the line was so long that it was curving. When I thought I was getting in, the line went in a curve. I feel glad I didn't wear my costume at preview night.

Despite that, I got my badge and proceeded to the Capcom booth. I was pretty much chatting with others in the line with discussions like if they're going to try out the new characters or stick to old favorites. I knew I was either going to choose M. Bison or Ken. Later, I told the guy behind me that I decided on M. Bison. I even made a crack remark going, "Don't worry! He won't be out of character like in the Street Fighter cartoon." He knew what I was talking about and made comments on M. Bison's two lines, "This is delicious!" and "YES! YES!" with stuff like, "Did he eat a cookie or something?" We pretty much laughed over the badness of the lines.

I finally got into their ring and play Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix while I was waiting. It's certainly pretty and I'm looking to bring it on when it comes out. Finally, I got to play it. Street Fighter IV is awesome! It has that feel of Street Fighter II and plays extremely well! I knew how to handle M. Bison to some extent and I won my first match in the two I played up there (I also did my homework on the Revenge mechanic and used it similar to a SFIII parry to defend against a Hadoken. Street Fighter comes back and doesn't disappoint! This is the big fighting game to come out. Go and play it!

Amazingly, I only bought a couple of things throughout the con, both on Preview night. I bought Okami for Wii at the Capcom booth ($40 and no tax on me) to make up for not playing a game I didn't back in 2006. Also, I bought a shirt at the Penny Arcade booth...the "Shoot him first" Red Team shirt (In reference to this comic). I'm just doing my PSA to make sure you know who to shoot first. Considering the joke is relate-able to more than just Team Fortress 2, it was worthy of a purchase (I mean, a common mistake I kept making in Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance was misplacing my healer and the enemy being, "Their healer is unprotected! Kill him!" *stab* *stab* "I failed you, Ike!" *falls dead*. That's how relate-able it is. Just don't me started on what I had to do in Tales of the Abyss's cameo battle...considering she's my favorite Tales girl.).

Oh yeah, I saw this at the Namco Bandai booth, I really like the artwork. Wonder if this is going to be used for the North America box art?

Thursday
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What a way to start. I had a costume malfunction (you'll see it in my photos) and my stomach wasn't feeling good. I actually had to sit down somewhere. I managed to recover though. I was pretty much walking around the con. I also did play Mega Man 9. Well, it's classic Mega Man...in 8-bits...and hard. It's certainly interesting that Capcom did it this way.

Well, I got some random hug from some girl dressed as a Team Rocket grunt. I didn't know what that was about but I dealt with it. I probably should have ask while I was at it.

I got my first someone asking for my picture while upstairs. I asked if he knew who I was and he replied "Lion Magnus" (said in the same way you would that ferocious feline of Africa). Well, it was good enough answer and I admitted this was more "under the radar" and he replied about Tales of Destiny being more obscure. After that, I went back downstairs looking around some more. Just around the Pokémon booth, a girl happened to ask for my picture. Again, I asked if she knew who I was suppose to be. She answered, "Leon Magnus." I got excited hearing that she knew who I was suppose to be. I told her I'm currently the only Tales cosplayer I know of. She then tipped me off on a Luke and Guy cosplayer at the con. I decided to keep an eye for them, disregard my issues with Abyss. Not long after that, I encountered a group of girls and they reacted as if they encountered Johnny Depp or something. I let them take my picture and ended the meeting with a little joke comment "If you see that country boy around, wake him up, will ya?" and had to mention, "I'm referring to Stahn." After picking up on that, she then said with, "Oh I will!" Continuing to the area with the video game booths, I went towards the Square Enix booth and...I found the Luke and Guy I was tipped off about.

Me with Guy and Luke. Now you see the costume malfunction I was talking about.

I got my picture taken with them and actually asked if I can join their group. They allowed me to so I actually was in a Tales group for the day. They actually have another Luke and an Anise in the group. We went upstairs and got many photos taken there. We just started talking Tales, like me preordering Tales of Vesperia the previous month, people that actually like Tales of Legendia after my remark of people hating it *gasp*, and making remarks fitting the situation (Like, the Anise in the group needed to do some things and left for a bit and I remarked, "Don't forget to give Guy a hug!").

We spent a lot of time looking for the console game room. We found it and also found a spot outside to get some photos. Unfortunately, I didn't get all of it. Just too caught in the moment. They were talking about the Tales cosplay they saw at Anime Expo...like a Stahn (after looking at the photo from there, I pretty much figured...they must have been referring to mura_arkaine .



Later, we disbanded. They did mentioned a rumored Dist showing up the next day, so I kept that in mind. The rest of the time I wandered the convention hall. After the exhibit hall closed, I didn't have much to do, so my friends and I left and got that part you saw fixed up.

Friday
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I wandered the hall for a bit before going to a panel. I met up with the same Anise cosplayer...just not being Anise this time (I think she was Ky Kiske...I was looking at the metal plate and I don't remember if I read "Hope" or "Free"). Just a little greeting and I went to the panel.

In a previous entry, I mentioned my whole dilemma of either going to a Powerpuff Girls/Foster panel in order to see Presea Combatir Tara Strong or the Mortal Kombat Vs. DC Universe panel. Well, I went to the Powerpuff Girls/Foster panel. I'm beginning to wish I brought something related to Presea Combatir to sign. Then again, I wasn't sure if I was going to get a mention of Presea to her (and I didn't). Not to mention, do I really want to ruin a Presea trading card that was really all about luck getting it? Yeah.

Well, I got more photos taken and all that. I decided to get on the escalator to see what the deal is with Lucky Star. I saw the saw Luke and Guy but wasn't able to catch them or give a shout out. As for Lucky Star, it's hit or miss. That's all I'll say about it. It was hard for me to get into but I'm not sure it's a complete miss for me. Oh yeah, and I confirm that I really shouldn't try to make any sense out of its hypotizing opening.

Well, some Kingdom Hearts cosplayers recognized me (same reaction as the previous day) and wanted my picture.

Late at night, I decided to just watch random anime out of pure boredom until a new thing we started doing started...watching awful cartoons and also sick and twisted stuff!

Highlights of the awful stuff:

• Mighty Mr. Titan. Always the one to start this awful cartoon marathon. Teaching kids to get active and healthy...through seriously limited animation...oh yeah, and the positions in this one were really questionable. If this is suppose to encourage exercising, it's just making me want to sit on the couch instead.
• One cartoon that I think really doesn't qualify to even be called black and white. The cell weren't even colored in!
• Super President. We got cartoon looking vulture guys with a realistic looking man. Talk about the blatant contrast.
• A commercial...with Fred Flintstone...advertising cigarettes. I knew what was coming when this final one showed up, since I was actually mentioning to someone behind me after this one about finding a site with obscure TV trivia and had a video with Fred and Barney smoking Winston and I knew what was coming with this one. In fact, here it is from Youtube...the one I saw:

• One involved safe sex...with a twist.
• Santa Claus being horribly mean to one kid.
• Happy Tree Friends. Cute little animals getting mauled with blood and gore splattering around. Enough said.

• Wonder Girl.
• Little Girl as a Rebel fighter flying X-Wing.
• Some Kingdom Hearts people ended up breaking into the Caramelldansen dance...okay, whatever, let's move on.
  
• Gatchaman! I'm not even familiar with the series but this one got me cheering like a madman! The costume was cool and the performance was flashy! I couldn't help it! It was awesome! He got some prizes for referencing an old school anime and
  
• Eternal Sonata? Just like how I wasn't expecting many people to recognize me as Leon Magnus, I wasn't expecting Eternal Sonata to show up. At the beginning of it, I was in my, "Don't remind me" position. Surprisingly, it entertained me with the costume quality and the performance. What feels ironic was that I mentioned that Master Chief bailed me out of Eternal Sonata on the count of "I liked Halo 3 and Eternal Sonata was a disappointment." Guess what? They won the prize from Xbox which included an Xbox 360 Pro and a Master Chief costume. Does this mean Polka going to frag me now? They also did win the prize for costume design.
• We Lost. It's a Lord of the Ring performance about the losing bad guys. Ironically, they ended up winning the entire show as well as other prizes.

• A Tales character, at least at San Diego Comic Con, is going to be mistaken for a Fire Emblem character. People were mistaking me for Marth. Well, the only thing Marth and Leon Magnus have in common are that they were both voiced by Hikaru Midorikawa.
  
• More people knew who I was suppose to be than expected. Looks like I can find the Tales fanbase at San Diego Comic Con.  The best moments were grouping with the Luke and Guy there, plus seeing fangirls scream as if they saw Johnny Depp or something,
  
• I really wish I could have thanked the Luke and Guy there for letting me join their group for a day.  It was nice of them to allow me to join up.  They showed me there are Tales fans around here and crazy about it like I am.  Heck, while I still have my issues with the game and it'll never be my favorite, they got me to appreciate Tales of the Abyss some more.  They were also very nice to me.  It's just a shame there's a age gap there.  It just probably made things pretty awkward after I told them I was 22.