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.
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