There’s already been eighteen years of Otakon, but this is just my first time going. With it’s 2011 attendance of 31,348 people, this yearly convention held in Baltimore, MD is the second largest anime-based convention in the United States, and the largest in the East coast. If you couldn’t go this year, JPHiP & nandake take you there to experience the con through my eyes, and if you were there, help you relive it!
Otakon is held annually, usually on a Friday, Saturday and Sunday midsummer, at the Baltimore Convention Center at the Inner Harbor District in Baltimore, MD. It’s attendance is no joke, as guests fill the entire convention center with ease, with people cosplaying characters from anime, manga, video games, movies, and even other real life people. I attended the convention with no particular goal other than to get an autograph from Japanese R&B duo, Chemistry, and to take pictures of as much cosplay as I could find, but even with such few objectives in mind, Otakon had me occupied from opening to close each day of the con.
Otakon is a bit different from most other conventions, in that there is no day passes to the convention. Otakon attendence is actually obtained by becoming a member of Otakorp, a non-profit organization which runs Otakon, and the privilege to attend is given by registering for that membership.
I arrived in Baltimore at about 8:30am on Friday, July 29 after a 4 hour drive from New York, just in time to get in the pre-registration line to pick up my badge. Friday was a very hot and humid day, and I was dripping sweat from just standing outside in line for about 2 minutes. Thankfully, the line moved fairly quickly and I was inside the convention center in another line in just about 10 minutes, and in just another 10 minutes, already had my badge. This must be the pace you can expect from a convention who’s official sport is queuing!
Otakon offered six different badge designs, offering designs from Tiger & Bunny, Sacred Seven, Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Durarara!!, Gundam 00, and Crabby, the program book crab. I took the Gundam 00 design, which must’ve been a mistake because a day later, I was stopped by an Otakon staff member under suspicion that I had a fake badge! I was stopped for about five minutes as he took his time comparing the holographic stickers and making sure my badge was authentic. Other than that inconvenience, I was pleased with the option for con goers to be able to choose the design of their badge, but I have received both press and attendee badges at other conventions, and preferred the quality of their badges. Otakon’s badge was just a print-out with a holographic sticker inside a clear plastic type case on a lanyard. While I know most conventions employ this type of badge design, I have had better and prefer the plastic type card instead.
Because Otakon is such a large convention, you can imagine that there was many different panels, workshops, and events to attend. To make this easier, they designed a large piece of foldable paper called, “The Awesome Sheet of Awesomeness.” This paper was a major help to me as it listed all the events going at at each room at each time all on one page. Not only that, but they also had the hours of operation for every area of the convention, as well as a map of the convention on the reverse side. I believe this is the first time I’ve seen this done and it was very helpful. In addition, this year Otakon had their schedule and map available and continually updated on the Guidebook app which is available for both iPhone and Android devices. Unfortunately, this didn’t stop me from missing the KPop vs JPop Dances panel due to it being pushed ahead an hour early.
Thanks to “The Awesome Sheet of Awesomeness,” in the first half hour, I got my schedule organized and was ready to set out and take pictures of all the cool cosplayers at the con. The convention center was already full of people all dressed up, and after about an hour of walking around, I headed for my first panel. The panel was held at what seemed to be the main hall of the con, and is where they held many of the high volume and popular panels. They divided the line into 3 sections to allow for traffic to come out of the room and through the hallway, but it was not enough. There were many people that wanted to attend the various panels in that room, and many were left hanging around outside of the line waiting for it to open up once others started entering the room. In fact, almost every queue I saw other than the autograph queues were practically bursting at the seams with people trying to attend panels and watch premiers. For the most part they were handled well, but I heard complaints about the workshop queues, none of which I was able to attend (due to the aforementioned scheduling change).
After attending my panels, I made my way to the Dealer’s Room and Artist Alley. The way Otakon has both the rooms set up was a bit annoying. Most people I asked couldn’t give clear directions on how to reach the dealer’s room, and for the first day, the only way I knew how to get there was to walk all around the convention center to a specific set of stairs that everyone was being herded too. By the second day I realized that there were many easier ways to access the room, but they were not being actively being made known. Now this would be fine, but Otakon had set up one entrance and one exit to both the dealer’s room and artist alley, and you could not enter the room through the exit or exit through the entrance. Very understandable, but the entrance to both rooms were at the same side of the convention center, and the exits were on the other side. To go to the Artist Alley from the dealer’s room without knowing the convention center well enough, one would have to walk all the way around again, which includes going up 2 flights of stairs, walking around the rim of the convention center again, and going down another 2 flights of stairs. Oh wait, I want to go back to the dealer’s room… I hope you can see the inefficiency of this design. Even with knowing a few of the untold “shortcuts” it would still take 2 flights of stairs up and down and with maybe half the walking. People’s feet hurt enough through a normal day of the convention; having to walk up and down 2 flights of stairs to go between the dealer’s room and artist alley is just adding insult to injury.
Although the design of the exits and entrances were, quite literally, painful, the actual layout of the dealer’s room and artist alley was awesome. Large open aisles kept crowding to a minimum, and it was very easy to see everything you wanted to see. Unfortunately, the convention center doesn’t have signs hanging from the ceiling, so finding specific booths or your friend’s location was a bit troublesome unless you had memorized the location of each booth already. The convention center (not to be mistaken with Otakon) also disallowed some booths from doing some fun and even important things, such as not allowing Crunchyroll’s live stream to preventing Hi-chew from selling their Hi-chews. The variety in the dealer room was also nothing to be proud of, and I was not even remotely interested in any of the merchandise they sold there. However, if this is the only convention you go to, this is definitely the place to get some cool figurines, cosplaying accessories, posters, wallscrolls, and body pillows. The artist alley on the other hand was great, with many artists selling awesome drawings and accessories, but I guess variety is an intrinsic nature of drawing, isn’t it?
Another fun room at Otakon was the Video Gaming room. I only went inside once, but from what I could tell it would’ve been very fun if I had time. They had Pump it Up machines and TVs with XBox 360s and other various gaming platforms setup all throughout a very large room, and for those that are into gaming, it would be a fun place to play fighting games and first person shooters with people right next to you as opposed to talking to faceless voices on XBox Live or PSN. Games ranged from Street Fighter to Halo, and I even saw people playing trading card games like Yu-Gi-Oh.
By the third day, it was almost sad to end to convention so early, but it was a nice break to just relax with so few panels running that day. Although screams of Marco Polo got tiring by that point, I could not help but laugh every time someone screamed “I got that ice cold water” with many replying “and it’s only one dollar” all throughout the convention center. Although I was exhausted by the end of the convention, with so many panels to attend, a great lineup of guests, various different cosplays to see, and trinkets to buy, I still wanted more and I will definitely be attending Otakon again in the future.
nandake’s Otakon Photo Gallery
Otakon is an annual convention held yearly with a focus on anime, manga, and Japanese culture. Membership to Otakorp with the privilege of attending Otakon can be obtained when registration is open at otakon.com or at the Otakon convention.
The Ice Cold Water Man can be found at the inner harbor district in downtown Baltimore selling water for just one dollar around the Baltimore Convention Center and Camden Yards.
