Otakon 2017: Artist Alley

Leave a comment

For the last few years of Otakon in Baltimore, there was a premium on artist tables. The lottery system had to be implemented with space so limited in their Artist Alley. That problem has been solved at the new con center in Washington DC. Artist Alley is now bigger than ever and even has space to expand!

Now Artist Alley shares its space with the autograph section which seemed to have been given a wide enough berth to not cause traffic jams in the alley proper. There was a snag Friday morning though. Some autographs were scheduled right when the alley opened so hordes of fans had nowhere to wait except the hallway and ended up blocking escalators. But this seems like an easily solvable problem for next year.

That was nothing compared with the chaos of Saturday night when a waterfall appeared inside the Artist Alley thanks to the storms outside. Videos from some inside show it pretty clearly, and it ended up closing down the alley for an hour or so. Some merchandise was ruined and many artists had to relocate within the alley causing some confusion. From the sound of things, Otakon responded well to the situation. However, some in the forums say this leak is not an unknown occurrence with this convention center.

Continue reading →

The Speakeasy #092: Otakon, More Ideon, More One Piece

1 Comment

Ongoing Investigations: One Piece Water Thriller Bark-Paramount War, Space Runaway Ideon.

Song: “SKILL” by JAM Project from Super Robot Wars Alpha 2

Food for Thought: What event would you like to see for Otakon’s 25th year?

Topics: Otakon

DOWNLOAD

More Otakon 2017 posts:

Otakon 2017: Ani-Gamers Podcast
Otakon 2017: General Impressions
Otakon 2017: Artist Alley
Otakon 2017: Panels
Otakon 2017: 15-minutes with Hidenori Matsubara

Mysterious Heroine X Assassination Note: How Many Sabers Are There? (Update #6)

Leave a comment

hisui_icon_4040 I decided to finally do it. I would try to catalog all the various Saber variants there are. The fact that there are more and more variants of Artoria Pendragon has gone from a few different versions of the main heroine to a running joke that has had an official term for characters who look like Artoria: Saberface. In Fate/Grand Order there are units whose whole gimmick revolves around doing more damage to Saberfaced characters, certain characters will target Saberfaced characters, and there was even a whole event centered around Saberfaces.

All of this attention is clearly because Saber is a popular character but it has also engendered an equal amount of resentment for all the focus the Saberfaces have gotten. As a major aficionado of Saber, I decided to catalog how many Sabers there are. I went to all the different version of Sabers as well as the different costumes those characters have.

As always a few caveats on any list I make:

1. I am pretty much purposely invoking Cunningham’s Law here. I am almost surely missing an official iteration or two. I plan to update this list whenever I get the chance so new additions are always welcome.

2. I realize some of these are the same character in different outfits. The main thing is that over time some iterations of Saber in costume have become characters in their own right. Lily Saber and Saber Bride are 100% this case in action. Therefore I have just decided to make all different versions their own thing but readily admit that this list could easily be condensed.

Let’s see how bad this really is.

Continue reading →