Another Otakon has come and gone, and I can’t help but feel a little empty inside. Of course, I always get melancholy the day after Otakon – after all, that’s why we’ve nicknamed the last day Sadday. This year is a bit different, though. I don’t know if it’s because we had such a phenomenal time last year, or if it’s because there was so much hype around the convention this year, but I have a niggling little seed of disappointment gnawing at my fanly soul.
Where to begin? I guess I’ll start with some background. I have been attending Otakon since 1997, back when the convention was still in its formative years. I’ve seen the thing grow into one of Baltimore’s defining events – right there with Artscape and Honfest. My sister just attended her sixth Otakon; coincidentally, she was the same age when she attended her first Otakon that I was when I attended my first. It’s the high point of our summer, a chance to leave reality behind for a few days and dive headfirst into the fantasy world of anime. I imagine it must be the same for all the kids who go – the last hurrah of summer, the eternal fight against that dreaded back-to-school.
And I guess that was part of the problem. There wasn’t a lot of must-see for us oldsters. Everything seemed geared toward the Generation Y otaku. Granted, it was quite the coup to bring in Peter Fernandez, voice of Speed Racer and Astroboy – without him, and without those shows, anime in the US wouldn’t be where it is today. Nothing else really compelled us to attend, though. We wound up spending both nights away from the convention center, checking out the bar scene in Fells Point on Friday and watching the Redskins preseason game on Saturday.
That’s not to say the schedule was a complete dud. The Opening Ceremonies were fun, and the Otakon OAV was awesome! (The crab attacking Unit 01? We think that had something to do with an essay I wrote for the program guide a couple of years ago. OK, more specifically the picture my sister took that accompanied the essay…) The AMV contest was passable, and it was cool to catch The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and Afro Samurai in high-def, but that was it. That’s all we attended, as far as programming goes. There were seven theatres, four panels and three workshops going all weekend long, not to mention stuff going on at the First Mariner Arena, and yet we still only made it to four events. Hardly “epic,” to borrow the word the organizers liked to use.
Another thing – where was everybody? Oh, I know, the attendance numbers will say differently, but the convention center seemed positively empty at times. The only time we ran into a crowding issue was during the line-up for the AMV contest on Friday. At other times (Sunday in the Charles Street Lobby comes to mind), we felt downright lonely. We didn’t see any of our regular con buddies, and I could count the number of regulars I recognized on one hand and a finger. Yes, Otakon has crowd control down to a science, but maybe they do it a little too well…
Cosplayers this year, as in past years, were competent and prevalent. Quite a few Death Note players, quite a few from Gurren Lagaan (mmmm, Yoko), and a pretty steep decline in the number of Narutards (with a corresponding increase in GOOD Naruto cosplayers). I gotta give props to the female Orochimaru cosplayer – she did a great job with the costume. Really pulled off the attitude, too. Overall, there were several great cos-actors – fans that not only got the costume right, but played the character properly, too. One Cammy was so good that she had the attitude going even when she wasn’t posing for pictures. Which brings me to one more thing. (Did he just go Jackie Chan Adventures on us? I think he did.) Not once did I pull my camera out, not once. My sister took a picture of one cosplayer – me, and I was accidentally in costume. Turns out my interview suit doubled as an impromptu Turk costume. I’m not putting down the cosplayers – I’d say the quality was better this year than past years. It’s just that I like to catch cosplayers out-of-character or in situations that are incongruous, spontaneous shots of the person behind the costume. It just wasn’t meant to be this year.
Sidenote: Forget Legalos-or-Link. The new cosplay game is “L or emo?”
So what does this all mean? Does this mean I’m not going next year? Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? No, of course I’m going next year. I will go as long as I draw breath and Otakon draws fans. We’re just going to do things a little differently. We’re going to stay in a hotel next year. We’d leave the con and head home – and it’s really hard to come back once you’re home. I’m going to do something that will give me an emotional stake in the convention – an AMV, a panel, maybe even cosplay. I’ll take Monday off, so I can post-con on Sunday. After all, maybe the con WAS epic. Maybe I was just made of epic fail.
Still, can’t help but think: the con is a lie.
PS: I walk past the convention center every day to get to work. It kills me how quickly they clean up after us, but they didn’t get everything. I saw a tuft of someone’s anime wig behind the center. What a wonderfully maudlin thing…
PPS: Apparently Marlboros are the brand most preferred by otaku.
PPPS: The rumors are untrue. The Weather Channel did not identify “fanboy funk” as the top pollutant on Saturday during their Local Weather on the 8’s
I'm trying a few things, changing the look of the site. Please let me know what you think.
For starters, I've changed my photo galleries to the new Album tool. They're all together under one tab, instead of spread out over a bunch of links - easier to navigate, hopefully. I'm now using one of the transparent templates, in order to give my site a slightly more dignified look. And I've uploaded my own series of background images. I've taken the kanji for destiny, love, luck, zen, and reiki (and a few others), manipulated them using the open-source Gimp image editing program, and slapped them up there. I hope they're not too distracting.
Anyway, it's been a long time since I've done anything with the site, for which I apologize. SOMEONE (I won't mention who, but her site is here) kept telling me to go check out the new tools on freewebs - and now I see why.
PS: In keeping with the Japanese theme, please take a look at my cherry blossom photos under the Static Arts link. Took them all with my crappy cell phone camera, and I must say, they came out pretty nice. Well, after some digital manipulation, anyway...
I spent this weekend at the Hunt Valley Inn, up in Hunt Valley , MD. Those of you who know me know the significance of that remote locale; those of you who don’t – well, the story’s too boring to tell. That hasn’t ever stopped me before, though – follow this link to read more. Anyway, this was supposed to be a weekend of sappy self indulgence, a chance to get away from the things (and people) that were annoying me and spoil myself – gourmet food from Wegman’s, enough alcohol to fell a rhino, smoking cigars in the face of Mormanocity, and bout after bout of pasturbation. (I have to be honest – that last one is a tribute to my friend Lazarus, who used to chastise me for base-jumping, noisily and with great gusto, into the pit of memory.) I accomplished all that, but to a much lesser extent than I had planned. (My frail, oversized body and frail, undersized wallet are both eternally grateful.) I also did some soul-searching – it wasn’t my intent, but it happened – and I discovered that the real reason that Hunt Valley is important to me isn’t because I attended an anime convention there. Instead, it is the representation of a decision I made eleven years ago to explore beyond my block, neighborhood, and city, beyond the boundaries of what I knew, and dive feet-first into a completely unknown situation. Decisions – that became the theme of the weekend. The decision to go to Otakon in 1997, while relatively minor in and of itself (femtoscopic, really, on a cosmic scale), set into motion the events that define my current personal life. If I didn’t go to Otakon, I doubt very much I would be living in Baltimore today. My only exposure to Baltimore before then came from afternoon excursions with my father, off to see my boyhood baseball team – experiences I wouldn’t give up for all the anime in Akihabara, but not enough to enamor me to the Charm City. But I did, and I am, and I’m cool with that. I’m even sticking around, despite everything that’s happened in the last couple of weeks. This is partly my doing – I had been so busy blaming other people for putting me into my current bind that I forgot the only decisions I can control are my own. I stayed mum when I had reservations. I decided to have faith in others instead of trusting my own intuition. I put someone else’s short-term happiness ahead of my long-term well-being. Decisions. Well, I’ve made one more. I’ve been playing "go along to get along" for too long. No longer. I'm not saying "My way or the highway", but I'm also not letting your way put me on the highway. If your decision is not in my best interest, I will let you know. Dark side ascendant, beeyatch!
I spent this weekend at the Hunt Valley Inn, up in Hunt Valley , MD. Those of you who know me know the significance of that remote locale; those of you who don’t – well, the story’s too boring to tell. That hasn’t ever stopped me before, though – follow this link to read more.
Anyway, this was supposed to be a weekend of sappy self indulgence, a chance to get away from the things (and people) that were annoying me and spoil myself – gourmet food from Wegman’s, enough alcohol to fell a rhino, smoking cigars in the face of Mormanocity, and bout after bout of pasturbation. (I have to be honest – that last one is a tribute to my friend Lazarus, who used to chastise me for base-jumping, noisily and with great gusto, into the pit of memory.)
I accomplished all that, but to a much lesser extent than I had planned. (My frail, oversized body and frail, undersized wallet are both eternally grateful.) I also did some soul-searching – it wasn’t my intent, but it happened – and I discovered that the real reason that Hunt Valley is important to me isn’t because I attended an anime convention there. Instead, it is the representation of a decision I made eleven years ago to explore beyond my block, neighborhood, and city, beyond the boundaries of what I knew, and dive feet-first into a completely unknown situation.
Decisions – that became the theme of the weekend. The decision to go to Otakon in 1997, while relatively minor in and of itself (femtoscopic, really, on a cosmic scale), set into motion the events that define my current personal life. If I didn’t go to Otakon, I doubt very much I would be living in Baltimore today. My only exposure to Baltimore before then came from afternoon excursions with my father, off to see my boyhood baseball team – experiences I wouldn’t give up for all the anime in Akihabara, but not enough to enamor me to the Charm City.
But I did, and I am, and I’m cool with that. I’m even sticking around, despite everything that’s happened in the last couple of weeks. This is partly my doing – I had been so busy blaming other people for putting me into my current bind that I forgot the only decisions I can control are my own. I stayed mum when I had reservations. I decided to have faith in others instead of trusting my own intuition. I put someone else’s short-term happiness ahead of my long-term well-being.
Decisions. Well, I’ve made one more.
I’ve been playing "go along to get along" for too long. No longer. I'm not saying "My way or the highway", but I'm also not letting your way put me on the highway. If your decision is not in my best interest, I will let you know.
Dark side ascendant, beeyatch!
