Otakon 2024: every year me and a bunch of old dudes get in a room and yell about Shaider

Friday was quite a night and I was really in no hurry to wake up the next morning. I don’t think I was at the convention center and about until about 11 or so. From there we hit the artists’ alley for quite a long time, because…

Saturday is critical-mass time

Pretty much any weekend convention’s crowd levels peak at early afternoon on a Saturday. The Walter Washington center is quite spacious and walkable for most of the weekend, but for those two or three hours it genuinely descends into chaos as the Saturday-only crowd get added to the mix. I have found that during this time it is best to just stick to one spot, and my friends and I chose the artist’s alley, which we hadn’t seen yet.

We wound up missing all of the big-name panels, most notably the Delicious in Dungeon panel where they apparently fed Trigger animators meals inspired by the series. (And also there was a medical emergency... unrelated to the content of the panel.) From what I saw that evening, getting into that panel pretty much meant you were lining up hours in advance, and it was the only thing you were doing that day. Listen, I like Dungeon, I like Trigger, but this is my damn vacation and I’m gonna treat it like one. My years of waiting two hours in line are not over, but my years of waiting six hours in line are.

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Artist's Alley

This con definitely appears to treat its artists right. The space is massive, artists appear to have a lot of room, and as such it draws a really varied pool of talent. Recalling the old days when the alley was dominated by a single Naruto-via-Blizzard art style, I’m really happy to see the way the alley and the work within has become so wonderfully varied and unique.

(I technically sat on the alley once selling Kawaiikochans, but I brought too little stock and sold out in the first couple hours, and staff really didn’t like that.)

You can kind of read anime/manga trends by what’s selling in the artist’s alley and what’s being cosplayed on the floor, and let me tell you, it’s Delicious in Dungeon. It ain’t close. It’s way out in front. People talk about “Netflix Jail”, but that did not stop this show. I’m beyond pleased there are this many prints and doohickies of Marcille out there for me to peruse. Though I didn’t buy one. I figure she does well enough.

(I suspect that "Netflix Jail" exists more in the minds of online anime pundits who only watch anime on Crunchyroll; there's observably a big non-otaku "silent majority" watching titles like Baki or Kakegurui, for example.)

I did buy a very cute Serial Experiments Lain keychain with bear Lain on one side and “let’s all love Lain” printed repeatedly on the back. This one was love at first sight; I didn’t even have to think about spending the money. My barista the other day just lost it when he saw it, so clearly I did good for others by purchasing it.

Relatedly I actually caught a Lain panel in the middle of the day; titled "Japanese Technology and Anime in the 90s"– making me and the guys expect a panel about laserdiscs or something– it was in fact an explanation of Serial Experiments Lain. Luckily every single person in the crowd for an anime convention panel called "Japanese Technology and Anime in the 90s" is totally cool with hearing someone talk about Lain for an hour instead, and so we did.

I'd like to write about Lain sometime too. Its portrait of the Internet birthing a new world is quaint today, where "the Wired" is comfortably integrated into our lives. The Wired is in my group chat. I'm talking to you in the Wired right now. On the way home from Otakon, the Wired inside our rented Mustang told us where the cops and speed traps were. But Lain meant a lot to us nerds back then, and it still means a lot to me today.

Meanwhile…

An ongoing story of the weekend was that our friend Remi, who draws auto-biographical manga for Japanese audiences about her life in New York, happened to be in DC on work. Our meeting and becoming friends is a long story, but my friends and I have kind of been guiding her through the American version of the ota-culture, and it’s all been very exciting and fascinating to her as a Japanese otaku. (We bonded over sharing Gunbuster as our all-time fave.)

Over the course the weekend we were trying to figure out how to get Remi into Ota. (No, we did not sneak our friend in, it was all legit.) We all knew the best we could possibly show her of the American ota culture, and the most representative of us… was a bunch of middle-aged guys hollering over old anime at the Discotek panel.

Old guy fun hours

(Disclaimer: I’ve got quite a few friends in the US anime/manga business— it happens when you’re former press— so I must point out specifically for this one: A few of the folks who work with these companies are friends and acquaintances, usually by way of parties at events like this. I say this to point out that I am not impartial about these folks; I love their work and actively want them to succeed.)

Animeigo and Discotek were booked back to back. If you don’t know who those companies are, Animeigo is one of the very first purveyors of English-language anime ever; think back to the days of Bubblegum Crisis (the first one) and Megazone 23 and you’re about far back enough.

Discotek is a company that releases extremely large amounts of high-quality Blu-Rays of old and nostalgic titles ranging from the 80s to the 00s. Many an otaku of about my age has a Discotek Collection Problem, and at conventions we all get together and hoot and holler as the company presents 20 more extremely cool titles that nobody else would ever touch, and which we cannot afford to purchase. (I’m available for hire btw) It’s like the Nintendo Direct for anime old-heads.

Up first is Animeigo, whose panel was titled “Rebirth” as very recently presenter Justin Sevakis bought the company from founder Robert Woodhead (yes, the Wizardry guy!). Justin is working on getting the old library back in print, including some classics like Otaku no Video (Otakon’s spiritual guide anime) and the godlike car-chase OVA Riding Bean. A big surprise that got the millennial crowd really cheering was a the first-ever US release (and first HD release anywhere) of the cult 2000s shoujo TV series Full Moon wo Sagashite.

About fifteen minutes into Discotek’s panel— after we had already cheered for Shaider and sang along to Captain Harlock’s theme— we managed to bring Remi in. She had as much fun as the rest of us as Mike and the gang called out deep cut after deep cut, whispering “I dunno this one!” and “I REALLY dunno this one!” to us and delighting in the audience flipping out over stuff she had no idea existed. To see a crowd of old dudes holler at the announcement of a Blu-Ray box of Kite, and for that same group to recoil in horror and boo at the announcement of a Blu-Ray box of KissxSis that will nevertheless sell… that’s pure culture, to me.

So what we did…

To really maximize the impact of the con for Remi, we simply walked her through the Saturday night convention floor and took her around town. For my money, the most fascinating thing about the anime convention is getting to see the full saturation of otaku in a city. We had dinner at a place where every table was in costume. The feeling that “your people” are everywhere in this place is at once deeply surreal and weirdly comforting.

The spot I wanted most to take her to was the hotel bar inside the Marriott, the hotel closest to the con center. We weren't staying there this year, but this place is really busy all con weekend, and at peak hours it looks like an anime scene itself. (I myself once got absolutely trashed with a buddy and some total strangers and toasted “to the gacha!” at this very bar.) I knew I was right when Remi started scrambling to take pictures of cosplayers and tell them “you’re so cute!” and so on. Her face lit up; she said it was like “another world.”

I felt kind of proud. It’s so good to share the culture with someone else and watch them experience it for the first time. That’s what this whole thing is about.

Speaking of sharing the culture, at the end of the night I again made a bunch of room party guests watch videos about medal games and then kicked them out when we wanted to watch a video about the new DX Chogokin YF-21. It went something like that, anyway.