Category Archives: Conventions and Concerts

October 8, 2012

New York Comic Con 2012: Day -3

By omo

Another year, another mess at the Javits center. I’m not a fan of this con in a lot of ways, although I do like a lot of things they do. You can tell this con is run by people who have the savvy and experience to pave the way of an interesting convention experience. But I think ultimately two big factor drives NYCC:

There is just nothing in the metro NY area that can satisfy in such a scale, and the location sucks.

Downtown LA, for example, is really no better. It’s kind of boring and it lacks a lot of the interesting things I enjoy LA for. It’s kind of unavoidable given its urban sprawl configuration. Manhattan is a different story, but the same mechanics play–there is just no place to put a convention center big enough for everyone and everything that is close to where all the attractions are. On the flip side, it’s not hard to flag a cab or even catch a bus from the Javits center. It just cost $30-40 to park for a day.

To some degree, I think for some reason I’m not a fan of this con has a lot to do with me rather than the con. Sure, I definitely can lament the death of NYAF and I do remember when there were great anime con content in NYC, and how that’s kind of not here anymore. Sure, I can whine about how much I hate the early bird method NYCC uses to give away autograph tickets. I think it’s terrible to make me get so little sleep, and keep me in a poor mood all day–and the people around me are more victimized than I am about it. Rather, I think by October I think I’m done with cons until next…oh, April? It’s easy to see how this October anime convention serves as the mark for the end of the con season/year/whatever, and by this point fatigue has long since set in. I mean, by next Monday I would’ve attended 5 (or 6 if you count 3 hours at AnimeNext) conventions in the space of ~6 months.

NYCC has an app. I hope it would be, at the very least, slightly more than useless when I’m at the con with its maxed out NYC-style cellular reception. Maybe enough people don’t have iPhone 5s yet so LTE will still be useful. Then again, I don’t know if you get any LTE inside the building.

Writing about this con is just kind of a downer. Maybe that is why each time I tried to, I ended up looking up places to eat with friends. NYC is a great city to eat at, and it has gotten better lately. This year there are a few new places that popped up, but most importantly Go Go Curry is having a $5.50 promo on their tonkatsu single-sized plates, which is a good eat at a very good price. Since midtown lunch is more of my beat, maybe I can drag some people to Taim mobile or somewhere outrageous (that’s a loooong walk). I don’t know, I’m on a small falafel kick. Other than that, maybe Chef Samir’s? Will people hound Tabata? Will more people even try out Bonchon? Of course, unless you’ve never had it before, Shake Shack is somewhere to stay clear of, or if you can’t make up your mind. Paranda-tested Schnippers will always be available, and it’s a pleasant fall-back. As far as I can tell, though, the closest Wafels & Dinges will still be across town, so that might be tough. If you don’t mind the walk or taxi fare, there are still more food options than I can count going up 9th Ave or into K-town, so it’s all good. Of course, once you hop in a taxi, there’s all sorts of places. Anyone up for this?

It might be a headache to wrangle a large party for dinner and all the stragglers and friend’s-friends; getting a reservation Saturday night at a nice place isn’t easy. Still, I prefer that to trying to move around in a massive dealer’s room shoulder-to-shoulder with 20,000 geeks any day of the week.

PS. Ever tried Uber? My Seattle-based CEO came visiting a few weeks ago and gawked at how nobody at the office has heard of Uber. “Because we work in Midtown, duh. Just look outside.” But if you live in some backwater place like Seattle or San Fran, a taxi hailing service like that can be handy, sure. Turns out even in NY it can be handy, because it was fronting the cab ride up to $25 last month. Now? It’s just a more expensive way to call a cab.

PPS. Hopefully all of this is enough to pry me from XCOM when this weekend rolls around. I know at least I will be short on sleep…

6 comments | posted in Conventions and Concerts, English Language Modern Visual Fandom, XCOM Seiyuu Play

September 24, 2012

Gushing Introspection about Conventions

By omo

On second thought, this post is kind of embarrassing. Well, hopefully it’ll tickle all the N’s out there.

[First a bit about that picture. As far as I know Otakon is the only large anime convention that allows its attendees to select from a set of image badges every year. Reason being that it is extra work for the registration folks, slows the registration lines down, and cost more money–why would you do any of these things? I guess because it’s awesome? And I think it’s driving/driven by con badge culture. As a beneficiary of custom badges over the years (I probably show take a picture of that too) I can’t say I want Otakon’s choose-your-own-badge thing to ever go away. Also, at around 2003 they started doing the badges without lamination, which makes for a duller but more standard (and more importantly, faster) registration process/badges. Imagine that, laminated badges for everybody…]

I ask myself this question all the time at a con. Being at a con feels just so contrary to my nature that every time I find myself in that situation I ask why I’m at a con in the first place. But since I hit so many cons and thus have such moments on a regular basis, maybe I should change the question: When an anime con goer turns 30, does he become a magician?

Short of making this into a joke the truth is this fandom is aging and all my friends are not getting any younger. Some of us are married and/or have children. Others are settled with mortgages, ongoing job responsibilities, and having to walk that work-family balance. And then there’s me, who has gone to about 5 cons a year for the past 4  years. Anna might have started in 2002 and she went to her first because her friend asked her to go; my take is more of the person doing the inviting.

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2 comments | posted in Conventions and Concerts, English Language Modern Visual Fandom

August 29, 2012

A Tale of Two Wifus: Makoto’s Meteoric Rise

By omo

Let’s get it straight: I don’t have such a thing. Call me old fashion, but I have a top 1o list. This 2D substitute-functionality has never changed, but I never really feel like I got anything out of the de-ghetto-ization through public acknowledgement for such things. I certainly don’t mind that if you do, or don’t.

Anyway, I ran across the birthday of Makoto Kikuchi the other day and I figured to compare just her pixiv entries with Kobayakawa’s celebration on pixiv, whose birthday was on the 17th, a couple weeks back. Makoto is on the 28th. More relevantly, Makoto came into existence to the public some time in 2005, where as Rinko Kobayakawa debuted with the hit DS wife game, Love Plus, in 2009.

Between 2005 to 2009, the Idol Master (iM@S for short and sanity) franchise has not gone very far. It saw moderate successes as an arcade game and for the Xbox. There was a hardcore contingent spending money steadily, but it did not grow. What mixed marketing efforts turn up mostly to be failures. Under a new plan, the second iteration of iM@S, which debuted with the DS and PSP games, and iM@S2 for the Xbox 360, marked a much better run, that probably capped ultimately with the iM@S2 PS3 and anime releases. Safe to say, its popularity is at an all-time high right now.

Here is the pixiv tag for Makoto’s birthday. Keep paging back to see the old stuff, dated to 2008. If it was easy to grab dates, I would post you a chart, and it would probably look parabolic.

I can’t even find one for Rinko’s birthday in 2012. Or in 2011 or 2010. However, this is how many pages back, in 2010, and you can see for yourself.

Taking a step back, this pixiv fight doesn’t really say much. On one hand, iM@S fandom is cultivated with blood and tears and countless money for DLCs. It’s been brewing for a while now. Seven long years! Love Plus, on the other, is half as old and just gone through a rough patch with the 3DS release, enduring delays and bugs.

Still, very few franchises truck on like Bamco and Columbia’s lovechild. I think this picture sums it up.

6 comments | posted in Conventions and Concerts, Idolmaster, Modern Visual Culture

August 2, 2012

Otakon 2012: Wrap

By omo

This con, I had a lot of fun. It’s definitely one of the more memorable Otakon personally. But that’s got a lot to do with some non-con related things. It’s just that I’ve been going to too many cons and taking too many days off work, I don’t know when I can really afford a real vacation. And I need one.

If you ever do cons with me you know I take it pretty seriously. Well, you can tell just by the blogging I’m doing I guess. One side effect is that I burn out on cons; it’s like a huge party to begin with, but now not only I don’t get much sleep, I spend the entire day doing stuff. There’s very little down time, and it can be exhausting. So cons are not like vacations…with exception to maybe Animazement.

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4 comments | posted in Conventions and Concerts

July 29, 2012

Otakon 2012: Day 3

By omo

Otakon day 3 by stats

  • # of Jimmy John sandwiches consumed: 2
  • # of meals at the con: 1
  • # of tweets at home: 16353
  • # of autographs: 3
  • # of handshakes: 7
  • # of UOs burned through: 4

Otakon day 3 by Tsuritama cosplayers

Otakon day 3 in a paragraph (or 3)

Aya Hirano went overdrive and signed a billion autographs. There were a lot of happy fans. Jim Vowels finally announced his J-music festival. There were a lot of happy fans. It’s one thing to bid farewell to friends departing the con, it’s another to say “see you in November” to them. Thanks Otakon! And all it took was to wait until after the closing ceremony before leaving the con! If there was one “I wish I had” moment on Day 3 for me, it is missing out entirely on the Charity Auction. Which, in retrospect, might be a good thing.

PS. I listened to a bunch of iM@S music on the way home. In fact, the entire way home. Two observations: First, I really do like the iM@S 2 related tracks much more. Second, it is probably because they are better produced. Maybe by “second vision” it actually does mean something, something that kicked into effect in 2009 or 2010. Because it is just outright so much better than their previous string of stuff.

PPS. I listened to a lot of iM@S music on the way home because I feel yet again a severe lack of iM@S content. I did see some couple Ps with their iM@S shirt. A particular person on twitter wore Iori and the other guy (friday) wore Makoto. I tried unsuccessfully to search/stalk for an iM@S cosplay gathering and I guess there was one but I probably should’ve asked someone working the ACP or something. Which is funny, because I do know someone!

1 comment | posted in Conventions and Concerts