The forecast said it would be raining in Baltimore during Otakon weekend. It didn’t rain and the weekend wasn’t gloomy at all. It was, in fact, quite comfortable the whole time for a fairly low-key but enjoyable Otakon 2008. I didn’t take any pictures at the con, so yeah, no cosplay shots or reveals on what some of the bloggers I met look like.
Panels
With the number of companies dwindling, there were more holes in my panel attendance schedule than in previous years, but that left more room for other things. The lower number of company panels meant that the normal panel going population wasn’t spread out like it usually is and were all trying to cram into the two or three that were actually there. Getting into company panels was actually tough this time.
The scheduling annoyed me a little bit. There were a good number of English VA panels that were scheduled against each other like Saturday at 10AM had the Bang Zoom Q&A, NYAV Post Dubbing Workshop, and the Laura Bailey Q&A. There were several hour blocks that had no English VA related panels, so I wish the schedule could have spread it out more for fans of that stuff. I went to the Laura Bailey panel, which was a highlight for me.
The Dub Actors After Dark panel was also very good this year. It filled up Panel Room 4, which is huge. Very encouraging to see that many people attend. It’s not even all that related to voice acting, just a bunch of entertainers entertaining, so you don’t even have to like dubbing to enjoy. It’s like Fight Club though, having the same rules about not talking about Fight Club, so really I can’t say anymore about it.
Due to scheduling I missed Link’s “Welcome to Touhou” panel. Of course, nobody updates the schedule outside of the panel room, so Friday at 10pm, there’s a whole bunch of people thinking they’re getting loli vampires and instead get some guy talking about the psychology of the convention goer. Personally, I thought it was a gag at first. The room was clueless about the panel change and so was he, which lead to a combative atmosphere in the room, leading to the panel being shut down by the staff. Otakon messed up on that one by not updating the schedule cards outside the panel rooms. Not everyone goes down to the front desk to check and see if the panel they plan to attend is actually going to happen. The guy might have had something interesting to say, but the crowd was hostile and the guy got very defensive when he didn’t understand what was going on when a bunch of people he thinks are there to listen about his observations asks him about loli vampires. He crossed the line though.
I also attended the Crunchyroll panel. Their story for the future sounds pretty interesting and inevitable. It’s obvious they have an insight to a certain segment of fandom and stand a better chance than the legit companies to leverage that segment and bring them into the economy of anime, rather than giving them every reason to stay out of it. They still leave a bad taste in my mouth and I still have my doubts, though.
The Fansub and the Industry Panel…didn’t change much of my thinking at all.
And the Madhouse panel was good too. A little low key, but that happens when stuff needs to be translated. I just like hearing creators talk.
Kaishi Katsura Rakugo Performance
I’m so glad I went to the Rakugo performance. Otakon gets extra points for brining in something a little different like this. Rakugo is like stand-up comedy, except you know, different, like sitting instead of standing and has its own set of conventions that gives it a flavor. Kaishi Katsura had me rolling. I’d definitely see it again if rakugo came back next year.
Walkabout
I enjoyed the variety of cosplay this year, but the abundance of male cross-play female doesn’t enthuse me. Perhaps the most confusing thing was the only Bridget cosplay I saw was a cross-play, a girl as Bridget — though somehow appropriate in this cross-play heavy year. Whatever, people are there to dress up so it’s fine. I’ll just blow chunks in the corner whenever Man-Faye’s competition walks on by. I’m sure there’s a few guys out there with body types that can pull it off. Didn’t see them this year though.
On the other hand, it was obvious that the economy has taken its toll on the con. I mean, half these people couldn’t even afford soap.
Bloggers and Others
Spent more time socializing this year, finding myself in a lot of random conversations, as well as meeting a few other bloggers out there. I met Moy, Omo, Link and some other whose names I didn’t really catch (sorry) for a beer on Friday and then hung out with them again in the OtaCafe for a few minutes on Saturday, where I met Wildarmsheero and TheBigN. They all seemed to be into karaoke.
Loot Recap
And what you see in the loot pics inside this post: a Mikuru pin; a Yoshida from Shakugan no Shana pin; Shana; Tsuruya; a Kagami fastener charm; a pin of Anna from He Is My Master; some Yoko fan book; a book of Shining Wind art; Noizi Ito’s hardcover Ka-e-n; a Mai-Hime thing; and, a Samurai Champloo hardcover, which has a lot of sketches as well as full graphic stuff.
Nice loot , i so love the Mai Hime and the Champloo stuff ^^
Glad to see you had fun and with no rain ^^
It was exactly the same in France , forecast said it would rain and nothing :p I was outside all week end so that would have been bad :p
forecast sux
they’re always wrong ^^
:O you got the shining wind art book! great loot there
any seiyuu invited to the event?
Forecast is always wrong, except when you count on it being wrong.
Yeah, there was, Kappei Yamaguchi
Props on getting the Shining Wind and Ka-e-n; have both myself and they’re definitely worth every penny!
BTW when the dealers’ room was closing HLJ was having a 50% or more off sale on whatever they still had. Surprisingly the Kemeko figure I was eyeing was still there; picked her up for $30! Guess it was good I held back and didn’t buy beforehand ^^
… and yea on the soap bit LOL. Luckily most of the places I was at either were open aired enough or with people who shower daily. I wasn’t so lucky a few times I had to walk through the long hallway… OMG that was some powerful stuff @_@
One case was so bad, while waiting in one of those ginourmous lines, we let people cut ahead of us to create some distance between us and the foul odor. Never trust the kindness of strangers.^^
I confess, I somehow lost your number and couldn’t call you until Sunday when I realize this and got it from Moy. Would’ve totally tried to look you up when Momotato was around as he’s a fan of your site.
I wish I could’ve went to more panels but Jam Project takes up way too much time.
And actually we are not really into karaoke. It’s just me! It just works out to be a good thing to do if you’re just chilling with people and not running from panel to panel.
I have no idea if you remember me from Kono Sono/Karoshi but I was there too and when I heard that I “just” missed meeting you, I was in so much anguish. So much.
Shining Wind artbook! <3
[...] also incredibly disappointed that I missed super rats, Momotato and Scott. These senpais I greatly respect and would be in awe if I met either. I planned [...]
Wish I could have went. Sounds like it was fun except the packed in part to go to each panel.
ohoh Kappei Yamaguchi, would have loved getting an autograph from him on my Usopp figure ^^;
Karaoke is funny… especially anime related ones, when you don’t even undersand what you are singing hehe ^^;
Seems to be a great event.
It would definitely have been cool to meet the legendary Momotato. And Os, I do remember.
Karaoke…I have no problem making a fool of myself — I blog about 8-inch plastic women. It’s just my impression of a dying water buffalo is too unpleasant to unleash. I wish. I really have a phobia about getting in front of people like that.
Hee, you got Ka-E-N and the new Shining Wind book. Tony Taka and Ito are like tiny art gods. Arg, such lovely illustrations.
The scheduling thing isn’t unusual. All cons have that sort of weirdness going through, reschedules that are unannounced, literal errors in booklets etc. Then again, organizational part of cons can be tough.
And also: on your community cloud, the link to my blog is outdated. orz it points to /fuwa/ which doesn’t exist anymore, it’s at the root of http://www.finetoo.org.
Do you intend to go to Sakuracon 2009?
The community cloud thing pulls the link from what you enter in the comments field at the time and unfortunately I don’t know how to remedy that short of manually changing the information in the database. I will get the blogroll to write to the page template like I did with the last theme, but that probably won’t happen until the weekend.
Unfortunately, scheduling errors aren’t unusual, guests can change due to their schedules etc., but the con staff should update the cards outside the panel room door.
Sakuracon is that on the west coast?
No worries, no worries. It’d be almost useless for people to come on the blog at the moment anyway, since I’m breaking my head over the code at the moment.’
Sakuracon is indeed on the west coast. It’s the one I usually attend each year, as well.
It was good to meet you, but it was so quick! Hopefully we can meet up for later at another time. :3
Ka-en :O
And I wish cons here were even half as awesome and comprehensive :<
Ah, that Shining Wind artbook, i’ve been meaning to get my hands on it but i haven’t had the time. I’ve got the Shining Tears one though and it’s very nice. Also, <3 Laura Bailey, nice to see she attended, i caught her at Acen and she signed my Kiddy Grade boxset. Would love to catch Monica Rial so it’ll be signed by everyone! I’ll probably attend Otakon next year.
I wish I had known you were going, I would have tried to meet up and say hi. Actually, if you walked past the Asylum Anime booth in the dealer hall and saw a skinny guy in a white tee and jeans, that was me. XD
That was my first Otakon (been to a few AXs) and I had a blast~ I picked up some nice loot, too
Caren for $35 and WW for $15 from the HLJ booth, the pencil board and artbooks were my payment for helping at AA, 5cm/sec for $20 at the ADV booth (I was glad they had some), and some other stuff.
I also like the new layout, by the way.
Also, yeah, man, I noticed a lot more con funk in the air than I ever noticed at my trips to AX. It was pretty bad by Sunday; I could hardly stand it in the dealer hall :s Soap should be sold at the Otakon merchandise booth…
Laura Bailey is so charming isn’t she Equinox?
That would have been good, Veers.
Wind Walker is an awesome figure, just get some putty or something to secure her to the base. She doesn’t lean, but the connector at the base tends to get worn down over time.
I’ll keep an eye on that. I didn’t open her until last night right before bed so I didn’t really mess around with it much yet. The metal rod in her leg fit pretty snugly into the base, though. Neither of those figures were ones I was really looking for, but they’re both nice and the prices were too good to pass up. Caren adds some monochrome to my rather colorful figure array and Wind Walker can keep Ignis company now :] HLJ had a MF Haruhi (the original one) there on the first day for only $35–I didn’t buy it because I wasn’t sure it’d fit in my bag on the trip home, and after I decided that it would and went back for it, it was gone :[
And here’s something unrelated but I haven’t really seen anywhere else to ask and be on topic so I might as well ask here. What do you do about dust on figures? I got to the point where I got tired of dusting them so I put them back in their boxes, and now I’m getting to the point where I have enough figures to kinda justify the purchase of some kind of display case, since the top of my bookshelf is kinda crowded now with Caren, Wind Walker, and Reinforce added this week, and Miku on the way this winter. What kind of shelving do you use for display and do you have any suggestions for shelving/casing shopping? Doesn’t need to be super fancy, just something to hold them in such a way that they’re easy to look at and don’t get dusty. My sister tipped me off to some stuff that IKEA sells, namely this but I’ve never heard of them before.
The Ikea Detolfs are real popular among figure collectors, basically because they’re a good value for the money. Since it’s not air tight, some dust still gets in there, but your talking about dusting once a year as opposed to having to do it once a month. I just use a microfiber cloth to wipe the dust off. It’s been tempting to try running them under the sink though.
Nice hauls.
Do you thing there will be good stuffs at NYAF too?
http://www.nyanimefestival.com/
e-jump: NYAF is pretty nice. I went there last year and am looking forward to the one this year. I’m already in NYC so it’s only 10 minutes away. How convenient
I’ve never been to NYAF, so couldn’t say, but it looks like it’s a decent sized convention.
Laura Bailey <3… she sang the momiji song :3… highlight of the con for me! I had fun at the con, and this is the first time going that I didn’t meet up with anyone, but there was so much to do, I don’t know when I would have been able to this year.
I wish I got that Shining Wind artbook. I know nothing of the game, but just love those character designs. Nice pins
!