The following is a brief write-up I made following my attendance at Otakon 2021 as press. Ultimately I decided not to make it into a video as planned, but considering it was only available on my now closed patreon, I decided to share it here. I’ll likely share more of my writing, old and new, later down the line.

So I went to Otakon 2021. I had some thoughts, so here they are. My experience with this particular con runs back a fair way, well before I was even fully aware of the Japan-obsessed world I would later fall in to. Back when my knowledge of anime and manga went about as far as reading some volumes of Prince of Tennis in the library and sneaking peeks at the Chobits omnibus after my older sister told me I shouldn’t read it because “it had naughty stuff in it.” I had seen glimpses from afar during what is now coined to be that same sister’s “weeb” phase. She read Honey & Clover, watched Sailor Moon, Ouran High School, aand Lucky Star (which, in retrospect, is an odd choice for an early anime despite how common it seems to be watched as such, considering how heavily the show centers around nods to the wide range of media in this otaku culture it displays.) While she swooned over J-pop stars, I listened deamau5, and as we had both went from kindergarten through Highschool homeschooled with a family computer by the living room, her interests were always at the corner of my eye. Even if I was a bit too busy drawing Sonic to pay attention. 

The first time I heard the name Otakon came shortly after. My sister was a big fan of the artist Kanon Wakeshima, a singer and cellist whose given genre “neoclassical darkwave” I thought sounded mysterious and cool. I still think it sounds cool. Neoclassical is quite simply, an awesome word. The gothic tone of her music fits the moniker aptly, and even revisiting some tracks now I still enjoy her work. Her song “Still Doll” was the ending theme for the series Vampire Knight, though I’m pretty sure that show has long since faded from everyone’s minds. I vaguely remember hearing my sister talk with some moderate excitement about the fact that the Kanon Wakeshima would be performing at this thing called “Otakon” right in our very city. That was in 2009. For obvious reasons, associated with the fact that we were both children with little means and busy parents, it never developed into much more than a passing thought of possibility. 

In 2014 that seed of intrigue took root when I started watching anime because a friend told me I had to check out Log Horizon because it had like video games and stuff, and by 2017 it, and I, had grown to the extent that I thought I could ask my somewhat strict parents if it was okay for me and a friend to go to this fabled “anime convention.” Though it is a bit comical that the city I grew up in, spent most of my life in, and that Otakon called home for over a decade, Baltimore, would be exchanged for the newer and nicer convention hall in D.C. the very year I could finally go, after having heard of and glanced at the cosplayed congoers out of the backseat car window for years.

So having attended in 2017, 2018, 2019, and now 2021 – two years purely as a fan, two years recognized with a press pass – I guess one could call this an Otakon “Review” of sorts. Though considering my only other congoing experience is a single day (Saturday) of the Baltimore Comic Convention in 2016, I don’t exactly have the widest metric. That con sucked, by the way. Perhaps it is more of a journal. For whatever reason I feel this need to mentally catalogue my experience and relationship with cons in particular, because of the unique place they often end up holding within my mind. A strong memory I can conjure up and retell with relative ease, a weak one seems to me a hazy dream or a sequence of words on a page, more a remembrance of a remembrance that the true thing, but there’s these tangible moments that are like portraits I can see in a gallery, and my memory of conventions tend to have a lot these. It’s those moments wherein I almost become a spectator to myself, both keenly aware while fully within the experience, my mind married to the the moment. It’s watching Serial Experiments Lain in a tiny screening room with like a dozen other people, wandering back to my hotel late at night after experiencing the bizarre film that is Wings of Honnemmaise, awkwardly asking an Akatsuki no Yona cosplayer for a photograph, that one guy in a con line who was really excited about Gurren Lagann, watching the crowds of people flow and feeling their presence. Perhaps because anime has been my focus for a while my mind ends up drifting back to these experiences more than others, but in one way or another I find myself often thinking of the unique atmosphere I felt there. It draws me back year after year. Well, that and the collective opportunity to meet the friends I talk to so often yet so rarely get to see.

In as critically clear terms as I can muster, Otakon is what I would call a fairly quality experience. Good alone, better with friends, it pulls a respectable 25 to 30 thousand on average in attendance. It’s a clear step up from that of smaller local conventions, able to pull in guests and vendors in higher quantity and quality, but doesn’t even approach the harrowing crowds and lines I’ve heard of at cons like AX. There’s room to breathe. And as mildly dismayed as I might have been at the transition, Otakon benefited greatly from the change of location. Not only is it a better area with more to do and see outside of the convention itself, the hall is infinitely nicer than the dated Baltimore one. Its need for renovation was the precise reason behind their transition away in the first place. For someone like myself, who enjoys just sitting off by alone and people-watching, it’s the perfect setup. The main upper hall is the center stage for cosplay photography and idle groups, there’s a dedicated karaoke room where you can sit and listen to impassioned reinditions of every classic anime theme from fellow congoers, and a broad range of rooms dedicated to screening films and series popular and niche alike, many of which I often have never seen or heard of. Even if there was that one really annoying guy who kept talking over the screening of Akira. As much as I find the architecture pleasant, perhaps it has more to do with the number of times I’ve come now that I find the place strangely homey, right down to that gaudy rainbow staircase. 

Now I won’t pretend to claim it’s the best it could possibly be, my biggest issue lies in the quality and quantity of guests. Some years are incredible but others rather lackluster, and of course with covid’s far-reaching effects still in full swing it restricted this year even more so than usual, but I was still surprised at how full of an experience it did feel to be for a return from such an absence. It certainly could have ended up being much worse. 

Otakon 2021 was a very different experience for me than earlier ones. In the absence of AX, it seems this became the designated anituber/streamer/internet people con to be at, at least when it comes to people in and around my particular sphere of that community. I was also there with a secondary goal in mind, shooting content for my collaborative channel with Jackisboy and Korewa Eden during the con and week following. So not only was this a return after a year’s absence and all the things that means for the con and myself, in balancing socializing and additional in-the-moment content creation outside of the after-the-fact writing I do here, the entire event blazed by with its own unique character. To that degree I appreciate it for being unique, and I feel I’ve gained a sense for another facet of the deeply varied “con experience.” In prior years I was either in a small group of friends or playing solo, in fact the first few times I largely wandered entirely alone, third wheeling with two friends and for that reason quickly finding reason to split off my own way. That admittedly sounds kind of sad but honestly I didn’t, and still don’t, particularly mind it. There’s a fun of its own sort in that experience. In fact I kind of missed it this time, but I gained something new so I suppose it is all part of the balancing act. 

I got to meet the illustrious Caribou-kun of “Hey it’s Shaybs!” fame, see my good man Jackisboy again as well as so many others that it is quite literally too many to name. I walked around in a rainbow suit embarrassing myself for all to see – stay tuned for that one on Spilling the Milk –  it was a surreal three days. I bought doujinshi!

The moment everything came to a head was near the closing of the final day, during the afternoon Sunday concert put on by the J-Music Ensemble. Now this particular guest was one I was especially excited for, as I’ve been following their music since I discovered them in an Adam Neely video in 2019. A group dedicated to Jazz and J-pop, and one that’s damn good at that, it couldn’t be any more perfect a match to my interests. They opened the show declaring it was their first live performance in two years, and they definitely played like they couldn’t wait to get right back to it. You could feel how much fun everyone was having, the level of technical mastery that lends to a sensation of musical freedom. Considering it’s been a similar period since the last time I was able to see a live show, it hit all the harder. Feeling the vibrations course the hall, the energy of the players and everyone listening, it’s something that can’t be replicated on any stereo setup. Listening to the music I couldn’t help but feel this intense feeling of joy. Joy that they could perform, that I could be there, that the music was fucking good, and that I’d be able to carry the memory with me. The fact that my friends and I kept bringing it up and praising it days after speaks to the impression it made. Seriously, go follow J-Music Ensemble, they’re incredible and deserve infinitely more recognition than they currently have. There was one particular moment, part of the way through a sequence of tracks from Persona, where I genuinely came close to crying. The music wasn’t even trying to hit an emotional moment, that particular track was upbeat and groovy, but after what had felt like a purposeless year their dedication to delivering this show, this explosive sensation of release after being unable to perform, it hit close to home in a way I think most people can relate to. 

Granted, I’m lucky, in the sense that I can afford to live on the internet. And yet in some ways that seems more an excuse than anything. The unfortunate timing locked me largely by myself, and in a way I feel like my life has been on hold, like I missed out on and will continue to if something doesn’t change. That concert and that con were a much needed breath of fresh air.

I don’t have any poetic resolution this time. Maybe something interesting was in there. I give Otakon 2021 a 7/10. Well to be honest this one might be more around a 6, 6.5-ish but I also didn’t get the opportunity to check out panels and video screenings to the same extent as last time so I’ll round up.