Ohayocon

Normally, walking in to a room filled with cartoon geeks on a Saturday night would be something of a welcomed change. I mean, with most of my weekends blurring by with work, naps, and the occasional outrageous activity, I never get a chance to exercise my inner-geek. Well, once I got my wish, I found myself daydreaming about backbreaking labor, sleeping all day, and hazy drunken debauchery. Ohayocon, the yearly anime convention, taking place in Columbus, Ohio, was just too much.

I will admit, walking in to an event, almost strictly for anime lovers, when not particularly sharing a passion for the genre was what we in the business may call 'a bit foolish,' but this wound up being an understatement. Let me paint a picture. Take 3 floors of a hotel, fill every little bit of it with thousands of costumed nerds of all ages (mostly around 16-24), then, throw in the fact that there are only 4 elevators, for roughly 19 floors, almost all containing said anime nerds. Never have I experienced 20 minute waits to get to an elevator. Thus the rule, "once your out, your out," became commonplace amongst the people staying at the Hyatt Regency.

So what does one do at an anime convention? I'm still not completely sure after spending three days amongst the chaos, but here's what I've gathered..

1. COSTUMES. COSTUMES. COSTUMES.

One thing I've absolutely gathered from this experience, is if you don't come dressed in your finest costume, as if it were your last Halloween, expect a sad and lonely trip. The main focus of many Ohayocon attendees was to collect as many pictures as possible, of cool (not always original) costumes. Despite most costumes being of obscure anime characters, there were a plethora of of other things such as superheroes, Internet memes (there was a pedobear, it made life so much better), adult swim cartoon characters, and of course a few original creations. Some of these costumes looked like they cost a fortune or had tons of man hours put in to them. One of the kids I went with, decided to go as the Joker. Instead of just walking around in costume, he decided to take on the Joker persona the whole weekend (this is know as cosplaying). Oh boy. It was completely impossible to walk anywhere with him. Wherever he went, people wanted pictures, and it eventually got on my nerves to here him spout out the same rotation of Joker lines he had memorized. But what I didn't appretiate, those attending Ohayocon sure did. After browsing the Ohayocon message board, I found several comments about the 'awesome joker,' referring to my friend (including several marriage proposals!). I attempted a search for praise of that handsome, overweight, bald guy, in the Between the Buried and Me hoodie but I was sad to find that my 'I-don't-give-a-damn' costume, went unappreciated. Oh well!

2. Panels

Now this was one of the more fun aspects of Ohayocon. There were several conference rooms throughout the hotel/convention center, set up for various forms of activities and discussion. Some rooms completely dedicated to gaming with cards (such as magic, warhammer, yu-gi-oh, pokemon, you get the drift..), workshops (mostly things such as karate, drawing, fan fiction), and of course anime discussion.

3. Hentai

It was everywhere. Not cool. I refused to look.. ok I looked! But not for too long. (Editor's note: do not Google this on a whim. You have been warned.)

4. Video Games

Now this was my favorite part! For all 3 days, there were 4 rooms completely dedicated to any kind of video game you could think of. 24 HOURS. Now as an insomniac, I have to say, it was quite a relief to see Rock Band 2, was playable at all times, never an instrument open. There is nothing quite as satisfying to playing bass at 4:30 in the morning to Pretty Fly by the Offspring, in front of about 50 people.

5. Sleep

Just kidding. That actually never happened. I couldn't tell if I was seeing things or not by Sunday, because well, there were child molester bears, and kids in kimonos running amuck. How do you really tell?

6. Buying Things

The third floor of the con had a marketplace that was open 10am to 7pm, which was filled with the uniform geek merchandise. T-shirts, weapons (real weapons!), video games, dvd's, hentai, more costumes, art, hentai, and more hentai.

Was Ohayocon nearly as bad as I have complained it to be? Probably not. But going without a costume really did suck a lot of the fun out of it. Plus the lack of sleep and inability to get back to my room within 10 minutes really killed it for me. Perhaps it was also the fact there was no true appreciation towards the culture behind anime that made it such a downer of a trip. So am I going back? Hell no.

But if you ever decide to make the trip, at least you'll have some idea what to expect.