Matt Alt on last weekend's SuperFest...
The Winter SuperFest was what it was: comfortable as ever, but nothing
to write home about. It's a decrepit old convention held in an decrepit
old building, the sort of place that an event ends up in rather than
seeking out. It's not a particularly cheery place or a "scene" for
strutting one's stuff. It's the last stop on the line for the version
1.0 otaku, the guys who grew up on Thunderbirds and don't give a shit
about dressing up or resin kits of girls or staying on the cutting edge
of the latest trends. The countless little dealers that come in from
the suburbs to hawk their wares from cardboard boxes they hauled into
town in their Hondas make it less like WonderFest than a gypsy version
of Nakano Broadway. Yamato Takkyubin, who knows a good thing when they
see it, set up an encampment in the main lobby that was visited by a
string of disheveled middle-aged otaku mailing industrial pallets of
Leiji Matsumoto gashapon and UFO Catcher prizes back to themselves. The
scattered kids in attendance were obviously being dragged and would
rather have been anywhere other than a sweaty room full of clones of
their father excitedly discussing the "lost" episodes of Ultraseven. By
mid-morning small pockets of schoolchildren had drifted into unused
areas, Wi-Fi'ing their Nintendo DSes together in a last-ditch attempt
at salvaging their last day of the weekend.
Much gaming. Me stuck inside San Francisco playing Fight Night 2 until my hands cramp. A new boxer in town. Goes by the name of Astral Herpes.
Comments