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Oh knows, My brother is doomed!!!!1
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| Lira |
Mario? My younger brother has just left to a local Otakon [explanation], and he's going to spend his weekend there, it seems, and you can see some of the pictures in this post (they're from 2005). After realising the danger my brother was going through I sat back and started to think: What for? I mean, what's the purpose of such gathering? Better yet, would I meet Nou if I ever went there? What convinces a bunch of individuals, who hardly ever leave their homes, leave their downloaded episodes of Mega Tokyo Superstar Neon Fried Chicken Fighting Samurai 3 behind and spend a weekend in what seems to be a religious ritual worshipping strange Japanese gods?
Who would've imagined? Ladies and gentlemen, if you allow me, this is what I'm going to talk about in the following paragraphs.
Within every group, there's a certain sub-group that takes things one step further as they capture the essence of everything that first group stands for, blow it out of proportions and turn it all into something completely different, often with some stigma. Rave culture has candy kids, PeTA has furry culture, Psy-trance has Terence McKenna followers, Literature enthusiasts have Harry Potter fans, Clinically depressed culture has emo kids, Americans have republicans, Nerds have anime fans, Anime fans have Otaku culture, and otaku culture itself has cosplayers (Hentai cosplayers are okay, as they're actually actors who are getting paid). Anyway, that should be an accurate portrait of what I'm talking about.
Why, Choco-milk, why? Just like any other form of fanatism, where you commit a philosophical suicide and you take something as an absolute truth, there's this apolitical non-religious fundamentalism where you find yourself surrounded by the same ideas and you become a sub-product of those ideas yourself. This is why most people don't understand that religious nutjobs aren't that way because of religion. Eskimos The Inuit have 173 words for white because they're surrounded by this colour and they need to express differences more subtly than we do. Brazilians have 38 kinds of wax for this same reason. Still, cosplayers manage to develop a whole new grammar of the Japanese language using just a handful of words (usually "baka", "kawaii", "otaku" and "sugoi", which are all derogatory terms, with the sole exception of "baka").
My brother, an emo geek, is now there, and I'm afraid he might cut his wrists with a Nintendo cartridge once he sees the monsters he fought during his childhood (that would be Koopa and Bowser). But this is interesting. This is a sample of what might happen when you have a rather homogenous source of information (Anime), ideas (I never understood why they're so addicted to both heavy metal and j-pop) and girls (the ones they find). That's the importance of embracing difference, probably, and not letting your kids stay locked in their bedroom downloading stuff that should be illegal to minors. And by that, I mean anime, as pornography actually does have its uses, such as preventing prostate cancer and having lessons that can be applied to life (if they ever get to that stage of having one).
I will report what happened at the otakon once he comes back. |
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| Lira |
| quote: | Originally posted by Nou
My little brother used to go to anime conventions... ughhh I hate otaku so much, I won't step foot near those things, too many wapanese. |
You can always get lucky and find a fit girl though. If Sailor Moon doesn't hadouken you, that is. |
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| Aquarian |
| I feel that this would be a good time for me to confess that I saw the star wars premiere at midnight sharp, and I came dressed as a sith, with tunic, cloak, and my own home made lightsaber. |
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| Lira |
lol @ Aquarian :p
| quote: | Originally posted by Nou
I know his hate grows for me by a factor of 10 everytime I say this but a certain well known and popular COR whore goes to anime conventions (two actually might, im not sure though). |
You know what puzzles me? Are there sitcom conventions? Imagine what a "LOST" convention would be like :D |
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| paranoik0 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Nou
I know his hate grows for me by a factor of 10 everytime I say this but a certain well known and popular COR whore goes to anime conventions (two actually might, im not sure though). |
woah, this anime thing is really global, i didn't know there were conventions of it in Finland!  |
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| Yan |
My female friends want to drag me along to Anime Boston next weekend.
I think not. |
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| Lira |
| quote: | Originally posted by paranoik0
woah, this anime thing is really global, i didn't know there were conventions of it in Finland! |
:stongue: :stongue: :stongue:
I don't think he was talking about Nik though :p |
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| Sirocco |
| hah,i been to a few otakons back in the day. i remember winning the pokemon card tournament at one of them. luckily, i grew out of it :) |
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| Yan |
| Otakon isn't the proper generic term to explain it. Anime convention works just fine though. :p |
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