Aug. 16 - Ikasucon vs. Otakon
A 5 year veteran of Otakon I have actually never been to another con, but this weekend that changed when Ikasucon uprooted from its 4 year home in Cincinnati and moved into the Grand Wayne Convention Center. Used to the crowds and the wholesale takover of downtown Baltimore that is Otakon I donned my Communist Wolfwood costume and set out for Ikasucon. My friend Mallory came along for breakfast and to take pictures of people in line. And as we parked our car in the library parking lot and walked the 2 or 3 blocks to the convention center she gave me strength because when I looked around Fort Wayne I realized that I was the only person in any sort of costume much less carrying a large symbol of oppression. This was my worst nightmare, naked in math class times ten, and any more time outside would have given me a series of elaborate panic attacks. I approached the apparently empty convention center, gripped with fear and covered in a cold sweat, and let myself in. but moments later I was turning the corner in to something completely familiar. A line.
A line made up of the same old faces, all my favorite characters from a bunch of shows I have never seen, and of course naruto.
Men dressed as women,
women dressed as men,
and people dressed as otherworldly horrors from deep beneath the abyss.
he's such a cute little horror
And of course there was the line,
LINE TAKE 2: the guy in the cowboy hat was from flavor country
the anime fan's favorite pass-time. If Otakon attendees revel in a line Ikasucon attendees bathe in it, they breathe deep its heady aroma and eat its succulent goodness down to its sweet, sweet marrow. But rather than wait for 3 hours in a line of mere hundreds I went to lunch. When I came back the line had moved slightly, but was actually moving. After I registered, and was able to see the convention outside the line I started to notice the big differences, at Ikasucon the line to the dealers room is 4 and a half seconds long, the dealers room is also the artists alley and all told either one could fit in a space not much larger than my apartment.
the entire dealers' room
The video game room is an oval of a dozen 27" televisions with consoles out in the open not locked in heavy boxes, DDR is played by fat slow people, and speed metal rages in the background.
But on the positive side, there are no yaoi paddles, the dealers room sells almost no hard core homo-erotica, the main events are held in rooms big enough to house the entire con, the special guests have their own tables in the artists alley/dealers room and there aren't 2000 people trying to get their autographs so you can actually have a conversation with them, and did I mention that I haven't seen a yaoi paddle all weekend? Since the programming wasn't as overwhelming as it was at Otakon, and the dealers room didnt take a lifetime to explore I decided to take part in some of the events and the first event of the day was cosplay chess.
It's like the chess scene in History of the World Part 1, except there was no gang bang at the end. This was my team
The other team
Being wolfwood (communist though I may be) I was an obvious choice for a bishop. Unfortunately the people playing both employed a unique strategy that ensured that I was the first to die. Yes, struck down in my youth like so many bright flowering young men at Khe Sanh, at Langdok, at Hill 364... by mister hat and clogs.
He Regan smashed me.
But I was avenged after he was ordered to kill our knight our king beat the ever-loving shit out of him.
PEPSI OR CHOKE MOTHERFUCKER?! PEPSI OR CHOKE?!
NOW HIT HIM WITH THE STICK! DO IT! AVENGE ME!
And eventually we went on to win the match. At Otakon this would have been accompanied by 10,000 jeering fans, angry that their favorite character had to be sacrificed, yaoi paddles, and possible intervention by the Baltimore PD when the flavor-of-the-week crossplayer's balls popped out. And while there were crossplayers and all around douche bags there were no balls (interesting side note, on my way to the con I did see a hoopdy up on 20s that had balls. Literally. It had silicone testicles hanging off the back).
At Otakon you come for the media event, the anime showcase provided by industry leaders, you come for the consumerism, some people come for deviant pornography, but at Ikasucon you come because its local. The anime is old and fansubbed, the industry couldn't care less, the consumerism is on a fractional scale, and the deviant pornography is infinitessimal. I learned a lot from the anime classics, firstly some of them are just old, the yellow guyver has a much bigger wang on its head than the blue one, the galaxy express 999 series sucks hard even if the movie was mainly of nostalgic significance, and the Irresponsible Captain Tylor isn't as funny as some people made it out to be. I also learned that the library closes at 6 on friday and its parking garage has steel shutters on it. And I learned it cost about $12 to get from my apartment to the convention center by taxi. The last event of the night was karaoke. There is just something special about nerds singing poorly.
These 2 meth heads nearly destroyed the stage singing japanese metal.
I briefly poked my head into anime "who's line is it anyway" and decided it was both hilarious and racist but it was time to call it a night. Final impression of the first day of the con: satisfying if not tiring and bewildering, but what would an anime convention be if not tiring and bewildering?
Day 2 of the con started with me getting up at 8:30 so Mal could pick me up and take me to the library to get my car before they had it towed and for the next part of the day I went right the hell back to bed. Unfortunately for day 2 of the con a felt like shit, like death warmed over. Apparently my time around the unwashed masses, and more importantly, the unwashed otaku masses, had taken its toll. But fortunately, despite the fact that there were quite a few more people there Saturday, there wasn't anything to do. So I got myself a Gundam and decided to have a relaxing afternoon assembling it, that was not to be. Whoever decided that tiny metal screws would make plastic Gundams better should die.
On Sunday, the shortest day of the con I made one last trip to the dealers room, made one more circle around the game room, and played some game show type thing in main events called "last otaku standing" which turned out to be "test your knowledge of Japanese vocabulary." I got eliminated after the first question because I don't speak japanese.
In the end Ikasucon is convenient, and more accessible to the average otaku, and while Otakon is all the way in Baltimore and it is somewhat overwhelming the quality and quantity of it's content are unmatched, but the true joy of an anime con can only be experienced when it is spent with friends, and that experience was sorely lacking at Ikasucon.
last, i will leave you with 2 pictures that i feel sum up both cons pretty darn well.
Ikasucon:
More the cheapo tinfoil al than the Roy Mustang
Otakon:
Edit: picture of me as Communist Wolfwood.
Posted by Colin Gray
