Seeing a recent episode of How I Met Your Mother got me thinking: since when did body pillows (or dakimakura as some of you like to call them) become weird?

In the episode, Lily’s husband, Marshall, leaves for a few weeks to take care of his mother after his father passed away. In Marshall’s absence, Lily decides to throw some of Marshall’s clothes on a body pillow to hug while she sleeps, but then things get weird and she starts treating it like a person. Later in the episode when Marshall’s mother is asked how she’s holding up, she replies, “It gets a little lonely. My friends suggested a body pillow, but *laughs* I’m not a lunatic.”

To me, body pillows are just as essential as a head pillow and a blanket for a good night’s sleep. I know a lot of people don’t use them, but my parents came from a place where body pillows are found in just about every bed so I’ve had them for as long as I can remember. They help keep you warm and comfortable, and they give you a sense of security, like a security blanket in pillow form. Apparently, body pillows also help with back problems, so if any of you have that, you should look into getting one.

So where did the idea that body pillows are for “lunatics” come from? Well, as far as I know, it’s because of things like this:

Yes, that last one is a bit of a shocker, but I think you see my point.

Somewhere down the line, someone turned a relatively boring object into a human substitute (in more ways than one). One of the things I’ve noticed is that the body pillows used for this purpose are flat one two sides and extremely long. They’re nothing like the body pillows I’m familiar with, which are cylindrical and not that much bigger than a regular pillow. My guess is that they aren’t cylindrical so the characters don’t look stretched, and they’re much longer to be able to fit a 1:1 scale print of a person.

I’ve also noticed that most of the body pillow covers designed to be a human substitute are not of partially nude celebrities or models, but of anime characters. What’s more, even non-anime fans are becoming aware of anime-themed body pillow covers because of shows like 30 Rock:

Now when I say I watch anime and I have a body pillow, I’m sure some people are going to assume the wrong thing.

So what do you guys think? Are body pillows just as normal as a head pillow and blanket, or are they for “lunatics” as Marshall’s mother put it?

They also had the admission prices up: $10 for Friday, $24 for Saturday, $17 for Sunday, $35 for the whole event, and $150 for an X-pass. An X-pass is like a VIP pass which gets you the best seats for stage shows, access to the vendor’s area an hour before everyone else, and some sort of dinner. I didn’t get a Friday pass so I just wandered around the hallways for a few minutes, but before I left I took a picture of a nice Link and Sora cosplay from Zelda and Kingdom Hearts.

On saturday I came back and managed to take a pic of the lineup for the vendor’s area right when they were letting people in. It took me about a minute to walk from the front of the line to the back, but it probably would’ve taken longer if people weren’t already rushing in.

I didn’t notice this before, but there’s a guy with a lightsaber in the line. Sometimes I wonder why people come to animethon as sci-fi characters even though they know it’s an anime convention. In the next pic there’s a bunch of swords that they were selling at one of the booths.

I would’ve liked to buy one of the swords, but there were several reasons stopping me. First of all, I already have a katana in my room, secondly, I don’t have any space for a second sword, and third, I took the train here so I would’ve had to carry it back home and it’s illegal to carry swords in public. So I resisted the temptation and walked away, but then I saw this couple.

Those aren’t real swords, but they’re still pretty cool. I wonder how long it takes to make one of those, a few hours maybe? Next up I is a guy cosplaying as Godot from Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations.

If you haven’t played Phoenix Wright, it’s a great game for the DS where you play as a defense attorney and find evidence to prove your clients innocent and catch the real criminals.

The red ranger was also at Animethon this year. I remember watching him and the other Power Rangers fighting evil monsters as a little kid :)

At this booth we have what are known as dakimakura or hug/body pillows. These ones have anime girls printed on them in sugggestive poses or wearing bikinis. I can only imagine what some people do with these, but before the girls out there start thinking that guys are really perverted, I saw a girl with one of those pillows and a half-naked Sasuke from Naruto printed on it.

I don’t know where this costume is from but I thought it was pretty neat. It looks like a cross between a cow and a centipede.

This picture is a little blurry but I wanted to share it anyways. These 3 actually when with this years theme of gothic and lolita. If you look closely, you can see that the guy actually has the girl with the umbrella on a leash.

This was a cool costume, and she’s actually carrying around a real guitar, not one made out of cardboard. I have no clue which anime she’s from though.

Once again, I have no clue which anime she’s from, or if she’s even from an anime.

And for the last cosplay pic, here’s Tomoyo and Sakura from Card Captor Sakura.

As you can see from the clock in the above picture, the time was almost 2:30 and the cosplay contest in the main gym was at 3pm so I went to get good seats. Unfortunately, there was something wrong with the equipment and the organizers couldn’t shut down the mist makers so the whole gym was foggy. Any pictures I took with the flash on just gave me white splotches and pics with the flash off were too blurry so I don’t have any pics of the cosplay contest. After the cosplay contest, I watched the AMV contest, which was pretty good, and then I went home around 9:30pm. If you’re wondering what loot I brought back from Animethon, I’m sad to say I only bought two Lucky Star Posters.

I didn’t buy anything else because last week I spent a few hundred dollars ordering anime figures online so I felt guilty spending any more money at Animethon. The figures I ordered are still being shipped to me, but I’ll post pictures of them here once I get them.