With the rabid movement of the Coronavirus here in the United States, many conventions and other large events are being outright cancelled at the worst, or delayed/postponed at the best. Genericon is unfortunately one of the conventions that in the cancelled category, and it breaks my heart. So, with a review for that con thrown out with the bathwater, I needed something to replace it.....so why not do a review of a convention I went to last month for my first time ever!? Yep, the cycle has been broken in going to just 2 conventions, and a new one has appeared in my geeky life that may become a permanent staple. With that out of the way, it’s time I showed you what I thought of Katsucon 2020. Let’s begin!
For starters, let me just say that I didn’t see gaggles of cosplayers & various shades of Otaku. For all intent & purposes, I saw the geek equivalent of Genghis Khan’s Mongolian horde! I haven’t seen this many people since the glory days of Connecticon, which at this point is 5 years this year. A lot of the hotel was packed: definitely not the hallways of the rooms, but everybody else had tons of people. Even the dealer’s room (More on that in a bit) was filled to the brim with con goers. I confess I was pretty overloaded by how many people I saw the entire weekend, but I’m not going to lie when I say that it was wonderful seeing so many individuals like myself!
Relating to the amount of people I saw, it was also incredible to see so much cosplay in one space! It didn’t matter what grade of costumes I saw: I witnessed just about each & every skill level there was. I saw basic cosplay, intermediate cosplay, and cosplay so good I can’t never even remotely re-create it. In fact, here’s just a sliver of the costumes I saw!
Next positive were the panels. I confess I hardly went to any of them, as being a new guy I decided instead to explore & watch everybody, but the sliver of them I did go see were awesome. My three favorites were the Cabaret show with drag performers (Who, btw, did a hell of a job), the hentai dubbing panel (There were supposed to be more than one host, but there were complications), and the rather humorous “Boob Physics” panel. That last one had a lot of.....jiggles, if you know what I mean. I definitely enjoyed seeing the descriptions of the other panels, but I enjoyed wandering around and looking at everybody that was there a little more.
And finally, I gotta talk about the dealer’s room. Like with the horde of people, I haven’t seen a marketplace this big since the last Connecticon I went to. There was a hell of a lot of stuff to buy, and it’s pretty much what you’d expect. With the exception of one specific thing (More on that below), you could find just about anything you wanted. I had spent almost all of my cash, but thanks to some swift impulse control on the last day, I managed to leave Katsucon with at least a little bit of money for pitstops on the way home. Pretty impressive if you ask me!
As for anything mediocre, I can’t really think of anything. I could argue that some of the lines were bad/long, but even then they all moved quickly & efficiently. I could argue that the trip down and back was long, and coming in at 8 to 9ish hours (I come from New York state.) I can see why some people from my neck of the woods would hate this, but it was smooth in both ways. In the end, I really can’t think of anything that was just.....meh.
Now we get to the negative stuff, and there’s really only 2 negative things I can say about my first Katsucon. The first would have to be the pricing. Not for the con-badge or hotel room, but for hotel’s food & such. Holy crap I haven’t seen anything this expensive in a while! At first I thought it was just me, but nope a lot was expensive. Even the bubble tea stand was 6 dollars per drink, and that’s not counting the 2 dollar individual Twix bars they were selling. The lunch buffet was around 15 to 20 dollars I believe (Excluding tax & tip), which isn’t that bad. The breakfast buffet? Coupled with tax & tip, it all came out to a huge 31-something dollars, which I think is absurd! I get that the hotel needs to make money (Hence why the Dealer’s Room had no food vendors), but there a fine line between making a living & making wallets cry.
The other negative thing I got to complain about would be the schedule app. To be perfectly honest, this actually wasn’t a completely bad thing. Granted, I highly prefer my schedule to be in the booklet itself so I can look things up quickly, but the app wasn’t bad by any means. All days were there, and it was easy to pick & choose which panels I wanted to go to. Again, prefer the schedule in the booklet, but the app wasn’t so bad.
Katsucon 2020 gets a 9 out of 10. For my first time, this is some pretty high praise!
And that was my review for my first ever Katsucon. Again, it was a wild experience, but this firestorm of insanity may very well be something I revisit in the coming years as long as I got the cash. Again I’m sorry for getting this out so late, but due to the cancellation of Genericon I figured that a review of this convention is a good substitute. I’ll see you later this month for some additional content. Until then.....stay crazy Katsu!
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