Thread: Otafest 2008 - A Con Report.

Well, yesterday I went to Otafest 2008, an Anime Convention at the University of Calgary in Calgary Alberta, which was celebrating its 10th Aniversery. Sadly I was only able to go for one day (Due to money contraints and my work schedule).

I also decided to take 4 of my friends from work for the road trip as well, and since we all live in Lethbridge Alberta, its a 228km drive. The speed limit on the highway is 110kph. We made the trip in just over an hour.

Once there, the 5 of us got lost. The U of C campus is a huge place, and none of us bothered to print off a map of the venue's, so We had no idea where the registration booth is, so we walked from one end of the con to the other, finally finding the linup, which went out the door, to register.

So, after offering our 20 dollar registration fee (I was the only one who bothered to bring a food donation, so I paid 19 bucks), we immeditly went for the venders room, to which I spent over 200 dollars on various objects of interest. (Those are links to pictures).

Then I attended the Applegeeks Webcomic panel, and I have to say, Ananth and Hawk are two really cool guys. Great senses of humor. They answered alot of questions on how they make their comics, and revealed that, even though nothing is finalized, they are looking to release a book sometime this winter or next spring.



After that was all said and done, we all went to downtown calgary for some lunch, hit Chinook Center (A huge ass mall), and went through the hobby stores in Calgary's China Town, then headed back to the con.

There I watched a compleat screening of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya in its orginal Broadcast order. Damn I love that series

The games room there was pretty sweet. We had 8 player halo 3 matches going almost consistantly, and my friends who brought their labtops all hosted a Team Fortress 2 deathmatches.

All in all, Otafest was pretty good, but not as good as some of the other cons that I've been too. All the various venues were too spread out over the campus, so it took almost 5 minutes to walk anywhere. That and there were too many Narutard cosplayers (To which I refused to take pictures of, even though there were some really amazing ones too).

I give the con a 6 out of 10.