Entry tags:
Otakon Vol. II
The first thing I have to say about Otakon is that this July in Baltimore was sweltering. The second thing is that I gotta say, cosplaying puts a serious cramp in your congoing mobility if you're not used to it; there's a big difference between jetting around on your own, propless and comfortably dressed and fancy-free, and hauling ass in skintight baseball pants with your wooden bat over your shoulder and left-ear-deafening headset constricting your skull in its plastic jaws while stopping every ten seconds to pose for a picture with your Ma. And that's with a really easy costume. I can't even imagine how this went for Zora Link and Demo-kun*. The point is, the point at which I wanted to sit down and eat and take my headset off and not rush to the next thing I'd planned to do came a lot faster and harder than I was used to, which is something I'm going to have to take into consideration next time I go to something like this.
That being said, the third thing is that for the size of the con it really needed bigger rooms and better organization anyway, speaking as someone who never usually has problems making it to lots of panels at 100K+ San Diego Comic-Con. And the fourth thing is that it was really fun regardless and brought back a huge wave of fandom nostalgia, because since when do I go to anime conventions, anyway?
Friday Stuff:
Rideback: This was an accident. We wanted to go to Baccano!, or rather I wanted to go to Baccano! and nobody had any better ideas, but this was playing beforehand so we sat through some of it. It's. Uh. It's a mecha series about an ex-ballerina who makes friends with a robot motorbike, apparently. That's... yeah, that's about all I can say about it.
Baccano!: Wow. You know, I kept having this recommended to me, and though I've only seen four eps of it so far (two at the con and two at home) I'm impatient to see the rest, given it is a story involving Prohibition-era mobsters, the Philosopher's Stone, and non-linear storytelling, or I have no idea how I hadn't picked this up already.
Nobuo Uematsu Q&A: The main thing I was looking forward to on the con schedule! I admire the hell out of Uematsu's compositions and the FFVI-FFX world created between Square art design and his soundtrack has had an incomparable influence on my ideas of the fantastical, so I couldn't pass up the opportunity to hear him speak in person. He was charming and classy, even to the stupid questions, and apparently wanted to be a pro wrestler when he was a kid before he wanted to be a musician but was "too small." Composing takes him between 15 minutes and a week per piece, with One Winged Angel landing closer to the week's mark. It was also just really refreshing to be in a room of people who appreciate what a legend Nobuo Uematsu is; a lot of Japanophile types seem to think the games and anime they admire come out of a void of art and design and don't often think about the artists and designers who are responsible for how beautifully iconic JRPGs are in the US. Uematsu was nearly as integral to Final Fantasy as Hironobu Sakaguchi, I think, so getting to see him at a con in person -- wow.
TF2 Photoshoot 1: We missed this. Seriously, they started 15 minutes early and gave unclear directions. It wasn't on.
Saturday Stuff:
Cow: This is a Chinese dark comedy film about a Chinese peasant during WWII being charged with taking care of a cow while Japanese soldiers invade.![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
relia and I only got to see the first 20 minutes of it or so, which was a tragedy.
TF2 Photoshoot 2: We made this one! It was only the massive group poses, though, and RED and BLU divided, so mostly it was a study in finding poses to hold my bat in that didn't hurt after people's nine billion photos.
Fullmetal Alchemist: Sacred Star of Milos: This was the other thing I really wanted to see at the con, of course. It was the US premiere of it, which is a funny concept considering that anime fans are better-acquainted with Bittorrent than just about anyone, but I hadn't seen it or heard much about it before, at least. It was pretty good, I enjoyed it, albeit it was a side story with little relevance to the FMA metaplot in which pretty much just the Elrics had any major involvement and some other popular characters made token cameos. I question how this journey-to-another-imperially-oppressed-country Philosopher's-Stone-involving revolution-brewing plot happened casually between FMA episodes, exactly, but okay. We've taken to calling it "Sacred Star of Incest," on account of some really questionable sibling relations, but this is after all the series which is about two brothers, calls its main musical theme "Brothers," and has a remake named "Brotherhood," the point being that FMA was never exactly the crowned king of the Westermarck effect in the first place.
Sunday Stuff: Mostly this was rounding off the dealers' room from previous days and sitting around waiting for stuff to happen, but I ate more at the breakfast buffet. They have pretty awesome French toast, and also raspberry lime soda.
Dealers' Room/Artists' Alley: I love dealers' rooms and artists' alleys, they are half the attraction of cons to me. These were totally overrun with DRRR!! stuff this time, which threwrelia and me off for superficial reasons, but we made the rounds and I picked up some stuff that was of interest: an FMA State Alchemist's pocketwatch for future purposes, a little Roy Mustang keyfob, and Baccano! on DVD. There were a lot of shirts and series and doujin that tempted me, but I was kind of on a tight budget this time so I didn't get as much as I would've.
Other Stuff: This was my first time at this con or in Baltimore, and I wish I'd gotten to make more of the panels I'd circled, including the sillier stuff like Death Note Mafia and the have-to-see-it-once like Cosplay Burlesque, but it was incredibly hot and incredibly hard to coordinate the con activities of a group of five. Next time planning with that in consideration. There were a ton of grubby Homestuck cosplayers, not as many Hetalia cosplayers as I expected, actually, some regrettably bright blue FMA military coats, and a lot of "sexy Pikachus." And some awesome stuff, like Zora Link and some cool Frans and a dude what goes to conventions and does complicated cosplays like Jareth the Goblin King and Emperor Kuzco and rocks it. It was really really hot. People in lines need to shop shouting. There's a Noodles & Company in Baltimore, I was delighted.
My favorite person who stopped us for a photo of our costumes was at the very beginning on Friday, actually, which was a girl who greeted me with "Oh my God, Scout, you brought your Mom to a convention?"
My birthday is tomorrow! I can't remember if my birthday's ever fallen on a Tuesday before.
*this is not a typo
That being said, the third thing is that for the size of the con it really needed bigger rooms and better organization anyway, speaking as someone who never usually has problems making it to lots of panels at 100K+ San Diego Comic-Con. And the fourth thing is that it was really fun regardless and brought back a huge wave of fandom nostalgia, because since when do I go to anime conventions, anyway?
Friday Stuff:
Rideback: This was an accident. We wanted to go to Baccano!, or rather I wanted to go to Baccano! and nobody had any better ideas, but this was playing beforehand so we sat through some of it. It's. Uh. It's a mecha series about an ex-ballerina who makes friends with a robot motorbike, apparently. That's... yeah, that's about all I can say about it.
Baccano!: Wow. You know, I kept having this recommended to me, and though I've only seen four eps of it so far (two at the con and two at home) I'm impatient to see the rest, given it is a story involving Prohibition-era mobsters, the Philosopher's Stone, and non-linear storytelling, or I have no idea how I hadn't picked this up already.
Nobuo Uematsu Q&A: The main thing I was looking forward to on the con schedule! I admire the hell out of Uematsu's compositions and the FFVI-FFX world created between Square art design and his soundtrack has had an incomparable influence on my ideas of the fantastical, so I couldn't pass up the opportunity to hear him speak in person. He was charming and classy, even to the stupid questions, and apparently wanted to be a pro wrestler when he was a kid before he wanted to be a musician but was "too small." Composing takes him between 15 minutes and a week per piece, with One Winged Angel landing closer to the week's mark. It was also just really refreshing to be in a room of people who appreciate what a legend Nobuo Uematsu is; a lot of Japanophile types seem to think the games and anime they admire come out of a void of art and design and don't often think about the artists and designers who are responsible for how beautifully iconic JRPGs are in the US. Uematsu was nearly as integral to Final Fantasy as Hironobu Sakaguchi, I think, so getting to see him at a con in person -- wow.
TF2 Photoshoot 1: We missed this. Seriously, they started 15 minutes early and gave unclear directions. It wasn't on.
Saturday Stuff:
Cow: This is a Chinese dark comedy film about a Chinese peasant during WWII being charged with taking care of a cow while Japanese soldiers invade.
relia and I only got to see the first 20 minutes of it or so, which was a tragedy.TF2 Photoshoot 2: We made this one! It was only the massive group poses, though, and RED and BLU divided, so mostly it was a study in finding poses to hold my bat in that didn't hurt after people's nine billion photos.
Fullmetal Alchemist: Sacred Star of Milos: This was the other thing I really wanted to see at the con, of course. It was the US premiere of it, which is a funny concept considering that anime fans are better-acquainted with Bittorrent than just about anyone, but I hadn't seen it or heard much about it before, at least. It was pretty good, I enjoyed it, albeit it was a side story with little relevance to the FMA metaplot in which pretty much just the Elrics had any major involvement and some other popular characters made token cameos. I question how this journey-to-another-imperially-oppressed-country Philosopher's-Stone-involving revolution-brewing plot happened casually between FMA episodes, exactly, but okay. We've taken to calling it "Sacred Star of Incest," on account of some really questionable sibling relations, but this is after all the series which is about two brothers, calls its main musical theme "Brothers," and has a remake named "Brotherhood," the point being that FMA was never exactly the crowned king of the Westermarck effect in the first place.
Sunday Stuff: Mostly this was rounding off the dealers' room from previous days and sitting around waiting for stuff to happen, but I ate more at the breakfast buffet. They have pretty awesome French toast, and also raspberry lime soda.
Dealers' Room/Artists' Alley: I love dealers' rooms and artists' alleys, they are half the attraction of cons to me. These were totally overrun with DRRR!! stuff this time, which threw
relia and me off for superficial reasons, but we made the rounds and I picked up some stuff that was of interest: an FMA State Alchemist's pocketwatch for future purposes, a little Roy Mustang keyfob, and Baccano! on DVD. There were a lot of shirts and series and doujin that tempted me, but I was kind of on a tight budget this time so I didn't get as much as I would've.Other Stuff: This was my first time at this con or in Baltimore, and I wish I'd gotten to make more of the panels I'd circled, including the sillier stuff like Death Note Mafia and the have-to-see-it-once like Cosplay Burlesque, but it was incredibly hot and incredibly hard to coordinate the con activities of a group of five. Next time planning with that in consideration. There were a ton of grubby Homestuck cosplayers, not as many Hetalia cosplayers as I expected, actually, some regrettably bright blue FMA military coats, and a lot of "sexy Pikachus." And some awesome stuff, like Zora Link and some cool Frans and a dude what goes to conventions and does complicated cosplays like Jareth the Goblin King and Emperor Kuzco and rocks it. It was really really hot. People in lines need to shop shouting. There's a Noodles & Company in Baltimore, I was delighted.
My favorite person who stopped us for a photo of our costumes was at the very beginning on Friday, actually, which was a girl who greeted me with "Oh my God, Scout, you brought your Mom to a convention?"
My birthday is tomorrow! I can't remember if my birthday's ever fallen on a Tuesday before.
*this is not a typo
no subject
It sounds like you had a good time! I want to give Baccano! another try because I watched the first episode and was very meh but it was on a Youtube-type site and I apparently can't do subtitles in a three-inch window and it was unwatchably blurry in fullscreen. #mylifesohard And super jealous of the Nobuo Uematsu Q&A, the man is a legend.
no subject
As for Baccano!, I totally get being turned off by the first ep, actually, because I would've been had I not made the commitment of sitting down there through Rideback first -- it was meta and annoying and a prologue, and the plot actually started happening in Ep 2. So I have only seen four eps (hopefully watching more tonight!), but so far I have really enjoyed 2-4.