Asian Fortune Your source for all things Asian American
By Jenny Chen
Boys in tawny hair, starched white shirts, and make-up lounged along the walls of the Baltimore Convention Center. They were accompanied with various incarnations of Totoro, and girls carrying foam daggers. Welcome to Otakon 2013 – or at least, the outside of it. All the thinly veiled warnings from my friends when they heard that I was covering Otakon this year did not prepare me for this colorful display of fashion — normally reserved for Halloween. I have many friends who are into comics, video games, anime, and the like, but I have never delved into the world myself.
Yet here I was, in the center of this mecca for many manga and anime devotees. I was told that the cosplayers (costume players – or people who dress up as their favorite cartoon or video game character) were the real reason to attend the convention. The costumes were, indeed, remarkable. The care with which anime fans portrayed their characters down to each strand of hair on their head made them akin to real life manifestations of the characters. Except for the fact that unlike their blue screen counterparts, they could get tired, they could get sweaty, and could emit bodily odors.
Otakon is a three-day convention held in the Inner Harbor of Baltimore every summer to celebrates East Asian culture (primarily manga and anime) and its fandom. Started in as a small convention in Philadelphia in 1994, Otakon is now one of the longest-running Anime conventions in the United States, and the second largest North American anime convention as of 2012. People come from all over the country to attend the convention.
To the uninitiated (ie. me), this can be a bit overwhelming. I felt like I had just been dropped into a middle school girl’s dream. Characters from the cartoon Adventure Time flashed an Otakon badge on a red lanyard to the security cards patrolling the doorways. No-Face, from the award winning anime Spirited Away also with a red lanyard around his neck, was sitting on the floor, knitting.
Even the uninitiated knows the importance of cosplayers in this convention. But as I walked around like a stunned rat, I vaguely wondered about the non-cosplayers. What about the people who were just walking around, dressed in the costume of ordinary Joe? What were they doing here in this middle school girl’s dream?
The Wheelchair Cosplayer
The answer began reveling itself to me while I was searching desperately for the Press Op room so that I could procure a red lanyard myself. I found myself instead (after walking around several circles) in front of the Special Needs booth. A good a place to start as any other.
As I stepped aside to pull up my press email on my phone, I was vaguely aware of a young man in a wheelchair, with a tube coming out out of a mask on his face. He was decked out in a dapper hat, chains, and other paraphernalia that marked him as a clear die hard anime fan. There was an urgency with which his companion was speaking. A young woman at the Special Needs booth was told that he was on life support but that he desperately wanted to see the Yoko Kanno concert. (Kanno is known as the great master of animation music.)
“Just tell them the situation, we’ll get it all sorted out. I don’t see why it would be a problem,” said the woman who I would later meet as Harmonie Perry.
The amount of attention and care that Perry and her team gave to those who needed special assistance at their convention made an impression on me even after I had managed to find the Press Opp room on the other side of the convention center. As I put my own red lanyard around my neck, I found myself wondering about the Special Needs division. The passion of the average cosplayer wowed me, but the passion of those who have to overcome additional obstacles to get here wowed me even more. Were there more people like him?
During my short time at Otakon, I met a man who’d had a tracheotomy who was accompanied by a young man who had enjoyed manga and anime with when they were kids. I met another girl who was dressed as Sailor Moon. The fact that she was on crouches because of a lame leg, seemed secondary. None of these people seemed out of place in this throng of otherworldly craziness.
I later asked Perry why those who have special needs might be particularly drawn to this conference. “I think it’s because these people have probably felt out of place at some point on their lives,” she said in the soft and soothing manner she exudes. “But here, they don’t. You could have a Minecraft shirt on, and if I like Minecraft we’ll instantly be best friends and it doesn’t matter if you’re in a wheelchair or if you have a disability.”
The Security Personnel
As Harmonie Perry introduced me to the staff, I met a security personnel. She was a slender black woman who had never been to Otakon before and was so overcome with everything she was seeing that she was at a loss for words.
“It’s just wow – just wooooooow,” she gushed. “There is no other word to describe it but ‘woooooow'”. She told me that it brought back memories of her childhood.
“I can’t remember the names of the shows,” she said. “But I see them, they’re here!” Her favorite costumes were the Japanese school girl costumes. “The details are just amazing, they look so real!” she said. I left her staring star struck at the cosplayers as they went by. Another unsuspecting passerby, converted.
The Mother
In the main arena I met a woman from Laurel, Md who was here with her 8 month old son and her mother. I thought perhaps that she had a husband or a son who was really into anime or manga, and she was accompanying them since she didn’t appear to be decked out in any sort of costume besides full-mom gear. But she said that not only was she hear out of her own volition but that she’d been coming for the past three years.
“I like how it’s a different perspective,” she told me. “It’s just a change from the day to day.”
She mentioned idly that she might invite her teenage son next year because “he likes this kind of stuff,” but in the meantime, she shrugged. “I just like coming here,” she said.
As I stumbled out at the end of the day on the waves of people singing Mulan’s Let’s Get Down to Business in unison. Trashcans were overflowing with paper plates, brochures, and broken costume bits. Ice cream trucks idled at the front of the curb, puffing out exhaust as they scooped in the last of the tired cosplayers, exhausted from a day of exulting in Japanese culture, being different, and being bold.
I thought of all the non-traditional visitors that I had met, the mother, the security personnel, the special needs visitors. I guess I had become one of them, a journalist who still didn’t know the difference between Speedracer and Astro Boy but who had somehow become a part of a world where the differences mattered a lot.
What charmed me wasn’t just the costumes, but what the costumes did to me after I left. I had slipped into a world where, for a couple of hours, people dressed up in the most outrageous costumes without any inhibitions, and when I slipped out, I found that I could never see the world the same way again.
As I walked into the mall adjacent the Baltimore Convention Center, I couldn’t help but stifle a smile as I mentally catalogued ordinary looking people into costumes – the girl with the red dyed hair,”edgy girl”, the man in the three piece suit, the quintessential “banker.” What Otakon taught me above all else was that we’re all in costumes every single day. How we choose to adorn ourselves tell a lot about us as a person, but ultimately are also completely superficial and changeable. It’s a great reminder when we fall into the rut of dressing just like everyone else or following the latest trends.
Now excuse me while I change out of my journalist costume.
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According to an official press release, Otakon will be held in Washington, DC next year.
