psipsy

Ok so yeah, Katsucon this past weekend. I went. I spent about 80% of my time in the dealers room, hanging out with the Hen Da Ne gang, because they're kool kats who hang out with me.

But if that's all I do at most cons, why bother going? There is a reason, I guess. Anime cons have changed.

A big long-ass time ago, in a different century, in the year 1995, I went to my first anime convention, Otakon '95. And it was fun. And looking back at it, it was something of a life event for me. Anyway.

Back in the 90s, the purpose of anime cons was for fellow fans to gather and meet other fellow fans, watch new anime that we never heard of (and if we were lucky would make to store shelves in the US 2-3 years later), buy stuff we couldn't find anywhere else, and anime-industry folks would hold panels for sharing news about what was going on in the world of anime.

Then the internet happened. A flood of anime news was suddenly available to everyone at once, and there were a lot of introductions made outside of anime cons. Savvy business owners decided to set up stores on the internet, meaning we no longer had to wait several months and then travel 6-8 hours to a convention for the Cool Stuff; it was a few mouse clicks and a credit card number away.

Well, we could still watch new anime at conventions, right? Oh wait the internet took that away too. Unless someone's main computer was from 1995, they were able to watch anime right on their monitor. A Raspberry Pi has enough computing power to handle all but the most exotic formats that use some coyote codec that was compiled in someone's basement last week. The barriers that prevented us from tapping into a larger supply of anime were flattened by the bulldozer of technology.

So what are anime cons good for these days? Certainly something, because attendance at most of them has only been going up, and the calendar is getting crowded with both established and new events. If anime cons were obsolete, then Otakon wouldn't have grown so much that they're now making the BCC strain. And Anime Expo wouldn't have attendance figures so large they just round to the nearest 1000. People are getting something out of them. There's a reason why people are still waiting several months for one to come around and then driving 6-8 hours to attend it.

Personally I think their biggest purpose now is for socializing. We all know that there's a limit to how much we can learn about each other online, and eventually it gets to a point where there must be some face time. Or we have existing friends that live a great distance away and general life events keep them away much of the time, except for the few times a year they come to the same convention. Or we just bump into a complete stranger, have a friendly and enthusiastic chat (which may or may not also be fueled by alcohol), and a couple minutes later, we have new friends (in a good way). I have genuinely lost track of how many friends I've made at and because of conventions. I can't even try to guess; it's that many.

And then there's cosplay. Increasingly, cosplayers will put on their A-game, which in turn encourages other cosplayers to do the same. Then you'll see several thousand people all dressed up in cosplay, just because they can.

People still buy stuff. And there are some dealers who will only sell at conventions, and they sell the sort of thing most places don't sell in a store or even online. Especially the rarer things that people will want to actually look at and examine before buying, and if there's someone with the cash for it, they're going to be at a convention.

People supply gaming systems for the game room. Original systems with original games. I gotta say, there's playing games through an emulator, and there's playing games on the original system. There's a difference.

There's more to this. Much more. I'm just scratching the surface here. In essence, anime cons have become really huge parties that take over a hotel for a weekend. That, I think is where the appeal is.