My interaction with anime has always been about the source material over the (human) extras. Which is to say, I didn’t sign up for the sake of a subculture. Neither did I sign up for a course of total human isolation. So, I have felt the need to talk to people over the last year. And one way or another, I found myself as part of a small party attending the MCM London Expo.

Till a few weeks ago, I’d never even heard of it. So, description: it’s a games, anime and comics event, it doesn’t compare to the major conventions in the US and Asia, it’s a big room full of tantalising produce and cosplayers.

I’m going to pick out 3 core aspects of the experience which struck me: wallets, cameras, and geeks.

Wallets:

I’m a typical case of the online generation of anime fan – reliant on digital fansubs, online shops, and the critical voice of anonymous thousands. Which means that the massed stalls of the convention has not been a necessary part of my development. As such, the event constituted an unnatural strain on my wallet. It compressed my normally ordered cash wastage into a brief uncontrolled splurge.

There was not a dense schedule of events. I had not heard of any of the people doing signings and talks – who were mostly figures from TV sci-fi and comics. There was a cosplay catwalk-type event late on to go to. A bunch of computer games to wait in line for. A lame robot-fight event (not violent enough). An even lamer Dance Dance Revolution contest (once you’ve seen one near-perfect automaton performance, you’ve seen them all). And a lot of time to walk around stalls and lose large quantities of cash. That’s pretty much the point of the Expo.

This is the thing though. I don’t like figurines, I don’t need overpriced T-shirts, and I don’t like miscellaneous paraphernalia. Not for me the noble quest to obtain a rare limited edition thingie never before available in the UK. I just like DVDs. Which meant that I spent the time walking around a not-that-huge hall deciding which box sets I really really wanted.

Cameras:

Ok, I mean cosplay. It was when a couple of Espada got on my early-morning train that I actually arrived at the event. It’s the proud peacocking of a naturally reclusive fandom. It’s I imagine like every Saturday night was for a 70s punk, the chance to display alleigance. Some of these people had waited months. Not that I cared about effort. I was too busy being surprised to find that I actually do get a kick out of seeing a good costume. And I don’t know why.

As I had expected from perusing reports from pure anime conventions, there was a mixture of the oddball, the hopeless, and the genuinely impressive. Best of all (and the inevitable winner of the competition) was this stunning Catbus (from My Neighbour Totorro).

Photographing people was my major activity for the day. It’s quite fun, very cheap, and produces a strange archivalist mentality. I started collecting certain characters. The obsessive pleasure of the gentleman explorer being slightly diminished by the growing feeling of unease as I asked the umpteenth 14 year old girl to pose for the camera. I enjoyed the costumes, but it can feel creepy – and I found that my reaction to my own creepyness was a sort of defiance. I decided this photo-album thing was what I wanted and would let nothing stand in my way. “Quick, round by the Yaoi, a cactaur!”

Personally the idea of actually dressing up is something I keep placed alongside figurines on the “do not want” list. But without these people, the event would have been rubbish. They’re their own fandom, but they’re probably the only fandom who merit a grand day out. For what it’s worth, I’m a lot more sympathetic towards them now.

Otherwise, I can report that the population of the UK still like Naruto and Bleach a great deal – and that Akatsuki coats are clearly widely available to the consumers. Suzumiya Haruhi also turned up in near-infinite variations, but the presence of a lone Kyonko (female) was enough to banish any malaise. I was gratified to find several rather good Soul Eater costumes. I was less gratified at the way I kept spotting pink hair and a red coat, for a split-second assuming the presence of FLCL’s Haruko, before registering another Sakura.

Geeks:

A catch all category? Not quite. What really matters to the modern first time convention man is the feeling of a room full of concentrated internet. And my mixed reaction to the fandom in the flesh.

The nice side of this is when some guy shouts out “The Game”(apologies) and you hear a distant moan. And it’s undeniably involving to see all these shiny things and colourful people. The occasional sense of festival when some guy is schooling you unforgivingly at a game neither of you have ever played, or when you find yourself flicking through the DVD’s and spot the right deal, or just spotting something you’ve never seen except on a monitor – that’s what makes an event like this exciting. Not being the displaying type doesn’t mean I can’t like aspects of full-on geekery.

But, as anyone who has, in the walk of life, found themselves by chance in conversation with a fellow obsessive can attest, it’s not an unsullied pleasure.

I don’t really take issue with the naked commercialism of the exercise – I like my new boxes. It’s just that I get reminded that my geekery is fundamentally an escape for me. It fills the (wide wide) spaces in my life with pleasant fripperies. It allows me to follow art as an obsessive rather than a connoisseur. I find the idea of actual “geek culture” uncomfortable. Hell, I find it wrong. A reversal of the priorities of my private time. As a quasi-festival, the Expo felt a bit sad.

Maybe on the scale of a US convention this would not be the case, but at the London Expo it was often clear that this was really a fairly small event for a collection of disparate fandoms. It was never going to be mind-blowing. The staff were clearly working their arses off for the show, but you couldn’t call it grand.

The worst of it came amidst the cosplay “masquerade”, in which some of the better costumes were flaunted satisfyingly. For one thing, a lot of acts tried to distinguish themselves by referential geek humour and tropes. Out loud this stuff reveals a lack of genuine wit. Worse by far were the two event hosts. Two adult men, a bunch of sub-schoolboy innuendo, endless exhortations to cheer on, godawful comic interplay, and even playing the YMCA song to a (presumably sober) crowd still determined to enjoy themselves.

Maybe this is just the inevitable reaction to being a student in what was essentially a teenage event. But there’s something depressing about a subculture imitating a counter-culture. For anyone who’s criticised the vacuity of more popular mass-appeal events – this is the same thing without the sense of scale and with only sporadic showmanship. It’s an imitation of the spectacular.

Not that I had a bad day at all. I now find cosplay distressingly fascinating. I have some cool new shit. I walked around with some fellow geeks and had some pleasant sightseeing. I can see why people would turn up year after year – and clearly for the costume brigade it’s a totally different deal. I was a convention tourist, I had a laugh, I turn back to the screen – I think it’s a better fandom.