I heard there was a convention this past weekend. It certainly seemed like it. Maybe I’m getting jaded by other conventions, but this seemed more like a ridiculously huge social gathering than a convention. Anyway, continue on for my (and CJ’s!) report.
I arrived on site a little after noon on Friday to pick up our panelist badges. It was very simple, fortunately, and we were in and out in just a few minutes. But then, we run into a problem that is rampant this year, programming. Specifically, there’s not a whole lot of it at this point. And while I realize it’s still early on a Friday, you’d think with this many people there’d be something going on. This will progress throughout the weekend, but it eventually evolves into a problem where I have nothing I particularly want to see. The only events I went to were the Masquerade and the panels I was directly involved in.
So we can talk about those next. Adult Swim and the RPG Discussion went very well, just as good as last year’s. We managed to fill both of those rooms up. Our Whose Line shows also went very well, though I have a complaint about the size of our room. Specifically, they were really small. All the panel rooms were really small. These shows are a big draw though; we fill up Main at Sugoi which has about 1/5th the attendees and a room roughly twice the size we performed in. So to all those that missed part or all of the show because of this, I apologize, I hope you can make it to the next one.
The Masquerade was entertaining, however, it’s about as disorganized as ever. We were let into the room late, it started even later than that, and they rushed through the walkons and awards even though there was clearly time to spare. Not only that, but because they failed to make a count of attendees before moving us to the holding area, they moved the Masq participants out into the hallway for the entire show. From what I’ve been told, this hallway was poorly ventilated as well. This is no way to treat the lifeblood of this event, and I hope it is immediately rectified next year.
So now I’m going to hit a few areas very rapidly. First of all, the Artist’s Alley and Dealer’s Room were well stocked and had a good variety of merchandise, so that’s definitely a plus. I’m not one to spend a lot of money at conventions, but I did grab a present for someone. The food court was packed, but livable. Also, two of the vendors stayed open all night, as far as I know, so we didn’t have the problem last year of not having any place to eat at. The rave was poorly managed, the room is simply too small and unsuitable for the event. The game room was a bit sparse this year, though I’ve already been told by several of the staff that they’re going to overhaul it for next year.
Now we move onto staff. I was kind of disappointed. A lot of the staff and gophers didn’t seem to know exactly what was going on. I understand they were understaffed this year, but still, there’s a certain level of responsibility there to get things done. And of course, there’s stories of both levels being rude or apathetic toward the congoers, and I was there for a few of the incidents. I’ve also brought these to the attention of the proper staff members. Ohayo really needs to work on building a better staff foundation for their convention. Really, a lot of problems could be solved by just trying to get everyone to mellow out a little bit.
In the end, I had a good time, but it wasn’t because of the convention. It was because all my friends were there. To drive that point home, every image thus far features some of them. And we’ve come full circle to my opening statement. Understand, though, that this convention isn’t going anywhere, it’s a juggarnaut of a con that can’t even be undone with several bad years. But it does have a lot of problems that need to seriously be looked at for future years.
~Rakuen
CJ’s View
Yes, I was at Ohayocon. Sort of.
It turned out my Christian youth conference was scheduled literally in the middle of Ohayocon. Same convention center, and you allegedly had to walk through Dare2Share to get between the two halves of Ohayo.
Yes, sparks kinda flew. (A Witchblade cosplayer apparently walked into one of the D2S meeting rooms. Joyous.) And there was a cheerleading competition in the middle of everything too.
And what did I get out of this?
Tons of fangirl squees, lots of crappy-quality pics of Soul Eater and D.Gray-man cosplayers, an incredibly shocked expression on Rakuen’s face when I popped up in front of him (“AARON~! Hi! … Recognize meeee?”) and the chance to eat Pocky in front of people without having to be asked what the heck it is.
No, I didn’t sneak into the con, what are you talking about?
tl;dr: PFFFFFFT, WHO NEEDS TO SHELL OUT MONEY TO THE LAME-O NAZIS IN CHARGE TO HAVE FUN?
(inb4WHOREYOU’REBANNEDFROMMYCON)
~CJ
PS – Allegedly there was a Funimation panel at the con that revealed the names of a few D.Gray-man dub cast members. More info to follow if I can get a few things confirmed…
