A weekly look into American otaku culture

So I’ve just gotten back from the biggest anime convention that I’ve ever been to, Otakon 2005. There is really only one word that I can use to describe it: exhausting! There was so much to do, but so little time to do it. But still, I managed to squeeze in a lot during that time. Let me tell you about all the different things that made up my experience over the weekend.

Atmosphere

Since I went to Anime Boston within the last couple of months, I was able to compare and contrast just what made these cons unique. They both were set-up pretty much the same, like having the same kind of events, panels, and guests. However, there was one really big difference between the two, and that would be the fans who attended it. Sure, Otakon had many more people then Boston; it was nearly impossible to move around on Saturday because it was so crowded. But I think that the kind of fans that were there were very different. Boston is the biggest college city in the country, therefore most of the Anime Boston attendees were college kids who were into the fansub scene. You could tell this because of the ridiculous number of Naruto cosplayers walking around. The age range for Otakon was much broader then Boston. One of the biggest surprises was seeing otaku parents pushing around baby strollers. There was much more of a “family friendly” feel going around. Also, most of the attendees were fans of anime on American TV. You saw a lot of Adult Swim cosplayers walking around such as One Piece, Full Metal Alchemist, and even a couple of Super Milk-chans. In fact, I didn’t even see that much Naruto until Saturday night’s masquerade. Overall, I felt a lot better with the Boston crowd then with the Otakon crowd, but that’s just me.

Shopping

This was the first time that I brought several hundred dollars with the intent to spend it all on anime merchandise. And while a good chunk of it did go towards the hotel and transportation, I still got to go silly in the dealers’ room. Let’s see just what I was able to come home with….

Books:

• Girls Bravo vol. 1
• Kamichama Karin vol. 1
• Rizelmine vol. 1
• Video Girl Ai vol. 10
• Video Girl Ai vol. 11
• Video Girl Ai vol. 12
• Galaxy Angel vol. 2
• Galaxy Angel vol. 3
• Galaxy Angel vol. 4
• Galaxy Angel vol. 5
• Galaxy Angel Party vol. 1

DVD:

• Invader ZIM - House Box Complete Set
• Mao-Chan vol. 1
• Someday’s Dreamers vol. 1
• Mahoromatic vol. 2
• Yu Yu Hakusho vol. 29

Other:

• Megatokyo Kimiko Poster
• Mahoraba Figure
• Amusement Park Dating Sim Game

Eleven books, 5 DVDs, a poster, figure, and dating sim game… I say that’s a pretty good haul, wouldn’t you? I was a little disappointed that Hirameki International didn’t have the Ai Yori Aoshi game for sale at the con, but I did talk to the president of the company. He showed me the prototype of the final product, and I was surprised to find out that it was actually two different games (both on different CD-Roms) in one package: a Southern Island and Winter Lake edition. This is looking to be a pretty sweet game. I game him my contact info so maybe you see some more pimping of that title on this blog in the future.

Panels

I didn’t really have the time to attend a lot of panels, due to lack of interest in them and a very busy Saturday. The couple that I did attend, however, were excellent. ADV ran a great show on Friday night that had to be one of the funniest panels I’ve ever seen. They showed this great new series involving mannequins in ecchi situations. They also mad great alternative dubs for their Madlax series that were hilarious. The one thing that I have to love about that company is that they love to goof off and have so much fun doing it.

On Saturday I walked into a panel expecting to see the Bandai rep, Jerry Chu, talk about his company. However, Chu was nowhere to be found and the panel was now for another company called Animenation. Rumor has it that Chu had just recently quit his job at Bandai, which I’m a little upset about. He really was a fun and cool guy. However, Animenation did show a funny series called Haru + Guu. It’s a very strange kind of humor that’s completely random. It reminded me a lot of Invader ZIM and other Johnen Vazques works.

On Sunday, I attended the State of the Anime Industry panel. Fueled by my recent commentory on the effects of fansubs, I started off right away with asking just what are the companies planning on doing with people downloading their titles on the internet and selling their DVDs bootlegged on eBay. FUNimation imediately brought up that their company just hired a lawyer whose sole job everyday is to find these people and pursue legal action. ADV then talked about how the Japanese are just starting to see how much it’s affecting them. The whole Asian anime market is now lost to bootlegs, and the industry actually makes more money in the US than it does in Japan. o_O! So now they’re expecting a bigger crack-down on bootlegging and piracy in the US and Japan as well.

Things also havn’t been looking so good in the US as far as DVD sales go. It is a failing medium, and as the retailers prepare for the next generation of media disks to come out (possibly Blu-Ray and HD-DVD), a flood of TV show box sets now flood the shelf space. This because TV shows won’t translate well into the new medium. This is limiting room for anime DVDs, and so sales are not going as well as they should be. However, there is hope that the industry is looking into, and that is with digital downloading. CD sales were dropping pretty low in recently years, but the recent launch of iTunes and other online music stores have proven to be quite benifical to the music industry. Anime companies predict that the same will go for anime shows and DVDs. ADV has already gained enormous success with it’s anime Video-on-Demand service. So right now they’re working on how to use the download technology to get legit product out to us fans.

I believe that we’re on the eve a new revolution for the anime industry in the US. All the pieces seem to be in place for a great year coming up. First of all, Naruto is going to bring in a great load of new fans interested in the Japanese and anime culture. When that happens, the demand will be up again to bring new titles over here to generate a lot of money. I think we’re also going to find better methods of watching anime at home or on our computers in hopefully a cost-effective way. Here’s hoping that we’re on the front line for it.

Cosplay

As I had mentioned in my previous post, Jenn cosplayed once again as Chun-Li for the convention. Just like in Boston, she was a big hit among the fanboys. She would constantly be stopped and asked to pose for the cameras, and received many compliments on how great she looked. “That’s the perfect Chun-Li” said a fan who specilizes in Chun-Li cosplayers. But the biggest photoshoot was when we were walking by the Central Park Media booth in the dealers room. They are going to release a documentory on anime fandom in the US, and they’re going to have a photo gallery of cosplayers as a special feature on the DVD. The photographer spotted Jenn and really wanted her to participate in it. So she stepped in front of a white screen, and had to do 6 differant poses for the camera. It was like she was a model! So I really think that we’ll be seeing her photo on that DVD when it comes out.

I gladly took the role of her manager and held all her stuff as she posed for the many photo requests made to her all weekend. After each shoot, I would hand out little flyers that we made together to promote this website, which I told them was ours. Now while my name is in the title and I’ve written all the of articles so far, I really think that this site will be a lot better if we both used our talents to run it. And so recently I’ve been trying to make her more involved with the site for a while now. So far, she’s taken the role of the editor and artist, and I really love that Chibi-Scotty logo she made for the site. We’re planing on having more Chibi-Scotty (and maybe Chibi-Jenny ^_^) images up soon. Also, I’m asking her to write up some posts herself about the kind of anime and manga that she likes. So hopefully we should be seeing a little more Shojo around here in the upcomming months.

But back to her costume. For this convention, she decided that she wanted to compete with her costume, so she signed up for the Hall Costume Conest early Saturday morning. The first part was going infront of a panel of judges. They asked her verious questions about the costume, why she chose it, how hard was it to make, and what past experiences did she have in cosplaying. They then asked for a final pose, and all seemed very happy when she did the little “Yatta!” thing. The one thing that I heard a number of times through-out the weekend is that it takes a very cute girl to be a very cute cosplayer, and Jenn was definitely cute. The second part of the contest involved a catwalk fashion show at the end of the Masqurade later that night. I joined all the photograpgers in front of the stage, and tried my best to snap a shot of my baby in the spotlight. Unfortunately, the picture came out blurry, but I was still so happy to see my cutie on stage like that! ^_^

Unfortunately, the competition was fierce, and Jenn didn’t win any prizes. She was going against the best of the best (though for some reason they were all in the novice level), and there were some really spectacular costumes, including some full-size Pokemon suits (pictures of them will be posted later). I felt sorry that she didn’t win, and told her that if so many people wanted pictures of her, it had to be a great costume. But I don’t think she was really devestated by it. In fact, she was telling me how she’s going to work harder to make sure that she wins that competition next year. That’s my girl! ^_^

Blogging

On Friday night, I met up with my fellow anime blogger Token Asian. We went out for Japanese food in the food court and then hit the dealer’s room together in search of some Ah! My Goddess figurines for him. This was the first time I’ve ever met anyone from the blogging community in real-life, and he was a pretty cool and friendly anime fan. I wished that we could have hung out some more over the weekend, but of course, we both had some very busy schedules. That’s the problem with going with friends to one of these convnetions, there’s so much to do that you really can’t spend too much time together doing the same thing.

But the meeting did inspire one idea in my head - Why don’t we hold an Anime Blogging panel at one of these conventions? We’re definitely a big part of the anime community, and I think that a group of us together would be able to talk about our experiences with anime blogging and offer tips to those wanting to give it a try themselves. I might try to organize something like that for next year, so if anyone is interested in participating, let me know! I think it would be fun.

Megatokyo

I’ve never been truly star-struck at one of these conventions until I was with one of my favorite artists, Fred Gallagher of Megatokyo. Sure, he’s not really a Japanese manga artist, but I feel like the two of us have simular interests and takes on the Japanese pop-culture. I love his style and I love the messages and commentary he gives through his comics. So one of the first things I did on Friday in the dealers room was buy a very nice poster from his wife, Sarah. While she might not be anything like her manga counterpart, she was very nice and friendly and always answered all my questions in the sweetest way possiable. Then I made my way to Fred’s autograph line, but at that very moment he went on break. So Sarah rolled up my poster and told me that he’d be back shortly. Well, I’d figure I’d catch him sometime on Saturday.

Saturday turned out to be a lot busier then I had expected, and I didn’t really get a chance to get on line for is autograph until later on in the afternoon. However, Fred had his own panel to go to at that point, so he wasn’t able to stay around much longer. Jenn and I desided that we’d try again on Sunday and in the meanwhile, make our way to his panel. His panel wasn’t the most organized, but we still had fun at it. The first thing he did was introduce a new bit of merchandise for his comic, a plushie of a cute mouse character named Boo. Then he had a slide-show of his trip to Japan, and how he incorporated a lot of the scenery into his comic. He had a picture of him giving a copy of his comic to Ken Akamatsu, and mentioned how much of an honor it was. That’s how I found out that we both had the same favorite manga artist. (^_^)

Sunday was our last chance, so Jenn and I packed up early, went over to the convention, and waited on line for the dealers room before it even opened. We weren’t the first on line, but within one hour we had finally made it to his table. I very nervously gave him the poster, and asked him to draw a picture of my favorite character, Ping. Then a talked to him about something very important to me. You see, the truth is that he introduced me to the world of anime blogs through the rant he made at the bottom of this page. When I clicked on those links and saw those blogs, I was inspired to make my own blog site. A couple months later, I did. So I told him this, and we started to talk about how he depends on anime blogs to keep up with all the latest series in Japan, because he’s much too busy to watch them himself now. I told him that I did some of that too, but I also try to use my blog to talk more about anime philosophy and culture rather then fansub recaps. He said that sounded pretty cool to him. I gave him one of my flyers and told him that I would really appreciate it if he checked it out sometime. He said that he would. I know that he might have just been saying that to be friendly, but I think that him actually reading my website would be one of the biggest acheivements I can have with this blog. After all, he is the reason I got into it in the first place.

I was pretty suprised to see just how friendly he was towards me. After all, he did just spend the past three days doing endless amounts of drawings and autographing. But he was so nice to talk to me, and then when Jenn went up to him for a personal “Boo” skech on the back of her convention badge, he also took the time to talk to her and offered her some suggestions to make sure that the sketch didn’t smudge afterwards. This was definitely the highlight of my weekend, and now I have an ever better respect for him and his wife.

In closing…

Otakon was definitely a different experience than I had at my previous conventions. It was much larger and had way too many things going on for me to handle. I’ve never been as exhausted as I was this weekend. I think I might prefer the simpler Anime Boston than this. However, I still had a blast over the weekend. I was able to completely go nuts in the dealers room, and I’m quite satified with the booty. I got to show off my girl to the world, which may end up on a DVD someday. I got to meet a fellow anime blogger and now have a closer friend then before. But most of all, I got to meet with one of my heroes and actually have a pleasent conversation with him. As exhausting as it was, it was definitely worthwhile.

And so ends the 2005 convention season for me, and now I have to get ready for school again. I have a feeling that things are going to be different next season, either with new kinds of fans being brought in, or maybe with myself being recognized as a member of the press (which is my goal for next year). But I’m really looking foward to whatever future conventions may bring.

[Note: I’m currently compiling our photo-album from the weekend. Expect to see it posted on this site in the next day or two.]