It's been another busy and rainy day at Anime Weekend Atlanta, but it was anything but dreary inside the Cobb Galleria as Saturdays usually bring the highest attendance of the con.

The day started off with a Funimation industry panel and previews of some of their upcoming releases, but nothing new to report, however. I did pick up the first Sgt. Frog boxset (officially out next week) from their booth in the dealers' room and I highly recommend it to everybody out there since it's hilarious stuff. I didn't watch Spice and Wolf and Bamboo Blade, so I'll probably be picking those up when they're released in November.

After another visit to the dealers' room it was time for the costume contest in the evening. Some really impressive stuff was on display, a few which you can see in the gallery (excuse my poor photography and cheap camera). I especially liked the Final Fantasy 4 DS group and Shaman Nina from Breath of Fire 2, both receiving awards. The winner was a very nice female hunter from Monster Hunter, but I wasn't able to get a good shot of her so hopefully I can find her tomorrow.

The highlight of the night for me was the concert by Omodaka, bringing together electronic music and traditional Japanese folk music. I'm quite a big fan of chiptunes and the like, so it was quite a treat and quite interesting. Pretty amazing how he manages to get something modern like the sounds of a Gameboy Color to meld so easily with vocals from an enka singer. Unfortunately, there were some technical difficulties — his LCD monitor got a bit cracked when it fell over, but like a pro he kept on. For more information on Omodaka, check Far East Recording's website and Zac's writeup.

After the concert I was planning on doing some karaoke, but I showed up too late to get into the drawing for spots, which means that you don't get to hear me butcher a eufonius song, luckily. For some reason, there's no Japanese songs only rule here so while I was there mostly non-anime stuff was being sung, though the last guy I listened to did a quite energetic performance of JAM PROJECT's SKILL.