This image best represents the entire weekend.

Ok, so I didn't exactly mean that last part literally, that's just what they happen to call your first time attending the convention. So, CTZ already covered Yaoi-con on the CBlogs as well as Jtor, but I figured it needed a second opinion especially since I managed to somehow survive the entire weekend at the con. Of course, before I really get into the post I would like to preface it by saying that I am by no means a fan of Yaoi, but I'm not really offended by the stuff either. I am just a silly nerd who enjoys a broad range of anime and the thrill of attending related events. So now that we have that out of the way...

What is Yaoi and what is Yaoi-con?
Honestly, the best description is going to be found directly on their website. Don't worry, it is completely safe for work as Yaoi is not necessarily porn or hentai. If you are too lazy to click, Yaoi is basically boy love and the convention, like any anime convention, is a gathering and celebration of that. It should also be noted that Yaoi is typically created by females and for a predominantly female audience.

So what the hell goes on there?
Well, like any decent sized convention they have all the standard events that one might expect to see. For those of you who may have never attended a convention before they would typically include things such as an AMV contest, cosplay masquerade, panels, anime viewing rooms, gaming center, artists, and dealers. Yaoi-con also has a few unique events which include a maid cafe, bingo night, and auction, all of which more often than not featured scantily clad bishounen men.

The maid cafe is basically a makeshift restaurant with male waiters who serve and chat with the patrons, nothing too crazy. Bingo night is a little bit more exciting, winning a round results in getting the man of your choice to take off an article of clothing on stage in front of hundreds of screaming fan girls. The auction deserves its own section entirely.

What!? An Auction you say?
The auction was a completely different beast and definitely takes the cake as far as entertainment for the weekend goes. It is a four hour event and also happens to be the main form of fund raising for the convention. The Bishounen Auction typically involves one of the many bishounen performing some sort of act on stage. What they perform can be anything ranging from a simple song and dance to any other number of other random and sometimes unspeakable acts. After the performance, and this is where the fund raising comes in, bidding begins at a mere $10 and proceeds in a standard auction style. The bidders raise their cards and the price increases by increments of $10, $50, and $100 depending on how high the bid gets. The winner of the bid receives the pleasure of spending a measly two hours with the bishounen of their dreams. All of the money goes back to the convention, but never before in my life did I imagine that I would witness so many desperate girls willing to fork over more than a thousand dollars for the privilege of hanging out with some random dude.

Any unofficial events?
In addition to the standard fare, con attendees will sometimes organize unofficial cosplay gatherings or events. The events are always different and can be something simple like a gathering of all the characters from a specific anime to eat and take photos. I've even seen people hold marches through the city simply for the sake of frightening the rest of the population. Every once in awhile though there is an event that really stands out, something out of the ordinary that people usually remember. For those of you who might be familiar with Naruto, on Saturday they held an awesome marriage ceremony in complete Yaoi-con style at the hotel. I would try to describe it, but I managed to get permission to post a picture instead!



Is it as scary as CTZ made it sound?
It certainly could be if you let it, but you can also have a whole lot of fun too. Sure there is definitely a lot of weird shit that goes on at anime conventions, Yaoi-con especially for that matter. You are always going to run into the extremely weird and stereotypical nerds, it is pretty much unavoidable. Fortunately, most of them are pretty nice and honestly they will probably never deliberately bug you unless you want them to.

For any fairly normal person this probably would be the last thing you would ever want to spend your weekend doing. On the other hand, if you are a fan of anime, cosplay, Japanese culture in general, and especially meeting other people who share similar interests then it is definitely worth it to check out a convention at least once in your lifetime. Of course, I wouldn't necessarily recommend attending Yaoi-con, especially not as your first convention, unless you are a. extremely secure in your sexuality or b. very open-minded. I actually feel really bad that CTZ was so weirded out by the whole thing as it is definitely not what a normal convention such as Fanime would have been like. I definitely did have quite a bit of weird shit happen to me over the course of the weekend, but I'm unfortunately (or fortunately) going to leave it out of this post. Feel free to inquire further if you are really that interested.

Cosplay photos featured here, courtesy of Conpix.net.

Oh yeah, the part CTZ mentioned about hot girl on girl action was most definitely true.