Yesterday, Aaron and I went to Animarathon, an annual free convention hosted by Anime in Northwest Ohio, the anime club of Bowling Green State University (my alma mater).
We came to a realization when we walked into the building full of becostumed teens and young adults: we are no longer part of the anime con demographic. We’ve seen and heard most of the panels, some of them multiple times. Any anime we want to check out are easily available online (generally speaking), so we don’t hit the video rooms. We’ve cosplayed a couple of times, and it was fun, but we don’t get the joy out of it that we once did. We definitely don’t get any joy out of listening to fangirls squee or otaku guys try to sound intelligent. We’re tired of rude otaku of all persuasions being pushy and inconsiderate in dealers’ rooms.
It’s not fun anymore.
Granted, it was awesome to see Alex (who created the awesome mascot for the late WARP Anime Podcast) and Traeonna (local cosplayer extraordinaire). It was also awesome to get a new Beer-chan shirt from Wizzywig.
Plus, it was free. You can’t beat free.
Will we go to the upcoming Garasunoshi-con (translation: Glass City Con) at Owens Community College? Probably, as it’s also a free con. But I don’t see us traveling to Columbus for our once-favorite cons anymore.
Aaron does point out, though, that we weren’t too old for the Providence Anime Conference, as it was 21 and up. The youthful insanity was at a minimum, and the panels were interesting and relevant. Hopefully, that one will stay around for a while, and maybe start a trend…