Friday, August 04, 2006
OTAKON
My sister-in-law and her fiancé are coming into town tonight to stay with us. They’re coming down from New Jersey for Otakon, a huge anime convention that is taking over the Baltimore Convention Center this weekend. By huge, I mean that they have to cut off their attendance at 25,000 due to fire marshal regulations. They could probably have twice that number of attendees if they had room.
I used to find the large number of attendees at anime conventions a little strange. After all, I’ve attended Science Fiction conventions and Star Trek conventions in the past. While the Star Trek conventions (actually, with all the science fiction TV shows around nowadays, they are more properly referred to as Media conventions) usually have larger numbers than the average Science Fiction convention, the number of attendees even they attract can’t hope to compete with an average anime convention. It puzzled me for quite a while why anime conventions were so wildly popular, and it was only recently that I put it into perspective.
See, ask anyone who goes to any of these conventions why they go, and the answer will usually be the same: “Because it’s so much fun!” Fine, but why is one so much more fun than the other, and another so much more fun than that? Well, boil it down to basics. The average person who goes to Science Fiction conventions enjoys reading Science Fiction books. That’s their starting point, and they extrapolate their fun from there. The point is, they start out reading. Lots of people, though, consider reading a chore. A sad fact of life, but true. The average person who goes to Star Trek and Media conventions is usually a fan of certain (Science Fiction) television shows. The point is, they enjoy watching TV, and lots more people like doing that than read. The average person who goes to an anime convention is a fan of Japanese (or Japanese-inspired) cartoons. Who doesn’t like watching cartoons? And there you go.
My sister-in-law and her fiancé have both attended Otakon in the past, but I understand neither is as into the scene as much as they once were. They will be arriving late tonight and spending the night at our place. Tomorrow morning, they will awaken bright and early and head to the con. We may or may not rendezvous with them for lunch or dinner, but we’re leaving that up to them. They were enamored of The Chinatown Café on President Street when we took them there last year for dim sum. Sunday, they have to leave by 1:00 p.m., and I have an afternoon meeting anyway, so we might do brunch somewhere.
We probably won’t go to Otakon ourselves. I did find it really neat at my first one when my sister-in-law ran into a girl dressed as the character she voiced in a fan parody she helped with, and the girl was dressed as the character from the parody. This year, Bill Holbrook, the creator of
My sister-in-law and her fiancé are coming into town tonight to stay with us. They’re coming down from New Jersey for Otakon, a huge anime convention that is taking over the Baltimore Convention Center this weekend. By huge, I mean that they have to cut off their attendance at 25,000 due to fire marshal regulations. They could probably have twice that number of attendees if they had room.
I used to find the large number of attendees at anime conventions a little strange. After all, I’ve attended Science Fiction conventions and Star Trek conventions in the past. While the Star Trek conventions (actually, with all the science fiction TV shows around nowadays, they are more properly referred to as Media conventions) usually have larger numbers than the average Science Fiction convention, the number of attendees even they attract can’t hope to compete with an average anime convention. It puzzled me for quite a while why anime conventions were so wildly popular, and it was only recently that I put it into perspective.
See, ask anyone who goes to any of these conventions why they go, and the answer will usually be the same: “Because it’s so much fun!” Fine, but why is one so much more fun than the other, and another so much more fun than that? Well, boil it down to basics. The average person who goes to Science Fiction conventions enjoys reading Science Fiction books. That’s their starting point, and they extrapolate their fun from there. The point is, they start out reading. Lots of people, though, consider reading a chore. A sad fact of life, but true. The average person who goes to Star Trek and Media conventions is usually a fan of certain (Science Fiction) television shows. The point is, they enjoy watching TV, and lots more people like doing that than read. The average person who goes to an anime convention is a fan of Japanese (or Japanese-inspired) cartoons. Who doesn’t like watching cartoons? And there you go.
My sister-in-law and her fiancé have both attended Otakon in the past, but I understand neither is as into the scene as much as they once were. They will be arriving late tonight and spending the night at our place. Tomorrow morning, they will awaken bright and early and head to the con. We may or may not rendezvous with them for lunch or dinner, but we’re leaving that up to them. They were enamored of The Chinatown Café on President Street when we took them there last year for dim sum. Sunday, they have to leave by 1:00 p.m., and I have an afternoon meeting anyway, so we might do brunch somewhere.
We probably won’t go to Otakon ourselves. I did find it really neat at my first one when my sister-in-law ran into a girl dressed as the character she voiced in a fan parody she helped with, and the girl was dressed as the character from the parody. This year, Bill Holbrook, the creator of
# posted by Renfield @ 12:43 PM 
