Otakon 2001: Con Report

So what really went down? What did the city of crime and otaku have in store for us?

Thursday, August 9(yes, 9!): No sleep was gotten this night, as Scott stayed up late (again), compiling the movie into one big file. Rationale for doing so? When playing the movie as a bunch of seperate files in premire, we had the problem of little black flashes occuring throughout, when the video feed couldn't keep up. Scott and Jon were also working in the "Army of Darkness" trailer at the end, with Devin and Carol spot-checking audio in the other room. I [Lukas] was also up late, finishing up chainmail and making "Otakudom" flyers. That's right. In the hustle and bustle of everything, we still didn't have much promotional material, other than the cast T-shirts that we would all be wearing. The end result, six different flyer designs, and a sleepless Lukas.

Friday, August 10: The madness began at 5:30 AM, as the main component of the "Otakudom" crew met in uptown Princeton to arrange rides and the like. Last minute copying was done at Kinko's, so that we have roughly thirty flyers. An emergency trip was made to Wawa to stock up on food stuffs. The 4 apple pies (monetary value of $2), composed fifty percent of my food diet for the weekend. Slight problems arose in divying up seats, as Transfan Lukas insisted that he be in the same vehicle as Jeremy (It's an Autobot thang). Wih seats finally divyed up, the crew was ready to "roooooll out!"

After a brief stopover to use the restrooms and get more food, we made it to Baltimore, where we proceeded to circle our hotel, the Wyndham, roughly five times in an effort to find non-valet parking. In the end, the hotel staff told us to park in the public garage that had a bright "Parking lot full, do not park here" sign in front of the entrance. Wild man Devin, with his policy of "no slower than 80 miles per hour at any time," had made it well ahead of the rest of us. But only when Scott, Yosh, and Desiree there were we able to check into the rooms. The good news was that all our rooms were right next to each other. The bad news was that none of the rooms were conncted with each other. With the bags put away, and the only two people (Jeremy and Lukas) whose sause was not of the weak variety in costume, we walked over to register for the con.

If there's only one thing to learn about Otakon on Friday, it is that you never ever preregister. When we got to the front door, we saw an amazingly long line. Jeremy was scared, because he assumed it was the register line (as he had not preregistered). Not so. The on-site registration line was only ten minutes long. The rest of us had to wait an hour while we walked the line that snaked through three floors of the convention center. What was cool, though, was that I got to wait in line behind a big-time celebrity, Merekat of Megatokyo fame. I, in perfect fanboy form, couldn't even produce a coherent sentence for the first five minutes.

Ater registering, things really hit the big time. Jeremy, in his straw Mojo costume, and to a lesser extent me in my hand-made chain mail vest, were swarmed with requests for pictures the entire weekend. Of course, Jer got more props for the foam nail through his chest, but several times that weekend people commented on the fine work that was done on the vest (the two pairs of hands that made it being Scott's hands and my own). It was also satisfying to be able to scoff at the other Serges that had come in grey shiny cloth, trying to pass it off as chain mail. And the one other Serge who had chain mail? Well, let's just say "Aluminum, inferior, stainless steel, superior."

Scott went up to meet Matt to give him his cast shirt, the final version of the parody, etc. I'd write more, but I wasn't there.

Surprisingly, the first thing that we caught that weekend was the music video contest. A super early (in my experience, at least) screening was held noon on Friday. Although it was customary practice in years before to watch the Friday past-midnight screening, many Otakon newbies in our group didn't want to stay up that late, so we all went to the matinee.

Overall, I felt the dramatic categories were a little lackluster this year. There were real good ones, I admit. My personal favorite was the "In the End" by Linkin Park video done to Trigun. I also liked the Miyuzaki tribute done to "The Mummer's Dance." It had a lot of cool effects that i wish we had learned to use, but I still feel that the '99 entry to Mononoke Hime for the same song was a stronger video. I also think the "Hit Me" Utena video was misplaced. I don't mean to say it was a bad video. The way the creator split the screen into different sections to show multiple things at once was nicely done, but people will remember that one for how funny it was, not for how dramatic it was. That said, the Action and Humor categories were devestatingly impressive this year. Doki Doki's "Right Now" was fabulous; I admit that their earlier Ghost in the Shell made me believe that text was no good to convey story in music videos, but this one simply blew me away. I also liked the Survivor video; mostly because it had Hot Rod and Vash in it, but it mimiced the Survivor opening very closely, from the black & white photo graphs to the weird shaky camera stuff. Action Upbeat? Well, what can I say , except that after seeing "Happy Boys and Girls" I really really want to see Digi Charat.

So after the music videos, a bunch of us went to the dealers room. Much to my dismay, not one dealer had the new Transformer Fire Convoy, leaving me with only the God Magnus part of God Fire Convoy. I did, however, procure a soundtrack to Dance Dance Revolution: Disney's Rave, which I am now seriously considering modding my PSX in order to play. I also picked up my obligatory Otakon 2001 con shirt; much of my purchasing power would be flexed Sunday.

With merchandise in our Con-supplied plastic bags, we mosied on over to our main food supplier for the weekend: Burger King. The cheapest place to get food near the con, pretty much every meal I got that could be considered a meal was at Der Burger Fuher. The only thing I could find so bad with it that I would want to complain was that you could never tell if the Dr Pepper tap was working or not.

After this, I went to check out the Megatokyo panel. Lots of fun. I didn't believe the vibrating sheep of DOOM existed, but there it was, in all its glory. Got a sneak peek at the Megatokyo Memorial poster, which I am very much thinking of getting when/if it goes up for sale. I had to cut out early, though; Jer wanted to take off his Mojo costume for the rest of the night, to save wear & tear so we'd look good for the costume judging the next day.

When Jeremy and I got back, it was already time to start lining up for Mystery Anime Theater 3000. Man, did we get shafted. And by we, I mean me, Jeremy, DJ, and Mike. DJ was good enough to wait out the end of the MT panel for us, to invite Piro-san and Largo-san to see our parody. But alas, they were busy. And somehow, we met up with Mike. The gophers were really good at their jobs this year. No amount of space saving by the other people would get us a place in line. However, Luck was on the side of our four intrepid heroes. We were pretty much at the end of the line, and we despaired for our chances to get in. Many times, there were false alarms, where we stood up and then the line would not move. But the last time, when the line really did start to move, for some wacky wacky reason, the opened up one of the side doors right in front of where we stood. As a result, our possible half an hour wait to get inside was reduced to about half a minute. MAT3K was quite funny. I had never seen Samurai Shodown before, but judging from the screening, that was a validation of my better taste. And I don't care what the rules are for spirit guides; small, living, organic... bah. My spirit guide is OMEGA PRIME and only OMEGA PRIME!!! Accept no substitutes. The preshow channel number "skits" were amusing enough. although I was personally rallying for 37 myself. Heh. Thirty-seven...

After Mystery Anime, Jeremy busted out his Glo-Sticks and went to the rave. As there was no food to be gotten, what with all the Baltimore food stores smartly closed, I made the treck back to the Wyndham and fell on the floor to catch some Zs.

Saturday, August 11: It's Saturday, the most celebrated day of the con! If there's only one day you come to Otakon, it's Saturday. And I started... on the floor underneath the esk in our room. I was dead tired, and wasn't getting up till I was good and ready. This was due in no small part to the lack of sleep I had gotten the night before. Early in the morning (nine AM), most of the crew were up and ready to catch FLCL (Furi Kuri), the new Gainax series. Unfortunately, everyone in my room was not. So we slept for an extra hour. Unluckily for the rest of the crew, FLCL was cancelled for reasons still unknown. But back at my perspective, it was ten by the time I woke up.

As I was getting into costume, the others in the room convinced me to use some blue hair spray, to further the effect of being Serge. It worked... somewhat. Thankfully, in the pictures I took, my hair looked pretty nice and blue. I only hope that it looked just as good in the pictures that other people took. Saturday, however, was the day that the parody was going to be shown. Going to the costume judging in a grey t-shirt, however, would have been costume suicide. I had to stay in costume, and I couldn't wear the shirt over it because putting the shirt on and off would have mussed my spiked and spray-painted hair. So to compensate, I decided to pin one of the flyers onto my back. specifically, this[LINK] one.

So, back to the con we went. Before doing anything else, I went down to the artist's gallery to talk to Piro of MT. Lucky for me, he agreed to do a sketch for me. So with that taken care of, I went on the the next plan of business. My plan was to meet up with Jeremy at the FLCL showing, go get his costume on, and then go wait in line for the costume judging. Good plan, eh? [Course it's a good plan! It's mine, idn'it?] Couldn't go wrong, could it?
Problem 1: Finding Video Room 6. FLCL was showing then, and so all I had to do was go to Video 6. Unfortunately, just because the convention center map showed the video room being right next to video room 5, does not mean it is as easily acessible as video room 5. All the energy I had managed to regain by sleeping was depleted just by walking through the entire convention center trying to find my way to FLCL, not to mention all the time padding I had giving myself by leaving really early. At least, I think it was early; I didn't have a watch on.
Problem 2: As I mentioned earlier, FLCL was cancelled. What I did not tell you was that this was knowledge I gained only in retrospect. I had no clue that the porgramming had been switched. So, you can imagine my surprise when I got to the video room and there was anime showning that was very clearly not FLCL. And since the anime Jeremy wanted to watch was no longer being shown, he was no longer there. Jeremy not locatable: problems abound. With no better plan, I roamed the halls of the con, trying to find my hay-contruction companion, but with no success. Dejected, I headed down to the dealers to try and console myself with overpriced merchandise. I had given up, and decided that the only else we had to look forward to for the rest of the day would be the parody showing. And that's when, in the middle of perusing the Dance Dance Revolution soundtracks, a hand came down on my shoulder, and I heard the familiar refrain of "Mien Shnowzer!"

With Jeremy collected, as it were, we hightailed it back to the Wyndham to put on his costume.

Coming Soon: More Saturday and Sunday!