Blasted kids, get off my con!

Kanda Yu from"D.Gray-man".

For a great many anime conventions outside of Japan, there are typical experiences one should expect when attending them. You have your dealers’ hall and artist alley, voice actor panels and special events. There’re the crowds of cosplayers and fanboys/fangirls. I could easily keep going, but essentially, these are standard issue for anime conventions these days. Conventions are what you make of it in the end, but you must admit, when you’re attending a good convention, there’s something in the atmosphere that keeps you energized. It’s that feeling of yeah, this is an awesome place and I belong here!

Metrocon failed to deliver that feeling.

Metrocon, proclaimed the “largest anime convention in Florida”, took place at the Tampa Convention Center in Tampa, Florida from June 19^th through 21^st. Within seven years, it quickly soared in attendance due to perhaps the large draw of industry guests and fan events, such as their anime-themed human chess match. For whatever reason, perhaps primarily due to the economy, I failed to see the swelling numbers of attendees this con was known for—and I attended on Saturday, typically the height of any convention. However, what I did see hoards of were kids. Sugar-hyped, yaoi-centric, maturity-challenged kids being escorted by parents who were obviously in too much of a bewildered daze to do much about controlling their literal screaming and spastic behavior.

View of the artist alley.

It’s true that most conventions have seen swelling numbers of attendees under the age of 21 since anime and manga became increasingly easily accessible and mainstream. Every year they seem to get younger and younger, especially now since many fans have “grown-up” and have kids of their own. For many of us of any age, it’s to be expected to encounter the usual groups of teenage kids (and maturity-challenged “adults”) wanting to slap each other with paddles while screaming at the attractive cosplayer who unfortunately caught their attention. At Metrocon, it seemed as if this type of behavior was more than just present, it was predominant. As an older fan and cosplayer, I have found that as each year goes by, this aspect of conventions becomes increasingly more annoying. Usually, the convention staff tries to police the hallways and panels to ensure things don’t get out of hand. From what I could see at Metrocon, the staff you could find not only ignored a lot of the “crazy” behavior, but even encouraged it.

For example, before the “Whose Line Is it Anime?” show, one of the actors handed out a giant roll of bubble-wrap to everyone in line. Naturally, everyone brought it into the event room with them and proceeded to POP POP POP continuously for the duration of the show. While the actors and actresses projected their voices loudly, it was a very large room and anyone in the back was out of luck for hearing anything over the persistent popping and roar of the convention from the open door. After several minutes, my companion and I left since we couldn’t hear anything.

An impressive father-son team.

Not everything about this convention was bad, however. It did have some highlights which were pleasant to be found at a con. The dealers’ hall was an excellent size with a wide variety of dealers with competitive prices and a lot of different merchandise. Having a convention in an actual convention center is great—Metrocon’s location is ideal, with two hotels (one connected via skywalk) and the entire space of the complex to handle the crowds and provide more than enough room in event spaces. This was certainly the first convention I’ve been to that featured bleachers in the main events hall with tons of room to spare.

Metrocon had a ton of guests from a wide variety of portfolio backgrounds. A great majority of the English cast of Gundam Wing was present, and together they made for one of the most entertaining VA panels I’ve attended. There was a lack of moderation, however, as we suffered through the typical “Say this line!” questions and other non-enlightening prompts. What took the cake was the woman who had all the actors read from a fan script she had written. Some VA’s will usually politely say something akin to “see me after the panel” when something crazy like that is asked, OR a moderator will step in. None of the mods did anything, and for whatever reason, the guests humored her, and attempted to take it seriously at first before giving it their own flair. They certainly turned it around into something worth seeing, but it took up a large amount of time and some people couldn’t have their questions answered as result.

Panels are usually only as good as the presenters are, and since they are typically run by volunteers, it’s always interesting to see how these presentations turn out. I attended the Lolita fashion panel, which was excellent. It was full of examples, succinct information, and had a fluid presentation. I was most looking forward to the steampunk fashion panel.

An incredible steampunk costume featuring stilts!

Steampunk, for those who may not be familiar with it, is a genre based on science-fiction conceived out of the 19^th century. It is typically associated with Victorian fashion featuring a lot of earth tones, leather, brass, goggles, and gears. Metrocon’s theme this year was (supposedly) steampunk, and there was a satisfying number of steampunk cosplayers present at the con featuring some incredible talent.

While a lot of thought went into the steampunk panel, and no offense to the presenter, it failed to hold attention. It felt more like a doctoral thesis presentation than anything else, and while doubtless she was nervous, reading from pages of text explaining every facet of the genre to an audience that already has a grasp of the topic is boring. Being continuously interrupted by one of her fashion examples (a gentleman who runs an organization of professional steampunk costumers or something akin to that) didn’t help, either. It was the attendees who made it interesting, as many stood up to show off their costumes and describe the characters they created to go with them.

In the aforementioned main events hall, it was clearly exciting at first to see the elaborate set-up for the infamous anime human chess match. Every year, the match has a storyline that is explained on the website and played out on stage. Two large screens featured a decently arranged cinematic video of the prologue to the game. These screens would’ve come in handy later, as the stage proved to be much further away than made to believe in the dark before the lights turned on, making it very hard to make out who was on stage if you were sitting up in the bleachers (like me).

Actors from the Human Chess Match.

While the “kings” had hand-held microphones, their players did not, and it became clear quickly that they did not check the sound prior to the show as you could hear almost none of the players. There was a lot of dialogue to the show that most of the crowd missed, and thus, had no idea what was going on. Then the fights were hit-or-miss, pun intended. Some of the matches were painfully rehearsed and précised, and with each battle lasting some five minutes or more, it grew boring rather fast. Others proved to be rather talented at play-fighting, and some of the matches were actually entertaining. But with so many characters to go through during the show, and some of the fights going on far too long than they needed to be, after nearly two hours it ceased to hold my attention—particularly since I couldn’t hear the dialogue. In my opinion, when it was clear there was no sound for the players, they should’ve borrowed the hand-held microphones the “kings” were using.

As for the cosplay, I’m glad I didn’t wear my Kingdom Hearts II Sora costume, as it seemed that there were three times as many cosplayers from this series at this convention than any I’ve ever attended. I counted over six Soras before I had made it to the registration table, not to mention the legion of Organization members and Axel-toting Roxases. There was also a surprising number of male crossplayers. The level of skill present matched most of the maturity levels, and my comments on that have clearly already been made. There was not much creativity to be seen, save for some exceptional few and a satisfying number of talented steampunk costumers.

There were many steampunk and Victorian cosplayers featuring some exceptional talent.

The atmosphere did nothing for me. I found myself bored as many times as I was enjoying myself, and I just wasn’t feeling anything other than an overwhelming sense of “average anime con” and a surprising irritation of feeling “too old” to be around a lot of the crowds. Really, wouldn’t a screaming match in the lobby between several cosplayers annoy you too?

If you’re new to the convention scene and haven’t graduated high school yet, you’ll probably enjoy Metrocon. Those of us who are more seasoned are better off saving their cash.

Here are some links to photo galleries featuring more cosplay photos from Metrocon ‘09:

• My Personal Gallery
• 91.8 The Fan
• Flickr

Related Posts:

• Dragon*con 2009: Recap
• Dragon*con 2009: Thriller World Record Attempt
• Dragon*Con 2009: 8th Annual Parade
• Anime Festival Orlando 2009
• Megacon 2009