Once a year, tens of thousands of ravenous anime fans flock to Baltimore, Maryland, to attend the largest fan-run anime convention in North America: Otakon. Every year always seems to top the last in terms of sheer magnitude; as large as the Baltimore Convention Center is, venues offsite have been rented as of late to accommodate the overflow of attendees for main events. Since 2002, the Anime Academy Staff and its students have used the occasion as our official annual get-together. This one proved to be just as memorable as all the rest.

Day Zero
I should be an old hat at this by now. Living in Washington, D.C. (only an hour's drive away) for the past few years has certainly made attending this convention monumentally easier. Then why is it every year I continue to get lost amongst Baltimore's labyrinthine roadways… and at the same spots taking the same wrong turns? It's like a running joke gone on too far, as if a group of children were to suddenly cry, "Oh my God, they got lost! You bastards!" Perhaps it's my subconscious purposely leading us astray in an attempt to inject a little excitement in our trip. Hey, subconscious, Otakon is exciting enough without your meddling, thank you very much.

Knowing this going in certainly helps since I always pad some minutes into every excursion to compensate for taking the inadvertent "scenic route." Mugs' train was due to arrive earlier than usual, so Alex and I departed the District of Columbia on Thursday morning and proceeded to take a circuitous path towards Penn Station.

Normally we have had nary an issue with our hotel, the same one we've reserved for five years. I was convinced (nay, I hoped) that this year was an anomaly: much of the housekeeping staff seemingly teetered close to striking, and thus our room would not be ready until 3:00 pm, giving us several hours to kill. Eek was only a short trip away from central Pennsylvania, and Roark and Mana were en route after driving all night from Chicago, Illinois. Having spotted a billiards/bowling alley nearby, we decided to wait inside, away from the scorching 105°F heat of August in Baltimore. We made calls to the rest of our party to inform them of the change of plans.

After several games of pool and a skeeball version of bowling (imagine smaller pins and bowling balls the size of grapefruit), Roark and Mana arrived, looking not as disheveled and discombobulated as I had expected from driving 13 hours straight. After grabbing a quick lunch, we headed back to the hotel promptly at 3:00 pm, only to find our reservations even further delayed by the housekeeping staff. With our patience wearing paper-thin, our rooms were finally "ready" (and I use that term very lightly, as Roark and Mana discovered used towels and a general disarray in their room). Just then, Eek happened to pull into the parking lot. After a much needed, albeit brief, respite for Roark and Mana, we were on our way to the Baltimore Convention Center, henceforth abbreviated BCC.

With press pass reservations in hand, our party walked past the serpentine line that started from the main lobby and wrapped around the building in both directions. While I did feel bad for those roasting in that oppressive heat… I didn't feel bad enough to join them. We marched our way to the as-yet-unopened registration booths and asked a more-than-accommodating Otakon staffer to process our registrations before the lobby turned into a feeding frenzy. With that out of the way, we stopped by Paolo's Ristorante (another tradition of ours) overlooking the Inner Harbor for a nice Italian meal. Bread was broken and a good time was had by all.

The press orientation meeting that evening was fairly standard, with Press Liaison Regina Buenaobra going over the Do's and Do Not's that are mostly for the benefit of first-time members of the Otakon press corps. It was then that we found out animator/director Kawasaki Hirotsugu (Laputa: Castle in the Sky, Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Memories, Metropolis, Spriggan), on our very short list of interviewees, cancelled his visit at the last minute. I made a face, wadded up my cheat sheet of questions and scored three points in wastebasketball.

Aside from briefly losing our way on the highway (but we expected that to happen by now, right?), our group made it back to the hotel and cracked open a couple bottles of fine spirits to cap off the night. We kept the beverage-laden festivities to a minimum, however; veterans of Otakon know full well the benefits of getting as much sleep as possible before Day One, plus Roark and Mana appeared to be on their last legs. We bid each other adieu and counted sheep until dawn.

Day One
My day started around 6:00 am, so that Alex, Mugs, Eek and I could each get enough time in the shower. After grabbing breakfast at the golden arches and allowing Roark and Mana to squeeze in some much-needed sleep, our caravan of two cars was on the road towards the Baltimore Convention Center by 8:00 am.

Now, it's funny that this being my fifth Otakon, I continue to fail to take into account Friday morning rush hour traffic. Plodding along at a pace slower than a fight scene in Dragonball Z was a rather inauspicious start to our first day at the convention (I swear I'll remember this debacle for next year… well okay, probably not). Nearly an hour and one illegal turn into a "DO NOT ENTER" later, we strolled past the line of would-be registrants and darted for the Press Ops room. There, Mugs and I picked up the allotted two concert tickets that were granted per organization. We were to meet the rest of our group after they obtained concert tickets through normal channels.

Upon imbibing liquid sustenance (a.k.a. coffee), we were introduced to Niner, scriptwriter for the Late For Class comic. I proceeded to give the group my eight-cent tour (it started at $0.10 until Mana had to throw her two cents in, as usual…) and guided them down the 3rd floor of the enormous Baltimore Convention Center. Roark and Mana were in need of cash, so we headed out in search of an ATM. While at the Bank of America building across the street to exchange plastic for paper, we were discussing when to meet Mira, Anime Academy student and Director of Publicity for Sakura Con, when, lo and behold, there she was standing in line for the ATM! Introductions were made, and then we headed back to the BCC to catch the last couple episodes of Starship Operators at 10:00 am. Having long ago reached my fill of "teens in space," I cemented my decision then and there that a couple of episodes were more than enough.

Due to a last-minute shift in scheduling, the anime music video overflow (the entries that didn't make the contest finals) at 11:00 am was moved from the west end of the 4th floor to the east end of the 1st… which wouldn't have been so bad had Otakon staffers been strategically placed en route handing out water bottles and energy bars. As usual, AMV overflows are a mixed bag, but Alex and Mugs elected to stay because this is one of her favorite parts of the convention. Roark, Mana, Niner, Tyrdium and I made our way to the dealers room around 11:30 am.

For those unfamiliar with the wait outside of the dealers room at a large convention, I'll paint a portrait for you: thousands upon thousands of fans, many with cash in hand and drooling like Pavlovian dogs over their nice costumes, form a serpentine line that stretches as far as the eye can see. These eager consumers voluntarily wait in line long before the orgy of capitalism was to commence at noon. Our group would have likely suffered the same fate had I not been Kain. After blinding an on-duty security staffer with the glorious aura of my press pass and ushering in my comrades, we entered the cavernous confines that house the dealers room… and probably a fleet B-52 bombers during the off-season.

With plenty of time on the ticker before the floodgates were scheduled to open, many of the vendors were still setting up their wares. We were privy to the goods on display and unencumbered by hordes of shoppers. Deciding it would be of interest to witness the opening of the dealers room from the inside looking out, we set up camp near the doors with cameras at the ready. Much to our dismay, the tension ended not with a bang, but a whimper; the approaching masses were orderly and civilized, not the rampaging pillagers we had anticipated. Simultaneously disappointed and astonished that such a crowd was herded so successfully, I quickly purchased two Otakon 2006 T-shirts for Alex and myself and made my exit before the claustrophobia became suffocating.

After snapping several bird's-eye photos of the dealers room from the observation window in Press Ops, I sprinted upstairs to the main events hall, where I was greeted by Alex and Mugs, to catch opening ceremonies at 1:00 pm. Unlike opening ceremonies of the past, this year's lasted but a mere 20 minutes and commenced with little fanfare. Following a brief skit involving popular characters from various "Flavor of the Month" anime, Con Chair Jim Vowles quickly ran through Guests of Honor introductions… and before I knew it, the meeting was adjourned and people scattered like cockroaches with the kitchen lights turned on.

Mugs, Eek, Alex, Roark, Mana, Niner, Tyrdium and I hopped across the street to a food court for lunch. While we were wrapping up and about to leave, I noticed a young man across the way with a surprised expression on his face staring at us. I paid him no mind until a moment later when he was standing right next to me. He asked if we were with the Anime Academy (Alex, Eek and I were wearing our T-shirts), to which I confirmed so and then introduced him to the group. The look on his face was priceless as he literally took a few steps back and struggled to regain his composure. He is an Anime Academy student by the moniker of Dirty Harry, whose name most of us recognized. As it turned out, he later joined us several times throughout the weekend and fit in rather well with our eclectic bunch.

At 3:00 pm, Alex and I ventured to the dealers room after making a detour for more coffee. Being the bargain shoppers that we are, every dealer's inventory was scrutinized several times just to buy a Japanese parasol and a Domo-kun shirt. There we finally caught up with LadySage and Le Bread, both of whom suffered through car troubles on the way to Baltimore and thus missed the early part of the day. With our purchases out of the way, we shuffled over to a video room that was playing Ouran Host Club, a silly anime of such little consequence to me that I spent the time lying down and resting my eyes.

Every year, the guys and I make it a mission to attend the Studio Madhouse panel, hosted by the always lovable Maruyama Masao, founder of Madhouse. I joked that Masao is put into cryogenic stasis in the bowels of the BCC and revived once a year to host this panel. At his side was the always trustworthy interpreter Karahashi Takayuki, whom I have henceforth dubbed Ukulele Man. Promptly starting at 5:00 pm, the latest round of Madhouse anime either in production or airing in Japan were shown to us via a teaser reel. The clip from Redline (which I commented on during Q&A) was a remnant from Otakon 2005, though others were fresh off the presses: Black Lagoon, Kiba, Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo, Yume Tsukai, Saiunkoku Monogatari and Highlander: Vengeance (yes, that Highlander!).

Maruyama breezed quickly through introductions and dove headfirst into Q&A. One question involved the much-anticipated movie Paprika (directed by Kon Satoshi, with the title role voiced by Hayashibara Megumi), Maruyama replied that the production is complete and the film will be submitted to the Venice Film Festival. The next inquiry focused on the animation techniques practiced at Madhouse. The answer was primarily by hand, though the company is transitioning over to rendering everything digitally. At that point, I chimed in and asked what was the cause of the delay behind Redline, and can any of it be attributed to its extremely eclectic art style. Maruyama defended its director, Koite Takeshi, saying he's tackling this project pretty much on his own as a test of his abilities... though Maruyama joked that he wanted to live long enough to see its completion.

At first, we were perplexed as to why Otakon 2006 would feature the Kitade Nana/MUCC concert at a bar half a mile away from the convention center. Though the Rams Head Live! seemed to be a peculiar venue, in the end it was pretty close to perfect. So, without further ado, allow me to make a bold statement:

This was the best Otakon concert I've ever attended.

Yes, better than L'Arc~en~Ciel at the Mariner Arena in 2004 and T.M.Revolution in the Main Events Hall in 2003. I make this declaration even though the events leading up to the concert were nearly as inauspicious as Friday morning gridlock on the highway. First, merely finding the Rams Head Live! required a collaborative effort from our entire group (Eek and Tyrdium declined the invite, with LadySage and Dirty Harry's mom (!) joining in their place). Second, as we ventured further and further away from the BCC, I could feel the powers of my press pass waning as if suddenly struck in the back by a shard of kryptonite. By the time we reached the line outside of the bar at 6:30 pm, the press members in our group (Niner and LadySage from Anime Secrets, Mugs and I from Anime Academy) realized we had been reduced to the ranks of mere mortals... err, I mean, my charmingly inadequate peers!

In any case, our group waited it out in line and proceeded to exhibit the beginning signs of attention-deficit disorder. I commiserated with another press group as they too were turned away at the door... and eerily, they wanted to take my picture, all the while LadySage pretended to be a screaming groupie. At 7:20 pm, we were finally ushered inside the Rams Head Live!, which consisted solely of a bar, a stage and a second-floor balcony...

... and yet, it worked. No matter where you sat, you had a great view of the stage, aided by the numerous flat-panel television screens displaying the action from every angle. Those in our contingent over 21 partook of the local spirits (some of us more than others...). We laughed, we drank, we made fun of Le Bread's national-lampoonesque journey to Baltimore, we pantomimed Kitade Nana's air guitar rendition until her wig became entangled in her guitar strings. But it was the Japanese metal band MUCC that stole the show. I had no expectations going in, having never heard this group's music before. After Nana left the stage to tepid applause, MUCC proceeded to bring the house down with their hardcore stage presence and terrific songs. It wasn't long before I joined the excited crowd, inspired by the beats and six bottles of Yuengling beer.

At 10:15 pm, we returned to the BCC, partially deaf and nicely buzzed. We killed some time in the video game room, rubbing shoulders with those who mastered the art of the sho ryu ken but not the art of the shower. Much to my chagrin, my sense of smell chose at that moment to compensate for my loss of hearing. Shortly thereafter, Roark and I tracked down Eek, and we made the trek back to our hotel, weary but satisfied.

Continue to Otakon 2006: Part II...