Otakon~ July 21, 2009

It’s already Tuesday, and I’m still riding the rush of energy from Otakon (that’s Friday through Sunday, for those of you not keeping up). From being surrounded by fandom. Being saturated with it. Getting an injection of otaku geekery directly into the bloodstream.

I love the panels that go into minute details of cosplaying (did you know that there’s an optimum number of fake eyelashes for women who crossplay?), and I love the panels that degenerate into drunken flailing. I love the giant box of pocky walking around, along with a Pac-Man, several Waldos, one Billy Mays.

I adore the four-year-olds being led by their parents: teeny Naruto, itty-bitty Princess Serenity, a mini Soul Reaper. They’re like chibis in RL form.

I love the girl in Pikachu ears and a yellow bikini. I love the spontaneous Naruto conga line. I love the squadron of guys walking around in Saiyan warrior armor made of paper colored with crayon.

I love loling over terrible dubs, and getting engrossed in excellent dubs, and loling when the video feed malfunctions right as an Angel fires into Tokyo-3. I love groups of people breaking into the Hare Hare Yukai dance, some in seifuku, some in bunny outfits.

I love the geeky shirts. (Horton Hears Cthulu! I will not brew decaf; decaf is the mind-killer. TARDIS Shipping: for when it absolutely, positively has to be there before you sent it.)

I am not so keen on the autograph session lines filling up within five minutes of the con doors opening, or the utter lack of good last-minute deals in the dealers’ room this year. But they are a small price to pay.

I love helping host a panel on using comics to teach kids, and having thirty people show up and start asking piercing questions: How can I use this in my classroom? How can I adapt this to adult education? What does it take to get started?

I love having random people come up and pet the giant stuffed dog I carry around.

And I can’t say I mind having people say “You do And Shine Heaven Now? Can I hug you?”

I sit by the fountains and pull out my sketchbook, and turn out half a dozen drawings, followed by two weeks’ worth of comics in a matter of hours, while cosplayers mill about below me and La Soldier blasts in my headphones.

I look up, and I see a gorgeously costumed Super Sailor Moon greet a Gundam so large that the costume probably doesn’t fit on the escalators, and I think:

I’m home.