My first "Kon"

Yesterday, I went to my first anime conference, here in Kansas City - "Nakakon." As you might remember, my husband is a fan of anime and Japanese pop culture. He wanted to go, and he wanted me to go along with him.

I was exhausted from working 4 days in a row. But, I had slept in that morning and I had expressed interest in going, so I went.

It was strange, to say the very least. First we had to wait in a line for registration that took about 90 minutes. Then we went to shop in the vendor area after getting some lunch. We went to a talk on "Dollfie" collecting - those large beautiful Japanese dolls that my sister collects. We then attended a showing of an anime TV series called "Lucky Star." We watches some of the cosplay contest, then attended an anime themed improv comedy show.

Now it was about 7:00pm, it was snowing outside, and I was even more tired. We went home in the ice and snow.

I was rather weirded out by the whole event. I don't really like hanging out with adolescents all that much anymore. I found some camaraderie with the parents of the attendees, revealing my real age. There were a few older folks there, some dressed in their anime costumes, too. Yeh.

A telling detail about the event was how it categorized the attendees by age, plastered obviously on your registration badge. Sheesh. It's been a long time since I attended a function where attendee age was relevant. I was in the 21+ minority.

Sigh.

The Dollfie talk was just poorly done. The speaker was disorganized, nervous, and couldn't connect two sentences without telling one of her friends to "shut up," between her giggles. One of her friends did about half of the talking, anyway, and the friend was better. She spoke from her heart and conveyed her enthusiasm for the dolls. It was kind of fun to see the dolls, though. They are pretty.

"Lucky Star" had a plot as thin as tissue paper. Its saving grace was that it was funny. It was kind of like an animated version of "The View" with high school girls, talking a lot about nothing. I don't really like The View, either.

I was disappointed with the vendor selection. They sold T shirts, resin Japanese toys of the characters from the TV shows, manga and movies, DVDs, manga books, and all kinds of Japanese candy. There were a few nice things and dress-up accessories that kept my attention a little.

In the end, I was a trooper, and I held in there for the husband. I think he enjoyed it. Sometimes you just gotta do it, for them.

I was really glad I didn't run into anyone I knew! Husband did - some of the students in his Japanese language class. We also learned about how to attend Nakakon: one word - preregister.

Another thing I learned was the prevalence of the anime on adult themes - pornography, mostly. There's the Hentai that's more mainstream porn, and the yaoi, the boy-boy love porn. While such items and showings were carefully marked as 18+ appropriate only, the terminology was everywhere. Surely the little ones had to wonder what that was.

I knew this stuff existed and I've seen a little of it, but I had the impression that it was the minority. Nope, guess not.

I come away from this experience thinking that yes, in fact, I am a grown up.