N-Philes

Cat People, Swords and Free Hugs: Thoughts From an Anime Convention

Posted February 19th 2009 by Adam Glasgow.

Just under two years ago I attended an anime convention for the first time. I went for the sole purpose of competing in one of the largest fighting game tournaments in the state: Texas Showdown. TS was held at the convention that year, complete with pros flown in from Japan to dash any hopes of a native Texan actually winning the thing. Now don't get me wrong, I like some anime pretty good. I would even go as far as to put Satoshi Kon and Hayao Miyazaki on my list of favorite directors - up there with the Coen Brothers, Stanley Kubrick and Terry Gilliam. But this is where the similarities between me and the majority of convention attendees end. I don't care about Naruto. Or Bleach. Or InuYasha. The seedy worlds of yaoi (man on man manga), yuri (girl on girl manga) and hentai all disturb me, deeply. I am of the opinion that furries are proof enough for the non-existence of a benevolent god. Friendly association with these types is not only social suicide, it's often borderline psychological torture. My question to myself then, is why in the hell do I keep going back to these things?

This year I patronized Oni-Con. Like every anime convention I've been to thus far, it was a surreal experience. Surreal enough that I'm convinced the only way to begin to convey how one feels whilst traversing through such an event is to describe a few of the different sights and sounds seen at a place like this. So here we go; things I saw and heard at Oni-Con this year in Houston, Texas. It should be noted that all pictures herein were in fact taken by me (or my associates) and not simply dug up on the internet.

1. LARPers

For those not in the know (which in this case is probably a good thing), LARP stands for "live action role-playing." A LARPer then, is "one who runs around like a jackass and hits other people with fake, padded weapons." Some LARPers get dressed up in character and create elaborate stories that go hand in hand with their pretend battles. These steps tend to be skipped at anime conventions, opting instead to get right into the fake beatings. It's just like you remember from back when you were seven. If a leg is struck with a pretend weapon, one must then lift that leg and hop on the other, as if the leg that was struck was sliced off and the victim was then forced to continue the fight with only one leg. A similar practice is applied when one's arm is struck. The only difference between seven year olds doing this and LARPers doing this is that at age seven playing swords doesn't automatically condemn you to a life of involuntary virginity.

2. Fat girls in overly revealing clothing walking around with lanky shirtless guys on leashes.

I have no rational explanation for this trend, but the amount of people I see doing this goes up exponentially with every convention. Typically the overweight girls will dress up in nurse costumes covered in blood, which makes the scenario even more confusing. Also, and again I have no rational explanation for this, the guys that exhibit this kind of subservient canine behavior tend to have long 90's looking blond hair and are the types of people who attach their empty wallets to long, heavy chains which then dangle at the side of their leg.

Obviously this is all some kind of gateway into a Bondage/S&M-type lifestyle, but I am at a loss as to what it has to do with Japanese animation. Sights like this make me think that perhaps I've stumbled into a sadistic version of a different kind of convention.

3. Awkward visits to the bathroom.

It seems like at every one of these things that I go to, the simple act of going to the bathroom becomes an event all its own. In the past I've heard nerds vomiting in stalls and seen them re-adjusting their dresses and bras (and rest assured I did not enter the women's bathroom by mistake). This convention upped the ante. After I had finished my business and was washing my hands, a chubby Asian guy entered with blood all over his face and nose. It appeared to be real blood, but I can't know for sure. There were others in the bathroom at the time, but it seemed like I was the only one who thought the situation was even slightly abnormal as no one else took any notice at all. Despite my curiosity, I did not ask him any questions and instead exited as quickly as I possibly could without calling attention to myself. In retrospect, I probably could have cartwheeled out of the bathroom without making a scene.

4. The vendor room.

At the heart of any successful convention is a lot of people making a lot of money off of a lot of stupid people, and the vendor room is the heart of this process. You might occasionally find something worth your money (although probably not as much money as is being asked), but for the most part the vendor room is full of useless knick-knacky crap that of course sells like crazy because it comes from Japan. Plushies, statuettes of slutty anime girls bending over in a manner that allows you to see up their skirts, retarded hats that you would get your ass kicked for wearing anywhere outside of a place where you can buy such a hat, horrible Japanese b-movies, loads of toys, &c, &c.

Sometimes you'll spot a booth selling Hello Kitty themed sex toys (a simple google image search will get rid of any skepticism you might have about the existence of such a thing), and you'll always find plenty of booths selling hentai, yaoi and yuri. A phrase I heard screamed by a booth vendor this year was, and this is a direct quote, "GET YOUR YAOI AND YURI! HOT AND FLAMING!"

5. Horrible art.

A very high percentage of people who attend conventions like this see themselves as artists. Of course they are horrible and should never show anyone anything they draw ever, but they don't seem to care. Like a child with a box of crayons and a new package of construction paper, they churn out terrible drawings and hang them everywhere, then beg for feedback (although what they really want is praise). To be fair, there is some good art around by some very talented individuals. But there is also, and I'm not making this up, a picture of a man with ripped abs rubbing a merman's chest. The merman's abs were, of course, also ripped.

There are multiple places one can find horrible art at Oni-Con. First you've got the Artist Alley, a huge area with tables set up for people to show off and sell their work. Some of it is horrendous, and most of it is forgettably mediocre. A very small percentage is worth looking at. Next you've got the vendor room, where overzealous artists can purchase additional space to sell their crap. I seriously doubt any of them make back the money they spent on the booth, which is probably why you never see the same artist in the vendor room for more than one convention. Try it once, lose some money, and let some other idiot give it a shot next time.

Finally you've got the art gallery, which is the place to go for terrible art. It requires no time commitment from the artists to hang things here, as they don't have to stick around like they would in the Artist Alley or vendor room. The effects of anonymity can be felt here in the same way they can be felt on the internet. You'll never meet the artists, and they know it, so they aren't worried about the embarrassment of showing you something you'll think is horrendous. There is always, always, always a lot of risqué furry pictures in the art gallery.

6. Cosplayers.

The weird looking guys are dressed like dumbasses and think they look amazingly cool while the nasty girls are dressed slutty and think they look incredibly hot. Only rarely will you see a moderately attractive girl in a revealing outfit, and even when you do the appeal is fleeting. Is this girl actually attractive, or is she only good looking in comparison to the other females around? Also, even if she is legitimately attractive, she's the type to dress up for an anime convention, which should clearly put her in the "no-date" zone. It goes without saying that cosplayers are everywhere at these things.

The phenomenon of people dressing up in crazy costumes in an attempt to stand out from the crowd and then surrounding themselves with people who are doing the same thing (which completely nullifies the goal of standing out from the crowd) is worth noting and pondering. Similar phenomena can be observed in all subcultures.

7. Binocular kid.

I noticed some chunky kid looking through a pair of binoculars at what was seemingly an empty part of the convention hall. I spent far too long surveying the area (both before and after he stopped looking) in an attempt to figure out what the hell he had his eyes on, with no success. After a while I figured he was just playing around with his binoculars, but then I started to wonder why anyone would bring a pair to a convention like this in the first place. The whole situation is shrouded in mystery and will haunt me until the day I die.

8. Free Hugs people.

These people apparently don't get enough hugs normally, so they parade around conventions wearing home-made shirts and waving around signs that say "FREE HUGS," or some kind of variant of the phrase. In my experience two types of people do this: smelly guys and fat girls. Their fat smelliness might explain why no one will hug them unless they beg for it. This correlation might also be explained by the fact that smelly guys and fat girls are simply the types of people to attend anime conventions, so the chances that the "FREE HUGS!" people will be fat and smelly is high for that reason alone. In my opinion it is most likely a combination of both factors.

9. Swords.

I failed to mention this before, but vendors sell a wide variety of swords. Fake wooden swords, samurai swords, novelty replica swords that look like everything from the keyblade from Kingdom Hearts to the Master Sword from the Zelda games, and a stupid amount more. The sword to person ratio is at least 1:1. That's not to say that every person is carrying a sword, but the people that buy one generally don't stop at one. I suppose once you get locked into a serious sword collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.

Chunky adolescents with braces unwrap their newly purchased weaponry. They are always visibly excited but quickly become confused about what someone does with a sword if they aren't killing something with it. Everywhere you look people are sheathing and unsheathing swords. They pose with them, sometimes for no one in particular. Things start to make sense when the principles of penile compensation are applied.

***

Attempting to explain how it feels to attend an anime convention has accidentally given me a possible answer to my original question of "why in the hell do I keep going to these things?" That possible answer being, simply, the spectacle of it all. Comparing a convention to a train wreck doesn't go nearly far enough. A more accurate comparison might be to that of a train wreck with two giraffes that are on fire fighting on top of the wrecked train, which is by the way constantly being struck by lighting and blasting David Hasselhoff's Hooked on a Feeling. If you thought regular train wrecks were hard to take your eyes off of, try not staring at this one.

That explanation places me as an outsider to their world, which I definitely feel like and I'm certainly okay with. But there are some gaping holes in that explanation. I tend to recognize people when I go to conventions. Some of them I know from my day to day life, others I've met at previous conventions. And some of the time I'm even happy to see and talk to the people I recognize; I've made some good friends at conventions and I enjoy getting a chance to see them. I like to think that these are other non-crazies who are here for the same reasons I am (whatever those are), but this is likely a biased view. Am I less of an outsider to these people than I think? This is a frightening suggestion. If me and one of the freaks were in a public place, would I look the same as the freak to everyone else around? When I'm at these conventions, do the freaks see another fellow freak? Or do they see something different? Or, to them, does everyone look like a freak, which would help to explain why they so often talk about their retarded hobbies to people who obviously don't care? Do I talk about my retarded hobbies to people who don't care?

Or am I just over thinking all of this?

Tags: Convention, Anime

Posted in: Offline, Entertainment, Features

Comments (5) | Permalink | Digg | Reddit