Otakon was excellent!
I had a blast. Part of me thinks each year, "it's too big, the hotel is expensive, blah blah" but then I'm there and it's so much fun to share the con with 
priestess_grrrl as we almost never meet at another time in the year and there are cool panels and fun new anime and the dealer's room and manga library and ..."
So, this year. P-grrrl was stuck in traffic so I was almost alone in line. You're never alone with hundreds of other otaku, and besides, I brought Totoro. One young Gothic Lolita spotted him and squeed, so we chatted a bit. I managed to connect with Megan, a former coworker (actually, I was her boss when she was a page) and her boyfriend for a fun catching-up and get to know the boyfriend dinner. Then back to the hotel and P-grrrl finally arrived. We were so loud security came to ask us to be quiet. Bad girls, I know...
This was The Year of Lolita. We went to an excellent Lolita 101 panel, with Megan there too, and then excitedly headed for the dealers' room to look at what they had. I did what might be a dumb beginner's thing but I bought lavender flannel bloomers. They were well made and simple but cute and are comfy as heck (I wore them to bed that night). We did the Lolita 102 panel also, to learn about shopping. Me being the cheapskate I am, I'm going to do only 1 or 2 outfits and my blouses are likely to be embellished thrift-shop finds. I also have a brain wave I may or may not follow, to buy a simple secondhand pink or yellow dress or skirt, and stencil Russian Blue cats on it. Wouldn't that be awesome? It's amazing what's on lolita-style dresses: flowers of course, kittens, pancakes with syrup and pancake mix, carousels (one of the lolita-class presenters had a carousel dress with a mini carousel music box on her headpiece!), and, would you believe, sailing ships (one gifted young lady had an actual miniature ship on her headdress along with feathers and flowers, and a sailing-ship-printed skirt along with tartan trim).
I saw two anime I definitely intend to follow up on. I've already started watching Natsume's Book of Friends on Crunchyroll. It's about a high-school boy who can see and is chased by youkai (where have we heard that plotline before?) Natsume-kun gets his powers, and a book holding the stolen names of various youkai, from his grandmother. His sidekick/teacher usually appears as one of those lucky waving cats you often see in Chinese and Japanese shops and is a hoot.
The other anime was The Daily Life of Teenage Boys, which is pretty much realistic as my knowledge of male teenagers serves me. It's a bit of an Azumanga Daioh! with boys instead of girls and while some of the little stories (4 or 5 per episode) fall a bit flat, some are hilarious. (The review in the link above is fairly spot-on, though it's pretty funny even if you haven't watched high-school-story anime; there are some universally funny/weird things about high schoolers!)
I read about half of the last omnibus manga of Mushi-shi (vols. 8-10) in the Manga Library--I hadn't known the later stories were ones not in the anime! Now I'm fired up to get into the fandom once again.
The producer and the editor of Samurai Champloo, Cowboy Bebop, and Kids on the Slope both came this year and held Q&A panels. Both were marvelous.The producer, Masao Maruyama, showed a lovely bittersweet anime music video made to encourage the survivors of the earthquake a couple of years ago. And I got to ask him my question: When making Kids on the Slope, did he think that modern teens might be interested in a story about teens set in the 1960s, and what did he think would appeal to them? He replied that his main concern was to make a good anime as quality will attract people, and that some things are universal and would appeal to anyone--one of those is love.
The Director, Shinichiro Watanabe, talked a bit, then answered as many questions as he could squeeze in before giving us the world premiere announcement and video about his new project: Space Dandy. It's his first comedy TV series and is about: a dandy in space. Yeah. Said dandy looks like a Japanese stereotype of a "cool dude," complete with Elvis pompadour and sparkles. His robot is called Q-T, and he has an feline-alien sidekick. The video looks hilarious, and highly creative as well. I've rarely seen so many truly *alien* aliens. Space Dandy has the potential to be either somewhat funny/somewhat lame, or a total howl with really good design quality, IMHO.
Oh, and before I forget, I got to meet Kori Michele Handwerker, the creator of Prince of Cats, in person!!! I was such a nervous fangirl that I was 20 years off on the time-setting for the story, and messed up a couple of my words. But I got a hug from Kori M, and bought final art for a page of the story, together with the sketch. It's a page with the four most major human characters-- Frank, Lee, Adi and Sam--and has some great facial expressions.
More later; this is getting way long!
priestess_grrrl as we almost never meet at another time in the year and there are cool panels and fun new anime and the dealer's room and manga library and ..."
So, this year. P-grrrl was stuck in traffic so I was almost alone in line. You're never alone with hundreds of other otaku, and besides, I brought Totoro. One young Gothic Lolita spotted him and squeed, so we chatted a bit. I managed to connect with Megan, a former coworker (actually, I was her boss when she was a page) and her boyfriend for a fun catching-up and get to know the boyfriend dinner. Then back to the hotel and P-grrrl finally arrived. We were so loud security came to ask us to be quiet. Bad girls, I know...
This was The Year of Lolita. We went to an excellent Lolita 101 panel, with Megan there too, and then excitedly headed for the dealers' room to look at what they had. I did what might be a dumb beginner's thing but I bought lavender flannel bloomers. They were well made and simple but cute and are comfy as heck (I wore them to bed that night). We did the Lolita 102 panel also, to learn about shopping. Me being the cheapskate I am, I'm going to do only 1 or 2 outfits and my blouses are likely to be embellished thrift-shop finds. I also have a brain wave I may or may not follow, to buy a simple secondhand pink or yellow dress or skirt, and stencil Russian Blue cats on it. Wouldn't that be awesome? It's amazing what's on lolita-style dresses: flowers of course, kittens, pancakes with syrup and pancake mix, carousels (one of the lolita-class presenters had a carousel dress with a mini carousel music box on her headpiece!), and, would you believe, sailing ships (one gifted young lady had an actual miniature ship on her headdress along with feathers and flowers, and a sailing-ship-printed skirt along with tartan trim).
I saw two anime I definitely intend to follow up on. I've already started watching Natsume's Book of Friends on Crunchyroll. It's about a high-school boy who can see and is chased by youkai (where have we heard that plotline before?) Natsume-kun gets his powers, and a book holding the stolen names of various youkai, from his grandmother. His sidekick/teacher usually appears as one of those lucky waving cats you often see in Chinese and Japanese shops and is a hoot.
The other anime was The Daily Life of Teenage Boys, which is pretty much realistic as my knowledge of male teenagers serves me. It's a bit of an Azumanga Daioh! with boys instead of girls and while some of the little stories (4 or 5 per episode) fall a bit flat, some are hilarious. (The review in the link above is fairly spot-on, though it's pretty funny even if you haven't watched high-school-story anime; there are some universally funny/weird things about high schoolers!)
I read about half of the last omnibus manga of Mushi-shi (vols. 8-10) in the Manga Library--I hadn't known the later stories were ones not in the anime! Now I'm fired up to get into the fandom once again.
The producer and the editor of Samurai Champloo, Cowboy Bebop, and Kids on the Slope both came this year and held Q&A panels. Both were marvelous.The producer, Masao Maruyama, showed a lovely bittersweet anime music video made to encourage the survivors of the earthquake a couple of years ago. And I got to ask him my question: When making Kids on the Slope, did he think that modern teens might be interested in a story about teens set in the 1960s, and what did he think would appeal to them? He replied that his main concern was to make a good anime as quality will attract people, and that some things are universal and would appeal to anyone--one of those is love.
The Director, Shinichiro Watanabe, talked a bit, then answered as many questions as he could squeeze in before giving us the world premiere announcement and video about his new project: Space Dandy. It's his first comedy TV series and is about: a dandy in space. Yeah. Said dandy looks like a Japanese stereotype of a "cool dude," complete with Elvis pompadour and sparkles. His robot is called Q-T, and he has an feline-alien sidekick. The video looks hilarious, and highly creative as well. I've rarely seen so many truly *alien* aliens. Space Dandy has the potential to be either somewhat funny/somewhat lame, or a total howl with really good design quality, IMHO.
Oh, and before I forget, I got to meet Kori Michele Handwerker, the creator of Prince of Cats, in person!!! I was such a nervous fangirl that I was 20 years off on the time-setting for the story, and messed up a couple of my words. But I got a hug from Kori M, and bought final art for a page of the story, together with the sketch. It's a page with the four most major human characters-- Frank, Lee, Adi and Sam--and has some great facial expressions.
More later; this is getting way long!