This post was written by Dark_Sage. He is Dark_Sage.
Saturday is tomorrow.
Note: Same key players as Thursday, but Will joined us later in the night due to having a job. So the day begins with Soup, Chimera (yeah, I changed her name; deal with it), and Dark_Sage.
10:00 We all wake up. Soup takes a shower.
11:30 Soup gets out of the shower. No time for anyone else to bathe. Fuck it; wet wipes for cleaning and crushed-up breath mints for deodorant will suffice. We gotta eat Chipotle and hit panels!
11:35 Thanks to a convenient shortcut and keen car-dodging skills we make it to Chipotle in record time.
11:58 Soup finally finishes fucking eating.
(Soup, do… do you see? Do you see why I wrote the morning like this? Time management skills, Soup. Time management skills.)
12:05 “Unpopular Anime Appreciation” Panel
You know you’re off to a great start when the panelist begins by asking the audience if they have any unpopular animes they’d like to recommend. Some girl yelled out “When They Cry”. Figuring she mighta been joking, I in turn yelled out “Higurashi”. This is what I like to call testing the water.
Both answers were enthusiastically received, indicating the waters were gonna be quite testy for the duration of the panel.
After a bunch of crowdsourced stupidity, panelist-chan shot straight into her presentation. “So who here has heard of Seven Ghosts?”
For those unfamiliar with that never-actually-used-anywhere translation, she was referring to 07-Ghost. Yes, the 07-Ghost that is currently the 132nd most popular manga and 225th most popular anime on MyAnimeList.
And in order to sway the audience into watching the “underappreciated” show, she pulled out its printed Wikipedia page and started reading it.
By the time she was finished, we were out of there.
12:20 Walkcon.
If you’re unfamiliar with how to play Walkcon, the concept is you walk around the convention with no particular destination in mind, and take pics of any cosplayers you wanna take pics of. This is how most people handle conventions, but it gets kinda boring after your second con, which is why I consider it a last resort.
Neways, we grabbed lots of shots of people. Ended up running into lots of people we’d met at Ohayocon 2013. And if you remember the Umineko cosplayers from the Cosplay Pix post, this is where we caught them.
Since Soup’s got a decent memory, he asked them why they weren’t running the panel they did last year. If you guessed “bullshit bureaucracy that punishes interesting content” then I guess you remember more than just the pictures from that post.
3:00 AMV Contest
I would like you to keep in mind for the duration of this textual segment that this AMV contest took place in the year 2014.
>Windows XP laptop
>Windows Media Player
>All_the_AMVS_-_Play_This.WMV
Holy why?!
The bald motherfucker running this goddamn contest had been doing it since at least 2012. How could someone be so consistently incompetent and still have any position of significance?
Anyway, dude starts the WMV file… and can’t figure out how to make it full screen. Took him three minutes to get it puzzled out. I do believe those three minutes were the only time during this whole mess that the crowd was legitimately happy.
When he finally figured out that you have to press the full screen button to get the vid in full screen, the AMVs start playing and they all looked like ass. The dumbass clearly just threw every file he had into Windows Movie Maker and hoped it wouldn’t come out as the desynched 480p mess that we got. Not fucking cool, baldie.
The only good thing to come out of that godforsaken visual abortion was bringing my attention to this AMV:
Yes, the bass is muted. It’s intentional.
5:00 Food and liquor.
Gotta have something enjoyable at the con.
6:00 “Do you even watch anime?” Panel
This panel was run by a bunch of tryhards from 4chan who thought they were fucking hilarious. The worst part is that this was the best panel of the con.
Though the majority of their presentation was stupid “lol we have better taste than you; Sword Art Online best anime ever” yelling (and Soup made sure to yell back at every possible moment), the brief segments where they managed to make a point resonated with anyone who was an actual anime fan.
“Homestuck is not anime. Get the fuck out of anime cons.”
“Doctor Who is not anime. Get the fuck out of anime cons.”
“Star Wars is not anime. Get the fuck out of anime cons.”
Spot on, guys.
While the panelists were rather casual themselves, the main point seemed to be “the anime fandom is a worthwhile one; try to become a better fan and we’ll all benefit for it”. And in a scene where the majority of “anime cons” are dead set on throwing anime fans under the bus in the hopes they might possibly attract normalfags, it is a fucking important point to make.
7:00 I dunno what happened here. I think we played Walkcon.
9:00 “Evangelion: You Can (Not) Discuss” Panel
These guys tried to manually imitate PowerPoint by opening up images from folders, talking about them, closing the images, and then searching for another image to repeat the process. It was mindblowingly inefficient.
Beyond their lack of presentation skills, the panelists ended up running out of time halfway through their presentation. And that was rather unfortunate, since it seemed like they had an idea of what they were talking about. I woulda liked to see what kind of panel they could come up with if they actually tried.
10:00 Pokemon and Beyond
Remember the Aniblog Contest? Neither do I, but one of the losing contestants shot me an email to hang out for a bit. We’ll call him Sekijitsu Guy since I forgot his actual name.
So Will and I met up with Sekijitsu Guy and rendezvoused with Soup and Chimera in the line for the Pokemon Conspiracies panel.
Unfortunately, the panel had filled up rather quick, so we didn’t get in. And then the concops yelled at us and said we couldn’t wait in the line for people to leave the panel. So much for America.
In an effort to entertain himself, Will then started asking random cosplayers to re-enact “that one scene from Star Wars episode VII”. It was a smashing success.
10:30 Everyone thought the rave would be a decent way to spend a bit of time before doing other shit, so we trudged on over to the dance floor.
10:31 “I’m 24 years old. What am I doing here? Booze time.”
So I ditched everyone at the rave (that was the last time I saw Sekijitsu Guy) and went back to the room to eat beef jerky and drink liquorhol.
One hour later and I figured I oughta try to at least make the best of the rest of the night, so I headed back into the abyss.
12:00 “Oppunmaikunaito”
I thought the “open mic” in the title meant this event was gonna be karaoke. Nope. It was a bunch of ten-minute skits.
When it came time for the Deadpool who thought dressing like Miley Cyrus was the epitome of hilarity, I was on my way out.
1:00 “Boogiepop and the Dark Side” Panel
“Anyone who likes Boogiepop can’t possibly be a bad person”, naively thought Drunk_Sage as he entered the panel room.
Here’s some advice for prospective panelists: if you think your audience has devoted their life to the subject just as you have, everyone’s gonna be in for a bad time.
This Aspie piece of shit spent the first 15 minutes of the panel referencing the most obscure bits of the series you could think of. Remember the first three pages in the manga? No? Well, this fucker did and he wasn’t above quoting them. He had some visuals to help illustrate whatever point he was trying to make, but they were all censored, which really didn’t help (keep in mind this was an 18+ panel).
But the coup de lack of grace came at the 15 minute mark, when he began to read a “passage” to help explain why Boogiepop is a magical girl (Boogiepop is male/genderless, just so we’re all clear). This lasted 20 fucking minutes, and when it was done, I was out of there. I would’ve left sooner, but after 5 minutes of this guy’s droning voice, I was really curious as to how long he was gonna keep it up. Gotta give him credit for his stamina at least.
(Oh, do try to remember this shit for the Day 3 – Sunday post. This guy makes a surprise appearance in the worst possible place.)
1:35 I tried to play Walkcon, but the convention center was rather empty, so I hit the sack in the hopes that Saturday would be better.
More
Day 0 – Thursday: http://www.crymore.net/2014/01/30/ohayocon-2014-day-0-thursday/
Day 1 – Friday: That’s this article.
Day 2 – Saturday: http://www.crymore.net/2014/02/04/ohayocon-2014-day-2-saturday/
Day 3 – Sunday: http://www.crymore.net/2014/02/04/ohayocon-2014-day-3-sunday/
where da fuk is the funimation panel
Well it wasn’t on Thursday or Friday so I guess there are only two options left, huh?
Clearly it was on Monday.
I don’t know how you made it through this. Ohayocon looks fucking terrible. Oh well, at least you got Chipotle, so not a complete loss.
Just wait till Sunday. Friday is what I’d consider a good day.
Ouch, if this is a good day, Sunday much be absolutely dreadful. I’m looking forward to it.
Sounds like you had quality con-time.
This pretty much reflects my experience with cons. Why are the panel titles always so much better than the actual panels? Why does liqour always go down so much easier at cons? Why is there never a liqour store anywhere near the convention center/hotel? These are the important questions.
Sounds like a grand time. Me, I’m not into self-inflicted pain.
Maybe one day, when I can handle my beers so I can drown in them.
That AMV convinced me I need to watch Mirai Nikki.
Also: that’s the best AMV I’ve seen since the Du Hast/Evangelion one. (disclaimer: I don’t watch a lot of AMVs)
You know before reading this I kind of wanted to go to an anime con just to see what it’s like, but now I’m not so sure anymore.
I was thinking about going to Anime Boston next month but I’m still on the fence about it.
Cons are, primarily, an excuse to hang out with your friends and do nerdy things in the presence of other nerds. If you intended to go to Anime Boston alone, scrap those fucking plans. But if you have friends who are going, jump on board.
What kind of wrongdoing earns you a nickname in the likes of Chimera…?
I actually just thought it was a cool name. I mean, fuck, wouldn’t you wanna be called Chimera?
Though I guess it ain’t all too great a title for a lady…
It does sound a bit badass… And Chimera-chan has a charming ring to it too!
You should change it again for Saturday.
Keep the readers on their toes!
Yes, that is how the name change joke plays out. Thanks for getting it.
Homestuck and My Little Pony are my favourite animes :3