Otakon 2008: TL;DR

I’m too lazy to do a comprehensive post on Otakon so I’ll do this and then tomorrow a loot post w/ pictures.

Guess I should do this…

THE GOOD
-Stayed with Baka-Rator and Patz who were both mega-cool
-SO MUCH AWESOME COSPLAY! I had no idea there was that much cosplay at these things, it was glorious. Took lots of shitty cellphone pictures. Favorite might have been Anthy.
-There are way less Narutards than I thought! Good percentage of crowd seemed to be true otaku
-OMFG HUEG dealer’s room
-I had 500 dollars spending money. My birthday and all.
-JAM PROJECT. THE SOULTAKER.
-The audience was amazing! I go to a lot of concerts and have been pretty consistently disappointed with audiences – I didn’t even expect people to stand up for this but everyone was up and when it was time to pump fists those fuckers kept them in the air. Beautiful. Best concert audience I’ve ever seen.
-MTF meetup and JAM QnA, I hadn’t known it was going to actually be the band, so that was glorious.  They seemed like awesome folks and it was hilarious and fun.
-EPIC KARAOKE WAS EPIC
-Both songs I did earned high praise. Got massive crowd approval when I belted out Taiyou no Mannaka e with all the soul I have even though I was so nervous I was shaking and staring directly at the lyrics sheet XD. Then I kicked even harder ass with SoulTaker and Omo said, quote ‘that was awesome’ which is all I ever wanted to hear <3
-Somewhere between hearing Soultaker and hearing Skill live and singing Soultaker and singing along with Skill at karaoke was some of the most fun I’ve ever had.
-I GOT THE LAIN FIGURE! I’ve never been able to find that motherfucker anywhere! It was sunday, I only had 35 bucks left and I just happened to spot it out of the corner of my eye, went over and it was only 30 bucks. Luckiest find ever.
-I pretty much own most of everything Yoshitoshi ABe has done. Got the Niea artbook, that new expensive-ass one, and 4 SIGNED doujins (the puchiyama trilogy and I am an alien I have a question).
-What I at first thought was a dakimakura of Chihiro from ef turned out to be a full-on bedsheet. On the down side, the fabric it’s made of likely stains easily, but I can just as easily pin it to my ceiling <333.
-Yuri panel was fucking hilarious. Even if she’s more than slightly pretentious, it’s nice to know someone else burns with as much Pure Fucking Rage as I do over Strawberry Panic and Kannazuki no Miko.
-The people selling doujins were carding people to flip through the manga but they never once questioned me. I slipped through like 50 doujins and bought 2 as well as Chihiro bedsheet all without problem. Not only am I not 18, it was exactly my 17th birthday. Guess it’s the beard.
-Got at least one thing pertaining to my favorites of everything. Favorite anime: ef: chihiro sheet. Favorite Manga: Gunslinger Girl: plushie, wallscroll, file folder… thing Favorite Anything: Boogiepop, finally got Boogiepop Dual volume 1, the second of which I’ve had for over a year and never been able to read >_> also got some good Eureka 7 stuff and more.
-Finished con with Otaku no Video. I know I’ve seen it recently, but it was just a damn epic way to finish a con especially because…
-My cousin pretty much went from a casual anime fan to a hardcore one somewhere along the line. He’s always been into cool anime, and especially artsy or well-directed ones, but sort of questioned my interest in cutesy bullshit and how I could watch anime porn. By the second day I had to talk him out of paying for hentai DVDs and he was asking me if he could borrow Haruhi. It was glorious. After seeing OnV he’s decided he wants to become a full-blown otaku.
-Roast-Beefy-Weefs is an awesome guy. The minute I met him, I instantly thought this was the beefy I know and was readily talking to him like such. The same goes for TheBigN who’s just as much as a really nice and cool guy offline as he is online. Naturally some of you bastards were better offline. Looking at Link. All smiles and sunshine on the con floor XD
-I GOT MY BADGE!
-I got out of my house and did something interesting! Yay!

THE BAD
-I completely missed Tir Na Nog dinner and couldn’t find anyone from MTF until Saturday.
-My hikkikomori friend who I brought with me hadn’t expected the place to be so crowded and overwhelming and skipped out on Saturday altogether. He brought like 400 bucks and didn’t end up buying anything, deciding he’d wait till after comiket and buy Japanese shit.
-Wildarmsheero either hates me or find me extremely unimportant =_=
-Asian Cinema: A Field Guide was boring and we walked out
-Late Friday we were too reluctant to leave and were just doing shit to do shit, leading me to Worst Panel Ever ‘games you should play’ where I promptly passed the hell out.
-I sat for about 3 fucking hours in otakafe before I got to sing and no one I knew was there to hear it. My cousin was being an asshat, but luckily EPIC KARAOKE made up for all that.
-I ate like continental breakfast on 2 days and lunch on 1 and that was it for all 4 days XD Partly accident, partly me being greedy.

Sure, the panels and stuff were pretty boring, but I spent most of my time either in the dealers room or watching cosplayers and still had a blast. Could just be because it was my first con, but it was definitely an unforgettable experience. As mentioned, somewhere between hearing soultaker live and singing it was just a once-in-a-lifetime awesomeness. It was great meeting you guys, and I’ve got 500 bucks worth of swag to remember it all by : DDDD