English: The back of an original Xbox console, showing its inputs and outputs. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
We planned better for our "down time" this year, and as such, time went by much faster for this Oni-Con than last year at Oni-Con X. The main thing that helped was that I brought my PS2, while my friend brought along his Xbox 360. We got lucky in that the hotel TV was configured such that we were able to plug in both devices to the same inputs (though obviously not at the same time). My PS2 definitely worked, but I think the picture quality on the Xbox 360 was sharper and clearer, so we opted to stay connected with it instead. The Xbox 360 could NOT access Xbox Live because of the set up of the hotel WiFi which requires the extra step of accepting the hotel's usage policy, that the Xbox 360 was not able to acknowledge and therefore get past. No matter, we merely needed the DVD function, which can be accessed offline.
We finished watching all of the anime Sunday Without God which is a weird little fantasy show out from Sentai Filmworks. I also showed my friend more of the Sci Fi anime series From The New World, of which he had only seen the first four episodes that were screened awhile back at Alamo Drafthouse Mason Park in his hometown of Katy, Texas. I've seen all of Collection 1 of this series but was willing to re-watch it with my friend, so we picked up with Episode 5 and continued from there. We didn't finish, but I let my friend borrow the case & disc to finish on his own after the convention. This was a fun way to spend our down time between major panels & events.
I also attended the late night "Hentai Fest" on Saturday night. My friend had gone with his girlfriend last year, but this year I decided I'd check it out as well. It was very loud and rowdy and I could barely hear the MC's over the roar of the crowd. Likewise, since very little Hentai titles get dubbed anymore, it required a lot of reading of subtitles, which were too low on the screen and I was having to constantly peak over the shoulders of the people sitting in front of me to try and read them. It was less genuinely sexy and more just a point-and-laugh spectacle and send up, along with some really gross, disgusting clips for shock-humor effect. A good deal of the humor for me was the wide variance between what actual sex is like and what ridiculous anime sex looks like. We stuck around for about an hour and a half (the allotted time) but as the Hentai Fest was by no means over at that point, and as I was feeling physically exhausted, we returned to our hotel to get some ZZZs our last night of the convention. We also noted that the Rave was still going strong on the first floor, but that's a younger man's game and as I said, I was tired to the point of exhaustion and had no energy left for a dance floor. I was glad to note in several of the panels that I wasn't the only balding near or past middle aged fan in attendance.
I did give some thought to attending the Sunday events, but by the time Sunday morning rolled around, all I really wanted was to get the heck home. My friend agreed. It's just that we were on a time crunch to check out at 11am, and if we stayed for the con events, we'd have to deal with finding new parking and I just didn't want to deal with it. Plus, some of the panels got switched around at the last minute for the last day and the changes were much less interesting to me. I didn't get any autographs this year, but that was okay in the end.
The hotel was better than the Quality Inn last year overall, though one thing was awful, and that was the fact that I only got 1 hot shower the whole weekend, and that was on Thursday night when we checked in. All the other showers I took that weekend the water was room temperature or cold, and it was fucking miserable. We never got to use the pool, as it was too cold. There was a brief stretch of time Friday afternoon where it was warm enough to swim, but I passed on the opportunity.
I think that because Oni-Con happened to fall on the weekend of Halloween this inspired many more people to Cosplay this year, including me. My friend costumed himself as a character from the video game Assasin's Creed. I was dressed as a Star Trek TOS Science officer in a blue shirt; I had both the short sleeve version and the long sleeve with rank stripes, which I wore interchangeably depending on the weather and time of day.
All in all, I feel as though I had a near perfect convention experience. I'd been to Oni-Con before but it was only this year where I felt like I did nearly everything right by way of planning and execution. Finally I'm a seasoned convention goer, at least for Oni-Con. That said, I'm not entirely sure that I'm going back to Oni-Con next year. I am definitely going back to Anime Matsuri next Spring 2015, but as for Oni-Con, there I'm less certain. I might splurge on attending multiple days of Dickens on the Strand next December instead, or maybe I'll even look at attending A-Kon in Dallas again. I did bum around the artists' alley at A-Kon one year circa 2008 or 09, but didn't actually pay to attend the con itself. I know it's in FUNimation's back yard, but actually if I recall, FUNimation doesn't necessarily have a strong presence at A-Kon, or at least not as much as you might imagine. I feel like cumulatively I've gotten all I want out of Oni-Con these past several years. The special guests (beyond the regular guests) are always a crap-shoot and this year were two that I were really unfamiliar with. Anime Matsuri is going to have some really great guests next Spring so I'm already committed to attend that (plus I don't have to get a hotel for it).
I didn't spend any time in the video rooms because all of the shows being screened I had either already seen myself or had no interest in. Bringing along our Xbox/PS2 was definitely the right call, so we could set up our own "viewing room" in our hotel room. I even enjoyed some adult beverages while enjoying Sunday without God on Friday night (a 6 pack of Negra Modelo I bought at Kroger's on the way back from the Convention Center). The show was fun, but its ending is kind of bullshit.
Anyway, it was time well spent all around. Attending the RWBY marathon did mean we got to see less of Galveston itself than I originally had hoped, but I have no regrets. The RWBY marathon was awesome and I'm glad we were able to actually squeeze it into our busy con schedule.
Greg Ayres continued to be hilariously entertaining at every panel where he was featured that I managed to attend. The 18 and up panel was a blast; there was some repeat from the year before, but also some new material, which was great. The 3 man ADR Direction panel with Chris Bevins, Chris Ayres and Tallesin Jaffe was interesting and informative. I missed Clarine Harp & Carli Mosier this year, but did at least see Carli walking around the convention.
I'm still coming down from the emotional high of attending Oni-Con XI, bathing in the afterglow.