August 09, 2003
Otakon 2003: Intro and Cosplay
Geekwads and dorkwads have indeed signed a historic wad alliance, and I have returned from its annual summit unscathed. Better than unscathed actually, as I now possess an imported Kurosawa film, "Throne of Blood," his adaptation of Macbeth.
Otakon is the annual convention hosted by Otacorp at the Baltimore Convention Center. The word comes from "otaku," the word used by anime and manga fans to describe themselves. And I, faithful reader(s?), have gone and returned with the low down so that you don't have to get out of your armchair (or white, plastic lawn chair in the case of Josiah).
In the interest of keeping this to a readable length, I've divided up my thoughts into several posts, with the content identifiable by the title.
Otakon was fascinating. Normally, I wouldn't really think of going to an anime convention, as I'm not really into anime all that much. I do love the films of Hiyao Miyazaki, but that's something completely different. The real reason I went is that the persons responsible for creating my two favorite webcomics, Gabe and Tycho of Penny Arcade and Fred Gallagher of Megatokyo were supposed to be there. Fred was, but Gabe and Tycho canceled at the last minute. That was disappointing, but it gave me more time to just watch the dorks in their natural habitat.
Now I was fully prepared for the people at the convention to be a bit on the eccentric side. It's an anime convention, after all. But the number of people who crossed the line from a bit geeky to sheer, unbridled dorkness was staggeringly huge. I got up at 6:30, and left the house by 7:30. Due to rush hour traffic in Harrisburg (due more to Pennsylvania's completely shitty roads than actual volume of traffic), I made it to the Inner Harbor of Baltimore by about 9:30. Since the doors of the convention didn't actually open until noon, I thought this should be plenty of time to beat the line. Boy was I wrong. The registration line already stretched out the building and halfway around the block. And that was just the one line. There was another equally as long. Some of these people must have been here since before I woke up. When I got in line, there were probably almost 1000 people in it.
The second thing that tipped me off as to the craziness of these people can be summed up in a single word: cosplay. Cosplay is the practice of attending anime conventions dressed up as one's favorite character from some anime or manga story. I would estimate that between 10 and 20% of the people there engaged in some form of cosplay, even if it was only sporting a pair of fuzzy cat ears with their street clothes. But some of these people were just nuts. The person I was standing behind in line was a twentysomething female dressed in - I kid you not - a black fishnet bodysuit under a black thong and bodice, white bunny ears, and a dog collar with chain. I decided that I was too creeped out to ask what fever dream this particular character came from. About 10 people ahead of me was a girl in a hot pink bodysuit, with two six inch blue horns coming out of her torso about four inches below the collarbone. Her face was painted white, and she wore this outlandish hat made of orange felt measuring 2.5' wide x 2' long x 1' high. She also had a bow about six feet high painted with gold glitter, complete with silver glittered arrow.
Those were just the people within 15 feet of me. The amount of blue hair was truly staggering. I would venture to guess that the only place one could see more brightly colored hair would be at a punk show, and it would be a near thing. Blue was by far the most popular color, but pink and white also made strong showings.
The other immediately noticible accessory was swords. Now Otakon has a weapons policy for exactly this kind of thing: guns that are not incapable of firing any kind of projectile and are not immediately recognizable as fake are prohibited, as is live steel. "Live steel" is defined as any metal capable of holding an edge, whether or not said edge is actually applied. They shouldn't have worried. Had any of the "swords" there been made of metal they would have easily weighed 300 lbs. Some of them were 8 feet long and 2 feet wide at the hilt. As a 4 foot, 2 handed sword weighs up to 10 pounds, these monstrosities would have outweighed their "wielders" by at least 100% in some cases.
The number of different characters was pretty large, I guess. I had no idea who most of these people were supposed to be, though I think that most of the people with the overcompensating swords were aiming for one of two characters from popular video games.
Demographically, girls seemed a bit more likely to cosplay than guys. This isn't entirely surprising, I don't think. However, what was a bit surprising - and really, really creepy, was that guys were much more likely to cross-dress than girls were. To quote Fred Gallagher, "cross-dressing cosplay = teh evil". I've got some thoughts as to why this is, but they fit better elsewhere, so I'll save them for later.
That about sums it up for cosplay. On to demographics!
Rye-Dawg, that was an awesome post. Fascinating, absolutely fascinating. I really really am looking forward to reading "demographics."
Posted by: JosiahQ at August 9, 2003 09:29 AMThanks. I'm seeing at least a 4 post series here.
Posted by: ryan at August 9, 2003 09:30 AMAhaha! yes, that must have been weird for you. I don't recommend cons for anyone who isn't seriously into their anime. But since you were there, I would like to point out that there was a *lot* of female 'crossdressers', including yours truly (going as the very-much-male main character from 'Naruto'.) Given that your average female anime character has a breast size that would easily topple her (or give her severe back problems), normal-sized girls and small girls like myself don't really look too much like the females. And that's not even mentioning the hair thing - long, strangly-colored hair is common in anime. Mine is very short and very brown. Off the top of my head, I can name 5 male characters that have my hair style, but only one girl.
And that is why we females cross-dress. The guys? Well ... you'd have to ask them! XD
~~Vikki
Posted by: Vikki at August 14, 2003 12:19 AMHee. :D
And Vikki here is right--there are probably TONS more female cross-dressers than male. Just if you're not familiar with the characters, it's not as obvious to you that they're supposed to be dressed as men. It doesn't make quite as much of a statement as a hairy-legged guy dressed in a frilly skirt. ^.^; But just about every pretty-boy character is cosplayed by an enterprising female.
Thought for a minute that this might be written by the freaked-out "mundane" who was sitting next to me at the cosplay, but I didn't see a description of my own shiny pseudo-Renassaince costume. ^_^
Posted by: Claireon at August 16, 2003 01:17 PMPLease.,..about male cross-dressers...dont remind me of that guy on that Saturday dressed in a japanese schoolgirkl outfit...still gives me nightmares.
Just curious...since we're all on this topic...I guess for some reason a lot of female cosplayers were dressed as Nicolas Wolfwood from "Trigun." Is there something special about him, or is it just my imagination?
As for 'straight' female cosplayers...some were actually pretty good...like the blond girl playing as Meroko from some anime cartoon i forgot the name of...:P...there were less Yunas from FFX-2 than I expected...oh well...who cares...I just take pictures like crazy. :)
Posted by: William at August 17, 2003 02:42 PMI think maybe the reason that I had trouble telling who was doing what is that I really don't know all that much about the actual anime characters or stories themselves. So if a girl was dressing up as a guy, I may not have known. I have a reason for this which I am still trying to develop into a post, but working overtime last week and this week makes that kind of thing hard.
Posted by: ryan at August 17, 2003 09:06 PMI've no idea who you are but I found this link posted n checked it out. I find the response to it quite amusing. I'm a cosplayer. We all have our different reasons for doing it. I study fashion and sew my own clothes. I'm also an anime fan. Its just common sense it'd be my hobby.
I'm also quite aware that I'm a huge uber geek extrodinaire. Come on I spend alot of time and money sewing costumes from Japanese cartoons. What else would I be?
My point in all of this is I find I highly amusing these people that completely freak out when they're called a geek. Do they not realize the rest of the world sees them as so? Seriously. Cosplayers are like the cousins of Trekkies.
People just make me cry.
p.s. The bondage, whips n chains people freak me out too.
Posted by: Mel at August 18, 2003 03:49 AMI've been going to anime conventions for a few years now. My initial reaction was like yours "oh my god, what geeks" but then I got into it, and it was fun.
Everybody's initial reaction to costumers (whether it's anime, or a sci-fi con, or an SCA/Ren Fair-type event) is that they're *weird*. My first assumption (when I was a lot younger) was that people who dressed up for these sorts of things were rejects who were totally out of touch with reality; they probably really believed that they WERE Spider-Man or whoever they were dressed as. At least that was the reason for *my* initial apprehension about them- basically, the fear of the unknown. I think it's at the root of most other peoples' negative reactions to costumers.
I found out that's totally untrue! Costumers are really normal people. Conventions and costuming are hugely social activities- most costumers plan their costumes in groups with other costumers for months or years before a convention, and then spend the most of the convention posing for pictures, talking about their costumes, and making new friends in the process.
Most costumers have their feet firmly grounded in reality; they don't think they ARE Character X for the day, they just enjoy the art of animation and/or games AND costume-making, so they get a kick out of walking around dressed as Character X for a day- much like a fan of paintings might enjoy hanging a painting by Monet on his wall or making his own painting in that style. Different mediums, different ways of enjoying/appreciating it.
There's also the whole public appreciation aspect of costuming. It's a LOT of fun to have lots of like-minded strangers admiring your costume. Let's face it- real life is mundane. How often do you get to walk around and have strangers openly admiring you and talking about what you're wearing? For a costumer, it's definitely fun (and addictive) to experience that for a few days out of the year. Costuming is really egalitarian in this aspect, at least moreso than "real life"- cute girls will still get more than their share of attention, but anybody who works hard and makes a cool costume gets a lot of positive attention, which is a great feeling.
So, yeah- dorky it is. But I've found fellow costumers to be really normal, smart, happy, imaginative, creative people with their feet pretty firmly grounded in reality. There are a few exceptions to the rule, but you could say that about any group of people. Sure, it's pretty silly and absurd hobby, but I think most costumers realize this. I think for most people (myself, anyway) the absurdity of it all is a big part of the fun. We work HARD at our absurdity, dammit. :P
Life's too short to worry about what other people think is "acceptable". Find whatever's fun for you and do it! Most people would think it's ridiculous to travel from central PA to Baltimore just to meet some obscure (to the general public) webcomic authors. But you dig Penny Arcade, so why not go for it? It's fun for you, so that's all that matters. As somebody who's into the gamer culture/subculture, you're a lot closer to the anime costumers than you are to the mundane general public, anyway.
Sorry about the rambling nature of this post. I'm too tired to revise it. ::heads off to bed::
(By the way- I, too was disappointed that Tycho and Gabe weren't there!)
Posted by: John Booty at August 19, 2003 04:55 AMAs far as the cross-dressing (aka, "crossplaying") goes, I don't think it's that creepy. When you see a big burly dude in a schoolgirl outfit, I can assure they're doing it for comedy purposes. It's not like some big 300-pound guy is really gonna be delusional to the point where he really thinks that he makes a perfect replica of a Japanese schoolgirl, haha.
Some people probably get off on it, but in my experience (about 15 conventions) they're either doing it for comedy or for practical purposes. I say "practical" purposes because most anime girls are drawn in such gravity-defying and revealing ways that it's tough for girls to pull off many of the female costumes. Also, most male characters are pretty effeminate and asian, which is actually a much easier look for a girl to pull off than your average American guy- so that's why you see a lot of girls in male costumes.
Even if somebody is cross-dressing because they simply enjoy it, I don't really think that's weird either. I'm not gonna get into THAT morality debate, but I dunno... it doesn't seem like a really big deal to me. Your moral mileage may vary. :P
Posted by: John Booty at August 19, 2003 05:06 AMActually Mel, as I know my tendancies are a bit on the anime geek side, I look at myself as far from geeky. I have friends who both share my opinion on cosplay and those who don't, and I'd have to say I look and act entirely normal and non-obsessive. I happen to keep good care of myself and think very highly of my image, cosplay doesn't effect that whatsoever.
And to the original poster:
Hey, I should probably thank the man, he made me come back into terms with why I love cosplaying to begin with. I mean, where else can you just be entirely someone else for one entire weekend of bliss? It's like being a little kid again, and getting intuned back into your inner child. Where for that whole weekend, you can act dumb, tough, sexy, stupid, whatever, and it doesn't matter, because nobody's really judging your outward appearance. It's like being in an eternal neverland, where you can be like "fuck theworld" and forget the squabble of everyday life just to enjoy yourself, and then on monday go back to the way things were with no personal harm done. I mean, I think we're definately more fun then most of the regular fans who go, and definately more confident and outgoing. Afterall, we ARE a giant walking conversation piece anyway right? ^^ And then there's those other fans who act outwardly ashamed that they actually got their nerve up enough to attend a real anime convention and act like they were totally horrified when they really enyoyed themselves. Like they need some scapegoat justification to their friends on why they went, and have to make fun of how lame everyone else was so their buddies don't label them as losers. WOW, I feel like I'm in high shool again!!! Sweet!
We always seem to be typically get stereotyped as being "fat greasy loser virgins who live with their moms", but in todays world that is such a crock of BS it's pathetic. To tell you the truth, I don't know any other place you could go with that many honestly goodlooking and friendly people, then to a con. I think most of the cosplayers are sexy, and there's no way he could have missed that in his trip, lol. And if he did, then he sure mised out.
The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
Posted by: Brown Heidi at January 9, 2004 05:50 PM I would have to say that I agree with the statment that Males dressed as female characters is entirly "creepy" and indescribably desturbing. At the Otakon of 2004 there was one person in particular, a male who had grown his hair out and put it in a pony tail on the side of his head, wore a yellow belly shirt and a pair of short-shorts in an attempt to cosplay as Misty from Pokemon. This I know first hand to be a scaring experience for any self respecting on-looker, but that is not the only horrid thing at conventions. Everyone in this forum has seemed to completly over looked how discusting it is also to see the overly obese females making an attempt to play the role of one of the abmormally slim female characters from Sailor Moon. I feel that this is almost equailly as disturbing as the males dressing as females. So that may also be a reason why more females play male roles.
Also, on the bright side for an anime fan there is absolutly nothing more exilerating at these conventions that seeing a character you can recognize being played by someone who actually looks like the person they are playing. It is absolutly breathtaking...