Otakon 2011
It is one thing to talk about a convention, or to talk it up like it's the second coming of sliced bread, but quite another thing altogether to experience that truth for yourself. This years' Otakon was no exception. Understand that I have been on the convention scene almost every year since 2000, and have since learned how to look at it all without the veil of awe coloring my perception.
Otakon may not be the best (arguable) or largest (only the second largest) Anime convention in the country, but it is one that I have attended almost religiously since I was first introduced more than 11 years ago. This year was no different, resulting in Baltimore's Inner Harbor being graced with my presence once more. So how is this year different from all others? It is because for the first time, I am attending as Industry instead of a fan.
Otakon, the Otaku (obsessed fan) Convention, was started in the early 90's as a gathering of fans of this strange medium called 'japanimation' in State College, PA. Because of the success of the gathering, the organizers of the gathering decided to do it again the next year, and their fan base grew. In 1994, the crew opened their event as an official Convention and the first official use of the term "Otakon", with an attendance of around 350 people with all of 2 rooms and 4 dealers to its cause. Because of its nearly exponential growth, Otakon moved to the Inner Harbor of Baltimore, Maryland in the summer of 1999, where it has occupied the entirety of the Baltimore Convention Center, turnout growing to an unthinkable 100,000 estimated turnstile attendance and some 170 dealers by 2011.
That's alot of people.
With a gathering of fans of any scale, some of them are invariably going to Cosplay, or dress up in a costume resembling their favorite characters. When it comes to large scale conventions, there is an unspoken rule that one is practically required to Cosplay, which turns into mind-boggling 35% cosplayer percentage. 35% may not sound like much, but if you walked down a line of random Convention attendee's, every 3rd person will be in costume! Even moreso for the big cons, there simply aren't any slipshod or patched-together costumes. The effort that goes into the dressing steals as quality. The dedication of the fans to continue to wear said costume, no matter how thick, layered, or heavy it may be, throughout the entire day of 100 degree sunny summer weather! The kind of cosplayers encountered in a con is extremely varied, too. From as obscure and missable as Kintaro Oe (Golden Boy) or Shiina Mayuri (Steins:Gate) to the insanely complicated like Angewoman (Digimon) or Saber (Fate/Stay Night), to the outright functional like Ravage (Transformers) or Angeal (Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII)
As much as a person can spend people watching (I've devoted an entire con or two to doing just that), there was so much more to do or see than one's fellows. On Thursday the 28th, while a large chunk of people (about 8,000) were there a day early to pick up their pre-registered badges, there was a Japanese style Matsuri (festival) on the street outside the convention center. Included in this early arrival activity was a live concert by Eyeshine, a rock band out of California. Regular hours events worth seeing, above the rest of the event which is just as worthy, include an AMV (Anime Music Video) contest-where people splice scenes from their favorite anime to music-: Several Video game tournaments- including Halo Reach, Street Fighter 4, and the American premier of King of Fighters XIII-; The Masquerade -where the best cosplayers perform extremely well choreographed and prepared skits-; not to mention signings from important people in the industry, including the legendary Nobuo Uematsu- the musical composer for the Final Fantasy series!
Let us not forget the Bane of many a Con'ers Wallet, the Dealers Room and Artists Alley. The Dealers room is a warehouse larger than the total square footage of 3 entire football fields, lined wall to wall with booths and tables selling everything a fan could ever hope to see and stuff they would never think of (but desperately want). Scale replica weapons, Resin Statues, Art Books, DVD's and Manga (graphic novels) galore, costumes, wigs, clothing lines, T-shirts, coffee mugs, and even replica Soul Gems from Madoka Magica. Even if one didn't want to spend money they didn't have, there were also large sections devoted to Bandai, Media Blasters, and other less liked licensing corporations who took the opportunity to announce new title acquisitions and other related news!
The other side of the industry room, the Artists Alley, was another humongous room roughly 2/3rds the size of the Dealers Room (more than 2 football fields large!) filled wall to wall with 5' long tables occupied by amateur artists of every kind of ability. From crayon monstrosities to they-make-the-professionals-look-bad to clay sculpting to hand-made plushies of a higher quality than China ever managed to produce. If you even looked hard enough, mainly by walking in with your eyes open because they were that close to the entrance, you could see a table devoted to our own J1 Studios, who had such a successful run spreading the joy that they completely sold out of every single thing they brought!
Several of the downsides to the convention was written off as being "just par for the course", or "you're not a fan if you don't suffer though it", or "it's all part of the convention fun!", even though they really are inconveniences at best and could probably be done better. This includes the reeeeeeealy long lines, such as the 2 hour long line of people trying to even get into the convention center on Friday, the one for people who already picked up their entry badges the day before, because the line to pick up one's badge or even to buy one there is even longer, typically wrapping around the convention center twice. Also, the lines to important events, like Signings or Concerts are just as bad, as one has to get in that line at least 2 hours ahead of time in order to avoid the 2 hour wait for admittance otherwise. Also, sleep deprivation ran rampant, with fans getting an average of 2-3 hours of rest a night, if even that. BO was another factor, as there were a hundred thousand people who were too busy to shower running through those hallways, and it was really really hot that weekend, too.
All in all, Otakon in 2011 was fantastic, as far as Previous Otakon's go. It may be a little too big for first-timers but that never stopped anyone before. Anime Expo, the single largest Anime Convention in the US, tends to hands some of the little things better, like the issue with excessive lines, though Otakon was much more inexpensive to attend. The masquerade was of higher quality than previous years. The dealers room somehow manages to stuff more and more dealers into the same massive crawlspace, and Cosplayers seem to be on a running competition to out-do themselves and each other year after year. If you've ever thought about attending a convention for yourself one of these days, I recommend Otakon, though try to go with a group if it's your first time, lest you be overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of nerdiness around you.
