Article: Sakura Con 2007 The best laid plans of mice and Otaku

Sakura Con 2007 The best laid plans of mice and Otaku

As with every year I went to Sakura con and like every year I wrote an article about my experience there. Unlike most of my convention experiences this story begins on Thursday. The first thing I did was to pre-register on Thursday as opposed to Friday. As it turns out getting your badge on the day before the convention is a good idea as it frees up about an hour at the actual convention for other things. The video theaters at the convention open up at 8am on Friday so if you feel like watching some anime without missing anything else or it allows you to arrive an hour later depending on your tastes.

After getting my badge I ate dinner with a Seattle anime group that I have little chance to attend due to the fact I normally work on weekends now. Two of the people that I ate and chatted with were the hosts of another anime podcast, Otaku Forever. They were nice and interesting people and talking to them was maybe the highlight of my convention experience.

One new feature that Sakura con had was something called a manga library. For those of you that don't know what that is, and that group included me until I visited the manga library, a manga library is a place where you can read manga for free just as long as you give the staff there your badge as collateral. This is something you can do to cool down for a half and hour or so or need something to do while killing time between things you are more interested in but is not something one goes to a convention for.

While there has been cosplayers at every anime convention I have been too this is the first convention that I have brought back pictures. Since I only had a limited amount of disk space on my camera i had to be a bit discriminating in my choice of who I took pictures of. One thing I learned that if you ask politely they will almost always pose for you; after all they are dressing up in a costume that required a good deal of effort to make or buy and can only wear at conventions if they have any common sense.

Another thing of note that I attended was a couple of fan fiction panels. While I have talked about fan fiction in the past all I can say right now is that it has reiginited an interest in writing new fan fiction.

The last thing that I attended that is worth talking about is that I, an actual and factual heterosexual male attended the Yaoi panel. Among the things I learned there was that Yaoi fan girls can discuss the topic seriously, especially when they are all above the age of eighteen.

I planned on this article being long but alas my stay at Sakura con was cut short due to the fact that I came down with a cold on Saturday. Even so I did have fun and plan to go back next year making sure I take care of my health.