Over the weekend, DT's Asian Culture Correspondent Haniel and I headed to Otakon 2007, the giant Anime and Japanese culture fan convention in Baltimore, to scout out anime artists [stay tuned for a roundup of the sweet finds]. We didn't dress as anyone, and we didn't bring the kids, even though a con turns out to be fantastically entertaining eye candy for a kid. [What do they know, people with giant homemade wings are totally normal!] But a few dads not only did both--dress up, and bring their kids--they dressed up their kids.
[note: Part of a con's raison d'etre is posing for random strangers' photos. So far, flickr has almost 4,000 images from Otakon 2007. Most photographers are fellow fans; folks like us with official press passes were rare. There were also a few sketchy voyeur dudes, but they were only interested in babes, not babies. If you have or know other ConBaby photos, please add or flag them below.]
When I asked this dad in the Artists Alley if I could take a photo of him and his little 1-yo Naruto, he wished me luck. Naruto wouldn't sit still for anything, and no sooner did his feet hit the ground, than he took off on a dead run across the hall.
The way the otaku crowd parted in waves of "awww"'s, you'd think he was running through butter with a hot knife, not a soft, little prop. [See above how his dad holds back the curved throwing blade for himself? This is only the kid's second con, and everyone knows you don't get a real blade until your third.]
I met Rich and Emily [and The Aunt, center, in black] at one of the convention center's half a dozen Starbuck's kiosks. They brought their two-month-old daugther all the way from Pittsburgh, so duhyeah, the kid's wearing a costume. Emily's sporting an homage to Chobits, while Rich & Daughter are dressed as characters from Tite Kubo's manga/anime Bleach.
See a bit more coverage of Otakon 2007 in the daddytypes flickr stream, or go all out with the Otakon and 2007 tags [flickr]
Glad to see you made it Otakon! We gave it a miss, though it's the closest con to us mileage-wise. Chad helped a family member move furniture all day on friday so packing up the child and trekking into B'more was more than we could muster. It's good to see that con babies were well represented. The blur factor on naruta kid is great. Manga speed lines!
Rich bears a striking resemblance to "The Family Guy."
Yea!
Max, purveyor of cuteness, disappears into the night; the Artists' Alley didn't know what hit it. I really like how the first photo came out (blur and all). Thanks for capturing the cuteness.
--Dave
[he's the ninja of cute. -ed.]