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periodicreviews · 2 years

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Momocon 2022

On Memorial Day weekend, I went to Momocon in Atlanta, GA. With this being the first convention I'd been to since December of 2019 and my first out of state vacation since February 2020, I was definitely nervous about being around so many people. The convention itself was a mixed experience, but overall the trip was well worth the insane gas prices and extra time involved in driving rather than flying.

So why Momocon? Megacon happened a week or two ago in Orlando and I could have easily driven 30 minutes to get there but I didn't. That maybe speaks more to not wanting to deal with the circus that is Megacon and having increasingly negative experiences there.

Part of it was realizing that I had Memorial day off from work and feeling like I should go somewhere. Another part was the musical lineup which included Mega Ran, Richie Branson, and Substantial. Those first two I've seen several times and they've never disappointed. Substantial is someone I've only seen on streaming so I wanted to experience him in person. The third part was that I was going to be able to stay at a friend's place that I hadn't seen in awhile. Although counter-intuitive, that felt more comfortable than dealing with a hotel and more strangers with unknown habits, even if that meant everything wasn't necessarily sanitized before my arrival. Finally, I felt like I needed a bit of training before another vacation I have planned for October, when I'll be in a completely new city and flying for the first time in 2.5 years.

I should also mention that the con explicitly said that masks were required in all indoor areas, whereas I don't think Megacon had any kind of announcement like that. Though even with that "rule", I had no way of really knowing if it would be enforced at all, but some attempt was better than nothing.

I got on the road at about 530am in an attempt to avoid the expected traffic that comes with a holiday weekend. 95% of the drive was relatively stress free, though as I got closer to Atlanta, a number of accidents appeared which slowed me down a bit. Once I got into downtown, the traffic was the nightmare that I had always heard about and up till that point only experienced in the passenger seat. It reminded me a lot of driving on the beltway in DC, though slightly less stressful than that because I was in a car and not a giant truck.

After meeting up with a different friend for a meal, I headed to my friend's house to park and ride the train downtown as I had no appetite for any more driving.

Day 1

Once I approached the convention center, I was struck by how many black cosplayers I saw.

It might seem obvious that a convention in Atlanta is going to have a higher percentage of black people based on the demographics of the city. But it also stands out in contrast to all the other conventions I've been to in Florida/Austin,TX/Boston,MA having so much fewer (at least from my casual observations) black people in attendance. Although I've been to Anime Weekend Atlanta several times, it never stood out to me, so maybe I'm just noticing it and it's always been like that in Atlanta. Or it could be that Marietta is just demographically different.

According to Census.gov 2021 estimates, Atlanta is 40.4% white and 49.8% black or African American. While Marietta is 53.4% white and 32.3% black or African American. For Orlando, it's 57.4% white and 24.2% black or African American. So my casual observations seem to line up with the data. https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/orlandocityflorida,atlantacitygeorgia,mariettacitygeorgia/PST045221

Once I got inside, it was apparent that the mask rule was not going to be enforced. Maybe half the people had some kind of mask on. While the other half either had nothing or it in various states of falling off their face. I was disappointed but thought to myself that despite what everyone else is doing, hopefully my N95 mask will truly provide the advertised protection. There were a surprising number of old fashioned bird beak plague masks and I couldn't tell if they actually had any kind of filter inside or if they were trying to make a statement about how masks are pointless.

After picking up my badge, I was funneled into extremely tight quarters on an escalator packed with people. I started to immediately regret my decision of even making the trip in the first place and began to have flashbacks to similar tight quarters at Megacon. It’s not so much the fear of Covid in that moment but just the idea of being pressed against random people and the fear of being crushed.

Once through the entrance gauntlet, things were a little more spread out but it was clear that there were a lot of people at this event and it had me questioning why I had picked such a large convention for this first outing. I was also questioning the design of the building, since the hallways seemed entirely too narrow for the number of people that were at this convention. I can only imagine what it must have been like at the previous venue for this convention which was apparently smaller.

I wandered into the exhibit hall to try to figure out where the stage was for the concert with Mega Ran, Richie Branson, and Substantial. I think the increased space was here in the exhibit hall, rather than in hallways or rooms, though there was still the same problem here at entrance/exits as people were funneled into a small space.

As I came upon the arcade, I was definitely impressed with the sheer number of DDR machines as well as the variety of other games that I normally don't see like Dance Maniax. Dance Maniax is similar to DDR but you wave your hand over what I assume is an IR sensor in time with notes that appear on screen. There are sensors on two sides so you have to wave both above and below with your right and left hands. I was struck thinking how perfect it is to have a game like this that doesn't require any touching (aside from the buttons to start/select songs) in this Covid timeline. They also had Dance Evolution which uses the Kinect and truly has no touching involved.

Anyway, onto the show, which I showed up at probably 745pm for the supposed 8pm start time. Everyone was seated despite there being open floor space near the stage, so I took a seat near the front with the intention to get up once the main acts showed up.

They had a DJ who was playing a bunch of mashup tracks, which normally, I would be really into. But as he continued to play more tracks after 8pm, I steadily lost my patience since it seemed like they were just stalling for time. When he played a mashup of some Snoop Dogg song and Down with the Sickness, I really died inside. I thought he was just like the opener, but looking at the event flyer, I see DJ Rockman is in fact listed.

Next up was Soy is Real, who I was surprised to hear was from Orlando. He had some solid beats, but the whole time I was thinking something was missing. Maybe the other performers felt the same way, so at various points they came up to do some freestyles or at least attempt them. Obviously it’s a lot harder to freestyle and there's a clear skill gap between Mega Ran and the others.

Prior to any of the performers joining Soy, I was kind of waiting for a beat that I really enjoyed to get me out of my seat and up onto the floor. The beat never really came, but after I watched one guy get up, I felt like I should join him. I was pleasantly surprised to realize he was Mark Cooper who is another nerdcore rapper that I enjoy.

Next up was Shinobi Stalin, who showed up in like a floral bath robe, which I appreciated as far as a way to establish stage presence and then of course to take off at some point in the set as he's heating up. I was again surprised to learn he was from Orlando since I hadn't heard of him or Soy before. I couldn't tell if it was technical difficulties with his microphone but I could not understand a word he was saying, even with taking my earplugs out. Mark Cooper then leaned over and asked if I could understand him and I realized it wasn't just me. Towards like the 2nd or 3rd song, it seemed clear that either he hadn't exercised his throat or he was sick because the strain in his voice was clear.

Things continued to go downhill with the 3rd performer, Afro Cocoa Puffs. She was introduced as a cosplayer/performer that had recently gone "viral" and she came out in a cosplay that I think is from Danganronpa. Her first song was about people complaining a character isn't black when a black cosplayer chooses to dress as them, which is very important message to try to get across in a song. The problem was with her performance because I again couldn't hear what she was saying. Unlike Shinobi's throat issue, I think she was just lip syncing or singing very quietly. It almost seemed like she didn't know the words of her songs. She also stayed very far back on the stage, almost on top of the DJ table which I don't think helped her engagement with the crowd.

I'm very aware of just how hard it is to be on stage and perform, so perhaps her issue is that she just isn't used to performing in front of crowds and was nervous. It’s very different to make videos online (if that's what she does normally) and then make the transition to performing live in front of a crowd. She also kept cutting off the songs after like 1 verse so I didn't feel I could get into them.

Next up was Raisi K, another DJ. During his set, people in the crowd decided to make a dance circle. I was kind of conflicted on how to feel. On the one hand, its people expressing how much they are enjoying the music. But on the other hand, it felt like a lot of the attention of the crowd was on the dancers themselves rather than the music. The guy was smiling the whole time so I can only assume that he took it in a positive light, particularly when the crowd was doing nothing for the previous performers.

Next up was Kadesh Flow who raps, sings, and plays the trombone. I can't remember if I've seen him in person but I've definitely seen a few streams and he was just as solid in person.

Finally we had arrived at the home stretch of the people I had come to see. Richie Branson is the artist that really got me into nerdcore in the first place with his Gundam Wing EP. He has a great stage presence and usually throws out a few solid jokes in his MC segments. Unfortunately, it seemed like he wasn't really prepared, he had this back and forth with the DJ on more than one song to figure out what the next track.

By the time Substantial came on, I felt like the energy (and crowd) had drained out of the room. Mega Ran/Richie Branson were on the schedule for 930 and here it was 11pm and only Richie had performed. I also felt like a lot of people didn't know who Substantial was. It's unfortunate because his set was solid and he tried to teach the crowd a few things about artists that had influenced him.

When Mega Ran came on, I was kind of just checked out. At this point, I had spent the last 2 hours with an audience member in front of me constantly taking off his mask to cheer and then putting it back on. My neck was also starting to hurt so I went to go sit down. Mega Ran played Avalanche and I just could not get excited even though it's one of my favorite tracks.

He also made a critical error when talking about FFVII remake by confusing Beau Billingslea (who voices Barret Wallace in the movie), with the guy who voiced him in the video game. He complained that Beau sounded awful in the video game, which I realize was likely an unintentional mix-up, but a pretty big one given he's interviewed Beau.

Mega Ran always has a freestyle section of the show where he asks people to take things out of their pockets and hold them up as inspiration for a freestyle. I got up hoping that he would use my Toonami shirt. It was all good until I watch mask guy take off his mask and offer that to Mega Ran. I was so disgusted that this person would not only not understand masks so much but also jeopardize the health of a performer it seemed like he was enjoying. I really wish Mega Ran hadn't grabbed it and at that point I decided to leave. Mega Ran's set was ultimately cut short because they were far past the scheduled end time which was even more disappointing given how much time was wasted earlier.

I think I ended the night with a game of DDR and at my friend's insistence took an Uber home instead of the train. I think I had stayed past the last train departure time anyway.

You definitely get a different answer regarding the MARTA train system depending on who you ask. Personally I haven't felt unsafe on it, but I'm also not normally riding it at 1am alone. Maybe it’s part of that feeling like nothing bad will happen just because I haven't personally had a bad experience on it.

Day 2

I started off the day slow by going to a farmer's market and honestly considered not even going to the convention based on how disappointing the concert had been combined with the number of people and the lack of masks.

The best part of the weekend might have just been the time that I spent with my friend, which either speaks to how much I didn't enjoy the convention or how much I enjoyed just sitting on the porch of my friend's house and catching up.

Before heading to the convention, I needed something more to eat so I headed to a place called Verde Taqueria. They had a buffalo tofu taco which is something that I don't see many places so I was interested to try it. The buffalo sauce was fine, but the tofu itself was the cheap deep friend stuff that was just way too hard.

Things took a turn for the worse when it came time to pay. They had QR codes on the table that you had to scan to reach a webpage where you would apparently pay. It was my first experience with this and no matter what angle I used, my phone could not recognize the code.

I was kind of panicking/embarrassed that I couldn't get this basic thing to work that clearly everyone else at this restaurant (who may be far less knowledgeable about technology than me) has no problem with.

Eventually the waiter came back and said that some people have trouble with it. He then brought over a paper bill to accommodate me. Obviously I dwelled over this small inconvenience all day as some big deal even though it's not but kind of is. Was it just my aging Sony Xperia XZ1 that just cannot handle some new QR codes? Or just my lack of indoor(though technically outdoor) dining experience in the world of COVID? Or just the QR code had some smudge on it at this particular table? The world may never know.

When I finally showed up to the convention, I think it was around 4pm and there were still a ton of people there, as one would expect on the Saturday day of any convention. I made my way to the vendor hall since when I tried to go on Friday, it was already closed.

As I perused the rows, I felt like I was burning up and I couldn't tell if the buffalo sauce tofu tacos from lunch had actually given me food poisoning or if the A/C in the vendor hall was off. Looking around at all the vendors and their conveniently placed Japanese style fans, I was definitely tempted to buy one right there. I think it was a combination of both things as eventually it felt cooler and my stomach felt better.

When I go to the vendor rooms these days, I'm looking for soundtracks that I can't buy digitally. I spotted the vendor that I've seen many times at Anime Weekend Atlanta and after not seeing anything catch my eye, I moved on. I spotted another vendor with perhaps everything I was looking for and more. Tubs filled with CDs organized in alphabetical order in a language I can't read. I didn't buy anything but I think I looked at 75% of the hundreds of discs they had.

From there, I made my way to the main stage in the exhibit hall where Phil LaMarr and Greg Baldwin were speaking as the voices of Jack and Aku from Samurai Jack.

The panel started off a bit rough with some technical issues on stage with muting the background music and getting the proper microphones turned up.

For whatever reason, they had this intense EDM playing as the background music and I had to put in my ear plugs while I waited. Though my ears are more sensitive than others, it seemed like overkill to have it turned up to 11.

Eventually they brought the guests out and it was cool that Greg had showed up in an Uncle Iroh cosplay since he also voiced that character in Avatar: The Last Airbender.

I had mixed feelings about the moderator because he started off by going into questions about theater and topics that it seemed like he was personally into. I get that if I had the chance to interview people that I really liked, I would probably indulge myself in asking a question that was personally interesting to me.

The problem being is that the panel was billed as the stars from Samurai Jack, so I'm expecting those types of questions to be asked. If the conversation leads to theater, great, but at least give us what someone people showed up for first and maybe sprinkle in your questions in the middle. Overall it was an entertaining hour (though not quite because they started late).

I then headed over to another room to see a panel with Justin Cook who voiced Yusuke Urameshi from Yu Yu Hakusho. The start time came and went and we were all still sitting there waiting. After 5/10 minutes, the emcee got on stage to try to kill time and Justin showed up shortly after that. The panel got off to an interesting start with him showing off the records that he had purchased earlier. I kind of wish that there were more non-standard guest panels where instead of just taking questions, they are showing off something they love or their creative side.

But I soon got the impression that the moderator wasn't exactly up for the task of interviewing Justin Cook. She was aware that he had voiced Yusuke and a character from My Hero Academia (which I was unaware of), but it was this question that was disappointing.

"In the past, anime was mainly shonen battle type shows like Dragonball or stuff like Gundam, or shojo shows. But nowadays it’s so much more diverse. What are your thoughts on that shift?"

Justin's response was something to the effect that it's not that anime is more diverse now, but that companies are licensing almost everything that airs in a season, so it just seems like it is. He phrased it in the most polite way to say that she was wrong and it was a bad premise. But even putting aside that there are all these shows on streaming, there was still a good chunk of shows that made it to the US pre-streaming that were not shonen battle, Gundam, or Shojo. Things like Detective Conan, Cowboy Bebop, Ghost Stories, Elfen Lied, or even Hamtaro. You might have to dig deeper and there were certainly less options but they were there even if they didn't get played on Toonami.

Between this and some of the other questions, it just seemed like the moderator didn't necessarily do their research. Personally, if the emcee/moderator is doing more than just translating, I'm expecting some more researched questions beyond what the typical fan coming up to the microphone would ask. Anyone can ask "how did you get started" or "what's your favorite character".

One could argue that that is an interview style in itself. I've seen an interview with Larry King before where he said he could go into a sports locker room after a game, without knowing the sport or who won, and get through 5 questions with any player. He also talked about how he favors simpler questions because he believes that the guest should be talking 90% of the time and the focus shouldn't be on the interviewer.

I left the panel at about 7:30pm to head to get some food that was slightly higher quality than the convention center. The first place I tried "Kwan's Deli" was closed for the weekend so I went to a place called Bakara.

Although a bit of a walk and it had a very unassuming presence, it was still packed with people even at 8pm probably due to its Yelp rating. As I waited in line, I had a lot of time to think about what happened every time someone ordered.

The first being the spiciness scale. The cashier would describe it as American, medium, and Indian spicy. And as people ordered, most appeared to choose medium. I can't help by consider the psychology behind how the description of the spiciness choices as not just "mild" but "American" has to contribute to pushing some people to choose medium even if they would normally pick mild. Or maybe most people just pick medium by default. To me, picking “American” has the connotation that you are too weak to handle any kind of spice at all that people from other countries treat as just normal flavor.

Incidentally, based on reports from people who work at Taco Bell, Mild is their most popular sauce category, as opposed to Hot or Fire.

The second being that the cashier would tell the total price in pennies. So $13.65 would be 1365 pennies. It seemed like such a bizarre choice but hey, whatever gets you through the day.

I got my falafel pita, medium spicy of course, and headed back to Centennial Park to eat outside. It was fortunately a very nice night outside amidst the honking horns, the music blaring from car stereos, and the car accident that occurred like a block away.

Back at the convention, I went to this "Youtubers Live" concert. Nowadays when I go to shows, I stand more towards the back and always get that feeling that I'm giving off creeper vibes. This was particularly relevant because as the music started and a guy named Gabe was performing, I realized this was targeted at a much younger crowd. His music isn't something I will actively seek out, but it wasn't awful. But I left after a few songs and headed to the AMV room.

I had missed the AMV contest but they were thankfully replaying some of those videos. There were a couple that stood out: "Oh heck a seal" with Lil Nas X's Montero, one with Himouto Umaru-chan and Body Count's Institutionalized, and another with Ghibli footage to a song called "What's inside your butthole". The Body Count one I had seen before at AWA but it's always enjoyable to see the crowd enjoying Body Count.

Finally it was time for the anime rap takeover show on the main stage. One of the artists, Shwabadi, I had seen on a live stream somewhere so I was interested to see how he was in person. I got there at like 7:50pm and I realized my mistake and went to the arcade. I came back at like 8:05pm and they were still doing a sound check. 5-10 minutes later, this sound check was still in progress, no thanks to seemingly all 10 performers needing a microphone at the same time.

Since I wasn't really attached to seeing any of these artists, I just decided to leave and go back to the AMV room. From the issues on Friday night with the concert, to the issue earlier that day with the Samurai Jack panel, this just felt like the 3rd strike and it wasn't worth me waiting around till they could figure things out. I don't know if this time it was the fault of the performers or the crew, but regardless, it just felt uncoordinated.

At some point I left the AMV room and spent the next hour or two in the arcade playing Taiko Drum Master and Dance Maniax. This time when leaving, I did take the MARTA and there were a good amount of people from the convention on it, so it wasn’t just like me and whatever random creeper. Obviously if I was here as a single woman, I would probably still not have made the decision to ride it.

Day 3

When I arrived, I went to the vendor hall again and ended up purchasing two video game soundtracks, Shadow Hearts from the New World and Metroid Prime/Fusion. From what I could tell, these were not available digitally, with Prime/Fusion being something that I was very surprised to see.

I headed to the AMV room again and saw that they had food and drinks set up in a table in the back. Someone in the room later announced it was free leftovers from "AMV Brunch". I had seen that event on the schedule but figured it was just a euphemism and not actually brunch, but I gladly took them up on the offer even if it was just bananas and granola bars.

Next up was the Matsuriza Taiko Drum performance. I've seen them perform several times in Orlando, since they work at Disney, and it has always been entertaining. It was a much smaller scale setup with only 10 or so drums instead of their 50-100 performances. But the room was packed and the crowd loved every minute of it.

The entertainment comes not just from the music but from the physical comedy they add into the show as drummers "knock" each other off the drum sets or perform various tricks like throwing the sticks in the air.

When it came time to pick members from the audience, it was a little uncoordinated, perhaps due to the stage layout or the darkness in the crowd. I got concerned when they picked one of the loudest people in the crowd shouting "pick me!!!!!" and my fears were realized as he proceed to make himself the center of attention. As the leader of the group was instructing them, "Pick me" guy was showing off to the crowd. He was seemingly unable to follow directions to which the leader who’s originally from Japan asked "Do you speak English?" I couldn't help but laugh.

After the performance, I got in line for the Triforce Quartet. I had maybe listened to one song of theirs when I was preparing my list of events but I wasn't concerned about enjoying them since string quartets playing video game music is usually a sure bet for me.

Like the taiko drum show, they started on time which was a welcome departure from the rest of the weekend. They had some great Legend of Zelda and Final Fantasy arrangements and the audience seemed to be enjoying it just as much as I was.

The member of the band who introduced the songs had a very dry sense of humor that was refreshing. When he took the mic after a piece he said for example, "That was Smash Ultimate, but you probably already knew that." I guess maybe nonchalant is a better word to describe his energy.

After the show I headed back to the game room for one final round of DDR.

I didn't really mention it before, but looking back on the weekend, the arcade is probably one of the more enjoyable experiences. Mainly for that ability to just jump onto a game with a random stranger and either they blow you away or you look like an expert. I also have not really been going to arcades to play DDR/rhythm games like I used to so it’s refreshing to feel like things are getting back to how they were.

In case you're wondering, it's not exactly easy to play DDR with an N95 mask on. And for that reason, many people were taking them off. Anyway, I ended up accidentally selecting a song/difficulty that 3 years ago I would have had no problem with but I quickly realized my mistake about 10 seconds in. After 3 songs, I was drenched in sweat and gasping for air. I headed outside and sat down for like 30 minutes and thankfully didn't pass out or throw up.

By that point, the con was over, so I headed back to my friend's place on the MARTA and then drove back south in the morning.

Overall, I enjoyed the weekend, in spite of the disappointments at the convention. I don't know if I would return to Momocon after such a rough experience without hearing some kind of review from next year or if there was a guest that I felt like I really had to see. I'm also not here just venting into the void, I politely filled out their post con survey with my issues.

I took some at home tests after I got back and both came back negative, despite also finding out that the day before I drove up, I had been around some COVID positive people at a food truck again. So thankfully I dodged both bullets.

In general, conventions don’t really have the luster they had for me back even like 5 years ago. Some of that is pandemic related. Large crowds are not really enjoyable still and also things that I once enjoyed have just inexplicably become less enjoyable. Some of it is maybe just fatigue or feeling like I’ve seen enough voice actor Q&A’s to last a lifetime. The main draw for Anime Weekend Atlanta after the first time was really the music and when a con doesn’t have that or the music ends up being disappointing, it kind of feels pointless, like why am I spending all this money to be bored? So maybe that’s also why I chose Momocon, to see if other conventions have something new or that I’ve been missing from only going to the ones here in Orlando for the most part.

I’m not sure where I was going with this but I felt there wasn’t enough existential dread in this piece so I needed to add it here at the end as I’m finally finishing this “review” a month after the convention. That’s all for now.

#momocon

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