Supposedly Otakon is a magical place where dreams can come true and anyone will be accepted for any reason.

You know, sometimes you just want to believe.

For me, as per the usual, Otakon mainly involved the sitting at the panels of companies who have already announced basically everything they wanted to announce at Anime Expo or whatever prior con they had attended and so these things bear little excitement for me. What's more, I wouldn't know whether or not half the things they talked about were worth looking into or not.

Well, that's not entirely true. I wouldn't know until they showed me a trailer, then I would know that it sucked.

It was looking to be a tough time this year. Without Andrew I knew that my panel-going experience was going to be a long and tedious one. Compacting this, I found Manga, one of my main "go tos", was not to be in attendance. No Manga panel means no Keith Burgess. No Keith Burgess makes a man like Dave pretty sad. Just as things were clouded with despair the rays of light that were Joel and Sambo burst through the gray lining of my terrible weather front. Yes. If things were to go as planned then they would accompany me to the majority of my expeditions through out the three day weekend the comprises Otakon. Joel because he had nothing better to do and was semi-interested in how the gears of the American anime market turned, Sambo because... he also had nothing better to do and was lured with the promise of free stuff. I myself was lured with the promise of a Coca-Cola bottle filled with about six shots of Rumplemintz.

Well, at least things worked out for me and Sambo.

Starting this year off was Pioneer, who were shoveled into a late start by a longer-than-expected run of Production I.G.'s panel, which I wanted to go see but was side tracked by a trip to Burger King where a particularly obese man wrangled his "unique" brand of (unfunny) humor by requesting breakfast after being told that breakfast stopped being served over a half an hour prior. Joel retorted with a slick comment about his propensity towards fat having some sort of correlation to his desire to drink soft drinks such as Coca-Cola with his breakfast.

After the brief Burger King and Production I.G. interlude, the panels were kicked off in verite. Pioneer tried fruitlessly to convince me that they were now called Geneon and had been for some time. I don't particularly care for it, but they were so kind to inform me of the reason for the name change and I feel a bit more comfortable knowing that they were indeed bought out by another company and not just throwing away 15+ years of name recognition at the drop of a hat. Then they went on to inform us that they were releasing lolicon porn (Koi Kaze) that also contains strongly incestuous themes. When I first set my innocent orbs on the trailer, I figured that this show could be an excellent character drama, blah blah blah, exploring the differences between two generations and two sexs. Then it was mentioned that (verbatim) "It goes one step further than Lolita".

Then I threw up.

That was probably the most interesting thing Pioneer has ever done for me. They certainly didn't expand on Shin Getter Robo or even reveal a half-assed trailer, which probably would've ameliorated my rage (at least a little bit). As it was, I crossed my fingers tight at even the briefest mention of a 13 episode series and was let down every time. After a brief spat of questions and surprisingly few crappy swag giveaways Pioneer soon shuffled to the side to allow J-Pop duo Angela to talk about how they loved Motley Crüe. That part was okay. The part where obsessed fans asked them to hug them was... not so much. Joel was quite incensed, though the prospect of killing their translator so that he could assume his super powers of language manipulation appealed to him enough that the giant of his torrential anger wasn't awakened from it's slumber.

I did like the one part where a con-goer asked whether or not Pioneer was going to support the Playstation Portable's UMD format and the Pioneer reps seemed to have no idea why someone would want that. I have the same opinion of the thing. Yes, I also love to buy incredibly proprietary and worthless formats because they're the "next big thing".

You're fired.

Bandai was as entertaining as it always is, and the encorigable Jerry Chu didn't see fit to try and disguise his identity this year (the bastard!!). However, I don't really know anything about 90% of what Bandai is releasing and I guess I really don't care to either. Sambo, however, did soil his pants when it was announced that there was some sort of Ronin Warriors collector's set on the way. I had a similar pants shitting event when I thought I glimpsed the infamous "Hindu Warrior" from Otakons past out of the corner of my eye. Fortunately, it was just my imagination acting up and the rather rubenesque Indian fellow to my right periphery was nothing more than that, another rather rubenesque Indian fellow (wearing a stupid Naruto headband). Now with our pants 66% filled with crap the panel could move on as planned. Joel entertained Jerry Chu by asking him a question related to golfing, thus giving the Bandai rep a brief respite from all the 'normal' fans lisping on and on about how they wanted more trailers on discs and how much they loved shows revolving around incredibly overt CG basketball games (and possibly man-love). The highlight of the panel was Jerry Chu's flagrant burn on someone complaining about the price of DVDs nowadays. "I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but there used to be this format called VHS. Have you heard of VHS?" He intoned, leaning forward into the mike as if he were a lion preparing to dig into a helpless gazelle. The fan was stunned, unable to respond, his drawers filled with a similar scatological material as mine and Sambo's.

Oh, it was a beautiful thing.

ADV was a particular disappointment. Andrew wasn't in attendance to see DLW's open man-shirt, for one. This, I'm sure, is something that he's ruing the day about missing. However, it was a let down in more ways than just the man-shirt spectrum. I've never really cared for the ADV panel for the sole reason that they give away hundreds of dollars worth of merchandise (that I never get) and it causes the place to be packed with hundreds of (overweight) fans wanting to save $30 by getting something for free and crushing me into seats that are already pretty painfully uncomfortable (on your ass). Added to this was the attendance of Monica Rial, who I'm sure is just great but acts like a five year old, who David Williams gleefully tortured and made (not so) veiled references at her cleavage and the use thereof. I've got more than an inkling that this was all just an elaborate act to appeal to the lowest common denominator, but, you know, it's still pretty damn inappropriate. Joel noted that he remembered dignity, I replied that I was aware of the concept. It didn't matter, because there was nothing the three of us were going to do to stop the torrent of repressed fan sex drives that got unleashed in that room. I would not normally think that the mere mention of the word "wood" would evoke cheers from any audience, even an audience of twelve year old boys, but I guess I would be wrong.

Also, you wouldn't think that calling a woman "retarded" over and over would be regarded in such high esteem. But hey, what do I know? Some point in there Sambo scored a Saint Seiya DVD off of a sexy voice actress while simultaneous hitting on her in a very inappropriate manner. She didn't find it as amusing as I did, but then I'm not a sexually attractive woman who gets asked that question on a daily basis from multiple people who are not quite the man-machine that is Sambo. Your mileage may vary.

CPM, god bless them, was like an arrow of light to brighten my darkest hour. John O'Donnell returned to kick my ass with his affable demeanor and "shooting the shit" attitude towards panel presentation. Unfortunately, Justin Sevakis was not there to express his disgust when faced with scatophilic hentai, but I guess it's true that you can't win them all. Instead, John's wife Masumi filled out the duo to inform us all about the new line of manga that CPM was releasing, "Be Beautiful" which is secret code for "Yaoi, man-on-man porn comics".

Okay, so not all of the CPM panel was that good.

Other than the porn, though, and Masumi's evasive, circulatory description of Yaoi (I guess you can't outright say that Yaoi involves pretty men or boys boning other pretty men or boys in the ass and still look professional) CPM told me all about their new Korean "Man-hwa", which I find particularly ingenious. Though instead of suggesting to anime fans that there IS life outside of Japan I'm going to wager a guess that John O'Donnell's plan for "world peace through shared popular culture" won't go as he hoped and instead anime fans will just adopt Korea into some pan-Asian superiority complex and Western comics/cartoons will be totally ignored as always. Oh well, he tried! His sales pitch was convincing enough for me to pick up a book called Nambul, which I haven't read and doubt I will any time soon... but supposedly involves some alternate past where Japan started WWIII. At least there's one country who remembers Japan as being aggressive warlord assholes and isn't afraid to say it.

As he was closing things out, John O'Donnell also told us they were releasing the "Kung-Fu Jungleboy" Man-hwa, which Joel suggested might be the best title for anything in the entire world. I concur. CPM didn't have a lot to say, but it was in the way they said it that made all the difference. And John didn't try to stick a plush doll in between his wife's breasts. That was awesome.

Mediablasters bored the hell out of me, as they usually do, but I still kind of like them because they consistently release things that I like. If nothing else, their boy John has no qualms about saying "gay" anime instead of "yaoi", which is preferable because it doesn't reek of unsubstantiated superiority complexes. Sure, you can refer to your junk in a secret code name, because obviously your hobby is so much better than everyone else's. I had a particularly witty quip when I suggested that a fan stop asking so many questions about licensing and instead try to license his SHOES onto his FEET. My advice went unheeded, though, and we all suffered for it, but at least Mediablasters talked about niche titles that I actually care about. Between Giant Robo and Aragami, November will be a busy month. The panel going expedition wasn't a total loss after all!

Saturday thus done I got drunk and annihilated half the memories I'd stored up the previous day via a strong infusion of Yuengling and Grey Goose (well, half of what wasn't already destroyed by the potent Schnapps concoction I'd been gulping down for about seven hours). Sunday held only one obstacle, Funimation. There was the other obstacle of checking out when half the room decides that they can't wait 10 minutes to go get breakfast but hey, that's just the way it is. It didn't have anything to do with anime, I guess.

Funimation was... Funimation. Lance was his usual self, though I'm becoming convinced that the entirety of this man's free time is spent trying to find a way to fit at least three extra "Kickass"es into each of his speeches. That's okay if that's his thing, but it strikes me as a little weird that your PR rep can act like that. I can act like a total spaz on stage too, can I have a job? Many things were mentioned at this panel, but it was all drowned out by screaming fans clamoring for more swag, which primarily consisted of EMPTY KIDDY GRADE BOXES. What the hell? I mean, when there's a thousand people in an ADV panel trying to get free DVDs that's almost okay, but for Christ's sake these are just boxes. They're just EMPTY BOXES. There's nothing in them!

I guess this kind of fan materialism mentality is why Jerry makes $200 of profit selling .hack//sign limited edition crap.

Regardless, Funimation did show us all that they really know how to make a trailer. I still don't want to watch Kiddy Grade, but damn if their trailer didn't make it look at least semi-interesting.

So that was the Otakon 2004 panel run. Pretty weak with all those fans cramming me in and smelling foul and asking stupid questions that makes me hate them, especially considering a startling lack of Keith Burgess action (even in the dealer's room!) but I guess I've had worse times. Despite the absence of Andrew, I wasn't alone. Sambo and Joel were stalwart companions in every sense of the world and I had 20 ounces of spiked, lukewarm Coca-Cola beverage to keep me alert and amused. At the same time there was a lot of fun to be had, provided you had the intestinal fortitude to crawl through the bad stuff. If it gets any worse next year, I'm leaving.

And I'm stealing Skabs's car.