On request, I’m going to write up my panel notes for the two Fuurin panels. But first, a “quick” recap.

So from my POV, Otakon 2026 is the 27th Otakon I have attended. It is the 10th year in DC. I heard the attendance has hit its highest ever at over 47K (warm bodies). This year the music guests were the usual FF orchestra troupe, the usual K-pop acts, and an indie rock concert (cover bands and similar). It’s a choice, unfortunately it’s also a change I’m indifferent to, at least I do want to see some indie rock acts but not enough to skip out on the bountiful number of seiyuu-related programming at Otakon.

I am pretty sure Otakon 2026 has the highest number of seiyuu guests at Otaokn ever. It definitely also has the largest number of autograph sessions where you can get one from a seiyuu. And thanks to using digital registration you don’t have to camp any of them, at least not in any meaningful sense. As a result I scored an autograph from 12 different individual voice actors. Most of them were brought to Otakon to promote some show, so they were part of the autograph session from the guests for that show. This included the New Magic Knight Rayearth anime (Yoshitsugu Matsuoka, Rumi Okubo), Bookworm (Yuka Iguchi), Chiramume (Shogo Sakata), Overgeared (Tatsumaru Tachibana), Romelia War Chronicle (Yuna Nemoto), Trigun Stampede (Chika Ayamori), and Roll Over and Die (Ayaka Nanase, Machico). There were other anime titles that brought their teams and I wasn’t able to go to those due to conflicts: World’s Strongest Rearguard (no seiyuu), Kaiju Girl Caramelise (no seiyuu), Tougen Anki (Kazuki Ura, Shogo Sakata), Ghost in the Shell (2026) (no seiyuu), The World Is Dancing (Simba Tuchiya), and Kagurabachi (no seiyuu). I might be missing a few? Apologies if I did.

Anyways, this is as if we took the Anime Japan-style of AX loadout and repurposed it for Otakon, in Otakon style. Everyone got their day in the panel rooms, their autograph sessions, and the usual panel content US con goers are familiar with, and it was good because you didn’t need to do much if any camping. This is all on top of “actual convention seiyuu guests” Ryotaro Okiayu, Kenji Nojima (both Aoni), and of course Ayaka Fukuhara (Across). To put things into perspective, an average Otakon with those 3 would already be an good meal for someone like myself.

In historical terms, at least for as long as I’ve been tracking North American anime cons, this is likely the only time we’ve had a bounty this large in terms of voice actors giving out free autographs. I personally have gotten 13 (one repeat) autographs, and since I don’t have any actual recorded data to go by, the only thing that could exceed it is during some of the older Anime Expo days when a lot of companies also brought their cast members for autographs. In terms of actual seiyuu attendance Anime Expo even this year brought about as many, so this isn’t something so extraordinary. It is just extraordinary that it is happening outside of a completely corporate anime convention like AX or ANYC, and other than Otakon I can’t imagine another convention could have handled it this well.

Which is to say everything turned out well, nothing got too sweaty, and we had over FOURTY SEVEN THOUSAND people. If there was an example of how things should be done at anime cons for planning for JP guests and autographs, Otakon 2026 is it. Technology is a force multiplier. Small cons under 30k have no excuse anymore to sweat jam your autograph sessions and block them from guest panels! Invest in your attendee’s time and experience! We don’t go to cons to stay in lines! Sometimes I feel like I’m like Myne when it comes to this aspect of cons.