The Old School Otaku Lounge

I had a couple of friends that attended Akibafest and they all thought it was a disaster. The pre-registration line was incredibly long and slow moving. Parking was non-existent, as well as public bathrooms. It seems that Aniplex thought that you could use the bathrooms located in the restaurants an...

I had a good laugh when the announcer said that over 3000 people had come from all over to attend AX 1996. 3000 people. That's like, a drop in the bucket, considering AX's 100K+ attendance. It was nice seeing a video from a time when AX was less corporately driven. Hard to imagine that there was a t...

Looks like MacrossWorld is suffering. It's been a two day con the last two years. I had friends that went the first year who were really happy with it as they each received a nice sketch at the dinner, but the second year of the con (2015), they were not pleased at all. I seem to recall the Sunday a...

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Nice sketches. If you try to whip out a 11x14 pad with you at any con now, not only will staff prevent you from doing so, but a lot of the guests will either refuse to draw on it or simply draw something small. I've seen staff turn people away from bringing large pads and extra large shikishi boards...

Yup, that's Matsubara on the bottom floor of the Raleigh Convention Center. I was really surprised that Yoshimi (head of guest relations) allowed this to happen. She's very anti-collector and, while she likes our money, is never happy to see us around. When Mikimoto was at Animazement in 2013, staff...

^ Eh, I was thinking about Matsubara when I wrote that. Really wish this forum had an editor feature. I'm surprised you had an problem getting stuff from Yuuki at Animazement. Staff called us greedy, but he was really ok with doing quick sketches for everyone. I don't remember staff getting upset wi...

I really think the money, both in terms of sponsors controlling their guests and how much artwork sells for at auction, are the deciding factors and not the amount of people that show up for autograph sessions. I can still get decent sketches at small cons like PMX because they don't have any auctio...

Here's the pic of the Watsuki sketch I mentioned - http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/450x300q90/341/fanime11.jpg Takada posted a picture of the three sketches she donated to the auction on her Twitter account. It's really a different environment since exclusively dedicated anime conventions began in ...

I didn't want to be the odd nut asking rando people if they were on a board I frequent. ^^' I wasn't there for the 30K auction. 2009 marked the beginning of my transition from cel to sketch collector, and I had no idea that they auctioned that sort of thing at charity auctions. My friend who won the...