Meri's Otakon Report

Otakon 2001 took place in Baltimore, Maryland from August 10-12. Mike and I left at about 8:45 on Friday morning around Trenton, NJ. Traffic jam notwithstanding, the trip down to Baltimore was pleasant, and we got to our hotel at 11:30. It was time for the weekend adventure to begin!

Friday

We found our hotel and the Baltimore Convention Center rather easily. We really lucked out, in that our hotel room was not only free (Mike's dad gots da hooks up, yo), but, it was also right next to the con. Just a quick walk over the skywalk, and we were there! Since we couldn't check into our hotel room yet, we decided to go straight to the con. This being my first big con, I really didn't know what to expect, despite what Mike had told me about the con. Once

we had gotten our Otakon program and badges (I got Ed from Cowboy Bebop! She's my fave), I finally saw first hand how big it was! Geez, there were already tons of people there. It was nothing like the smaller cons I had gone to. We looked at the schedule to see what was going on. The first screening of the Music Video Contest was in just a little while, so we walked on over to that. My god. The screening room for *just* the Music Video Contest seemed like a small airplane hangar. You could fit all of Shoujocon into this thing. As we took our seats, we saw some of our New Jersey peeps, which was cool. The music video contest itself was fun. A lot of excellent stuff, and a lot of crap, too. Out of all the Otakon Music Video Contests that have been held, this was most definitely the best one. Some of the things I remember about the contest was getting up and going *nuts* when our friend Scott's video, "This is Your Life," aired. Also, there was a strange aura in the room when Maboroshi Studio's video played...heh, I won't comment any further on that. All in all, the contest was one of the main highlights of the con...and it was only the beginning!

After the contest, we went to Burger King for lunch. How weird. In a con with thousands of people all around, we managed to meet up, with no planning whatsoever, with all of our New Jersey crew. Being the freaks we are, we critiqued the music videos we just saw, and then parted ways. It was now time for the, dum dum duuummm...the dealer's room! Dang, Mike wasn't kidding when he said this was a fan's dream! Soooo, much stuff, it was nuts.
On this particular trip to the dealer's room, we simply roamed around, scouting the place out. I think on that trip, I got an Evangelion poster, and a Kenshin poster. For that afternoon, we pretty much went in and out of the dealer's room, and bought random stuff. Oh yeah, and Bandai (see right) had a really neat set up. Too bad there wasn't much actually there... Anywho, at some point, we finally went to our hotel room. Daaayum, it was sweet. Kinda big, definitely snazzy. Oh yeah, we be big pimpin'. Or something. By this point
it was time for Mystery Anime Theater to start. We waited on the line for that...and never got to see the show. Why? Cuz we wanted to see the Classic Fan Parodies. We figured we could see a part of the MAT3K for a little bit, and then sneak off to the Classic Fan Parodies, but, as time went on, and nothing was happening, we ditched it, and went straight to the Classic Fan Parodies. What a mistake that was. That stuff was unfunny, and a waste of time. We hoped that the people who attended that show wouldn't think that that the "Hot New Fan Parodies", in which our "This is Otakudom" would air, would suck as much. Well, after that, we went to the hotel room and slept.

Saturday

On Saturday, Mike and I woke up early, in hopes of catching the anime FLCL. After dragging our sorry asses out of the hotel, we got to the con, only to find out that FLCL was canceled. Saddened we became. Instead, we decided to get on the dealer's room line with Mike's friend, Jerry. While in line, something cool happened! Mike and I were just standing there, when a guy came up to us and said, "Hi, I'm Steve." At first, it was kinda freaky, because we weren't sure if we knew him or not. There was an uneasy moment of silence before Mike said, "That's nice. Do I know you?" Steve then said something like "No, but I'm a fan of your sites." FINALLY, a fan!! A glorious, sociable fan! It was really great to finally meet a fan of our sites, and he had the balls to come straight to us. A few minutes passed, when another strapping young lad (^_^) appeared. He kind of stopped, looked at us for a second, and said to me, something like, "Hey, are you Meri?" When I said yes, he said, "You owe me a screencap." When he said that, I realized that I had conversed with this person before through e-mail! I was supposed to have sent him a screencap of Vegeta in his pink shirt, but I forgot. But, lo and behold, this guy was dressed up as Vegeta in the pink shirt. :) And so, another fan was with us.

	Steve, Trevor (the pink shirt Vegeta guy), Mike and I talked and hung out on the dealer's room line, and then shopped together. Oh baby, did I splurge this time around. I got more posters, wall scrolls (Bebop, Kenshin, and Eva!), some comics, a Kenshin decal for my car, among other things. During that shopping trip, random people said "Hi Meri!" to me, and I met some other fans. It was super neat. Thanks for saying hi, wherever you are! Soon, a few hours had passed, and it was time for lunch. After many cell phone calls and posts on bulletin boards, Mike and I met up with two people from the #db chat room. Crono and CV accompanied us to lunch,
and much fun was had. They were really nice guys. I remember we ordered this big cup of fries that we couldn't finish, and...on well, you don't care about that, so I'll move on. Upon returning to the con, Mike and I went to go see the special guest panel with voice actor god, Hikaru Midorikawa. An otherwise pleasurable experience, the panel was marred by the annoying squeals and questions of yaoi fan-girls. Please, does *every* question have to be about Heero, and gay relationships with Gundam boys? Anyway, other than that, I found that panel to be really fun, and Hikaru seemed like a cool, kinda shy guy. The highlight was *definitely* at the end when he shouted, as Tamahome, "MIAKA!!". Being a huge Fushigi Yuugi fan, I cracked up over that. He sounded just like himself! O_o    At 2:00, we went to one of the video's rooms to see "Boys Be. My god, what a surprise that was! It was a very fun and horny, but cute, anime. I liked it so much that recently, I went and ordered some episodes of it. :)    After that anime, we just went in and out of the dealer's room, where we got more useless crap. :P    We knew that Saturday night was the night of Overflow Screening 1, in which my Fushigi Yuugi music video, "Again", would air. So, what Mike did was write a message on the bulletin board telling our friends to meet us there. After doing that, we went to our room for about an hour, since we were exhausted, and needed to drop off all of the purchases we made in the dealer's room. I took a nap, while Mike tried to figure out the wonder's of the ice machine.    As 5:30 rolled around, we went to go stand in line for the Cosplay. The Overflow Screening 1 ran into the Cosplay, so we figured we'd leave the Cosplay early to go see that. Sadly, we never got to see the Cosplay. Time was going by, and the thing hadn't even started yet, and we had to make it to the Screening. So, we missed that event as well.    It was now time for Overflow Screening 1! All of our friends met up there...it's like we had a small army going to the thing. As the screening started, so did the nightmare. Never in all my years as an anime fan have I been so disgusted with other fans. No wait, that's a lie...I keep forgetting about the DBZ fan base. Anyway, during each of the video, people would boo, scream "Next!" or "This sucks!" and other terrible things. People don't know that it's very hard to make music videos. Not considering the creator's feelings is something I don't think *anyone* in our group tolerated. Hell, not even that...you just don't scream things out during something like that. Seriously, this was the main low point of the con.     Luckily for me, something neat happened. Seeing as how people were booing every video so far, I was worried my music video would get the same crowd reaction. However, as soon as my title screen (with my name, anime, song title, etc.) appeared, people started cheering! I'm not sure if this was because people knew who I was, or if they liked the anime I used. In any case, I was glad that something positive *was* going down. Better still, the audience stayed damn quiet during my video (and well they should!). The only incidents that happened were some whoops during the nude scene (which didn't bother me at all) and some fan girl cheers for Tamahome and Hotohori. When my video was done, people actually applauded it, and some were on their feet. I felt relieved that I didn't get booed out of the place. Moreover, I was glad people actually liked the video. So, after that, I was able to start breathing again, and my face wasn't as white as a ghost from nervousness anymore! Also in that screening, we saw the music video of one of our New Jersey pals, Rob. His Kenshin OVA video *kicked* ass. The screening featured a lot of bad videos. Fortunately, there was also a ton of really great videos too, and I was glad we were able to see them.    Then came time for the BIG event, the reason we were going to Otakon (ok, that's a bit of a stretch): The airing of our fan dub parody "This is Otakudom." This our same army of friends in tow, we all got to the large screening room, and anxiously awaited our fan dub. First was the classic, "Koko wa Otaku." Then....a somewhat crappy Utena dub. Then....a really, really bad and inaudible Evangelion dub. This was the saddest thing at all: after all of the bad fun dubs, lots of people left! All our efforts of posting fliers, wearing This is Otakudom t-shirts, and just promoting it, were all going to waste, because our fan dub was after a lot of crappy junk that people couldn't bear. I don't blame them, though. If I wasn't involved in the fan dub, I would have left too. However, once our fan dub showed (at a late 11:30 PM), there were still lots of people around. Our moment of truth had arrived! Months of hard work was paying off, as the fan dub had people rolling for a good 50 minutes. I was very proud of everyone involved, and happy to see the main guy behind it Scott (whose DBZ video "This is Your Life", won first place in his category), got flocked with people after it aired. It was very well received, and got just the reaction we had wanted. The reaction was somewhat different from the one at Shoujocon, as some jokes were received differently than others, but it still went over extremely well.
	Some of the big surprises were seeing how mine and Mike's DBZ/X-Men Trailer appeared on the big screen, and seeing the finished product of our friend Jon's Fushigi Yuugi/Army of Darkness Trailer. All the members of the "This is Otakudom" production got together for hugs and photo ops (see left). It was a wonderful experience that I hope I won't soon forget. After that, it was nearly 1:30 or so, so me and Mike went to sleep. Bottom line: Saturday kicked bootay.

Sunday

Sunday morning, we spoiled ourselves, and slept in rather late. After having a free breakfast at the swanky hotel Regency Club (we were allowed in because of Mike's dad...ah, things are good), we rushed off to the con. Of course, we went to the dealer's room, and got more fun goodies. On the way out, we met up with Trevor and Steve again. We hung out with them, as we waited for Jerry and Mike's other friend, Germ (not his real name, mind you), to arrive. When they showed up, we all went into the dealer's room. We had a blast, to

say the least. At some point, Jerry and Germ went and dropped off their goods at heir hotel room, and Mike, Steve, Trevor and I went and got lunch. Thanks again for the pizza, Steve! Then, it was time for the Media Blasters panel that Mike and I wanted to attend. Lucky us, it was canceled. Figures. To kill time, we went to a panel called "Otakumentary" (how ironic, we used that phrase in our fan dub!). It was basically a home video documentary about anime. So, seeing as how there was nothing else we wanted to do that day, Mike and I decided to head back to New Jeresy. We said our goodbyes, and packed on into my car for the ride home. It was on that trip home that I got into my first car accident....that took place in a parking lot. O_o No one was hurt, thank god, but some damage was done to my mom's car. It was very suckful, and I felt terrible for a good while. But, things got back to normal as we returned to our homes, showed our families our anime purchases, and let the trip sink in as we relaxed.

Despite some mishaps, Otakon was everything I could have imagined, times two! The airing of our fan dub and the positive reaction to my music video were the two things that stood out in my mind. I was really glad to meet some really great fans of the ToT and D-EX, and I saw some excellent anime. The three days seemed to last for a long time, and I wish I was back there, dag nabit! It was just an awesome trip, and I can't wait for the next Otakon. I know I forgot a few things in my reflections of the con, but basically, this is what happened. Thanks for reading my ramblings. I'll now leave you with my photo gallery! Thanks for all the pics, Trevor!

It's Vash the Stampede! All of 'em!	A wicked cool, large Gundam Tallgeese!	Ya know Trunks has to be there	Chichiri, no da!
Miss Relena, I presume?	Steve Bennet sports a shirt	Where do I know them from?	Meri and Mike shop on Sunday
The cast of "This is Otakudom" is very happy!...and tired! Seen here are Meri, Mike, DJ, Doug, Carol, Scott. Uh, I can't make out the other people, sorry!	"This is Otakudom" lines up for a group shot.	Trevor in full Vegeta garb	Trevor, Mike and Meri look *damn* pissed off. :)

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