First, I want to apologize to the mods for this most likely misplaced thread. But I really had no idea where to put it. I could have put it in the "How was your day" thread but I wanted to make this a thread of it's own. If you feel there's a better place for this thread, please move and or merge the thread without hesitation. Please don't delete it though:( Bear with me, this is my first con after all.
Anywho, with the formalities out of the way, let me describe my day today.
Now I wasn't expecting much for a Con in a microstate way removed from any American/Japanese influences. And I didn't get much but it was pretty fun and cool and there were more Comicy/Otakuy things than I expected.
After buying the ticket (12 euro for a two day pass) and getting a stamp printed on my hand, I got in. First thing you see is a stall encouraging people to sign up for Japanese language classes. Apparently they're using the Japanesey feel of the con as a way to break in the teaching of the language into the country. Which is fine. I signed myself up but I doubt I'll find the time to go.
There were quite a few stalls selling toys (or action figures, whatever), comics (saw quite a few old ones that looked like they came from the fifties and even saw one stand that had Watchmen and V for Vendetta), manga, games (PS3 and XBox mostly) and DVDs (at extremely reduced prices). There were stands where you could play Tekken 6, Mortal Kombat 9 or Wii games. There were also plenty of comic artists both local and foreign (which I'll get to into a minute). First thing I did was curse myself for not bringing a camera. Second thing was just go around and see a bit of everything. Oh the Cosplayers I saw because of course there were Cosplayers. One woman brought her 3-5 year old girl dressed in as Wonder Woman. I saw Link, Dark Magician Girl, Snake(from the Metal Gear series), Cloud with a kickass halberd which looked so real etc. Think what I liked the best was seeing all those artists be so into their work, heavily drawing even in the middle of the con to try and make new designs.
After I did a little wii bowling (which I was surprisingly pretty good at for being the first time I ever used a wii, I got two strikes and everything), I went to an exhibit which was supposed to teach drawing…but it was a children's exhibit consisting of some old dude playing draw charades with little kids. So that was a bust. I talked with Sonia Leong, a professional manga artist who's done commissions for Tokyopop among other things, and I talked to her a bit excited to be all otaku-like with someone. We talked about what manga we like (she likes gothic and Shoujo especially Ouran club) and how I always wanted to go to Japan and try the takoyaki and ramen (she likes yakitori) and then we went into the language...which I regret. She asked me what words I knew and I did and I tried to say "Sorry" in Japanese which is Gomenessai or (Sumi-masen) and I said Degozaru instead (had to be the same day the new Negima chapter came out) and she was all "No, no that's wrong, that's an archaic suffix only Samurai use" and she was surprisingly tetchy about it. Then we went to suffixes and I was curious at exactly how important they were to use. I started listing suffixes and what situation they could be used in and asked how close do you have to be to someone to not have to use a suffix and she said you have to be really close friends or lovers and I was insisting a bit that if they're lovers, they would use chan and...she got pissed. She spoke a couple of sentences quickly in Japanese to show it off and said that she's the one who knows what she was talking about and...I was pretty shocked and was like "please calm down!" And she did. I dunno, I think she was just naturally high-strung. She was always with the mood-swings and was very energetic (In her talk which I'll get to in a minute, she described decapitation in clamp manga with great fervor). The situation did make me realize that...Japanese culture is very, very strict. Here was this 20-30 year old woman, a long-time UK resident and even she was extremely defensive on suffix use. I always knew this but I always sorta imagined it's been getting a tad more liberal, more high-schoolers dropping suffix's with friends or something but according to her, it was very rare which was very surprising to me. Huh. Well I dunno...maybe she just happened to be extremely conservative? If any other Japanese residents could enlighten me on this, I'd be much obliged.
Anywho, Sonia did a little exhibit on making manga which was pretty boring because as ignorant I may be on Japanese culture, I knew manga and pretty much knew everything she said. I wish I went to the other exhibit, a debate on the scientific feasibility of super-heroes. So I went around looking at the different tables when I bumped into one being taken up by David Lloyd aka the guy who illustrated V for Vendetta. Yes THAT V for Vendetta. I ain't gonna pretend I'm comic savvy enough to recognize him by his face. But coincidentally I read on a sign, a list of the guests and their accomplishments so I knew it was him. He was a pretty cool dude, pretty chill drinking his glass of wine. First thing I said to him was "You're friends with Alan Moore right?". Then I asked him "I always found it kinda convenient how Finch found V after getting high on drugs" Cause that always bugged me the most with V. And we had a long fun conversation on how Finch had to get to the mindset of V and the drugs increased his perception and we went to how whether V wanted to die or not was left intentionally ambiguous and I commended him on making Eve's transformation into V's successor so believable and he said how the main theme of the story was that even though the world was free from it's leader, the world still needed a leader, just a different one. And stuff like that. Surprisingly, he never read Watchmen or watched the movie (I got the feeling that he was bad terms with Alan Moore or something). He asked me what i thought of the movie myself and I said how it was like a little kid doing good effort to pass a test but only getting a C+ and he liked that. He talked a bit on movies and how regrettable it was that some good ideas are ruined by lousy writing and I responded with Breaking Dawn (because it's topical) which took the topic of abortion (which really could be a touching topic about a mother's sacrifice or something) and just told it so badly and how ideas just die because of bad movies. I also mentioned how movies don't need to be super complicated and with tons of political intrigue like Vendetta or Watchmen but how simple movies that are character-driven could also be good and I cited Star Wars as an example where the movies were pretty simple but effective as they were more focused and character-driven and how the prequels ruin everything with a ton of complicated, convoluted shit. Like Unless you're Martin Scorsese or Stanley Kubrik, stick to the 3 acts and make things more simple and he liked what I said, as did the person on the table next to us who commented as such. I also saw bunny ears at one point and squealed accidentally and he was like "Erm, yeah...". I could have killed myself there and then, idiot that I am. Anywho we wrapped it up on a discussion of if he thinks comics are gonna be mostly translated entirely into digital format and he said "Yeah, but it's not gonna be the end of comics" And I told him that comics would lose their magic if they were entirely digital.
Ended the day by going to a cosplay competition. There were some cool ones. All the ones I mentioned earlier were there as well as Jason from Friday the 13th, Near from Death Note, Sub-zero and some others that I didn't recognize. There was also a group cosplay competition which was won by people cosplaying as Lupin, Zenigata, Goemon and Jigen (and I thought to myself, no Fujiko?>.>). And that was it. Oh and I also bought One Piece Viz volume one because they had One Piece! Wish they had later volumes though (they only had up to 7 and no 2). One Piece East Blue arc is a classic and all but I wish I had a OP volume where Oda had gotten a real mastery of his art skills.
And that's it. T'was pretty fun. I paid for a two day ticket but I really can't go tomorrow. So that was my first and only day at a Comicon. Wish I could go to some serious Cons outside the country but eh...it was okay for what I expected.