The Otakon Report — Part 3: Fear and Loathing in Baltimore
Let me tell you something about Sundays … they suck. Yes, even more than Mondays. You have to go to work the next morning, you have to finish up all the stuff you didn’t get to over the weekend, you have to sleep off you hangover from Saturday, overall it is really the worst day of the weekend, and convention weekends are no exception. Sundays at conventions are saddening to everyone who goes. They open late, they close early, and they are filled with special city police trying to rush you out of all your favorite convention hangout areas. Industry professionals are too tired and too jaded to divulge anything about their new projects, fans have changed out of their awesome costumes and now limp around on sore feet in unwashed civilian clothes, and all the awesome geeky hangouts you knew from the Thursday night or Friday morning have become nothing more than empty warehouses.
There is one important part of the Sunday convention experience though, and that is looking back at your Friday and Saturday convention experiences as you make the long trek home. Over the past two days I have brought you the best in Otakon news, but news is really only a portion of why you go to Otakon. The real reason to go, whether you are industry, performer, professional, or fan, is to have fun. So today’s final article is for all you 14-34 year olds out there who have never experienced the convention scene before. This is just some of what you have to look forward to if you ever build up the courage to make the trip down to this holy ground of anime.
The Rave
Rave, Dance, Shindig, call it what you will but it is a bunch of people all in one place having an awesome time. DJs are spinning, live bands are playing and the crowd is pretty damn varied. Oh, there’s that sixteen year old you saw on vacation from highschool. Oh, there’s a 30 year old computer programmer coming to Ota on a sick day. Oh, there’s the voice actor for your favorite anime doing the worm. It’s pretty nuts, and the funny thing is that it doesn’t stop when the official rave is over. People walk around Otakon all day with stereos blasting dance music waiting for you to join in on one gigantic weekend long dance party.
The Panels
OK, if you are into the whole industry angle, you go to industry panels, but if those are the only panels you go to you will miss out on a lot. Though it’s always nice to hear the latest news from industry professionals, the real panel all stars are the fans. Over the weekend I got to see an anime version of the game show Press Your Luck, 3 different types of stand up comics, an anime version of Whose Line Is It Anyway, plenty of panels on how to improve your writing and forge a career in the anime world, history and culture panels, lessons on how to make sushi, and much, much more. In fact the only thing more fun than going to panels, is doing a panel yourself. It gives you a great ego rush, and it nets you free entrance into the con most of the time. So save fifty bucks and talk for an hour and a half because no matter what your area of expertise is, someone wants to hear you talk.
The Hallways
No one knows how to liven up a convention better than the fans who go to the convention themselves. There is always downtime between events you want to attend, and in this downtime you might as well walk through the hallways and see what people are doing. You can find people playing card games, sparring each other, jamming out on their instruments, doing massive acrobatic stunts, and much more. The final day of this convention even had graffiti artists painting on the windows of the Baltimore Convention Center.
The Masquerade
There is nothing that compares to an anime convention Masquerade. It’s several hours of people in cosplay believing they can act and making asses out of themselves for your own amusement. Most of the skits are stolen jokes off of the internet, but every so often you get to see some people with real talent get up on stage and wow you. It’s always that one random guy who took an acting class, or who practices Parkour or something like that. More than that, they eventually get rated, and if one of the judges has the balls to be anything like say, an American Idol judge, you’ll get to see some Masqueraders coming off stage in tears.
Anime Rooms
I already covered the gaming room, and how just by stepping foot into it you get to play some limited edition imports that really aren’t available anywhere else. Well, the anime rooms are kind of the same thing. They are massive theaters (way bigger than any local movie theater) that show, what else, anime. Now a good portion of this anime is stuff you have already seen, but one or two rooms are always showing exclusives. Want to see the as of yet unreleased cut of Yu-Gi-Oh? You can! Want to see an anime in the original Japanese that hasn’t even come to our shores yet? You can do that too! My lucky find was Sword of the Stranger, a hardcore samurai flick. Stay tuned for the review in coming weeks.
Other Attractions
Not a fan of dancing, gaming, or sitting down to watch anime exclusives? There is still stuff for you to do at the convention center. Take a trip to the LARP room for some live action roleplay! Want a quieter weekend? Then go to the Manga Library and read your convention away! Still need more to do? Hop in a live action game of Left 4 Dead or Final Fantasy, participate in a parade down the streets of Baltimore in your costume, go on a mall raid as a zombie, catch a few Zs on the couches and beds set up right next to your favorite voice actors or industry specialists. Go to the artists alley and bid for some high quality artwork, or get your picture drawn by a professional manga artists. Go to the dealers room and waste away your money on Japanese products you can’t get anywhere else. There is always something more to do, and if you ever find yourself bored, chances are you aren’t being creative enough. Yes, that is a live action Final Fantasy battle with Billie Mays and Vince Offer as the final boss, put to live battle music.
The Long and Arduous Journey Home
When the doors finally slam shut on your headband wearing ass Sunday afternoon, you have nowhere to go but home … the same as everyone else. No matter how early you start your trip, no matter how responsible you are with packing, no matter how much you plan out your route, you will always hit more traffic coming home than you will going to the convention. This is the time when you finally take off your convention badge, pack up your convention programs and swag, and take 8 hours for a 3 hour drive because your friends have to stop every 3 seconds to go to the bathroom. You get home, you log on to the official “post convention depression” forum thread, and you wait patiently till next year to do it all over again. Or, if you are like me, you wait a few months and chase the convention scene up and down the east coast, but then again I’m crazy.
I hope you enjoyed this look into the crazy world of Otakon. I’ll be going to several other conventions over the course of the year, and will be bringing you all the best updates from them as well. My best advice to you, is to go to them yourself, because you’ll never know what convention life is like until you experience it. Until next time faithful ninjas, this is Angelo D’Argenio, signing off.
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