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Otakon 2016 marked the last Otakon to take place in Baltimore, Maryland, for at least a few years. Due to the Baltimore Convention Center (Otakon’s home since 1999) needing renovations, Otakon is moving to Washington, D.C., come next year. However, this Otakon wasn’t a sad weekend. In fact, it was incredibly fun and packed with so much stuff. Only on Sunday afternoon when Ice Cold Water Guy chanted, “For one last time: Ice cold wattaaaa. And it’s only one dolllah,” did long time Otakon-goers get sentimental as the bittersweet end to Otakon 2016 hit them.
Nonetheless, it was an awesome experience and filled with VOCALOID goodness all around!
Panels
EmpathP hosted two VOCALOID related panels, but there was another panel that VOCALOID sneaked into as well: the Good Smile Company Industry panel on Friday.
Good Smile Company Industry Panel
Mamitan hosted the GSC panel on her own, but the event was fun and interesting even with just her. She covered various Summer WonFes announcements, including the Heart Hunter Miku scale figure we talked about in our WonFes article. While not VOCALOID related, she also mentioned that the Nendoroid Korra from The Legend of Korra will receive earth and wind bending parts, and will go up for another round of pre-orders soon.
VOCALOID wise, the coverage came during the Q&A.
How to Petition for Certain Characters to Have Figures
If you’d like a character to have a figure, your best bet is to rally friends and post on GSC’s Facebook page. Creating petitions that require a certain amount of signatures doesn’t work very well, but Facebook posts with lots of likes and comments can get you very far.
Other VOCALOIDs as Figures
Overall, however, GSC is very picky about which VOCALOIDs they make. They wish to maintain their good relationship with Crypton. In order to do so, they need to be careful about what other VOCALOID companies they work with. While they’re unsure about making Engloid Nendoroids at the moment, they did say it was a possibility. They’re also looking into making another IA figure.
Senbonzakura KAITO Confirmed
Senbonzakura Miku was released quite some time ago. Fans following the figure line are likely to remember that KAITO was announced alongside Rin and Len, and then Rin and Len were released without even a prototype for KAITO. Well, according to Mamitan, he’s still in production!
The World of Vocaloid with EmpathP
As covered in our previous article, EmpathP hosted two panels this weekend. The first panel was on Saturday and was titled “The World of Vocaloid with EmpathP”.
In this panel, she focused on VOCALOID in general. She discussed how it began, how it came to be what it is today, and the pivotal moments in VOCALOID history. She kept the panel relaxed and entertaining as well, joking around and having fun with everyone. EmpathP even did a raffle at the end to give away some prizes! Overall, it seemed like everyone had fun. Until EmpathP played “Secret Garden”. At that point, Undertale fans got a little teary-eyed.
Behind the Scenes with English Vocaloids
The Sunday panel focused on English VOCALOIDs, EmpathP’s specialty. With VOCAMERICA right around the corner, she’s been promoting and using Western VOCALOIDs more than ever. Once again, she talked about pivotal moments in VOCALOID history, this time focusing on the English VOCALOIDs.
She noted that Prima and Tonio were both groundbreaking VOCALOIDs due to their genre-specific voices. The two were made for opera which, at the time, wasn’t something that happened. Until then, companies made VOCALOIDs that were more generic.
She also talked about the V4 era and how it’s focused on American accented VOCALOIDs. The recording script for VOCALOID 1, 2, and even 3 focused on the English accent versus the American one. This caused problems for BIG AL, as he is voiced by an American singer. EmpathP noted he sounds like someone trying to do a very bad British accent. VOCALOID 4 introduced a new recording script and RUBY, DEX, and DAINA also introduced extra phonetics to really focus on the American accent.
In addition to an unreleased DAINA song, EmpathP also played “Poe” featuring BIG AL and SONiKA.
EmpathP also spoke about making Western VOCALOIDs more popular. Interestingly enough, people believed that VOCALOID would be the new big thing in music for America. Yet the Japanese VOCALOIDs are the ones who get the most attention.
She stressed that people need to help to make Western VOCALOIDs more popular. If you can speak English and want to use VOCALOID, try using a Western VOCALOID instead of a bilingual Japanese/English one. And, of course, support producers and artists who feature Western VOCALOIDs as well. We can create a community that loves Western VOCALOIDs if we just give them more attention.
In the Q&A, she answered a very interesting question: Is it okay to make and redistribute karaoke versions of songs?
She personally believes that it’s okay to make karaoke versions but not to redistribute them. She said that she’d be very unhappy if someone made a karaoke version of one of her songs without permission.
Dealer’s Room
As always, the Dealer’s Room was filled with goodies. Even with several passes through it each day, it was impossible to find every VOCALOID good. On the last day, I managed to find a booth I missed on Friday and Saturday! While some places were slightly pricey, others were very fair. And this year, the Dealer’s Room came with some special, “unreleased” figures thanks to Good Smile Company. (The figures have been sold at conventions, but pre-orders have yet to ship.)
Good Smile Company Booth
The GSC booth had lots of Miku figures on display, including the Mechatro WeGo Miku figure still boxed. The figure is incredibly tiny, and even more so when compared to the 1/4 scale Miku V3 figure that was also displayed.
While a banner advertised that the Jumbo Nendoroid Hatsune Miku was for sale, a “SOLD OUT” sign was put on it shortly after the Dealer’s Room opened on Friday, according to Mamitan. They brought 17 of the figures and started with a two-per-person limit. Within minutes, they made it a one-per-person limit and, shortly after, were sold out. Mamitan expressed her surprise at how quickly the $150 USD figures went. She thought that they wouldn’t sell many at all.
Other Booths
While Good Smile Company wasn’t selling everything they displayed, fans could find quite a few of the figures and more at other booths. We saw a bit of everything VOCALOID up for sale. From GSC to prize figures, there was something for everyone. There were also a lot of plushies and even blind boxes as well!
One of the big highlights for us were the Miku-PAK magazines at the Kinokuniya Bookstore booth.
Artist’s Alley
The Artist’s Alley hosts independent artists who create their own goods. While we didn’t find much VOCALOID here, we did find a felt Miku plush by Animinis! They noted that there were Rin and Len dolls as well with finished prototypes. However, they hadn’t made any for Otakon. They do take commissions, so be sure to check out their website and their Etsy shop if you’re interested in getting a different VOCALOID made or if you want to grab Rin and/or Len later on.
The plushies are really good quality and look absolutely adorable. Animinis definitely puts a lot of time and effort into making sure the plushies come out looking great!
Cosplay Everywhere!
Of course, it’s not a con without cosplay! There were lots of VOCALOID cosplayers at Otakon and they all looked awesome. We saw lots of Miku, Rin, and Len, but plenty of other VOCALOIDs, Teto, and even another UTAU named Kitsuon Kyun made appearances as well throughout the weekend!
There was a photo shoot on Saturday, but we found cosplayers all day, every day. Here were some of our highlights. (We’ll also include all of our pictures of cosplayers in a gallery below.)
Hatsune Miku
This Miku cosplayer gets two shout-outs. First, she made her entire cosplay out of yarn. Everything from her hair to her shoes are made with yarn, which is quite the feat. On top of that, she was rocking this cosplay in Baltimore heat.
It was in the upper 90°s (around 35-37° C) but felt like a whopping 110° F (43.3° C) outside with the heat index. That’s definitely not comfortable weather for a knitted outfit! Nonetheless, this cosplayer worked it. Thank goodness for AC, as otherwise, she would have definitely roasted. But even then, the convention center did get a little warm here and there.
We found her at the GSC booth where she was grabbing quite a bit of attention with her creative cosplay.
Kitsuon Kyun
Not only did this cosplayer dress as her own UTAU, but also she did an incredible job at it!
Kyun’s design definitely isn’t simple, but even small details were captured perfectly by the creator of this UTAU voice bank.
At the moment, Kyun is considered an outdated voice bank. However, she does have a wonderful voice and we do hope that her creator will find time to update her in the future.
You can find mochiko-chan da yo, Kyun’s creator (and also the cosplayer pictured), on DeviantArt as well as SoundCloud.
YOHIOloid
It’s not often you see a Western VOCALOID cosplay. This awesome guy cosplayed YOHIOloid, the bilingual Japanese and English VOCALOID from PowerFX.
This was actually the only Western VOCALOID we saw all weekend! Hopefully we’ll see more in the future, especially at NekoCon, which will be featuring VOCAMERICA this September.
Tianyi Times Two!
We found two Luo Tianyi cosplayers this weekend! Both had absolutely amazing cosplays and looked awesome. It was great to see the Chinese VOCALOIDs getting some love.
SeeU
Another unexpected find was a SeeU cosplayer! Their cosplay looked really nice and they represented the Korean VOCALOID very well.
She was the only SeeU cosplayer this weekend, so we were very happy to find her.
With UNI coming soon, we can likely expect to see more Korean VOCALOID cosplays in the future. Hopefully, we’ll even see UNI and SeeU duos!
She, just like the Tianyi cosplayers, got a pin featuring the character she was cosplaying. All three of them were super happy to have a little something with the characters they love so much on them!
Other Highlights
Unfortunately, it would take pages upon pages to highlight every single awesome cosplay we came across. However, we do want to give special shout-outs to every cosplayer who attended the VOCALOTAKON meetup and braved the heat. ‘Cause dang was it hot. We do have to say the wonderful Racing Miku Sepang ver. cosplayer had the right idea when it came to cosplaying in the heat.
It was also really fun to see people dressing in lots of different outfits from Project Diva modules.
In addition, we’d like to thank the organizer of the VOCALOTAKON photo shoot. The shoot was lots of fun and, even in the heat, we could tell the cosplayers were enjoying themselves. While some left early because of the weather, a lot stuck it out and that gave everyone the opportunity to get lots of fantastic shots.
VNN at Otakon
Of course, we can’t talk about Otakon without talking about what we did! When not scouting out VOCALOID related goodies and cosplayers, we were spreading the word of VNN and also eagerly awaiting VNN fans to find us for the posters.
We actually had one fan find us, which was really exciting! The other posters were given away during EmpathP’s panels. We also donated leftover buttons and bookmarks to the raffle on Sunday. Quite a few people got to walk away with a full set of VNN pins as well as one of the bookmarks we were giving out. Whatever didn’t make it into these sets were handed out at the end of the panel.
However, we actually gave away quite a bit during the weekend. I handed out tons of pins (especially in the line on Friday for the $10 grab bags at the GSC booth) and Monds was busy at the photo shoot handing out pins and bookmarks. A lot of people actually loved Vivi, our female mascot, which was awesome to see. We had a lot of fun and plan to return next year!
Otakon 2017
As mentioned earlier, Otakon is heading to Washington, D.C. You can find the new website for Otakon with all of the details here. Otakon 2017 will be held from August 11th to the 13th at its new home, the Walter E. Washington Convention Center. D.C. Hotel booking begins on August 25th at 12 PM EDT. If you plan to go, be sure to book your hotel early!
You can also follow Otakon on Facebook.
