10:00 Soup comes in, “you get us those press passes, D_S?”

 

5 minutes later I’m at the con center, hanging with the media guy who is apparently shocked that a site with readers actually bothered to come to Otakuthon, and that I’d “fly up from Atlanta for this?”

I guess that’s one way to set expectations.

 

12:00 Let’s eat like the French do

$40 for this, no wonder they’re all so fucking skinny.

 

1:00 Cospix time

Remember when I used to have multiple threads dedicated to cosplay pix I grabbed? Well, this is it.

 

2:00 Funimation Panel

Awful, like every Funimation panel. …Why do we go to these again? Let’s not go to these again.

 

3:00 PonyCan Panel

PonyCan & Aniplex industry panels are always entertaining, because only about 10% of the attendees are actually customers of the company, and the other 90% have no idea why they’re there, or came specifically to complain about prices.

Advice if you plan to go is to wait till the q&a for the cringe to fully manifest. So glorious.

 

4:00 Otakuthon Idol

Considering how other cons treat their Idol contests, I was not expecting more than a small stage and 40 seats. But… this shit was in the main events room, on a giganto stage, with a packed crowd.

Skits were nothing memorable, but still, pretty interesting how each con has its own signature events that others don’t give a fuck about.

 

5:30 Poutine

We were talking food, trying to figure out where to go when some guy piped in.

“New in town? Try the poutinerie next to the strip club. Don’t try the strip club though.”

Dude was right about the poutine, so we similarly skipped the businessman scene and headed back to the con.

 

9:00 Anime Dating Game

Basic concept: bachelor/bachelorette asks questions to one of three people “hidden” behind a curtain in order to determine which they want to go have dirty con sex with later.

Shortly after Soup and I provided the only standing ovations of the panel to question/answer pair of “What is your favorite type of hentai?”/”Guro.”, Soup and I realized this wasn’t quite our crowd. Also, we may have been asked to leave.

 

10:00 Friday Night Fiesta @ The Sheraton

…There were distinctly fewer girls, and a lot more arguments over gen 1 pokemon tiers & Macross, but… actually, wait, I’m the one fact-checking this, right? Okay, we absolutely had sexual intercourse with Totoko. It was so hot. And also she gave us a nicely written thank you card after.

 

11:30 Games?

Went to the game room, I think mostly because we got to talking about how sweet Youmacon’s was, and…

…well, I guess Otakuthon’s wasn’t quite to the 24/7-party level. Fuck it though, everyone must be at the rave, we thought.

 

12:00 We thought wrong.

Maybe not the greatest way to end the night. But I tell ya, we fucking brought that shit back to life for a good five minutes. Also, we may have been asked to leave.

2:00 SNES RPG Panel

I feel like this panel would’ve been better if I grew up on SNES… and let it define the entirety of my goddamn life, like it apparently did for everyone in the crowd.

Whatever. Shit was still tops.

 

3:00 A-1 Panel

Somehow Otakuthon manage to wrangle themselves actual staff from A-1 to come in and talk about the shows they were doing. Aside from learning how fucking casual anime fans are, the q&a section was top. Here’s some (legit) transcriptions:

 

“What’s your opinion on Under the Dog?”

“…What’s that?”

 

“Anime is dying. Have you thought about hiring foreigners to make it more popular worldwide?”

“Uhh, we outsource to China, I guess”

 

“What’s your favorite sushi restaurant?

“I hate sushi”

 

Guests are the best when they’ve run out of fucks to give.

 

4:00 Crunchyroll Panel

On fucking point. The reason most people hate industry panels is because they’re terribly disguised advertisements for whatever shitfuck initiative some community college intern thought would work. Based Ming cared not for that.

You aren’t going to get a whole lot of people straying from the script at most industry panels, but Ming managed to do it while also hitting on every goddamn point he was “supposed” to.

 

5:45 Supper at Feng Shui

If ya remember from the hype post, my boy Bunny recommended this place as the best Chinese restaurant in ever. Having been to Vancouver already, I determined that was a lie, but we still gave it a shot.

After a few nibbles of soggy, grey meat, Soup and I realized we had to bounce to hit up the AMV Contest, so we left Bunny and Bunneesan with 90% of a meal left. Can only assume with that they got to mark indirectly tongue-fucking Dark_Sage off their bucket lists.

 

6:45 AMVs

I list this as simply “AMVs” because to call this a contest would be insulting to those who still give a shit about the AMV scene. Know those shitty MEPs that you only half-watch cuz you wanted to listen to the song? Even if you ain’t on my level, I think you get the gist.

Do not go to the Otakuthon AMV Contest.

 

7:00 Some guy on Twitter offers us crack

I’m in, but Soup isn’t. #BOO

 

8:00 Karaoke Contest

Held in a fucking cafeteria, didn’t start till 40 minutes past the listed time… Would not call this the greatest kara I’ve been to.

 

10:30 Kappuru Contest (Newlyweds Game Rip-off)

Assuming you never got bored enough to watch 80’s game show reruns (obviously), the basic concept of this contest is… too long to explain, just fucking google it.

Anyway, shit was cash. Every one of these essentially devolves into couples trying to embarrass eachother on stage in return for crowd applause.

 

12:00 DBX & crew in the house

Walkcon’d for a bit (like 10 seconds) and talked the shit for 20 minutes until they had to leave to catch the metro back (which is apparently what half the fucking con had to do since downtown is so expensive and public transport shuts down at 1 AM).

 

12:30 Rave till RIP

We weeb hard.

12:00 Authentic Japanese Breakfast Lunch

Authentic Japanese vomiting ensued.

 

1:00 Aimless wandering

Passed Bunny in the hall, shot him the universal “sup@u” twin barrels, and ran off to experience the smell of gamers in heat. Caught Xenath hanging out in the gaming room, so we abducted him to catch a “Whose Line is that Anime?” panel and look at gunpla.

 

2:00 o/

Soup had a plane back to Portland to catch (First Class, ofc), so we went back to pack and plan our con schedule for the rest of the year.

At least these, mark it.

 

4:30 Caught up with DBX10 & HikageKyun at the top floor of the con to… talk Canadian politics?

Look, there wasn’t a lot to do. And I got to learn things, like how many provinces there were, give or take five. Plus, we got to sweat all up on each other like a Catholic elementary school rave.

 

5:00 Dinner at the highest-reviewed Chinese restaurant on Yelp

Lesson learned: There’s a lot of Chinese in Montreal’s Chinatown, but not a lot of cooks.

 

6:00 Back to sleep write watch Suicide Squad