Otakon in Baltimore 2011

Another American-con gone and come, this was my second Otakon and was just as much of a blast as the first one. The weather was great (maybe a bit too hot and humid at times), lots of cosplayers, lots photos taken, and plenty of great people I chatted with, well worth it!

My weekend began on Wednesday night finishing packing and prepping all my stuff and heading down to Toronto to my GF’s house. The next morning we were out by 10am and went to go pick-up two friends who were coming along for the ride. From there, we headed south to Baltimore. Only after a border-crossing  food-eating tiring  10.5-hour drive did we arrive at our Quality Inn Hotel. The service wasn’t bad, the breakfast was nothing special, rooms were decent size with cool sink, flat-screen TV was good and unused, the WiFi didn’t work properly at first, and the AC acted funky, but for the price it was all right.

The whole weekend was a mix, and I don’t remember everything in its proper chronological order, so I’ll just type it as I remember. I spent the majority of my time on Friday and Saturday taking photographs and some videos, I ran into several friends and made new ones as well. Spent most of the time carrying my camera bag, light stands and glidecam, my shoulders know no fear though they were hurtin’.

I ate at a few different restaurants with different friends, no complaints as far as food went during the weekend. Saturday night dinner was also enjoyable, if not a bit cramped, the sake was needed for good reason. The food was great at P.F Chang’s, also enjoyed Happy Hour at the Kona Grill, sushi wasn’t the best ever, but the avocado egg rolls were awesome. I did hear that some cosplayers at some point during the weekend bailed on the bill at the restaurant, not impressed with that at all.

I attended two whole panels, bad anime bad, and Mythbusters Anime. Both were hilarious and greatly put together, did you know that Rock Lee has the leg strength of about 26 people?! It was busted. Also, Starship Troopers would have been a great anime following closely behind its successful live-action movie brothers, so the opening would have you believe /s. Check it out…

Saturday Night I dyed my hair in prep for my Houndoom cosplay for Sunday, as usual there were setbacks but everything turned out all right in the end. I think I’ll be retiring it at this point. Had my photo taken by the Funimation and CrunchyRoll booths for FB and Twitter respectively, I use neither. I picked up some merchandise on Sunday, like Interstellar 5555 which I regretted not picking up last year. And to top it off, bidded farewell with a bunch of friends before heading back on the 11-hour journey to Canada. This time there was no blue Dodge Caravan that nearly killed us by merging into our lane and almost knocking us off the road, I gave that wreckless driver a nice honkin’ for involuntary attempted murder, maybe I’m just over-playing it.

Anyway, great year, general con pics have been posted here, photoshoots and video will be up at a later time.

UPDATE: Video is up!

See you at next year’s event!

-Mike