Okay, I've returned from Otakon, after spending about 8 hours there.
I have acquired quite a bit of swag from the dealers room and artist's alley.
- 11 professional volumes of manga. (Including 2 I've been waiting for all summer.)
- 3 volumes of amateur manga.
- 12 individual chapters of amateur manga.
- 3 promotional volumes of professional manga.
- 5 gashapon capsules.
- 1 blanket.
- Various other promotional trinkets.
My morning was spent going once through the artist's alley, then to the dealer's room, then back to the artist's alley. I actually enjoyed the artist's alley quite a bit... most of the stuff there is fairly cheap, and it's always fun to go in and sweep up all of an artists's work for a few bucks. Not that I bought anything I didn't want, but some of the books were $2 each, and at that price, might as well buy all 4. I got a few sketches thrown in as well.
I also went through the dealer's room. I got to speak with some people at the Hirameki booth. Apart from the booth babes, I also got to speak to someone who seemed like he knew what was going on. He told me that the Ai Yori Aoshi game is due out on Sept. 6. I gave him one of my new AB cards.
That brings me to the next point... About a month ago, I had printed up some business cards with short descriptions of bishoujo.us and renai.us on them. I handed them out to some of the artists and other people I spoke with... And I also left some lying around the con. If you got one, keep it.
After that, I was pretty tired, so I went to the showing of "The Place Promised in our Early Days". I had already seen it, but I had also already seen everything else I would want to see, and it was on the big screen, which made it better, since it has great art.
I then went to Naze Nani Megatokyo. I was the first person on the second line for it. It started late. Being MT, this should come as no surprise. Basically, NNMT was a combination of plugs for new stuff in their store, and a more interesting slideshow showing how places in Japan were incorporated into the strip. There was also a bit of a rant about how Fred dislikes the OEL (Original English Language) prefix... but no suggestions on what to replace it with.
After that, I was getting tired... a combination of a cold and of realizing (around 1am), that it's actually possible to determine the exact years in which the events of Gakuen Redux take place, and then proceeding to write a short program to do so. So I left around 6:30 or so. Am not proceeding to rehydrate, lost alot of water.
- if it's something standalone, I'd be happy to put it up for download.
Saturday was better though! I watcehd Scrapped Princess (which was awesome) and Yakitate!! Japan, which is about baking bread. Words cannot describe how much fun that show was. I also got a State Alchemist's pocket watch. 
On Saturday I met Christy Lijewski who does the comic Next Exit. She wsas very nice and it was a lot of fun. I hope everyone who went had a good time!