February 20, 2006
About a month ago I saw a link on one of the webcomics I read about Katsucon, a comic/anime convention in DC. I've never been to one of these things, so I figured it was worth it to pre-register and take a look.
Friday: Borrowed a camera from one of my friends and hopped on the Metro to ride into town. I figured I'd only have an hour or two to look around and get my bearings.
As expected, there were a lot of people cosplaying (dressing up like characters from a favorite comic or cartoon). Several women were dressed as Sailor Moon-types. Some of these would probably have been better off dressing up as tents. Didn't have a chance to snap any pictures since I was so busy wandering around lost, but it looks like there'll at least be some decent "scenery" there tomorrow.
I tried to get some of my purchases out of the way, but the booths for the webcomics I read (MacHall and Apple Geeks) were both empty. Guess I'll have to stand in line with the rest of the slobs later in the weekend.
Looking at the event schedule there are a lot of panels on comic creation, including a Photoshop panel I missed. I'm not entirely sure I want or need to learn how to draw hentai but tentacles would be pretty much at the limits of my drawing ability right now...
Saturday: "Raynor, who the hell are you dressed as?"
An old roommate of mine from college came down from Baltimore to hit the convention, and I pretty much ran into him by accident -- while trying to find enough small bills for the MacHall guys to sell me a "sell your soul for a cookie?" shirt (scroll down a little). After we shot the breeze for a bit I made my way to the merchants' room.
Good God, the smell of unwashed geek was nearly unbearable. Imagine if the Cyert lobby was 10 times as large in both directions, and twice as densely packed. The only reason I was able to stay upright was because I knew that the fumes would do me in if I passed out.
Lots of manga on sale, and more than a few DVDs (though everyone seemed to have about the same ones). Looking around the tables, I saw Cowboy Bebob at a 20% off table. Unfortunately, 20% off meant that the price dropped from $30 to $24 per disc. And I ain't paying $144 for Cowboy Bebob, even with the free box of Pocky. Another dealer was selling 5 DVDs for $50, far more reasonable, but only had the sixth disc. D'oh. Guess I'll have to try Amazon again.
Saw some fairly cute cosplayers this time around, and got a few pictures. Then my friend's camera ran out of batteries, so I took one more with my phone. Luckily for me the good camera just takes double-As, so I swapped them out for another try on Sunday.
There were quite a few people cosplaying, actually, and these people (usually) put quite a bit of effort into their outfits. Naruto seemed popular, but that may be because it's one of the few I recognized. Also present were several Inuyashas and Kagomes. Didn't spot anyone from One Piece, though that may be because the translated (kiddie) version of it kinda sucks. I mean, it's a goofball show anyway, but painting a sucker on the end of one character's cigarette and pretending they're drinking "bug juice" instead of beer just makes me wonder if there are other jokes that are getting cut entirely.
I went to a few of the panels instead of wandering around lost like I did on Friday. One had a couple of the voice actors from Inuyasha (which is apparently getting ready to end), one had the MacHall guys talking about their strip and other stuff (it was kinda freeform), another talked about how Japanese culture appears in anime and manga, and one was about webcomic writing in general.
One I caught the last few minutes of was basically some sanctimonious prick talking about how scanlations -- (badly) photocopied manga with fan-translated English dialogue -- are the devil, because publishing companies won't publish a comic that's freely distributed online. Apparently they forgot to tell Dark Horse that; they've been selling Megatokyo compilations for three years and it's a webcomic. There's never been a time when MT wasn't available online.
Yes, the author's copyright should be respected, but if the legit channels are taking too long, or just plain aren't distributing what people want, they shouldn't be surprised when others fill the gap they've left. And blaming the fans for liking their work that they were too lazy/incompetent to distribute properly seems to be pointing blame in the wrong direction. And it's the same reason I think region-encoded DVDs are a crock. There's no such thing as a regional, or even national, market anymore. Release worldwide or you may find that someone's taken the liberty of doing it for you.
Of course, these are the same execs who don't realize that people who buy scanlations will often buy the true release just for the quality of it. But that comes back to the whole "incompetent" thing.
And finally, even people from northeast Ohio get cold when wearing a t-shirt under a medium jacket when it's 16 degrees out. It wasn't this cold here in January.
Sunday: Not much going on since it was the end of the con. Got a couple more pics and attended two more panels: The comic creation process and comic reviews and critiques. Both were informative, though I was hoping for something a little different on the first one. Like a quick primer on how to draw something more complex than a stick figure.
Overall: I enjoyed the panels and some of the anime they showed. The dealers were all right, though most of the stuff they had out wasn't anything I'd buy and the stuff I would have bought I was too ignorant of. Walking around the con was actually the least-fun part, owing in no small part to my general anti-social-ness. Cute girls in skimpy outfits were nice, but unfortunately few and far between.
Another of my favorite webcomic artists is going to be at Otakon in Baltimore later in the year; I may go up and give that a look too. I'm just deciding whether I'll really be inclined to drive the hour-plus to and from Bawlmer for a weekend.
