Toko-R’s Best bits of 2018 – Rezal

Well, it’s been quite a bit longer than I expected between posts, but life happens sometimes! This week, continuing our series on Tokonatsu Highlights, I’ll be going over my best bits, and what I loved!

Werewolf Ultimate
For me personally, the highlight of the weekend was getting to play Werewolf Ultimate, run by our Chairman Myst! For those unfamiliar, as I was, it’s similar to Resistance, in so far that you have two teams one of good guys, and one of bad. None of the good know who the bad are, but all of the bad know each other. Each day, a vote is passed to declare one villager as a werewolf, and they are killed! While at night, the werewolves come out to play, and pick a villager to kill in turn!

It made for some interesting banter, and some alliances based on nothing at all that crumbled into dust as betrayal ran strife! No-one trusted anyone, and those that did, died.

I’m proud to say the Werewolves won, and I was one of the last surviving Werewolves 😀

Running the events
Since Toko-R has become more integrated with Tokonatsu, and since we started to run events, this has genuinely become one of my favourite parts of the festival every year. I personal ran the Writing, Art and Colouring in competitions, and also ran three sessions of 2-hour role play based on my own system.

We had some amazing entries into this year’s contests, and we received some needed feedback on the prizes (as in not to hand out a How to draw book in an Art Contest! :p)

I also, got great feedback on the RP system, with one player now using the system themselves to play with their own friends, and some great ideas on how to evolve this for next year!

I’ll be handing the Competitions over next year so I can focus more on the Roleplay, as well as some other new things coming our way at Toko-R, so keep your eyes peeled for updates on those!

Food Court
The whole area surrounding the Food Court and Café Kraken this year was amazing! Though I didn’t get to partake in the Café myself, it looked stunning, and having somewhere to chill and eat my noodles was very nice! The vendors were all great, I only wish the noodle guys were there more!

Anime Cinema
M Pro did a great job with the line-up this year, and the whole setup was nicely done. I spent a nice evening watching Tenchi and enjoyed seeing the reactions of those that have never seen the Anime before! I think for me, that’s one of the best things about the Anime Cinema is seeing how others react to what we air.

This was especially true when we aired No Game No Life last year, and M Pro hadn’t fully screened it yet. Oh ho ho ho, that was funny stuff!

Manga Library
Thank you everyone that donated once again into the Manga Library! We about doubled our stock, and we now have a very nice collection! I didn’t use the Library much myself, but it was great seeing how much use it did get. It’s a point of pride for me as I helped spear-head getting this into place last year, and seeing the response we’ve had brings all the warm and fuzzies 😀

We are looking to improve this again next year, and make it a more comfortable place to be. We’re again welcome any donations to this effect, whether you have some spare manga, or want to throw a couple of bean bags our way, anything is welcome!

Bonfire
The last few years, I haven’t spent as much time down at the Bonfire as I used to, but this year was different! Between wrecking folk at Rock, Paper, Scissors, and getting wrecked on homemade Ginger Beer, the bonfire was the place to be! Got to reconnect with a good number of old friends, and made quite a few new ones! I’ll be making an effort in years going forward to make this a staple of my weekend once again.

My Son
One of the true highlights of the weekend was getting to spend some time with my son Ivan on the Saturday. I had initially feared that I wouldn’t have time to look after him among everything else that was going on, but it turned out that I did, and it was great. Not seeing him for a few days up to that point, I’d really started to miss him, and I’ve decided that he needs to be there for at least a few hours every year! It’s somewhere that, as he grows older, I hope he grows to love just as much as I do.

That’s all from me! There were plenty of other amazing things about Toko, and you all being there make it the stand out event it is!

See you next time!

~ Rezal