Otakon

Last weekend I had the opportunity to attend Otakon at the Baltimore Convention Center. My wife, Brother-in-Law and his friend all paid the 60$ registration fee to attend for both Saturday and Sunday. I however couldn't justify the expense. You see, Otakon is an anime convention. While knew this event would be high entertainment for me, I knew it would only be entertaining for an hour or two. That's the way it works when you are expecting to be entertained by the attendees rather than by the convention itself.

The plan was for all four of us to go on Sunday and trade off one of the three passes we had. Serendipitously, we found a discarded pass on the way to the Convention Center so we could all enter together. I was now going by the name "David" written on the pass.

Here's the scene: 5000 nerds, dorks, loners, geeks, goths, hackers, role-players, gamers, and assorted other shakedowns from the cultural substrata descending upon the convention center, mostly dressed as thier favorite anime characters; Sailor Moon to Hellsing to Gohan to Cloud. Oh ya, quite the fun scene. I'm glad I went. Of course, it wasn't all just for the people watching. I actually did manage to find one exhibit I was genuinely interested in; Red vs. Blue. Technically they classify RvB as "machinma" not anime, but I bought a T-shirt off of them anyway.

Update: My wife's pictures of the event can be found here.