TIN'S POINT OF VIEW!
MY OTAKON 2004 ADVENTURE

Okay, initially things for Otakon were not looking too bright. First, my stupid contacts (or my eyes) were misbehaving. My eyes kept burning and I couldn’t put my contacts in, which is rather cruddy since I can’t drive long distances with my glasses. So, already, we left late (Sorry, Tal!) Then, there was this horrendous amount of traffic on the way there. I mean, we’re talking about butt-cramp-from-sitting-down-too-long bad. We get to Baltimore after a 2-hour drive (which should’ve only taken 1 hour – darn gridlock!) and we see this huuuuuuuuuuuuuuge line that just about wrapped around the convention center. But we figured, hey, we’re here now, let’s go park. We park, stumble our way around in trying to find the line: we started following this one dude with a badge and a this girl in a kimono & obi and figured we were going in the right direction somewhat. We tack ourselves at the very end of the line, thanks to a very helpful Ed (from Cowboy Bebop) in front of us. About 5-10 minutes of waiting there, some random dude finishes walking & counting and announces “678 steps to the beginning of the line!” Thanks, for telling us, buddy, it’s kinda good to know, but in the words of many of the people on the line & Will Smith from I, Robot, “Keep that kind of $%!# to yourself….” But, thanks, just the same.

So, itunfortunately we’re all sweating. Really unpleasant. The main goal every 10 minutes was to try and reach a shade. Each time we thought we were nearing the entrance, we were fooled, boo. I felt bad for my sis, luckily, she didn’t wear her scarf & gloves, otherwise, the only thing I’d be dragging into Otakon would be a puddle of orange & green, wah. Well, my curls officially deflated, so I looked like a dork in all my pics (of course, running around in a pink night gown, dressed up as a dead chick already classifies me as a dork). But, it’s all good. Honestly, it was a long wait on the line, about 2 hours or less, but it was rather entertaining. In our time waiting, my sis was photographed by an official Otakon photographer (she looks so kawaii!). Er, well I got photographed too, but I think outta pity that I was standing there in costume, hehe ;o). One of the first cool costumes we saw was this AC Cloud with a bad @$$ sword, it was huge! Other interesting costumes we viewed either standing with us on line or passing by included a Sephy with – once again – a cool, big butt sword (it had characters on it, whee), a Dark Chi, a costume I dubbed The Sake Panda (very very cool), a Moogle Couple (so cute), various FFX-2 characters, and more. There was a guy dressed as a DDR bar, which was pretty funny. We even had a visit from Capt. Jack Sparrow, he even had his drunken rum bottle with him (he was pretty good w/his drunken act, dunno if there was real rum in that bottle, tho, who knows?). My sister managed to nab an awesome Sailor Moon group, as they were about to cross the street for some grub (see the pics). Yeah, so the wait outside was entertaining enough with all the cool costumes passing by. Oh yeah, and the Ride the Duck tours even passed by, which was cool…the first bunch of tourists “quacked” & waved, they were nice. The second bunch of the Ride the Duck Tours were just dead beats, no fun. The bad part of standing outside on line was some of the passing comments. Geez, grow up people. There was even this one bum who passed by and yelled out, “Freaks!” Yeah, real ironic, buddy, considering you live in a stinkin’ box. Standing in line, also gave me a good idea of what kind of people attend these things. It’s both good & bad. For people who have a hard time picturing what a cosplay convention is, it’s really a Star Trek convention, but everyone dresses up as Anime & Video Game chars. Enough said.’s hot, it’s humid, the sun is blaring down on us, and

We finally arrive into the convention center (Air Conditioning, thank heavens!!) and chug on through the line. I’ve never been to a con before, so when I saw this poster board with pictures & corresponding numbers, I had no clue what to do. Thankfully my sister poked me to choose a pic for my badge, doh, I’m such a newbie =). So, we pay (goodbye $$) and we try to figure out how to get to the dealers’ room. Now, the Baltimore Convention is humongous! In all my time, living in VA and visiting Baltimore, I’ve never been in it, but it is really impressive. Really nice, spacious, but good grief, what a walk! Thank goodness I decided not to wear boots. Basically, you need to cross into the other building, climb up, then cross, and go down again, weird huh?

So, we get to walking and even more awesome costumes come into view! Check out my sister’s pics. It was really neat to see people strike poses for you and your camera. A lot of the people were really cool about taking their pic. The first one we saw was this Sephiroth & other heinously cool sword-wielding girl character. My sister ran to ask for a pic and they struck such a cool pose, they were so nice. They put all their bags and stuff aside just to strike a pose, arigato! I won’t go down the immense list of characters we saw, but it was really neat. I really did feel like I was in Anime Disneyland, so many characters walking around. Plus, it was really awesome because people were asking to take pics of my sis (she’s so kawaii!). Even the boys….<grumble, grumble>….The BEST place to find cosplayers was in the Dealers Room. The Dealers Room was huge and it was kinda hard to find your way through since there were so many people and me & my sis are short, double wah.

We get to this one dealers table, which is – the swords dealer. Oh yeah! So, we’re walking around the 3-4 tables trying to decide between the metal swords or the boken. The designs on the metal ones were just too hard to resist. However, getting a spot on the table to ask for help was hard enough, 3 times worse when you’re just broaching 5 feet tall! As I was trying to squeeze my way in, my sis was happily shooting pics of cool cosplayers. Well, I finally get a spot in since this one dude left (whew, thanks, man) and I’m just waiting because I have officially sighted the sword I want. Nice, finely etched blade with Japanese characters (still need a translation tho! Please see goodies pics), and a beautiful handle and black sheath. Real nice, goes well with the apartment décor too =) The sword stands in the dealer table can hold about 9 swords approximately, so the stand atop the table ends up towering over me by about a good foot to two feet. This one guy catches the seller’s attention and asks to see this nice sword, which just so happens to be on the top of the stand. Seller reaches for it, shows it to the dude. Now, I don’t know what the heck happened, but I guess the seller tried to return the sword, might’ve slipped or something, and the next thing I know I’ve just been fwapped by the sword! Ouch! First reaction was “Thank goodness the sword is in the sheath! My limbs are still on me!” Second reaction was “Thank goodness my sister is safe.” Well, the sword hit me on my upper right arm, and it was all good (as I said, it was still in the sheath), but my arm did hurt. The sword was heavy (at least I know the swords are good quality!) and I definitely knew there was gonna be a bruise the next morning. So, I go to hand the sword back and I started kidding around with the guy and said, “Hey, since you hit me with the sword, do you think I could get a discount?” Surprisingly, the guy said “Absolutely.” Wowie. Well, that was cool. So, I figured cool, I can probably get a $10 discount off a sword or something like that. Originally, I had wanted a medium blade ($20), and a matching small blade ($10) for Tal, the budget was tight. I had considered the large sword, but I think it was about $40-$50. Then there was a trisot (3 matching swords + stand) special for $50-$60, but I dropped the idea. Moola was needed to pay for parking, plus the dude didn’t accept credit cards. Well, I only told the seller I wanted the matching medium & small swords. He starts to tell me that those 3 swords + stand are usually $60+, but he’d give it to me for $30! Wa-hoo! Talk about a dream come true…obviously it was a done deal. People were laughing and kinda jealous saying “Hey, hit me with a sword!” But, I was all happy and full o’smiles. So, I grab the really really big box and waddle away with my prize, whee! Too bad I didn’t grab the guy’s business card…I would definitely endorse him and buy more swords from him. Not because of the discount, mind you, but the swords are of good quality and they were freshly oiled too for easy sheathing. Nice. – of course, my favorite

So, now Tal & me are walking (well, Tal is walking/taking pics and I’m waddling around with the sword box), and we spot this uber-cool Vincent from FF7. I say, “Whoa, look its Vinny! Take a pic!” My sister pauses, does a double-take and runs off to ask the guy for a pic (she’s cute). You can see the pic she posted, this guy was awesome. He even seemed to fit perfect Vinny height. He was cool! Uhhh…but since he was so tall, my sister barely reached his chest (I think…). It was hilarious watching my sis run after this guy, she kept tugging at his cape and poking him, but it’s pretty loud at the dealers room so he most likely couldn’t hear her and I guess his costume was thick. Then, when the guy reached the sword table, he looked down and saw my sis. The smile on his face was classic, wish I had a camera then. He looks down (and I mean down) to my sister and has a smile that pretty much says, “Awww….look at the cute munchkin.” If he patted her head I would’ve died laughing on the floor. (Sorry, Tal, you know I wuv you, but it was really funny!) But, the guy was awesome (like many of the cosplayers there) and struck a pose, show-casing his very real-looking golden claw.

Yeah, so after that, we walk back to the car, I am dying carrying around the sword box, unload, grab a drink o’water and decide that it’s time for some grub. We walk into the Bank of America building across the convention center and there’s a Burger King & Sbarros. Wow, the lines were looooooooong, they must’ve made a killing that day with all the con goers. But it was nice to be around other cosplayers/con goers so it didn’t feel funny eating out in public in costume. Sorry, I’m still getting used to that idea. A quirky moment happened when I was at the ATM (my poor bank account). My sister said someone recognized me as Aerith, but the folks figured they’d catch a pic of the “dead girl” later since it would be weird to ask for a pic while at the ATM. Haha, that was neat. I thank those people who did recognize me! But yeah, truthfully, if someone tapped me while I was at the ATM, my first thought would be: Mugger! <punch> Sorry, NY-thinking.

After a healthy meal of pizza loaded with Parmesan cheese & soda, we head back to the con. Afterwards, it was just walking around, buying more stuff, and checking out more cool people in costume. I tell you what tho, there was this one dealers table with imported Final Fantasy CDs and soundtracks. If I were a billionaire, that table would’ve been cleaned out. But, I’m not even close to a millionaire, so we walked away with just two CDs, thankfully, it could’ve been worse on the pockets. Now, here’s something interesting to talk about…while we were walking we saw signs of “Hentai” “Yaoi” “Doujshinsi” (sp?) and I was like “huh???” Even my sis was “huh???” K, it was well those kind of magazines/drawings, where you need to be 18 and over….Now, the highly weird thing is that Otakon specifically states that you need to be 12 & over to walk around alone, but then, where are all the black curtains and big butt signs saying “Stay out! 18 & over only!”?? Weirdness….There were signs saying 18 & over but there weren’t barricades or curtains like I expected for that kind of material, but hey, whateverz. Now I know why all those areas were crowded…..I’ll refrain from further comment. I wonder if parents noticed it too…oh well.

We hit up the art dealer room & video game room next. The art dealer room is cool, but I wasn’t familiar with any of the artists, I’m not that good at IDing anime artists. The room did contain those cool fleecy looking character head hats…but darn, too expensive. The video game room would’ve been a network gamer’s ultimate dream. Massive multi-player action and fighting games galore. Halo was being played on 3 large screens…sweet. The DDR stations were packed though and people were mad good. There was this one dude who was crazy! Er, I’ll be darned if my clumsy butt got up there and played on my baby easy mode. Sorry, Tal, no go, we’ll just have to verse each other another day. But we left very soon after, the room seemed to have been devoid of AC and ventilation. Pooh. We go upstairs for a Chai Frap from Starbucks (really gooooooood) and as we’re resting we see this MKR group walking across the street outside (see pic). Nooooooo….and they were so uber-cool, too, wah.

Yeah, so all-in-all what a cool time. Lotsa fun, really interesting stuff to buy and see. Definitely a different type of crowd, but hey, it’s quite entertaining, I like it. I’d definitely wouldn’t mind going with my sis again, but wearing a costume, I’m not sure. My lack of pockets made me feel funny, hehe. Plus, driving home was a – you fill in the blank – but listening to the Final Fantasy Black Mage CD was good. I hurt A LOT and was sore from so much walking. But, you know what? I’ve stood on line for 2 hours to get into a club, and been crammed into a club w/lotsa people, and have been sore from dancing or waiting on line to get to the bathroom, but that experience was way different from Otakon. I enjoyed the con experience and the waiting & soreness from the con resulted in cool stuff and a good time with my sis. The club experience is another story another day. Yeah, so if I’m still living in the area next year for Otakon 2005, my sis & me may just have to make this an annual event for us two. I’m by no means convinced in becoming a full-blown cosplayer, but hey, attending the con is good enough for me =) Thanks, Tal! Happy Graduation *huggles*

Oooo..on a side note, we missed the great Adella, wah. She was there on Friday, dunno where she was. My sis was on the great hunt for a pic of her, Lord Masamune, and Alaria. Sadness…sorry, Tal, guess another con, another day.

 

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