The Otakuologist

Sometimes when you plan for the best, Mr. Murphy rears his ugly ass head and tries to ruin even the best laid plans.  Jokes on him, though.  He didn’t count on my crew and my audience to turn lemons into lemonade.  More on that particular story later on.

AnimeConji ended yesterday and even though every panel I was on, every event I planned didn’t go as well as I wanted it to, I had one of the best times of my life.  I met celebrities, I made contacts, I bought $5 t-shirts and I took pictures of some really cool cosplay.  Not to mention I had my first taste of Japanese rice balls.

What follows are some highlights of the con:

Remember this guy?  No?  Maybe this will remind you:

His name is Tadao Tomomatsu and he is best known for being “Mr Shake Hands Man 2″  from the short lived yet brilliant Fox show: “Banzai.”

Like I said before, I had my first taste of a real Japanese onigiri at Conji.

You eyeballin’ my riceball, boy?

Onigiri is a Japanese word for “riceball” and they are sometimes filled with treats such as pickled plum, or salmon.  I had quite a few the night before last.  I would have bought some last night but my food budget was spent.

Of the panels I was honored to be a part of, my favorites were the mostly ad-libbed ones hosted by Disciplined Monkey Studios. When it comes to podcasts that seem to take on a life of their own, Erick and the boys (and girls, sorry Rianna!) take the cake.  In the Anime Import Weekly podcast I was attacked for being an Astro Boy fan, and ridiculed mercilessly by Erick by some stupid “which is better” game that I always seemed to lose (even though I was told that I couldn’t lose…).  They made up for it by introducing me to this lovely young Tifa impersonator:

Unfortunately she’s married… DAMMIT!

Finally came my time to shine.  I was put in charge of the Karaoke contest at 4:30.  The equipment showed up around 2:00 and I paid what I thought was attention as he showed me how to set up and operate the equipment.  When the moment of truth came… the equipment didn’t work.

One panicked call to the technician who delivered the equipment would bring him back to find out what was wrong.  But what to do in that time?  What else could we do?  ACAPELLA KARAOKE!

That’s right.  Otaku after otaku came up and belted out their favorite tunes sans music.  And we all had a blast until the technician showed up.  I made sure that he got massive applause as he ran up to the stage to fix the problem.

Kudos to Hollis of San Diego DJ and Karaoke for being especially cool for coming to our rescue.

Hollis also turned me on to a little known subculture of the otaku: furries.

Now if you want to know a subset of geekdom that gets even more bad press than your average cosplayer it’s the furries.  Here’s an example.  Years ago, people in the States assumed that people who watched anime only saw cartoon porn.  It’s still that way for the furries.  Of course there are furries that like to have sex with each other, but there are also cosplayers who like to have sex with each other.  Not every furry is a pervert.

Hollis even gave me a website to learn more about them: Califur.com.  I haven’t had a chance to make a full perusal of the site, but what I saw looked interesting.

Some more pictures:

At 10pm on Saturday, Erick made his stand up debut at the WTF podcast, which just happens to be a mishmash of whatever we could think of.  I wasn’t attacked so much this time.

More pics from the con:

A nice example of crossplay.  Light and… um… L?

Domo-kun introduces a personal gachapon machine.  Exclusively at J-list.  But you can’t get it until July at AnimeExpo.

One more thing before I sign off.  I got to see an awesome band called “Steam Powered Giraffe” that blew me away.  This is an act that brought back memories of the old Saturday morning variety shows of the sixties and seventies like “The Banana Splits” and “The Hudson Brothers Comedy Hour.”  If they ever decide to revive that genre I’ll be the first to see it.

Here’s a video of their music.  For some reason WordPress 3.1 won’t let me embed video so I’ll have to give you a link.

Click here to watch video of Steam Powered Giraffe perform their favorite song

What a way to get RickRolled, huh?

Related articles

• AnimeConji Begins Today! (theotakuologist.com)
• AnimeConji Highlights (theotakuologist.com)
• See You At AnimeConji! (theotakuologist.com)
• ‘America’s Greatest Otaku’: Japanese pop culture hits the road in U.S. (herocomplex.latimes.com)
• Anime+Karaoke=Total Awesomeness (theotakuologist.com)