To kick off the final batch of pictures, here we have Mega Man! Who also shows up elsewhere in my report, btw…
This girl is supposed to be a Pokeman, I think…
I love dudes that dress up as Jack Sparrow, cuz they always go all out with the mannerisms; even when they’re just walking around, with NO BODY in sight, they still act like drunken Johnny Depp. Or maybe it’s just this guy…
At this point of the day, people are starting to become a tad bit anxious and bored. So here’s a conga line that started from out of nowhere…
… Also at this point, people began to get smelly. I mean really smelly.
Okay, time for yet another panel! This one was “Video Games That Push Our Buttons” and it too had a crazy long line to get in. But since I really needed to rest my legs from all the walking around and taking pictures, I didn’t the wait. I’m fairly certain that none of the panels, regardless of the subject matter or audience had much trouble filling seats since there was only six or so going on at any one time, and about 30,000 people just floating around, looking for stuff to check out. Anyhow, it was run by a bunch of dudes cosplaying as assorted Marvel characters, and one guy as Mega Man (pictured above), and despite the fact that I myself do the snarky, surly gamer dork that rips into other gamers and the games themselves routine, my tolerance for the same by others is rather short. Seems kind of egotistical I know, but in my defense, at least I don’t do some lame ass Yahtzee or Angry Nintendo Nerd impression like so many others. Hence why I had zero expectations going in, but ended being pleasantly surprised!
As the title somewhat implies, its about all the stupid things that are in games, some of which we take for granted and ignore, while others we can’t help but be annoyed by, yet still willingly accept. The best part was how each of the four speakers concentrated on a specific area, and everyone had their own mini PowerPoint presentation. Though a good ten minutes in the beginning was eaten up by their inability to fire the damn thing up, which was a problem for virtually every single presenter that weekend for whatever reason (sorry but PowerPoint is like the easiest thing to use, ever). Anyway, many of the presentations were actually funny and even informative! The one dude dressed as Deadpool, and especially another dressed as Spider Man, had impeccable deliveries; I really wish they gave out a URL or something, since they must have a blog or some YouTube channel out there that I’d love to check out. Perhaps my favorite one centered on Streets of Rage, everything from the absurd power-ups, to the bizarre city in which everything takes place, and even the various occupations of those under the employment of the game’s big bad guy…
Another guy concentrated on management games and did all the art himself, which I found to be super charming…
A good chunk of time was spent on Pokemon…
All was not perfect though. I hate to say this, not just because I’ve given Mega Man fans flack already, in part 3 of my report, and how the one in question really seemed like a nice dude, especially when I took his picture, but I found his presentations to be a tad bit lacking. When going over the ridiculousness of the various bosses in Mega Man, he did make some valid and legitimately humorous points, though his need to drag things out for comedic effect tried my patience after a while. But when the subject of racist game characters came up, he again referred to Mega Man bosses as a source of lulz, and the best he could come up with was… Flame Man? Seriously? I still can’t believe he totally forgot about Oil Man, from Mega Man Powered Up, who is basically a tar baby! Give me a break.
As somewhat hinted at throughout my report, the people who make up much of the audiences at these panels are a curiosity to say the least, but here, they were a flat-out headache. Like the one guy next to me, who aside from smelling really bad, had to get in on the joking around by basically repeating whatever joke one of the panelists just said, practically word for word (like I said, a lot of animu fans think they’re funny… but they’re not). Then you had this one girl; during the aforementioned racist game character panel, Master Onion from PaRappa the Rapper was pointed out (it’s highly debatable whether he’s an unflattering Asian stereotype, though at least the argument and the choice itself was an original one), and out of the blue this one girl began having diarrhea of the mouth, by going on about how much she hated the game because her older sister kept playing that game when she wanted to play PlayStation and so forth. Again, some of the folks who come to the show are not able to converse with like-minded people, or at least those who are somewhat familiar with the same sh*t they’re into, so once they have a chance to be hear, look out.
Then again, something I totally forgot to mention from that Mega Man panel from part 3: there was this mother in front of me, with a crying baby, and she did everything to quiet her down. It was clear that she was restless and maybe even hungry. So what does the mom do to keep the baby occupied and therefore quiet? Gave it a bottle of Advil to play with. Never mind that it would probably not bet able to open the thing up, thanks to it’s anti-infant cap, that’s still pretty f’d up. But moving on…
Afterwards was easily of the more obscure costumes of the weekend, the big bad guy from Samurai Jack!
And here’s Scorpion from Mortal Kombat, the MK3 variant to be precise…
At this point, everyone was just bored out of their skulls; it was getting somewhat late and with nothing to do. Sure there were some panels still going on, but nothing of the caliber of 4chan’s, which would have been going on at that point. So this gigantic dance party erupted in the main floor…
… I could have sworn that I saw the girl dressed as Optimus making out with the other Transformer girl. Anyhow, eventually, everyone got out of the way to watch the dude dressed as Eddy from Tekken 3, whose moves are based on Capoeira, engage in a dance off with some other guy (in addition to being proficient at break dancing, guy portraying Eddie actually knew some Capoeira himself)…
… Later, the girls dressed as Transformers offered themselves as human obstacles for the dancing dudes to jump over, which wowed the crowd (sorry, but all my pictures from that came out way too blurry). Then more people got into the mix, and soon disaster seemed imminent. Right before their next big jump, these two guys cosplaying as Bleach characters I think began dancing all over the place and getting in the line of fire, much to the annoyance of everyone. Such a strange scene. Eventually Otakon staff eventually showed up to break things up, which in the end was the best possible call.
Yet another oldie but goodie, some Cardcaptor Sakura characters…
Vocaloids were kind of everywhere, and these two were easily my favorite…
It’s Shiva, but white, and Chris from Resident Evil 5….
Some girl cosplaying as sushi…
Like I said before, I like Yuna from Final Fantasy X, but not so hot about Final Fantasy X-2, but this trio was still pretty impressive. Again, I think it’s because they’re Asian…
Here we have Kratos, the God of War, but instead of swinging around blades, he’s got glowsticks instead…
You always see Sonic in his native, blue form (see part 5), but can’t say I’ve ever see someone cosplay him as Super Sonic…
Time for yet another Persona cosplayer, this time a dude as Yukari!
These two from Sengoku Basara, aka Devil Kings to us gaijin, was mighty awesome…
Not sure about these two I’m afraid, but dig the threads….
… I think the one dressed as a guy is a girl, and vice versa, btw. I think.
And this one I’m not sure about either, though I think she’s from some JRPG…
Once again, Hard Gay…
And Master Chief tea-bagging Hard Gay, who?s clearly loving it…
By this point it was close to midnight, so the 18+ only panels were in full swing yet again, and decided to take a chance on “Sailor Moon’s Influence in Hentai”. Guess it goes without saying that the line for this one was ginormous; I’m fairly certain that those at the very front had been waiting for close to two hours. Meanwhile, I showed up maybe ten minutes before it started moving, way at the ass end, and still got in, thanks to the gigantic space it took place in. Sucks to be those people because, dear God, what a f*cking waste of time. Things started off promising enough; the moderators were fairly entertaining and appeared to know their stuff, plus the opening PowerPoint held a lot of promise…
… A few clips from two sexed up parodies were shown, the God-awful Sailor Moon And The 7 Balls and the surprisingly decent Papillon Rose. And then it quickly turned to sh*t. For a panel that was advertised as having hentai, there was I’d say only 15% actual sexual content. The rest of the hour had various people from the audience come up to the stage and do their take on assorted Sailor Moon poses. That’s it. For close to an hour. I can’t believe people waited for close to two hours for this nonsense, and I bet they couldn’t either. Seriously, worst anime convention panel ever. And what a note to end the day on.
Day 3
Funny enough, the very next morning’s panel, “Without Watching The Anime: Opening & Ending Themes”, which I almost blew off due to the time and how virtually every other panel up till that point had been such annoying disappointments, turned out to be best of the entire weekend! The concept was simple and the execution could not have been more perfect; just a guy on a laptop playing assorted beginning and endings to anime over the years. Everything from Astroboy to K-On! and a bit of everything from in-between. Before each one, he’d pass along some historical context or simply an observation that simply proved that this person absolutely knew his sh*t. The fact that he was articulate, concise, and organized was also vastly appreciated. He had totally won me over when he played the opening to Lain, and that was before proclaiming that one of the best openings ever was for Honey & Clover.
Anyway, my final day at Otakon was rather brief, even shorter than day one. There wasn’t a whole lot to do… the game room closed early, plus hardly any panels were going on. I think everyone in attendance can agree that there just wasn’t enough programming, despite the addition of the hotel hosting stuff. Sure Saturday was stacked, but that’s a given, and what about the rest of the weekend, specifically Sunday? Yet, there was still a surprisingly amount of people running around in cosplay, including Quote, whom I ran into on my way to the ATM…
Oh shi-, you gotta believe!
Hey, another BlazBlue character…
Even on Sunday, people were still dressed as Persona characters. Don’t think this particular Fuuka was around on Friday…
And I already passed along her picture before, but since I like Margaret so much, plus it’s of far better quality, why the hell not…
Even Santa Claus decided to stop by the convention!
Again, no idea who these girls are, but the outfits are neat…
About time there was some Digimon cosplay…
And finally, Mario cosplay is dime a dozen at these kind of shows, but this guy’s mustache is REAL…
… Had thought about sticking around till the very end, for the closing ceremonies, which includes the post-con gripe session. And Lord knows, I had more than a few things to say, plus it was pointed out that the heads of state would be there and therefore an excellent opportunity to introduce myself and sell my own panel ideas for next year. But in that would have meant getting stuck in traffic with everyone else trying to head home. Guess that’s what the official Otakon message board is for, plus I have at least one potentially helpful email address. Anyway, guess that’s it? It was… a show all right. At least I got some interesting pics from it.
Next stop, and for something entirely different, South Philly for the big US premiere of Dragon Gate this weekend! I honestly can’t think of any group more different from animu dorks than hardcore wrestling nerds. Fairly certain that they will not want me to take pictures of them…
