On paper, Otakudom, which refers to dedicated fans of Japanese animation, seems a little strange. After all, hardcore otakus live and breath anime, dressing up in outlandish costumes and spending small fortunes on imported DVDs with subtitles that read like an English dictionary throwing up. But anyone who’s walked past a My Chemical Romance concert and witnessed a sea of black mascara-ed bedroom eyes squinting from beneath the same slanted Monkees-mop haircut will appreciate that anime fandom at least encourages originality.

Of course, going to an anime convention, like Montreal’s Otakuthon, can nevertheless be bizarre. When we visited the third annual convention at the Palais de Congres convention centre, which was held July 26^th-27^th, myself and photographer Alison Anderson didn’t know quite what to expect. Familiar with anime, we knew we’d see scandalous, vaguely pedophilic schoolgirl costumes, plenty of Japanese comic books (known as manga), and hear many saccharine J-pop lyrics. What we got turned out to be an experience akin to stepping through Alice in Wonderland’s looking glass while full of Viagra and brown acid.

Here’s some of what we found at the packed 2008 Otakuthon.

Of course, anime itself was the star of the show, with four rooms screening episodes non-stop over the two-day event. Anime is mainly based around long running series of half-hour episodes, but it’s a style, not a genre. Series revolve around anything from giant robots to romantic comedy to the ever-popular ‘young woman raped by demonic multi-pronged tentacle’ genre. I wish I were kidding. Actually, no I don’t. We took in some yaoi, which is an anime/manga genre focusing on male/male romantic relationships, and a fan-parody called This is Otakudom, made entirely of re-purposed and re-dubbed footage from existing anime series.

Cosplay

A huge part of Otaku fandom is ‘costume play’, which involves dressing up as your favourite character, especially if your favourite character wears nothing but ribbons and lace to cover their genitals. Otakuthon featured a masquerade on Saturday, so costumes were out in full force. Provided you’re not constrained by a sense of prudish morality or strict parole terms, quite an afternoon can be spent observing the intricately skimpy costumes.

A truly unique genre, J-Pop refers to a sappy style of pop music, usually sung in a mixture of Japanese and bad English. Often used as the theme songs of anime series, J-Pop is taken incredibly seriously, despite the fact that the lyrics all appear to be badly translated Beatles love ballads set to the background music from tampon ads. Otakuthon featured a performance by local Montreal group Disorder, capped off, I believe, by the theme song from Patlabor. Thankfully, they didn’t play any My Chemical Romance.

For more information about Otakuthon 2008, visit the website here.