This post was written by Dark_Sage. He is Dark_Sage.
And you thought it couldn’t get any worse. Somebody put this pseudo-anime con out of its misery.
Note: Mecha Sailor Moon shall be referred to henceforth as Mistress Marmouth von Butterworth the Third.
9:00 At any normal anime con, we’d be packing to hit the noon “get the fuck out of our hotel” deadline. But Soup and I had earlier decided to spend an extra night, just to get the full Sunday experience at what we thought was going to be the greatest con ever. (You laugh, but we were legitimately hyped to the max for this year’s Ohayocon.)
So this was a chillax time for everyone.
Soup and Mistress Marmouth von Butterworth the Third decided to sleep in. And Will… Uhh, maybe he didn’t have work on Sunday? I don’t remember. Anyway, I headed into the con by myself and they all caught up at various points.
10:00 “Manga Japanese Critics Love” Panel
I thought this was gonna be a panel about good manga, but instead it was a panel about manga that Japanese critics love.
10:30 “Free and Easy: A History of Anime Consumption” Panel
Based on the name, I went in expecting a panel about fansubs. Instead, Panelist-kun read the “Anime History in America” Wikipedia page at the audience for an hour. It was as entertaining as you might expect.
Sadly enough, the boredom may have been tolerable were it not for the inaccurate information he kept spewing at us. Presenter-kun thought Sony was the company that came up with HD-DVD, for example.
Fucking Sunday amateur hour.
11:30 Subway time
12:00 Walkcon.
And what a pathetic walkcon it was. But not like you can expect much from Sundays.
1:00 “Panel Announcements” (This was a panel intended for panelists, to let them know all the info they’d need for what would be going on next year. But we snuck in cuz we’re too cool for rules.)
If you want to know why I’ll never go to another Ohayocon, this panel is the reason.
Remember the Boogiepop presenter from Friday? You know, the one who who spent 20 minutes reading a goddamn entire chapter from one of the Boogiepop novels? Yeah, he’s the head of panels for Ohayocon.
And by his side was some lovely thirty-something-year-old trying very hard with her make-up to cling to her twenties. She started ranting about how Ohayocon had to be a “family con” that attracted both families with children and the children themselves. And that incoming panels had to be respectful of Ohayocon’s desire to be a family con.
Ohayocon visitors, if you’re wondering why the panels all had age ratings this year and seemed more boring on the whole, this lady is to blame. And it’s only gonna get worse from here on out. If this con has any 18+ panels in 2017, I’m gonna be shocked.
But forget her. Let’s focus on the fat piece of shit that’s in charge of all the panels: Boogiepop-kun. And what did Boogiepop-kun want to see for Ohaycon 2015? Well, the answer is fewer anime panels and more “generally inclusive” ones. And he made sure to point out this was a con-wide shift in direction.
Though I wasn’t able to grab a pic of the full list, here are some of the panel topics that Ohayocon would prefer instead of anime/manga panels:
- Fan-fiction. There was no asterisk by this, so any and all fan-fiction is a go.
- Video games. Again, no qualifier as to what this means.
- American comics. Cuz Deadpool is just so whacky!
Oh, and for all the panels, the content they’re based on must have been made in the past 5 years.
I guess they’re trying to be relevant by making themselves irrelevant. It’s a bold move. Wonder how it’ll play out for them.
So in honor of Ohayocon’s new direction, I made them a banner for next year’s con.
Royalty-free, guys. Have at it.
2:00 “Why Your Fandom Sucks: With Greg Ayres” (He’s a VA or something, which I didn’t realize until after I wandered my way into the room.)
I thought this was gonna be a humorous panel about how reddit trash should never leave their mothers’ basements, but what I got was some touchy-feely, “why can’t we all be nakama desu?” bullshit.
Yes, Greg, if I encountered some poor otaku kid sleeping under a pillar and starving to death, I’d probably throw ’em a tenner to get a sandwich. But no, that doesn’t mean I have to fellate every panelist I come across, nor does it mean I need to regard every shitty fucking Disney princess cosplayer as equivalent to a human being.
My fandom is the anime fandom. It is not the Homestuck fandom, and it is not the Marvel fandom. Fuck you for trying to kill anime by advocating what amounts to fandom merges. You almost make me wish you’d succeed, just so you wouldn’t have a job anymore. Maybe then we’d see how much value your ability to voice act cartoons would have on the open market.
2:30 “Girl Power Transformation: A Magical Girl Panel”
This was quite possibly the dumbest panel I sat through at Ohayocon. Fuck you, Sunday, for not having any decent panels for me to go to instead.
Have an example of what I had to witness:
I had to cut the video down to 13 (or 12, depending on what Youtube feels like) seconds, because you don’t deserve to suffer through any more of that shit. And yes, the whole panel was like that. Hell, I could only get through it because I had Will by my side.
You’re a true hero.
4:00 “FLCL: Little Prince Curry” Panel
Surprisingly good. The panelist knew her shit and was capable of entertaining the crowd while simultaneously informing us of how shit that was nonsensical at first blush actually had some meaning behind it.
I still think it’s a bad show cuz it’s never entertained me, but this panel almost got me to watch it for a fourth time.
Almost.
5:00 Fare thee well, fair friends.
We said our goodbyes to Mistress Marmouth von Butterworth the Third as she returned to her native North Carolina. Those fucking warm-weather-having assholes.
Soon after, Will also hit the road. I’m not sure why he didn’t take his Patron with him, but I assume it had something to do with him still being drunk from the night before.
6:00 Soup and I went back to the hotel and chilled, waiting for our morning flights that couldn’t come soon enough, and trying to figure out which con we’d go to next.
More
Day 0 – Thursday: http://www.crymore.net/2014/01/30/ohayocon-2014-day-0-thursday/
Day 1 – Friday: http://www.crymore.net/2014/02/03/ohayocon-2014-day-1-friday/
Day 2 – Saturday: http://www.crymore.net/2014/02/04/ohayocon-2014-day-2-saturday/
Day 3 – Sunday: :X
The scarf was a lie.
anime expo yo
Scarf story where?!
The real scarf story was inside us all along.
fuck you
i’m mad
:(
I have a feeling Toaru Hikuushi will have a similar plot, getting us all hyped up and leaving us disappointed in the end with some deep shit.
Good god. That was excruciatingly painful to read, especially the clip about MLP. Seriously, how the hell are these guys so out of touch? Why are they trying to make a niche hobby more accessible? Instead of appealing to the people who like the hobby, they’re alienating the fanbase by appealing to people who could not care less. God damn, that makes me mad.
Oh well, we still have Crycon.
It’s a shame that getting wasted is the best thing during anime cons :/ That said, drinking with friends is always a good time.
It’s a shame that drinking isn’t simply an enhancer to anime cons like it is for everyday life. At cons, the drinking is everyday life. ಠ_ಠ
To be fair, there was one con I didn’t get drunk at: Anime North.
But that was only because we couldn’t find a liquor store that was open.
I refer to my previous comment, lol: http://www.crymore.net/2014/02/03/ohayocon-2014-day-1-friday/comment-page-1/#comment-143644
Come to Acen we’re an all anime con and check the Disney princesses by the door (¬‿¬)
No but seriously come to Acen I need a reason to drive an hour and pay steep for a hotel.
Then why was the con infested with Homestuckers last year?
Here, maybe these write-ups will explain why I will absolutely never be coming back to ACen: http://www.crymore.net/tag/anime-central/
How many is on your blacklist of anime cons?
Cons I’ve hated:
Ohayocon 2014
Youmacon 2013
Anime North 2013
Anime Central 2013
Ohayocon 2013
Anime Boston 2012
Anime Detour 2012
New York Anime Festival 2011
Cons I’ve enjoyed:
Ohayocon 2012
Pretty one sided list there.
I’m sure it’ll balance out eventually. Just gotta find the right cons. There’s gotta be at least one out there that’s run by anime fans, for anime fans. And I intend to find it.
I wish you luck in the never-ending journey to find a con which is like that.
I guess you’ll never know until you try.
From what I’m reading they might as well not even bother being a con at all any more. Just hold a rummage sale over a long weekend and serve booze in the evenings.
Remove that evening limiter and I’m in.
is will real
If he delivers on those [gg] Doraemon promises he made, then yes. If not, we’ll have to chalk him up to myth.
SPOILERS: Mistress Marmouth von Butterworth the Third/Chimera-chan/Mecha Sailor Moon/Amber is actually Dark_Sage’s female alter-ego. FACT.
You should create your own con ( Crycon ). Feature panels like “Anime: Why you all have shit taste”, “My little fansubers cant be this whiny” or “How to (not) be as awesome as Dark_Sage”. I believe many people would come to such a glorious event and worship you like a prophet.
I’m in. You provide the financing, I’ll provide the sagey charm.
It would be overcome is nyaa mods and raging Commie members. ABORT.
I’m laughing because they’d never leave their houses even if they could afford to.
>Reimu-is-so-perfect-holy-wow.jpg
How do you choose your images for these? Do you keep a stockpile of various useful pictures or do you have a site where you search for them?
Whoa, that’s like… a trade secret, man. But I guess I’ll give it up.
Images usually come from Google Images or the -booru sites. For Reimu, I thought “Hey, consumption. Finding a pic of an anime character eating something would be a good fit.” so I went to… danbooru, I think, and typed in “eating”. Then I browsed through the pics till I found one I thought would fit nicely.
Sometimes I even mine tumblr, but that tends to be dangerous since I easily get swept up in the addiction of scrolling and scrolling and scrolling…
I used to have a large collection of images to choose from, but I ran out of those back in 2012, since I haven’t been to 4chan (other than for cameo appearances) since ~2010.
Just curious. You have… interesting file names.
Oh def. I try not to keep things too boring on that end. Used to put jokes in every one of them, but that started being more effort than it was worth.
This is why I have four friends who I willingly talk to about anime; most anime fans are shit.
Dude, Otakon, you’ve got to do it this year!
So it looks like me not going this year wasn’t much of a loss… (and yes, I’m just getting to read this now). Then again, I didn’t really plan to go back last year but did for some reason… who knows if I’ll go in the future. Out of all the cons I’ve been to, Ohayocon was never one I ever really enjoyed… but they did have Benami Invasion…. hmmmm… How was that?
We kinda skipped the game room, cuz we were expecting panel awesomeness. Also I think we got too drunk to remember it even existed.
I’m sure even the worst cons can be fixed by the right amount of alcohol. Although, that may not fix the con, but the enjoyment level would increase.
The only way alcohol could’ve saved Ohayocon is if I was blackout drunk through it all. What a terrible con.
Even then I don’t think it could be saved.