Exhibition Hall
Like every other year, the Exhibition Hall part of Otakuthon offered not only offered a variety of merchandises for attendees to choose from to purchase (though that as much to appeal to my tastes as I predicted) from a number of dealers, but also included sales of artwork (including OCs and artwork based on characters/mecha from already existing franchises) made by fans for fans.
On the Friday of the convention, I made sure to drop off my art gallery submissions (the Anime Tropes drawings and the Anime Divas sketch cards) at the art gallery, which is part of the Otakuthon’s exhibition hall. Moreover, I dropped at the gallery itself, 5 on-sale limited prints I made at the Copies Concordia store for each instalment of each of my two fan art series. Each print per instalment of my “Anime Tropes” was to sell at $4.00 while each print per instalment of my “Anime Divas” was to sell at $1.00. Unfortunately, none of the prints sold, therefore not only transforming the $48.55 I spent to make these prints in total into a waste, but also causing me to experience the kind of pain moviemakers feel when their theatrical movies flopped at the domestic box office.
While at the exhibition hall during the three days of Otakuthon 2012, I bought a few things:
- A Star Trek: Fleet Captains Nebula-Class U.S.S. Sutherland Miniature on Clix base
- A 1:144 scale OZ-13MS Gundam Epyon model skit
- Patlabor The Movie: WXIII on Region 1 DVD
- Inu Yasha The Movie 4: Fire on the Mystic Island on Region 1 DVD
- Graphic Novel Vol. 6 of the Gurren Lagann manga series
- A Gurren Lagann solitaire card set
- A Star Trek pin featuring a 2D render of the Starfleet belt buckle emblem from Star Trek movies from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan to Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
- Two Transformers Generation One pins: 1 showing the Autobot insignia and the other showing the Decepticon insignia
- A pin containing a fan-drawn image of the adorable magical girl Madoka Kaname from Puella Magi Madoka Magica
When checking out the dealers tables in the exhibition hall, I was disappointed that: 1) not a single piece of merchandise related to Space Battleship Yamato or its Star Blazers dub (examples: VHS tapes, posters, CDs) was available on sale, not even after the launch of Space Battleship Yamato 2199 2) the few Captain Harlock figurines on sale were extremely expensive as they were on sale for a high price, which was ridiculous, 3) a lot of the more recent Transformers toy items available were being sold at highly expensive prices at one of the dealer tables (way higher than $20, like say around $70), and 4) no model kits items based on Captain Harlock or Galaxy Express 999 were around on sale.
