Otakon 2008: Sunday

I actually had this post written up a while ago, but I've been too busy to put it up, so here ya go.


I woke up on the final day and, though still tired, forced myself to pack so we could get checked out with plenty of time to spare on enjoying the last day at Otakon '08. Once again, I went down to the gym for some extensive stretches, and when I returned everyone was ready to leave as well. So we brought our bags to the car and then I headed my separate way to the Baltimore inner harbor to find lunch. There were rumors of a Chipotle in the area, and my information didn't disappoint, plus the walk itself was nice and I enjoyed the scenery.

On my way inside the convention center, I met up with my friend Steve and we had both decided to go to the Dealer's Room. Unlike on Friday, I wanted to comb through the entire room nice and carefully. So I would start on one end and look at the booths on each side as I strolled through every isle for anything that caught my eye. I should say at this point that I didn't bother investigating tables of manga or anime, ironically, mainly because I could do that on my own time in bookstores and online and didn't want to start a long collection on a whim, unless there was a cheap, concise box set. Unfortunately, there was still no sign of Hunter X Hunter or cool Rock Lee merchandise, which I have been scouring for every year since I started watching those shows. Ah well, Hunter x Hunter has been licensed now so it's only a matter of time before the mainstream transforms the fandom.


When I was about 2/3 of the way through, my friend calls and tells me that he's ready to go, and seeing as he drove me to the convention that's a sign that I need to be ready soon too. I told him I'd be a few more minutes, then quickened my pace a bit until I got to the end of the room. We met at the front of the con and had ourselves a little arm wrestling re-match since he thought he could beat me this time (poor Chris!), and then spent a few minutes trying to get in touch with another friend of ours (Aaron Q.) so I could beat him at my full strength, but he must have chickened out because he never answered his phone. At this point, it was the early afternoon and we were ready to skedaddle.


It wasn't a long drive back to my friend's house, but I was exhausted and ended up sleeping most of the ride. When we got there, his mom had spaghetti and French bread waiting, which was really nice and quite delicious. I said my goodbyes and headed out, but that wasn't the end of my weekend yet. No, I didn't think I'd had enough of an adventure, so I called up another friend who was staying in an apartment on my college campus and asked if I could chill with him and another friend who lived there too.

I hadn't seen Gary and Mike since school ended, so it was cool to catch up with them and see what sort of trouble they were getting into now. In an attempt to think of something to do, we started driving to a bowling alley but didn't realize until we were in the building that it was lame duck pins. Someone who worked there tried to give us directions to a real bowling alley, but none of us remembered what they were and almost got lost before turning around and going to the mall to see a movie. We kind of wanted to see The Dark Knight again, but Pineapple Express had just come out so we chose to see that for the first time instead. It was kind of funny, but a lot of over-the-top action for a stoner flick. lol After the movie, we went back to campus and soon forced ourselves to go to bed since they had work early in the morning, and I slept on the couch.

I think I woke up around 7 or so Monday morning, ate the rest of my Chipotle burrito from the day before, and left when my friend Gary went to work. Instead of going home, I went to the metro again and took that to Washington DC, where I found myself at the Embassy of Japan a second time in less than a week. I intended to pick up my travel Visa, but what I didn't realize was that morning was drop-off only, so I had to wait about 15 minutes for them to get it ready. By this time, the meter my car was at was running out, so instead of grabbing lunch I went right to the metro and when I got back the meter had already expired. But no ticket, so I was safe.

That's about it, I guess. Add that to the list of exciting Otakon weekends, and hopefully there will be plenty more where that came from. If anyone has plans for Otakon next year, for going or for a group cosplay, let me know and we can take care of those early.

Otakon 2008: Saturday

I woke up around 10:30 on the second day, having gone to bed late the night before. Miraculously, my legs felt great, and I decided to continue my stretching routine by going down to the health club for a half hour. When I got back and changed, I headed straight to brunch at the inner harbor for some pasta and salad, which was a little more expensive than yesterday's sub but added some needed variety.

In order to ensure that I didn't try to do everything on the first day, I intentionally avoided the Artist Alley on Friday, so that was the first place that I headed on Saturday. In middle school, Dragonball Z fan art really helped push me in my artistic ability, so I have tremendous respect for the artists who were stationed around the room or had pieces displayed. There were a lot of amazing 2D pieces in the gallery, but of course I wasn't allowed to take any pictures (I actually got yelled at for taking out my cell phone to look at the time, lol). I walked around to booths of actual artists selling their stuff, and nearly all of them were in the process of drawing something new. I guess that's to be expected, and to promote their abilities, but it reminded me vividly of a friend who is constantly drawing to become a comic book artist.


My next destination was the Q & A session for Kappei Yamaguchi, which I knew would be a popular panel so I jumped into line early. For those of you unfamiliar with Japanese seiyuu (I am too, but someone luckily pointed this guy out to me), he is one of the most well-known voice actors in Japan, having done Ranma (Ranma 1/2), InuYasha (InuYasha), Usopp (One Piece), Kyle (South Park dub), and my personal favorite.. L (Death Note), among many others. My friend was working at the panel, and he said he'd be giving out 25 autograph tickets for people who wanted to ask questions. Well, I didn't have any questions so I didn't bother raising my hand to get chosen, and luckily the people who did go up asked pretty good questions or made good requests of voices and songs. About 10 minutes before it ended, I left to hop in line for his autograph downstairs, and initially walked past a huge crowd before I realized.. that was the line. x_X It turned out that the autograph tickets were to bypass that line, rather than letting them get their autographs right after the Q & A. So I went to the back and eventually it became a line, which I was in for almost two hours (45 mins. after it was supposed to start) before I finally gave up and went to the Fansubber and Industry Discussion panel.

That morning I had read online that people who weren't going to Otakon had been looking forward to hearing what this panel would be about, so I guess it must have been a big deal. ~_^ Basically, there were people from American companies (Media Blasters, Funimation) and from fansubber groups (Live-eviL, Dattebayo, Shinsen, Anime-Empire) to discuss the state of the anime industry today and how it's positively or negatively affected by fansubs. So everyone sat along in a line and discussed topics from an overhead, and we got to see each side respond to the other based on all their experience and data. It was assumed from the beginning that fansubbing wouldn't just go away so it's pointless to ask or expect it, though each of the fansub groups confidently stated that they would stop if they were asked by a company to do so. However, once they stopped another group would probably take their project up, and this would happen continuously each time a cease and desist was ordered. To sum up, Media Blasters was of the opinion that the industry would just have to deal with fansubbing and could get along fine, Funimation thought fansubbers should respect the rights of the creators to earn their deserved royalties, and the fansub groups believed that the only way the industry can keep up is to bring anime into a medium that consumers want, namely quick, subtitled releases online that are true to the original. Funimation did kind of sound like a bitch, though. :/


Phew, so after all this I was pretty hungry for dinner, and I headed to the inner harbor food court for a pizza and bagel. I went back to the room to cool down for a while, then left to go back to Artist Alley with my friend, where I browsed the booths more carefully and found even more amazing artwork than I had seen earlier in the day.

The final panel of the day for me was How to Machinima, which was run by some friends of mine who work on Spriggs: A Halo 3 Machinima. Machinima essentially involves using a video game engine to create your own cartoon, but the developers of the game or engine have certain restrictions, such as Microsoft whereas you can't use any in-game sounds. So the panel was intended for those who might be interested in creating such cartoons, and they went into things like good equipment to use, setting up a good story, utilizing good camera and film techniques, and getting it out to the community. My friends worked hard on the panel, and though I wasn't interested in the mechanics of it so much, I thought that the group worked well together and made the experience amusing for someone who just walked in to pass the time. I hung out with my friends a bit afterward, and then left for the rave down the hall.

The rave is always a cool feature of Otakon, which you'd think might be kind of lame, packing in a bunch of young and awkward otaku onto a dance floor and blasting techno music at them. But honestly, you get into it. When you go to that area of the convention center, there's a stage up front with screens and huge speakers, a large dance floor that's always packed, a back area where people generally perform acrobatic moves, and a small crowded room on the left with different music and colored spotlights going everywhere. Tons of people have glowsticks, and everyone who isn't watching others dance are moving to the beat. The best thing about the raves is watching people dance, though. People are flipping around and performing all types of acrobatics, or having dance-offs that you could swear are choreographed. I would take videos of it, but my camera broke by then, plus it's often too dark to come out anyway. The worst thing about the raves.. is the smell. Some ungodly combination of B.O. and puke. I danced/moved around for a little bit, and at one point I was just chilling on one of the walls and a guy comes up to me and asks where he can score some E. lol So much fun.

Well that's it for Day #2. I got one more day, plus the adventures that follow. BTW, there are pictures and videos up on my Facebook for whoever wants to see them.

Otakon 2008: Friday

It's that time of year again! Otakon is the biggest anime convention on the east coast, and second only (maybe in the world) to Anime Expo in California. It goes from Friday to Sunday and falls anywhere from late July to late August, and luckily for me the city of Baltimore is only about an hour away from my house. I started going to Otakon in 2003 when I decided at the last minute to check it out for a day, and I look back at that as probably one of the longest and most exciting days of my pathetic life. :p The next year I returned for convention goodness (I think for just a day), and in 2005 I went the entire weekend with a friend of mine who lives nearby. Well that was enough Otakon to last me until 2007, when I went for another looong day and even picked up the Harry Potter book at midnight.

This year, a friend of mine at my school's Anime Society scored a free hotel room from points that his dad has accumulated from business trips, so I was there the whole weekend. Each day was pretty long too, so I'll be splitting up the posts.

Just leading up to Otakon is worthy of a post in itself, but I'll keep it simple so we can get to the point. Thursday night, of course, people were allowed to pick up their pre-registered badges so they could get an early start the next day, and that was my eventual goal. However, I first had to wake up early to take the metro into Washington DC in order to drop off my traveling visa application at the Embassy of Japan. I was able to make it just before they closed for lunch, and then got something to eat myself before taking the metro back to my car. From there, I drove to my friend Chris' house so I could go with him and his girlfriend to get the badges. Unfortunately, we couldn't check into the hotel room until Friday morning, so I stayed at his place that night which was about 40 minutes away and watched him and his friends play D & D until passing out.

On Friday morning I woke up relatively early to do stretches, which takes about 20 minutes and ensures that the long day ahead won't bring cramps from constant walking, then had some cereal before running last-minute errands for anything else we needed. The hotel was available for moving in by the time we got to the city, and so we did. The Hyatt is nice, too, with great furniture, a fancy bathroom, a gym with all new equipment, and opportunities around every corner to get charged just for moving things around (hint: don't touch the contents of the mini-fridge). But enough of the foreplay, LET'S GET TO OTAKON ALREADY.


Finally, around noon we entered the convention center and waited outside a panel for some friends. One of the coolest things about cons, especially anime ones, is simply walking around and checking out the great cosplaying. Sure, there are invariably costumes that just downright suck, but the overall atmosphere is exciting enough to overlook (some of) it. So my group of seven or so walked around taking pictures for a good hour until lunch time, at which point a few friends and I left the horribly overpriced convention center for the inner harbor food court. Get this.. $5 footlongs at Subway, half for lunch, half for dinner, and I carried around a water bottle so I never paid for a drink. XD!!


After eating lunch back at the hotel room, I headed for the Funimation Q&A panel, but got there too late and they were already full. I used my short time until the next panel by doing a quick run-through of the almighty dealer's room, and it was indeed as big as ever. My first panel of the weekend turned out to be Tokyo Travel on a Budget, which was fitting seeing as I'm going to be learning how to do that over the course of the next four months. It was kind of interesting, but mainly common sense - go on free tours, eat at 7-11, sleep at capsule hotels, use public transportation, etc. Scary, though, that gas in Japan is around $11 a gallon and DVDs cost around $50, and even some latest and greatest electronics that can be found relatively cheap are domestic only and can't be taken out of Japan. Grr!!

I sort of wandered around after the panel until ending up at the Lovely Complex Live Action series, and left a little while later to check out the Game Room but didn't play anything. Eventually I came upon the Anime Philosophy panel (go figure), where I met back up with some friends and listened to the panelists discuss various themes and lessons in life as introduced in shows like Evangelion, Full Metal Alchemist, Trigun, and even The Irresponsible Captain Tyler. lol It was dull at times, and one of the women tried too hard to make herself sound smart, but I learned how some common philosophical theories are evident in those shows and how they can be interpreted. At this point, I went back to the room and ate dinner while watching the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. OMG those Chinese know how to use $300 million to throw an awesome ceremony. The fact that people were moving those blocks up and down so precisely blew my mind.

After getting pumped up watching the Olympics, I went to the gym to do a quick workout on the energy of cereal and a 1 foot sub for the day. I took some pictures of the gym and everything, but when I went to take pictures on the way back, the camera stopped working, and I've since been forced to declare it dead. RIP 3.2 megapixel camera.. 12/25/03 - 08/08/08, may I replace you well before going to Japan. So now that I had become nice and sweaty, it was time for the RAVE! I went to the rave the next night too, so I'll cover the details there (this post is already pretty long). After the rave, I went to an 18+ panel about adult cosplayers, which unfortunately turned out to just be a discussion, regarding explaining the hobby to family and coworkers and dealing with the younger generation. There was some pointless bickering at times, but it was occasionally funny, and the best part was various rage rants given by the panelists and the audience.

By then, I was done. So back to my room I went, to take a shower and play Brawl until I fell asleep. Huzzah. See my Facebook for more pictures in the days to come.