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YamiBakuraFan's Little Shop of Horrors
YamiBakuraFan invades Katsucon. 12 2006!
February 20, 2006

Katsucon. is a yearly anime convention that takes place over in our nations capitol, Washington D.C. This year marks 12 years of Katsu’s existence, and the first year that I, YamiBakuraFan of Pojo.com will be going on an all out hunt for anything and everything related to the anime, manga, and collectable card game we all know and love, Yu-Gi-Oh!
 

Over the last three days I have braved many trials and hardships to bring you this article highlighting my time at Katsucon!

And so it begins….

Waking up at the usual time for a school day I started to pack everything I needed to bring with, clothes, clothes, deck and extra cards, clothes, etc. When I was packed up and ready to go we hit the road for Katsu, It was a quite long drive to arrive at the destination, but aside from some slight mishaps we arrived perfectly on time. The next problem was parking, which was solved after a bit of quarreling with staff, who were very helpful and supporting in the situation. Yes, Katsu was filled up and parking was scarce, but we pulled through in the end. Next, everything was brought up to the fifth floor to room five hundred a.k.a. HQ.

After getting situated I donned my signature black trench coat and headed down to the conventions main hall. Many cosplayers were dressed as their favorite anime characters and making busy with all kinds of conversations, photo shoots, and partying of all sorts. I decided to get my shopping done ASAP and immediately headed to the dealers room, which consisted of tons of stands housing countless amounts of anime merchandise of all shapes and sizes.

The dealer’s room was big, but Yu-Gi-Oh! Merchandise was scarce. What I was able to find however, did please me quite a bit. First, I hit the Japanese book store stand looking for the Yu-Gi-Oh! R Volume 2 graphic novel of which I have been slowly collecting every volume of from convention to convention.  The bookstore had quite a selection of Japanese Yu-Gi-Oh! manga in stock, and had pretty much the entire original series as well as countless copies of the first two volumes of R and the OCG Character Guide Book.

With further searching I was also able to pick up the Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Guide, containing Dead Spirit Zoma and Earthbound Spirit’s Invitation for a little less than 12 dollars. Heading over to the next vendor I searched through quite a few giant sized posters, among them finding a few Yu-Gi-Oh! posters advertising for Expert Edition 2 and the Japanese version of the recently released Magician Structure. Both posters looked fairly nice and had pictures of Judai (Jaden) in various duel poses. Most surprisingly of all I was able to find a poster for Mythological Age, which is a very old series. Seeing Yugi on the poster sealed the deal and I walked away a happy shopper.

Next stop, the Jump booth. It wasn’t actually Jumps own stand, but was a vendor selling nothing but different Jump magazines. Searching through the recent stash I was able to pull out the issue that contained Elemental Hero NEOS in it. I was happy to find a card that’s rather hard to obtain here in America due to lack of a good way top obtain these magazines.  Among the other various vendors only one other contained Yu-Gi-Oh! merchandise and it was nothing more than a few old American booster sets including Labyrinth of Nightmare, Dark Revelations 1, Legacy of Darkness, and Soul of the Duelist. I picked up an LON pack out of sheer curiosity of how good my luck was that day only to pull a Spirit Message “I”. That’s when I decided “no more booster packs for me”.

Now that my fun in the Dealer’s Room had ended I decided to just walk around the halls and admire cosplay for awhile. This year at Katsu both Bleach and Naruto were in fierce competition. There were Ninjas and Samurais everywhere. Coming in a close third would be Fullmetal Alchemist, with a bevy of Ed Elrics, State Alchemists, and Homunculi of all shapes and sizes. Yu-Gi-Oh! cosplay was scarce aside from a well done Seto Kaiba and rumors of an entire Yu-Gi-Oh! Memory Arc costume gathering going on somewhere. I did see some rather “interesting” costume choices, although I’d rather not mention some of them.

There was not much to do at Katsucon. as I soon found out. There weren’t that many panels set up at all and the only real Panel I sat through in the entire duration of the convention was to watch the next 2-3 dubbed episodes of Fullmetal Alchemist that were yet to air on Cartoon Network. The series seems to be firing up into some really good conflicts soon for all of you FMA fans out there. The best time I had there was stopping by and checking out random things throughout the convention. At Artists Alley I was able to take a look at all kinds of fan art from up and coming American comic and manga artists and enthusiasts. I was also able to pick up an awesome Naruto headband featuring the Decepticon symbol for Transformers at a booth there.

Next I wandered around the halls until catching a glance of someone playing the Japanese version of Kingdom Hearts 2. The game looked really good, both graphic wise and in game play. With amazing games like KH2 on the Playstation 2 and Resident Evil 4 on Gamecube it really makes me wonder why the companies are even jumping to make new consoles already. After that I stopped by to watch all kinds of Anime music videos and did that for most of the night until finally crashing back at my hotel around 2 a.m.

The next day I woke up later in the day, stopping by McDonalds for my breakfast/lunch. Next on my list was to stop and check out the Video Gaming room. The game room was separated into two sections, one containing classic arcade games and the other having many consoles set up with all kinds of multiplayer games going. I tried my hand at Guilty Gear XX, so I sat back down and watched some of the best GGXX players I’ve ever seen duke it out against each other on a giant sized television set up right in the center of the game room.  Next I moved on to play Halo 2 only to have far better luck when I took victory over around 16 other players in a free-for-all!

The game room started to get too hot and smelly for my tastes so I moved on to find the “other” game room, the free card gaming! But after hours of searching to no avail I became bored and decided to volunteer my services to pass time. Thus I became an official member of the Katsucon. volunteer security force! It was my job to clear the hallways and make room for oncoming traffic. I donned the bright orange vest of justice and went to work, only to become bored of it and hand in my vest an hour later.

Hungry and bored I satisfied myself with some Dominos pizza and then caught news of some people playing card games downstairs. I literally ran down the five flights of stairs only to find that they were playing Fullmetal Alchemist CCG. Mission failed. Or so I thought, I finally came across the Open card gaming room of which I had dismissed as being non-existent about an hour later and to my surprise it was full of Yu-Gi-Oh! players!

For all of those who care, here is a deck list of the deck that I was using during my casual duels at the convention.

Dark Necrophia deck (TCG version)

Dark Necrofear

Dark Necrofear

Slate Warrior

Slate Warrior

Slate Warrior

Mystic Tomato

Mystic Tomato

Mystic Tomato

Giant Germ

Giant Germ

Giant Germ

Newdoria

Newdoria

Newdoria

Dark Jeroid

Sangan

Breaker the Magical Warrior

D.D. Warrior Lady

Smashing Ground

Smashing Ground

Smashing Ground

Dark Hole

Heavy Storm

Mystical Space Typhoon

Snatch Steal

Premature Burial

Book of Moon

Scapegoat

Nobleman of Crossout

Creature Swap

Creature Swap

Torrential Tribute

Call of the Haunted

Sakuretsu Armor

Sakuretsu Armor

Sakuretsu Armor

Widespread Ruin

Widespread Ruin

Dust Tornado

Dust Tornado

The duels were intense, and fun filled at the same time. I first dueled against a girl with a kind of RFG/D.D. Dynamite deck.  I was able to beat it but only after it dealed about 6000 life points in damage successfully defeating my in the first duel with two D.D. Dynamites. Next I wound up dueling against her boyfriend, a fellow demon duelist! His deck was quite a bit different then mine, using a combo involving Inferno Reckless Summon and Goblin Kings, the first match ended when he was able to special summon two Goblin Kings and boost them both up to 7000 attack a piece due to all of our combined demons on the field.

Next I found myself up against a CC deck! It contained Cyber Dragons, D.D. Assailants, the works! I was surprised that my deck even held up against it, but was just plain astonished when I beat it with a 2-0 record. After that I decided to give my OCG Yami Bakura character deck a try. I dueled against a casual play Machine deck a few times in what amounted to some interesting games indeed. Overall the metagame was fun filled yet full of experienced players, and I had a very good time playing against everyone!

Here’s a quick shout out to the NYC crew!

Packing up and heading home was about all I did on the last day of the convention. Overall Katsucon. was an enjoyable experience, despite for the most part lacking structured events for the con.goers to take part in.  I did have lots of fun and I will probably stop by again next year, if not for the duels for the Dominos pizza!

YamiBakuraFan, signing out!