Luke VS Otakon

I confess. I'm not planning on following up my previous entry. Maybe I'll put some gratuitous pictures of the Giant Tree at the end of this entry. Or maybe I won't! Who knows! Not even The Shadow knows!

That's not the point of this entry, though. Even though I'm now devoid of a suitable camera, and have been for some time, I feel it is my duty to report on my recent adventures to the city of Baltimore, Maryland--for that mecca of anime nerds, the largest Japanophile convention on this side of the planet: Otakon.

Over the past year or so I've become a heavily jaded fan of anime and Japanese-related things. I've seen and heard of too many people become obsessed to a fault over the superiority of Japanese multimedia over our own, and after spending a good month and a half in that very country, I've had a lot of second and third thoughts. In short, I've turned my back on anime and manga at large. That's not to say I dislike it, merely that I'm many times more wary of it. I still consider the top animators from Japan to be some of the best ever, but I've seen too much other beautiful animation from other countries besides Japan to put as much faith in it as I once did.

Shows with giant robots still turn me on, though.

In any case, my brother decided not to do 1812 Reenactments with my dad this past weekend, for various reasons, and since Otakon happened to be on that same weekend, he figured that was a suitable substition. I agreed to drive him (Baltimore is a mere 45 miles from here), and off we went on Saturday.

Otakon was a Friday-Saturday-Sunday event, but we only went for one day. Now, as everyone knows, I've been to Transformers conventions. I've been to the largest one each year, save one, since 2000. That convention usually gathers 4-5000, a respectable number.

This one, however, was an entirely different ballpark. Otakon, as a quick search on Wikipedia tells me, has been running since 1994, which makes it one year older than Botcon, the Transformers convention. Evidently anime fans have enjoyed a much larger and much more exponential increase in fandom since 1994, since the brochure for this year's meeting informed me that they expected a whopping 22,000 attendees. That's larger than the town I go to school in!

Another thing a person may not realize about anime conventions is the tradition of "cosplay," which, if you don't feel like reading wikipedia, is another word for "dressing up in ridiculously complex costumes in order to represent your favorite anime/videogame character." This is extremely common at anime conventions, and since Otakon is the largest, it was even moreso. At a guess, I would expect a full one-third of the attendees to have been in costume.

Most costumes were from anime of some sort (there was an abundance of Naruto-related costumery), but nobody thought the lesser of folk dressed as video game characters, or even completely unrelated costumes. I saw at least two Enterprise officers, as well as some Twi'Leks engaged in a lightsaber duel. If you know what a Twi'Lek is, you gain +10 nerd points. I also found that for every common anime costume, there are two versions: the regular version, and the morbidly obese version. This is true for both male and female costumes.

Also notable about anime conventions is the non-gender-specificity. While Botcon is by no means an all-male convention, the females are definitely few and far between. Otakon, and I imagine anime cons in general, are far more gender-neutral. There were far more (attractive) females than any Botcon I've ever attended. I must note, as well, that at anime conventions, cross-dressing is not only acceptable, it seems to be encouraged.

In fact, a female dressed as Link, the Hero of Hyrule, was responsible for one of the more breathtaking parts of the convention. But more on that later.

After registering, and walking around in awe of the insanely detailed costumes parading by, and spending a little money in the (enormous) dealer's room, I decided to take a break. While leafing through the convention brochure in a nearby Starbucks, I encountered a blurb about an attraction named "Geppi's Entertainment Museum." I recognized the building as being very close to the center, and made it my next destination.

The Museum was located on the upper floor of an old Train Station, sharing the rest of the space with a Sports Legends-themed museum. Geppi's museum, to my utter delight, was a small space dedicated to the history of Pop Culture in America. I've long desired to see a museum devoted entirely to Pop Culture, and was previously unaware that such a thing existed. In short it was beyond my wildest expectations. There was one entire room displaying comics from the 30s and 40s to the present (a small wonder, considering the museum is owned and was created by the owner of Diamond Comic Distributors), as well as another area displaying only Star Wars collectibles and nothing else. Basically it was the greatest thing ever.

I spent an hour and half ogling original Walt Kelley prints, and had a chat with one of the museum workers about the place and about Otakon. She told me Otakon had risen in popularity dramatically in the past few years, and as a result the quality of the costumes had suffered. Regardless, she told me, I should go back for the event called the "Masquerade," in which members of the convention present short skits, and afterward the best costumes of the weekend are paraded out. Basically it was a nerd talent show.

I did return in time to wait on a titanic line bordering the entire building, which fortunately moved quickly as soon as the doors opened. My brother joined me momentarily. The theater where the Masquerade took place was immense, clearly intended to provide for large concerts or maybe an awesome laser-light show. The people onstage were barely visible from our vantage point, but thankfully there were two titanic screens which provided decent viewing of the skits.

There were around 40 skits in all, ranging from the embarrassingly bad (a lone nerd playing out shaky renditions of Zelda tunes on an ocarina, joined by an awkward friend who, we are told, forgot his instrument) to the completely contrived (the entire "Charlie the Unicorn" sequence reenacted by Kingdom Hearts characters); to the freakin' amazing (more on that in just a sec). The parading of costumes, afterward, was also quite satisfying.

Now, since I don't have any pretty pictures to show you, I decided I'd do something a bit different. Fortunately for me, some kind souls illegally recorded some skits during the masquerade, and uploaded them onto our favorite YouTube! That's right, free videos! And I found footage of some of my favorite skits, as well...

Firstly, we have a bunch of unusally acrobatic nerds dressed as Street Fighter characters jumping and vaulting around and performing various video-game inspired moves, all to music. Their choreography is actually pretty great, and their kicks and leaps are very accurate to the impossible gravity-defying special moves they are trying to imitate.



That was pretty cool, but this next one is the one I will remember for the rest of my nerd days. This little girl, dressed as Link, mentioned earlier, flounced out onto the stage, tossed aside her shield, and drew from her scabbard not the Blade of Evil's Bane, but a shiny gold flute. She raised it to her lips and proceeded to play what I can only describe as the most intense arrangement of Zelda melody that I have ever heard, to the delight and astonishment of the audience. It really must be seen and heard to believe, and fortunately this is possible via YouTube. You may have to raise your volume, as this video is particularly low.



She received a couple Judge's awards, but nothing else--I don't know why, as most of the other skits were pretty tame in comparison to this.

The rest of Otakon was mostly spent walking around and staring at the awesome costumes, but I have one more thing for you before signing off:

SPECIAL BONUS!! Footage of Nerd Rave! You must watch this until at least the 1:20 mark so you can see the person dressed as a Wii Controller. Dancing.



Thought I do not, perhaps, share the fandom's enthusiasm for the media, I thoroughly enjoyed myself at Otakon, and will, perhaps, attend again.