I went to Otakon this weekend so for those of you who care to know this is what happened
Thursday:
All Thursday usually entails is us picking up our badges for the con. We might have to wait in line for an hour or so but that’s not too bad. Thing was, the first preseason Ravens game just happened to be Thursday night meaning traffic was going to be all kinds of hell. Knowing this, we opted to wait until 8:00 to pick up our badges. In fact, we even took the light rail to completely bypass all traffic. No big deal right? Well this year the con staff had a system failure so for 3 hours that day (they opened at 2pm) no one got processed so the line zigzagged and looped around the Convention Center four times! In other words, out of the 35,000 attendees to the con, 20,000 were outside waiting at the same time! The worst part was that by 10:30 at night they had to cut off the line because Convention Center policy demanded that no one be left inside after midnight (despite the fact that Friday and Saturday go to 2am!) And so my group returned home in defeat after two hours since we were only 50% through the line when it was cut off.
Friday:
After the farce that was the day before, we woke up at 6am and moved our asses to be at the Convention Center early so that we’d be close to the front of the line which still looped around once. Knowing that they screwed up though, the staff opened the doors early to get a head start in processing people so we ended up getting inside the same time we would have on a normal day.
Our first order of business was an Anime called Witchcraft Works which is about two rival groups of witches trying to kidnap a guy because they want him for his body, specifically the white stuff inside it. As you can imagine, when they tell him this he completely gets the wrong idea and thinks they want to rape him. Hilarity ensues. It was only the first 3 episodes so I can’t say much more than that.
Next, I watched Journey to the West, a movie based on my favorite book. Thanks to watching Witchcraft Works though, I ended up missing the first half hour. The storyline was completely different than the book, but since I knew the lore I was able to predict how certain events would turn out as well as who certain characters were before they were ever named. Naturally when his Majesty Sun Wukong the Monkey King appeared I got out of my seat and kneeled before my Master. The best part was he was as powerful and evil as ever!
After lunch, I got my Haruhi DVDs signed by Haruhi herself, Wendee Lee! It amused me because I always thought she’d be the last member of the cast I’d get to sign my DVDs. Only two more to go!
When walking to dinner later that day I local city boy came up to me and the following conversation took place:
Boy: I bet you be Dracula.
Me: I am not.
Boy: Who you be den?
Me(in my Lelouch voice): I am Zero.
Boy: Who dat be?
Me(turning up the ham): The Man Who Works Miracles!
Boy: 0_0 Ok. *walks away*
If I wasn’t carrying bags and my mask, I would have put my hand over my left eye for more
trolling entertainment! XD
The only other eventful thing to happen was the panel about the beautiful but deadly creature called the Yandere. For those who don’t know, yandere means “crazy love” and is when you have a girlfriend (or boyfriend because males can be yandere too) who loves you so much you become the reason they live and if you do something foolish like reject their love, people die. Depending on the yandere either the people around you die because they are competition for your time and attention or you die because you would dare reject their love. There was even a flow chart on how to live if you piss off your yandere. If you don’t do what the flow chart says, you end up with a Nice Boat. I fell into uncontrolable laughter at this point. XD One interesting thing I learned was that since yandere is a state of mind, it doesn’t have to just be directed at a person. It can be directed to an object like a PRECIOUS ring. So yeah, Gollum is yandere for the One Ring. When Q&A time came, I decided to test my luck with this:
Me: How would one maintain an active social life and a happy yandere?
Yandere Host: Take her with you!
Me: What about a guy’s night out?
YH: You would rather spend time with them than ME!? After everything you learned tonight?
Me(As submissive as possible): I-it was just a question… I’m sorry…
YH: You better be!
She was just teasing of course so I decided to play along and enjoy the show. It was an awesome panel and the sequel is supposed to come out next year.
Saturday:
We started the day with two mistakes. The first was deciding that there wasn’t anything we wanted to do until 10am so that made it ok to sleep in and leave my house at 9am. The second mistake was not checking the traffic report before leaving. The Charles Street Race was Saturday morning which made traffic not moving! I’m losing what little sanity I have because the Code Geass photoshoot is at 10 and I’m nowhere near the Con at 9:45! As soon as we got out of traffic and were able to park, I ran to the Con! Luckily I made it with five minutes to spare so I was able to go to the bathroom and straiten myself up to be the sexy Zero that I am and catch my breath.
After the shoot we watched the Anime Brynhildr followed by JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. Both were pretty good. Next we watched the AMV contest which had so many great and funny videos in it.
There were things we wanted to do after the AMVs, but we got wind that the line for Voice Actors After Dark was forming so we went straight there even if that meant sitting around for 3hours because that is the single best panel of the Con. Most of the voice actor at the Con gather into one room and answer questions and tell stories for an 18+ crowd. What made this year better than the rest was the VAs had Cards Against Humanity and were creating scenarios with them. For those of you not in the know, Cards Against Humanity is similar to Apples to Apples, but full of memes and adult situations not suitable for the younger crowds. There was also an interpreter for deaf people there so the VAs decided it would be fun to get him to do signs for some of the cards like skull fucking, legless horse, and other hilarious shenanigans that made me wonder how these signs were ever conceived or if the deaf people would even know what he was saying!
Sunday:
We only watched two things on this day before deciding there was nothing left worth doing. The first thing we watched was Smuggler, a movie about two rival mafia factions going at it and the freelance smugglers who ended up working for both of them. The last thing we watched was Mekaku City Actors which is an Anime I’ve heard good things about from
@Kyubeon but never got the chance to watch until now. It’s weird as hell and bounces around a lot but it didn’t disappoint.
