Otakon 2011 Post: I AM NOW SAD

Otakon is over once again, and I am now back at my home.

Alone.  FOREVER

I was quite pleased with my Otakon experience this year.  Actually went to all three days this time, and even spent very little time sitting around doing nothing!  Although, I somehow managed to not go to the Artist Alley at all, probably to the relief of my wallet.  Still, planning and doing is improving.  Social skills are still not improving, but being unsociable in a crowd of approximately 30,000 other otaku is better than being just plain unsociable.

So, order of events!  Barely made it into the panel in which Nobuo Uematsu answered some questions.  This actually turned out to sorta be to my detriment, as they set the panel and subsequent autograph session up oddly and things weren't communicated well and going to the panel resulted in not being able to get into the autograph session.  So...FISSION MAILED.  Oh well, I got to hear Uematsu talk and look at him.

Then watched the "premiere" of the subs of the first three episodes of the Blu-ray version of Madoka, on a nice big screen.  Quite awesome, hopefully they won't take long releasing them here, because I will buy them.

The first concert was a duo called Chemistry.  Apparently they've been around for ten years and are kinda famous maybe?  They did some music for some Gundams and some little thing that no one's ever heard of called the World Cup.  Wikipedia says their genre is J-Pop/R&B which sounds about right.  It was J-Something, but enjoyable none-the-less.  Also, I was quite impressed with their choreographed dance moves.

The Game Room was splendid.  I wish I had some of those arcade machines, especially the Dance Dance Revolution X2.  It had "only my railgun", even though it was easy but my potential AA got screwed up by some guy having to do something to the machine while we were playing and distracted me!  I want one now, I think I could afford it.

Watched the dub "premiere" of The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya (happy, Twardz?  The whole thing, dubbed).  I guess the dub wasn't terrible, but I'll still take the sub.  I had forgotten how long it was, too.

Second concert was some girl named Kylee, with the power to speak both English and Japanese fluently.  Her music was also nice.  Interestingly, she also did a song for Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn, just like Chemistry.  What with all the Bandai stuff this year (they handle Haruhi in the US, and they're going to be handling Madoka, too), it probably wasn't too much of a coincidence.

HOW ABOUT SOME RANDOM PICTURES
Or what I could salvage from them, anyways.  Turns out I am pretty much incapable of taking pictures of things that actually move without the assistance of a SLR.  Also, I am so non-confrontational that I won't even ask a cosplayer to stop moving long enough for me to take a good picture.  Also, I can't take pictures of people.  Also, point-and-shoot cameras don't really work too well at distances in large spaces.

I apologize to anyone that I took a photo of.  I'm sorry.

Snapped a quick pic with Takoluka while waiting in line for the Dealer Room to open on the first day.  Despite having Takoluka with me the whole time, I didn't bother taking any pics with it.

A blurry Kyubey.

Bluefin had this bitchin' Unicorn display at their booth.  I want one!

They also had a lot of figures on display.  I guess they don't like Decade.

Some Puella Magi at the Bandai booth.

The blurry grey-haired dude there in the back-center is Nobuo Uematsu!

Random mob.  I think those were Hetalia cosplayers.

Random shot of the main area where cosplayers gathered.

I snuck a photo of Aya!

There were a lot of contracted magical girls there.

Deadpool vs Deadpool.

Another random shot.  Surprisingly few Final Fantasy people this year!

That is someone cosplaying the Movie version of the Transformer Ravage.

A Sister of Battle, with a bad case of blur.

Random shot.

SNAKE!  YOU'LL CREATE A TIME PARADOX!

Lots of Panties and Stockings around.

Some ICE CAR

Touhous playing vidya.

I think there might be a few assassins hiding out down there.

God.  Damned.  CREEPERS.

I think this was the most clever cosplay I saw - a 2D 16-bit Samus.  I think the person was wearing a screen of some sort, too.

But those are just random pictures!  Let's get on to the important part, THE LOOT.

TOYS!  Before going, I was pretty much thinking, "I'll get Robot Damashii Avalanche Exia from the Bluefin booth".  And so I did.  Decided to grab the Cure MOOOOOOOOOOONLIGHTO gashapon sorta-randomly since she's the coolest Pretty Cure ever and I don't know how I feel about the Figuarts yet.  Tandem Twin Dog Girl Alma is covered in spikes but she still looks awesome and most importantly getting her means I've finished my Tandem Twin set yay!  Nendoroid Kuroneko because I wanted to buy a Nendoroid for some reason and no one had Alphard and I kinda wanted her anyways.  Guess I'll finish watching Oreimo now.  Picspams of this stuff will hopefully be coming over the next week or so.

MUSIC!  As I found their music to be good, and their dancing impressive, I wanted to give Chemistry some money.  The doujin booth (if you spend time in anime convention dealer rooms, you probably know who they are) also sells a bunch of Touhou stuff, so I looked through their CDs some and saw one from Cool and Create that also had nice art of Aya so I thought "why not?"  Random CD that is a big mix of a bunch of game music from some DJ guy, a bunch of them were dumped on the DDR X2 machine so went ahead and took one, doesn't seem so bad so far.  Would have also bought some Kylee music, but I had run out of the cash so I'll just buy some online.

SHIRTS!  Random Portal 2-themed shirt using that British WW2 propaganda poster as a theme, which seems to be popular lately.  Otakon's 2011 shirt, and Otakon's charity shirt.  I actually hadn't bought Otakon shirts in quite a few years.  I think last year I was stopped because their shirt was a kind of horrible baby blue color.

ARTY THINGS!  Charity Madoka poster that Otakon was selling, and a Madoka postcard someone gave me at the Bandai booth.  The Bandai booth was also giving away fuckhuge Lucky Star posters so I helped myself to one.  My selected artbook for the con was an Asobi ni Iku yo! artbook I found, which is entirely art from the light novels, I guess, and none of the anime stuff.

PORN!  Persona 3 Portable yuri in which FeMC dominates all the other girls, pretty much.  Randomly-selected book about that succubus girl that's from that card game or whatever, Astarotte?  The Aya book has Aya getting raped by Reimu.  /u/'s been talking about Escalation a bit lately, so I was thinking of ordering it, but conveniently the doujin booth was selling it for the same price the people releasing the game for here are.

ALL HAIL IKEA!  Uh...I stopped by Ikea on the way home to return some stuff and grab a couple more of their LACK tables.  I also ate a cinnamon bun from their cafe thing.

AND BEFORE I FORGET LIKE I JUST DID
One of the most interesting things at the con...as it's the middle of summer, there are naturally plenty of people with coolers gathered around the convention center entrance hawking water.

One man, however, stands above them all.  I won't try to explain him.  I'll just link these videos I found.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DE29x2iV63Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuQMCZaCFs0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9zowP0tM-E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhQC4UX6LJ0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjX8h35P8vk
Surely, you will agree with me that this Water Guy is only the greatest water guy ever.
He shall become a legend, and I will have to remember to video him next year.

Hopefully Otakon will be just as interesting next year.  Maybe I will be more sociable.  Maybe I will take better pictures.  Who knows!

But I am quite seriously considering the idea of cosplaying as a male Reisen.  I've already got a suit jacket that'd probably work, would just need some appropriately-colored pants, bunny ears, and a light pink wig.

WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG