Why Just Build a Robot? Be a Robot!
A-Kon is North America’s longest
running national anime
convention. It was first held in 1990
and it has been growing ever since.
A-Kon 2007 had an attendance of
more than 14,000. Quite a few of
those attendees are cosplayers: fans
who dress and act like their favorite
characters from TV, anime, comics,
books, and video games. To give you
an idea of how big this thing is, A-Kon
2008 set a new Guinness world
record for the most people dressed as
video game characters in one room
(700+). Video game characters aren’t
even the most popular type of
cosplay. I thought with all these guys
in one place, there were bound to be
a lot of robot costumes. So, I set out
with my camera to see what I could
find. When I was still several blocks
away from the event location, I
spotted a group of Dragonball Z
characters marching down the street.
In the park across from the hotel, a
group of female super heroes battled
ninjas, to the surprise of workers
by R. Steven Rainwater
in nearby office buildings.
Once inside, there was no
shortage of robots, androids, and
cyborgs. Within minutes of walking
into the lobby, I spotted a Super
Vandread robot fighting machine, posing for curious bystanders who kept
their distance from the dangerous
robot. One bystander who considered
danger irrelevant was a Borg,
complete with motorized appendages,
lasers, blinking lights, and surrounded
by a cloud of self-generating fog.
If Transformers are your thing,
you’ll be happy to know there were
numerous Autobots and Decepticons
in attendence including Arcee — a
pink, female Autobot. Androids were
in plentiful supply, as well, and one
of the best this year was R. Dorothy
Wayneright, the android companion
of Roger Smith from the anime series
The Big O. Dorothy was part of a
group of cosplayers who won the Best
of Show award for their depiction of
Big O characters.
In addition to robot cosplayers, I
also made several other unexpected
robot sightings at A-Kon 2008. In
the dealer room were a variety of
imported Japanese robot toys —
Transformers, Robotech mecha,
Gundams, and other more obscure
robots. One dealer was selling tiny
little robot figures for gamers. Leaving
the dealers room, I ran across another
room full of Virtual World Battlemech
combat simulator pods. The pods are
networked together and exist in a
common virtual universe. Inside the
pod, you are in control of a giant,
bipedal robot battle machine and you
fight it out with other players.
One unusual robot in attendance
this year was Gir, the cute little robot
from Invader Zim. Gir wasn’t a
costume or a toy. Dallas resident,
Remia, had Gir tattooed on her arm.
When I asked her why she chose Gir,
she said, “Gir is kinda the reject robot
who was slapped together on the
spot for Zim. But the motivation for
me was I’m kinda like Gir, very easily
distracted at times and kinda off the
76 SERVO 11.2008
