K IS FOR KUMORICON

K IS FOR KUMORICON

OK, so first I use the same letter leading off a headline twice.

Then I go completely sideways and use an event instead of a job in the headline.

You know what?  I have two choices here.  I can hew to a mindless law,  or I can let fly.   My blog, my rules.  Or, more precisely, my rules to make up as I go along.

Blarp.  There.  I just invented a word and put it in here for no earthly reason other than my own whim.  God, creativity is fun.

But, as someone much smarter and just about as directionless as I once said... I digress.

So this weekend in our fair burg a little extravaganza called Kumoricon took over.  It happens every year, and you know it's underway when all these cartoon characters come to life and populate our town square like rats in a John Carpenter movie.  But cuter.  WAY cuter.

Oops, did I say cartoon?  My faux paws.  This is ANIME, dammit, and don't you forget it.

Except for all the Supermen and Doctor Whos and Indiana Joneses that showed up, but you know what I think of mindless uniformity.

So, braving the torrents of minivans, driven by parents, spewing out these little Japanese characters... I set forth to drop a little uber on the premises.

One of today's riders was a participant.  I wish I could tell you who he was portraying, but all I remember is "soldier in a very dark storyline."  But this was one damned informative soldier.

What I learned:

The convention was based on anime alone, but people were very acceptive of any fantasy character you wanted to doll up as.  (Literally... some of them looked like dolls.   And some of those were actual girls.)

For a show to be anime, it has to be made in Japan.  But anime is made all over the world.  They just don't call it anime.  Or  aren't supposed to.   But they do anyway.  Kind of like champagne.

The girls often dress up as VERY sexually provocative characters, which, given the boys'... uh... social skills... translates extremely literally to them.  Problem is, the girls aren't selling what the boys think they're advertising.  The boys touch... the girls scream... and controversy ensues.

Anime and gaming are so closely wedded, you'd have to look long and hard to find someone at Kumoricon that isn't into both.  So we started talking about gaming, and that's where things got really interesting.

For one thing, more and more girls are getting into gaming, especially online.  Which sets them up perfectly as targets for boys' hostility (see: social skills.)  So the irony is, in these fantasy worlds that mostly feature universal acceptance and tolerance... the Y chromosomes are still trashing the X's unmercifully.

But that's not stopping the girls.  48% of gamers are now female.  And the average gamer is... wait for it... a woman about 35.

Games take an average of three years to build, and then are sent out with known bugs (HELLO, MICROSOFT.)  Then on day one, people start reporting the hinky parts, and the crew goes back to work fixing them.  If memory serves, he told me that World of Warcraft released in 2004, and they're still finding and repairing bugs.

(I started finding bugs in our script at the world premiere of one of our movies.  Nobody ever went back and fixed them.)

His favorite game is one called PAPERS PLEASE.  In it, you play a customs agent servicing a line of  arriving passengers. That's it.  But he says who you stop, who you don't, why, makes it absolutely fascinating.  At least to him.

So was the whole world of the convention as a matter of fact.  So I dropped him off and headed back into stuffed-animal-for-real land.

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So how we doing so far.  Feeling exulted?  Cheated?  Feeling at all?

I'd like to hear about it.  Write me at sonicironic@gmail.com.

Onward through the fog...