I had a blast. The guests were a little light considering Yukijiro Hotaru canceled and the replacement was an actor mostly known for Sentai work and Tokyo SOS. Last year had too many guests, so somewhere in between is the magic spot. I actually was able to hit 90% of the panels i wanted to this year since the guests weren't overlapping them.
They "fixed" the fiasco with signatures this year, but i felt a little bad for the guests having to man signature tables for so much of the convention, and signatures were $20 a piece, so i only got one item signed by Tezuka.
The Tezuka panels were great. lots of interesting stories i hadn't heard before, and plenty of dirt. There were a couple awkward interview questions from JD. It felt like the two hours weren't enough. Would loved to heard more about some of the things he touched on.
Symphonic Fury was pretty solid. There was something off in the percussion of the Gamera 3 suite that i found distracting, but the Ifukube portion was wonderful... one mini rant though [rant] the wankery at the end really needs to be toned down. When you bring the guest of honor up and he receives a standing ovation, it diminishes that honor when you ride the ovation to have the audience clap for your girlfriend and your "boys in the goon squad".. it came across as tacky in an otherwise classy production [/rant]
The costume parade was a lot lighter than last year with 4 or 5 kids wearing store bought costumes and G-Pardy finals were pretty solid as well.
The sculpture room was really at a top notch level this year. Lots of impressive kits and original compositions
I didn't get to see the films at the festival portion that i wanted to see due to scheduling overlap, so i hope to see them eventually. I did pick up too much stuff from the dealers room, but only missed out on one figure i wanted because i hesitated.
The Pickwick was business as usual, and i did go to both Biollante and Megaguirus. The one thing i found odd was that people were laughing throughout Biollante, but rarely during Megaguirus.. i suspect it was because Biollante was dubbed and Megaguirus was subbed(?) but i hadn't seen either of the films on the big screen before, so i enjoyed it.
Next year should be interesting with the G'16 hype and premieres of Wolfman vs Godzilla & the new Raiga film. I'm already pretty psyched.