Otakon 2008
Day Zero: Thursday, August 7th
Arrival
The flight in to Baltimore was more than just pleasant, it was also fast. There were no delays, no troubles, and I was at BWI sooner than I expected. However, on more than one occasion, I was “made” as a pilgrim to the convention. The first was in the line to go through the DHS security checkpoints: one of the guards spotted my shirt (Mario/Luigi ‘08) and made some pleasant conversation (which was, I note, totally unexpected judging by his uniform). Later, a young woman noticed my bracelet (the familiar black-and-white Kyo beads) and asked me about my destination; it was a short conversation, as this was during boarding and we weren’t in the same parts of the plane. Finally, in one of the strangest ’spots’, my backpack was thoroughly inspected at the baggage claim at BWI by a man who I can only assume took it upon himself to become the Nerd Police; he asked me about the origins of two specific patches on the bag– the World of Warcraft ones. The train ride to the city was filled with silence, but one thing stuck out at me: despite AT&T’s claim, Baltimore is not one of the cities that’s in the initial 3G service rollout, meaning I was stuck trying to download a map on a moving train over EDGE. Yes, it was slow and torturous. Yes, it was also worth mentioning because it will come up later.
Meeting Up
I landed at the Convention Center stop somewhere around 3p, and the trek to the hotel was extremely short. I was greeted by Kain, Steve, Sean, and Barbie. The hellos were fast and pleasant, and the two rooms were laid out in short order. They were, indeed, adjacent… vertically. Yes, despite asking for close rooms, we wound up spread across two floors. It wasn’t that bad, as we were also near the staircase, so travel between the rooms was easy if not convenient. A few things came up in the discovery phase of the arrival: the television in the lower room was easy enough to attach an RF unit to, but said RF unit’s traditional output channels– 3 and 4– were disabled on that set. The upper room had RCA jacks but its channel was similarly blocked. This, needless to say, irritated us, because the web page we’d used to decide on this hotel explicitly said that game consoles such as the Wii and the 360– not coincidentally, two of the machines we’d brought– were welcome and could be connected. Yeah. We decided to set it aside for now, as we wouldn’t be able to experiment further until much later.
Geppi’s Entertainment Museum
In the absence of being able to play games, we decided to head out for a while; Steve elected to stay behind. Sean led us through some of the territory that would be explicitly and consciously shunned by our group later in the weekend, such as Camden Yards and the phonetically-improbable Eutaw Street. The jewel of the trip, however, was Geppi’s Entertainment Museum, a reliquary devoted to pop-culture elements such as comic books and ephemera. The four of us took part in the Treasure Hunt game, which was basically a very confusing trivia chase. Barbie, sweetly silly as she was, was the first to answer all the questions. We took our time in the museum, examining and reminiscing over most of the comic books and movie memorabilia; granted, we were mostly engaged by the comic book room and the section devoted to late-seventies and early-eighties popstuffs. I’m not entirely sure that going in there was in the best interests of maintaining the opinion that I’m not incredibly ancient by now, but eh. It was fun to see things that I hadn’t taken thought of for at least a decade.
The Assembled Thirteen and The Cable Chase
Upon returning to the room, we found that most of our group was already there and spread out among the two rooms. Introductions were exchanged and many hugs given, but it was discovered that there was a slight problem: the Xbox 360 had only part of its power adapter present. The ‘brick’ was there, but it had no way of tapping into AC power. It got better: the RF unit was there, but the television refused to cooperate. Eventually it was decided that we were going to have to handle both problems as soon as possible. Sean and I were dispatched out to find the part for the 360– it was a standard PC power cord, so it couldn’t have been that hard to find, right?– and Andrew stayed behind to try to discern a way of working around the limitations of the TV. Sean and I first tried going to the GameStop in the mall attached to the Wyndham, but it was closed by the time we reached it at around 9p. I located a Best Buy nearby and we raced to it, only to discover that quite unlike every other Best Buy in the entire world, this one closed at 8p on non-weekends. Defeated, we collected our badges from the now-minimal preregistration line and returned to the room.
Intimidation and Resolution
So how do you convince an unsympathetic hotel staff that you’ve been lied to by a web page they claim to know nothing about? That was the question burning in our minds as Sean, Ismail, Kain, and I went down to have a chat with the front desk. The manager led Sean into the back room in an attempt to locate the web site that we had repeatedly referred to and that she equally persistently disavowed. I decided to try to find it on my own, having remembered a fragment of the domain name, and was frantically pulling it up in the iPhone. I was, after a short bit of Google-whacking, successful and demanded to be let into the back room. The manager let me in, and I handed her the iPhone to read it. Naturally, she had “forgotten” her glasses and could not read the text. I enlarged it, to no effect. Eventually we pulled it up on the main computer Sean had been using, and she still couldn’t read it. So we printed it out, and finally, she acquiesced. We wouldn’t get the existing TV unlocked, but Maintenance would send up a spare TV which was unlocked. We waited until these conditions were fulfilled. It should be noted that while the manager was inspecting the printout and negotiating with Maintenance, I was standing in the back room with those people and Sean. Sean later described me as “scary” and “intimidating”, two words I never ever thought would be applied to me!
A Late Dinner
It was past 11:30p by the time we were done fooling around with the television situation, and our first choice for dinner, Edgar’s Pub, had long since ceased serving food. We scrambled to find another place to eat, and discovered a pub a few blocks away from the hotel. Thirteen of us walked to invade the pub at just past midnight, and we had our meal there. It was one of those sublime moments, in point of fact– all our troubles were resolved for the moment (Sean’s brother Patrick would be bringing the power cable the next day), and we were all looking forward almost too excitedly for the coming festivities. We all ate, trading stories and having our usual bits of verbal fun; by the time we made it back to the hotel rooms shortly before 2a, we were all in that “good tired” mood that was perfect for producing the pleasant dreams that would carry us through the last night before the real fun began. Our troubles were over or forgotten, and thirteen friends slept in peace.
Day One: Friday, August 8th
Dubs That Time Forgot
My first stop on Friday was this curiously-named panel. Granted, anime isn’t exactly considered an old medium, but it does stretch back to the late fifties and early sixties, and that’s where things get weird. Honestly, if you think some of today’s stuff is off the wall, I dare you to try to track down some of The Amazing Three or a handful of the feature-length films that escaped Japan back then. I don’t off the top of my head recall the name of one of the movies which was featured, but I will say that its animation quality was very high compared to, say, 8 Man or the other items shown– it reminds me of nothing so strongly as the art style of Professor Layton, which I would certainly hope was intentional on Level-5 and Nintendo’s part! The panel concluded with a ‘compare and contrast’ session between the initial American dub of Urusei Yatsura and the BBC dub… and I don’t honestly say this, but both of those turned me off from the series almost completely. Sort of. I mean, Beautiful Dreamer is just so darn trippy I’m going to have to see it eventually, but I would figure that’s as far as I’d want to go.
Gaming Room, Dealer’s Room and Lunch
I took a trip down to the gaming room for a while. At first inspection of the map, we’d all come to the assumption that the game room might have been a bit overgenerous, seeing how as it was situated where in past years the Dealer’s Room was. All thoughts in this regard were discarded when we saw it. It was still fairly full, with each and every station having attracted a sizable crowd. Somewhere in the chaos, I managed to link up with Sean, and we took our trip to the Dealer’s Room. Oftentimes people fail to understand just how crowded an anime convention can get. Imagine being in the middle of Times Square, completely surrounded by otaku in varying levels of size, shape, and (unfortunately) cleanliness. Now imagine all those people crammed into a space only about a quarter of the size of Times Square, with shelves and racks on every side creating a labyrinth of very pretty and very expensive merch. That’s close to what the Dealer’s Room is like. We came out of it with our first set of purchases– in our cases, DS homebrew sets and a couple of import games. I’d elected to wait for a bit before snagging some anime– this would prove, later, to be a mistake. Sean and I then connected with Steve and Kain, and we had a lengthy lunch at the Inner Harbor before returning to the convention.
Code Geass
I came across Slipgate shortly before Code Geass, and we sat down to watch that. He’d expressed some hesitation after seeing CLAMP listed in the opening credits, thinking it was going to be linked into the overall and over-crowded CLAMPverse; to be truthful, I wouldn’t exactly mind if the Angels of Art elected to show Lelouche and co. as extras in Tsubasa, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. Geass has a good story going for it, but the problem arises when you realize that what could be considered the “first disc”– the first three episodes– don’t really do much except set Lelouche up as a ginormous Mary Sue. He’s got plans within plans and they never seem to go wrong, nor does he ever seem to make a truly epic mistake– not even when he first figures out his Evil Eye only works once per person. He just doesn’t seem to be a well-rounded character and he does so very little to make him even remotely sympathetic. I’m told he gets better later on, but all things considered I can wait a while longer before going for this one. I bailed out early to ensure that I could get into the next viewing.
Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann
It was also noted that two events very closely related were unfortunately scheduled at the same time: the “Phenomenology of Shinji Ikari” panel and this show. Meh, Gainax. Sadly, that’s the nicest thing I can think of to say about the first episode of GL. It is very much a Gainax show, with all the Gainax hallmarks: inexplicable situation, a protagonist falling on the “identifiable with the audience” scale somewhere between “not at all” and “HELL NO”, the bombastic and hot-blooded sidekick, and the walking advertisement for breast-reduction surgery that is Yoko. After about ten minutes of Kamina shouting ridiculous platitudes about being a man and going beyond the donut (and with this being Gainax, I could totally not be pulling your leg with that line and you’d probably believe it) I did feel something swelling within me: the urge to leave. I imagine that it’s like Haruhi in that the first episode is nothing like the rest of the series, but unfortunately this first episode was enough for me to not care. On later reflection, I started to think that it’s not exactly bad, but it is something that I’ve grown a bit beyond these days; ten years ago, I probably would have eaten it up, but these days I go in for… well, you all know what I like. Anyway, I bailed out before the second opening credits ran.
Bad Japanese Music Videos
Hey hey hey, now wait just a second. I don’t want to really pigeonhole all of these videos as “bad”. Some of theme are actually quite inspired as surrealist… something. And I don’t think anyone could ever really consider “Fish Fight” as bad. Then there’s the wonder that is Maximum the Hormone. Of course, the one video I really liked and wanted to find– “VS” by Misono– isn’t on YouTube. I can understand why, but damn if that wasn’t hilarious and cute. “Yatta!” was not shown, either to save the presenter from flaming death, or because the Internet is collectively finally over “Yatta!”, I can’t tell which. The whole experience was a good warm-up for the last event of the evening.
Friday Night Fan Videos
I missed all of the fan-vids last year, and so I was determined to see at least some of them this time around. Friday’s presentation seemed to take a format similar to the “Viral Videos” panel from Tekkoshocon, in that it skipped around fairly randomly from live-action fan-produced videos to AMV-type items. Probably the biggest triumph was the premiere of AMV Salad 2, which I will freely admit is a worthy follow-up to the AMV Hell sequence. Edward Elric singing Tom Lehrer is probably not ever going to get old. Overall, the panel stalled out when a twenty-minute mockumentary was announced as coming up next– I left after that point, and headed back to the hotel for the night. Slipgate showed us Slayers Revolution, Episode 1; I was, of course, almost completely lost, but I enjoyed it anyway– enough to prompt a purchase later on. There was some minor discussion in the rooms and some story-swapping, but for the most part we all called it a night relatively early.
Day Two: Saturday, August 9th
Alison to Lillia/Wandering
I make no secret of my affection for Keiichi Sigsawa’s work. Kino’s Journey was and still remains one of my favorite anime simply because in the subtlety and the quietness, there is the opportunity for both reflection and great revelation. When I saw that Alison to Lillia– his next works, in animated form– were on the schedule, my heart leapt; after the heartbreak that was Tokyopop’s bungling of the light novels, it was a relief. Of course, the jubilation was short-lived: the showing was cancelled at the last minute. Don’t ask me why, because I can only offer some unsubtle and unprintable grumblings in reply. Anyway, bereft of tranquility, I wandered back to the gaming room for a while and met up with Kat, Andrew, and Barbie. We chatted for a while, and I followed Andrew over to the Soul Calibur IV tables. This was the first time both he and I had had any exposure to the game, and the glut of people surrounding the tables ensured that we would likely have to wait for another time before we could play. It was probably far more educational for Andrew than it was for me. He watched the players to learn new strategies and timings; I watched the screen mostly because the, shall we say, creative costumes were entrancing on many of the female characters. (You’d think I would be far more into Arcana Heart because of this… and you’re absolutely right, but I just haven’t had enough time to get good with that one.) Andrew had tried to get into the Super Smash Bros. Brawl tournament, and astute readers will note the phrasing “tried” there: the tickets to participate in that tourney were gone within three minutes of being announced. This was a 128-person tournament, and each ticket was gone in about a second and a half each. Yeah, we weren’t happy about that, particularly because I was secretly thrilled at the prospect of Andrew Din’s Fire-spamming his way to the top.
The Quest To GITS:SAC
I decided that now was as good a time as any to take care of a couple of obligations, so I returned to the Dealer’s Room. Remember how I said that I would have ample opportunity to pick up certain gifts later on? Well, it just so happens that the crown jewel of the gifts was Ghost In The Shell: Stand-Alone Complex, Season 1. I knew exactly where I’d seen it on Friday, and I confidently strode through the crowd to that exact spot only to discover it completely sold out. No matter, this was the Dealer’s Room, after all… and apparently SAC was the hot item this year, because it took me nearly an hour of wandering and searching to find a complete set of the season, priced appropriately high– it had to be the last one for a reason, after all. With that in hand, I went back to snag some boxes for myself– specifically, Slayers season 1, Kino’s Journey (I’d been meaning to reclaim this since, oh, the day after I lost it in Cleveland), and Evangelion (declaring that this was the absolute last time I was going to reclaim it, and meaning it). I kept my eyes peeled for the Nadesico movie, as well, but sadly couldn’t find it just yet; later revelations gave me dark hope, but that’s a story for Day Three.
HD Theater and Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei
Suitably laden with goodies, I did the unthinkable– I bought BCC food. A tuna salad sandwich and a bottle of orange Ramune (which, in point of fact, cost more than the sandwich), which I consumed happily while seated in the line for the HD Theater. The event was a film I’d heard much about: “The Girl Who Leapt Through Time”. Now, I had noticed the night before that a sign near the door read “No Backpacks Permitted”, and had figured that that was a restriction solely for the screening of the live-action Death Note flick; the sign was not present near the door at this time. No big deal, I thought, pulling out my DS and getting myself back into the Fusilier mission. About ten minutes passed before some con staffers came by, asking several people to leave the line, because they had backpacks, which were apparently still forbidden. I wasn’t among them because quite frankly they hadn’t come to my part of the line yet, but I was in no mood to be hassled by the fuzz; I picked up and fled the line calmly, internally seething that I wasn’t going to get to see one of the highlights of the schedule for me. This was definitely not turning out to be my day… but then I took a look at the schedule and found that a show I’d also heard glowing praise about, Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, was starting up shortly as well. I hurried to the screening room, and sat down just as the disc from the previous show– “The Wallflower”, which I’d caught an episode or two of a few years ago and thought was execrable– was being removed from the player. I managed to get a great seat, and the importance of this was not lost on me as the room filled up rather quickly. The show started and was soon drowned out completely by the howls of laughter– seriously, this was quite probably one of the runaway hits of the convention. I earnestly hope that someone from one of the main localizers was in the audience (and I would not be surprised at all to learn that was the case) because this is a show that just plain deserves an English-language release. I do not say this lightly, but the response to every single gag practically demands such a release. Just as soon as I finish up this report, the fansubs I have of it from Tekkoshocon are going to get played. Of course, later on I discovered that the “no backpack” restriction had been lifted from the HD theater. Damnation.
Dinner, Invading The Restaurant
I linked up with a few other folks and together, we went down to the hotel restaurant for dinner. Now, allow me to set the stage: this was not a general-purpose buffet, nor was it a fast-food chain bolted onto the hotel. This was a fairly nice restaurant, with a great sense of atmosphere and a cozy, intimate feel that was completely incongruous with eight otaku taking the place by storm. The discussions were varied but invariably to our general tastes, which meant that the poor waiter who served us was practically guaranteed a large tip owing to the fact that he put up with us. This is to say nothing of the other people in the restaurant, some of them otaku, but in far smaller groups. I think we hit the breaking point when the word “Incest!” was shouted out quite inadvertantly. Still, the food was very good; I had some shrimp pasta that was quite tasty, while Andrew partook of some of the local specialty, crab cakes. These were quickly dubbed the “Aperture Science Fish-Shaped Solid Food Meal Objects”, not because of quality, but because it was funny.
Phoenix Denied, Chick Rolled
After dinner, we headed back to the convention center in order to get to the Phoenix Wright mock trial. Naturally, when we arrived, the line was already not just full, but closed. It should be noted that the trial was being held in the largest panel room available in the convention, and it was still far past expected capacity. The line was closed because it had hit fire-safety maximum occupancy. Yeah, people really wanted to see this. I think in the future there ought to be some ways to simulcast these sorts of things in different rooms… well, I know there is, but the thing is that it really ought to be something that can be set up on short notice. As we were leaving, however, we happened across the table of brochures for other conventions and events. Nestled in this pile of paper advertising cons for everything from Avatar to Zeon, trying its hardest not to be overly conspicuous, was a small religious tract of the kind that tends to be horribly offensive to the reader. While it was not specifically rendered by the individual in question, the Rule of Funny was again invoked to allow me to announce, “We just got Chick Rolled.” Naturally I needed to take a photo of the tract in its position amongst the flyers for a furry convention. It should be on the Flickr page. We headed back to the room, still a little bummed by not being able to see the Objection-a-thon, but eager to get started on the new highlight of the evening.
In-Room Vids And Games
We got back to the room and saw a few more Youtube videos before some of the pre-prepared entertainment was shown. Kain had brought an episode of Top Gear along to convince us that we are all crazy for not having seen this previously, and for my part it worked: seeing the sheer insanity involved in their quest to make amphibious vehicles was completely worth it. We then came to the point where I had been asked to show a video off to the group as a favor to Rick, who was unable to attend this year. I showed a few of the other videos off– some lighter fare including “Young, Dumb, and Cromartie”– before getting to the proverbial “money shot”. I’d taken great pains not to spoil the surprise, even going so far as to rename the file to ensure nobody saw it coming. Yes, I showed off “The Internet Is For Loli” to my closest friends. The reaction was as expected: near-universal thunderous applause and howls of laughter. After that, we fired up Rock Band. Sean had wanted to try his pipes at a song or two, so he tool vocals while I took up my usual place at bass. Drums were a tricky prospect for Patrick and Lance, because the sticks had been left behind; we made do with some empty soda bottles. Sean played “Epic” and sold the vocals pretty convincingly– enough to loosen up my courage to try “The Hand That Feeds”. Yeah, I kinda hammed it up there. Barbie then took the mic for a very… unique turn at “Call Me”. Sean wrapped it up with “Sea and Sand”, which I think we all enjoyed greatly. After that, Soul Calibur III went into the PS2, and I started to zone out; it was, after all, close to 2a, so I headed up to bed.
Day Three: Sunday, August 10th
Check Out, The Concierge
Getting readied in the morning was quite easy. Many of us had made efforts to keep our gear reasonably self-contained, and I’d taken a trip down to the lower room to make sure I had everything before I went to bed. But it still wound up taking a goodly portion of the wee hours, and by the time we were all ready, the task of finding a luggage cart was not just a herculean effort, but probably an assignment requiring a miracle. I suppose I overstate that a little, since Andrew found one fairly quickly, and once time came to collect most of the bags for drop-off at the concierge, I had little trouble finding the same cart. Maneuvering it was another matter entirely. It should be noted that the hotel’s concierge was an elderly man who I can only assume had been working in that capacity since long before I was born. He was very friendly and kind, and I felt more than a little bad that I was defaulting to my usual businesslike tone with him (read: I probably scared the hell out of him). Regardless, I made a note to tip him well and to hope to see him next year– I don’t know if we’ll be going back to the Holiday Inn, of course, but quite frankly I do hope he’s still there next year. Oddly enough the parade of cosplayers probably didn’t even faze him by now.
ADV Announcements
Baggage tickets in hand, I headed back to the BCC to catch a few last-minute bits. I snagged a couple of import games and managed to reclaim Um Jammer Lammy, which in and of itself was a triumph deserving of the memery. But the key thing I’d wanted to see was the ADV Announcements panel. I will be the first to admit to a certain amount of schadenfreude when I saw the panel on the schedule, but then I remembered that I had indeed met Matt Greenfield before, and that because of that it was very hard for me to justify said delight in suffering. Anyway, I got in a little late only to realize that I hadn’t missed much: the majority of the conversation to that point was going over the fallout of the Sojitz affair from a few months prior. Matt made a point of saying that ADV was not going to collapse just because they lost that licensor; Sojitz made up only a small portion of their library, and they had plenty of back-catalog to rely on. Blu-Ray releases were on the schedule, he hinted, as were further re-re-releases of titles “which haven’t been seen in a while”. I took this to mean that titles long out-of-print, such as the Nadesico movie, would soon be on the shelves again. I did get to ask a question about light novels– hoping that ADV’s very good print division would be able to pick up where others had fallen (I don’t want to name any names, but I’m going to mention/blame Tokyopop anyway)– but the answer was noncommittal and somewhat discouraging. The overall mood of ADV, as best as I can reckon, was that of a cornered kitten– frightened, chastised, but still full of spirit and hope. Matt announced a handful of live-action titles and the other gentleman– whose name I missed– showed off an episode of their new series, but I left as it started as it didn’t interest me all that much. Good thing, too, because I bumped into Matt on the way out! We chatted a little bit about Tekkoshocon, and I discovered that he’d gone to a writing conference in Pittsburgh this year rather than our beloved Con of Steel. Ah well, I’m sure he won’t miss next year.
Lobby Goodbyes, The Plan
We gathered in the hotel lobby, most of us who hadn’t had to leave already, and began talking about what we were going to do for next year. These last moments are always hard; we never seem to want to depart, but we always need to. It’s troubling, of course, but then again if we did not part, our meetings would not be so much fun– they’d lose their luster of rarity and the gleam of their opportunity. All sentimentality aside, we spent a good portion of our time saying goodbye and discussing plans for getting home and getting together again next year, including trying to be a bit more pro-active about the whole organizational aspect of it. Much of our troubles this year came from a lack of adequate foresight, and while things did turn out all right in the end, we also wound up scrambling near that end and hastily composing backup plans while executing them. As I said, it did come to be for the best, as we all used it as a learning experience. Much of our goodbye-ing was combined with well-wishes for the future, as many of us were heading home to uncertainty and stress far beyond what we could have imagined. Still, it was hard to be too fearful for the future when surrounded by the people who love and support us. I think, honestly, that that’s a far more important reason to come to Otakon than the convention itself.
The Train and The Terminal
About half a dozen of us were tasked with getting to the airport for our flights home. The light rail was again the conveyance of choice, and Sean distributed the rail tickets handily. We didn’t need them, really, as we didn’t get checked, but better to be safe than sorry. Anyway, we took over the better part of the front car as we sat and chatted, going over what we’d done and what we’d seen– I made promises to cosplay as I always do, and I’m sad to say that I’ll probably forget to keep them again– until we finally arrived at the terminal. I don’t think anyone ever noticed this before, but BWI is laid out such that the light rail station is on one end of the facility, and that in between even the first check-in desk and the station, there exists the longest god damn hallway in Baltimore. This would be a wonderful place for one of those moving sidewalks, wouldn’t it? Well, keep dreaming, because it isn’t there. We hauled our bags all the way to the primary check-in desks, only for me to realize that Southwest was further off still. We made our plans to meet up in the main portion of the terminal to get dinner… and those were shot to hell when I discovered that Southwest uses Terminal A, which is conveniently completely cut off from the rest of the airport. Gah. Anyway, I called in my final goodbyes and sat myself down for dinner at the Philips restaurant in Terminal A. This was a tuna steak almost as big as my plate, and I would be a liar if I said it wasn’t the best food I’d eaten the entire trip. Consider this the note to myself that yes, I do want to go back there.
Coming Home
As it turned out, the flight home was delayed by half an hour. This gave me the opportunity to watch through most of two episodes of Babylon 5 before touching down in Pittsburgh. All things considered, it was a pleasant trip. Upon arrival I happened upon a young woman also from the convention; we chatted a little bit about the events we enjoyed, and I learned that I was indeed an idiot for passing up the JAM Project concert (it was not nearly as full as I’d expected it to be, according to her). Overall, though, I realized that, by taking the plane, I was not only exposing myself as an otaku, but I was also seeing in great detail that I was not alone in being as such. See, one of the things that I didn’t mention was that, on Wednesday, one of my co-workers came by and asked me what I was going to enjoy most about the con. He too was going, though separately, and he was interested in quite a bit of it. It’s one thing to know that you’re going to a con to see a circle of friends, but it’s another thing entirely when you realize that said circle isn’t twenty people: it’s actually twenty thousand people. Never once was I under the impression of being surrounded by anything but kindred souls. The convention was a place of calm harmony, even in the frenzy of trying to get from place to place, and overall there was always a sense that this was a second home. That the convention, as short as it was, was the place that an otaku could go to really be himself or herself, the rest of the world be damned. Normality can keep its rules, can keep its standards and can keep its expectations. We can play by them only for so long; at a convention, our true selves are revealed. And you know what? I like what I see.
Thanks as always to everyone who made Otakon 2008 possible, and thanks especially to the friends who made it unforgettable. See you next year– where I will cosplay, I promise!