Ive finally found some time to settle down and work through the impressions I had the last two weeks.Two weeks ago I attended my very first convention Dokomi and this weekend was the Japanday and boy was I dead after these events!
Anyways hit the Jump to read my thoughts about my first Convention experience !
Some of you may remember that I actually wrote a post about last years Dokomi in german and that I planned to visit it because its a cat throw away from me.In the end I didnt make it there but planned to attend it the next year. I am not a fan of western anime fandom and its behavior and planned to use this as a testrun before shelling out some cash for one of the bigger conventions in Germany.
The Dokomi is a rather small self-organized convention and didnt burn my wallet too much with its 14€ for the Weekendticket.I didnt expect a convention on the level of the established ones throughout Germany and wasnt expecting too much from the experience except an understanding of the overall convention feeling.
I visited the first day with my brother whos rather the gloomy type and to be honest I hated that day even though it was a rather short lived experience since I had to urgently appear somewhere else in the middle of the day.I just didnt feel like taking any Cosplay pictures because I felt rather shy about it even though some pretty good cosplays were attending there.
My brother didnt feel like going there the other day and so I decided to spend my day with JimmPantsu and his Anhang B who was also attending the convention.This is where the up until then shitty experience turned into something fun.Its alot more enjoyable to spend the day with someone that shares the same interest (except for the dreaded Moe) and to just talk about random stuff /take pictures of cosplays you like.It just feels alot more natural to be with a fellow blogger than standing in a crowd of people you dont like at all and trying to get “into the mood”.Thats why I highly recommend you to not go alone or with a only remotely interested gloomy brother XD
Lets get back to topic:
If I had to judge the Dokomi Id compare it to a school festival where everyone is having great ideas and giving their best but fails at achieving the highly set goals.The fact that the Dokomi was inside a school building even undermined that feeling ^^;
I personally felt that the whole event lacked some organisation, since some simple things like timetables or floorlayout were nowhere to be found,but I guess thats forgiveable when the event is organized by only a handful of people doing this in their free time.
One of the few things I was quite curious about was the merchandise but I once again discovered that I am as far from the target group as possible and most things are aimed at younger,less seasoned anime fans.The few vendors that set up their stores at the con had quite steep prices and I am actually shocked that some people buy these.One of the examples I do remember is a Naru Narusegawa figure for 329 € o.0
There was also a booth that had some doujinshi in stock and I shuffled through them and it looks like they updated their Doujinshi Stock the last time in the 90s since most Doujinshi were EVA and Love Hina and price from 15 to 25€.The newest Doujinshi I found was a Guilty Gear one and that one also had some years on its back ^^;
I cant say if other conventions have these steep prices aswell but vendors wont see any money from me with such ridiculos prices but as said before I am not the target group anyway.
One of the few things I looked forward to was the Cosplay DSLR Workshop and due to some unlucky events we ended up with only two attendees but this turned out to be a great chance for us since we were able to pierce Tentakelmonster, the hostess of the workshop, with lots of specific questions and it was quite a fun time.The Workshop focused more on Etiquette,Law and Postprocessing than the technical mumbo jumbo and while I was at first a bit disappointed it sparked some interest in cosplay photography.Tentakelmonster grabbed one of my meishis and I hope shell shoot me an email when shes back from the USA.
The rest of the Dokomi was the what I expect to be the typical Convention Events with Cosplay Tourneys,Showgroups etcetera,ecetera.
Didnt I forget something? Oh yes! The Meido/Host Cafe! Since I was dead broke I couldnt attent the Meidocafe and youll have to check Jimm Pantsus Blog for some pics of Meidos ^^;;;;
Photography Wise it was an quite interesting experience since I had to switch lenses and needed to adjust to the changing surroundings and I think this alone made the trip worth its money.Thanks to Meronpan Im also eyeing a new lense that might prove more useful during those events.
I didnt take many cosplay pictures mainly due to the fact that I planned to take them on Sunday and alot of cosplayers were already gone at that time and I didnt feel like taking pics of ANY cosplay.
Overall the Dokomi was a flawed yet nice experience thanks to the right people and I am thinking about attending another one this year with Pantsu again.
After all that talk its time to show some of the less than spectacular pictures ^^;
Another thing I learned during the Workshop is that you should take your time when doing Cosplay Pics which I didnt really take while doing any of these shots ^^;
I guess I just have to get some more confidence to ask these people out.
Blowfish – Over and Out
Japanday Post will be Wednesday-ish
