Is it a con... or a convention?

Okay, well Otakon has come and gone, and it was a pretty good con, I guess. I spent a lot of time waiting in line for a guest's signing, though... honestly, there was a lot of waiting in line.

There are a few autograph sessions I missed. First was Nobuo's, even though I tried. Personally, I think the staff could've done a better job organizing his arrival, since his panel was more or less cut in half 'cause they decided to prep the room without allocating any time for it in the schedule. This added to the fact that I was about ten minutes away from getting his autograph when they cut the line... I know if they gave the full hour, I would've gotten his signature. But they didn't. I don't know if it was the plan to only have him there for a half panel, but I somehow doubt it. I also chose him over Masao Matsuyama, and ended up getting neither.

Personal choice drove me to select other people over Johnny Yong Bosch as well. No signed Devil May Cry 4 for me, but I don't mind too much. But here's what I did get.

From top-left, going clockwise: Shikishi of Atsuhiro Iwakami, producer of OreImo. Shikishi of Noboru Ishiguro, director of Angel Scandies (an upcoming anime series). Totomono 2, signed by Momoko Oohara, voice of Khulaz Male PCs (that'll be me). Shikishi of Momoko Oohara, Chiaki Shimogama, and Orine Fukushima (with an illustration by Orine Fukushima), voices of Grill, Tsuzuki Usui, and... Gabrielle (?) from Angel Scandies. Voices of a Distant Star, signed by its director Makoto Shinkai. And to the side is a small Angel Scandies postcard I got.

I was also able to attend more guest Q&A panels, which was pretty much the only thing to do otherwise. The few fan panels I was interested in were at times when there were better things to do (like sleep, or doing something else together with my friends).

So... what did I get?

Don't ask me why I got the Leaf Arrange CD, it was an impulse buy. Other than that, I scored the missing volumes of OreImo I didn't have (though only Kinokuniya was selling Japanese manga, no one else was), a bunch of music, two doujin games, and a few shirts (including a Megurine Luka shirt). Stuff like this is really what I want the dealer's room to be filled with, as it can't really be found outside Japan easily... but for the most part, not too many people were selling anything really hard-to-get. We had one doujin booth, and one Japanese manga booth. That was it. There were a few import game stores, but it's hard to tell whether or not they stock the Asian editions of games rather than the Japanese version. So if you care (and I do), give those a miss unless you find something rare. Most of the time, you can get that stuff online for... probably about as much.

Effy (one of the doujin games) was also an impulse buy, because at first glance it looked like the work of Rectangle, the guys who did Raider's Sphere. Turns out they helped, but it was a different circle that made this particular game. It's still cool, the world needs more flight sims, so I'll be enjoying my doujin Ace Combat until... I guess I get another Ace Combat game? You really don't have much of a choice in this genre, though if Origin were still around...

And apparently there are people that think there's a difference between cons and conventions, and that the first is greater than the second. Sorry dude, I've been to con without Japanese guests, Otakon, and Comic Market, and I gotta say while this year's Otakon was better than most cons I've seen (which isn't saying a lot), it wasn't leagues away better than those other American cons. Makoto Shinkai was still awesome, and so was Nobuo, but something about the guest list as a whole isn't exactly what I fan over. Maybe it's because there were no voice actresses of characters I moe over.