Loran’s Otakon Adventure part 2: The Competition

by Loran
Otakon 2010 came and went, and it was a decent year, to say the least. Not as good as previous years, but passable, nonetheless. Of course, what I’m here to talk about is the model contest, and thanks to the presence of the BAKUC prelims, it was one of the biggest I’d ever seen. Unfortunately I couldn’t get any pictures of the entire table on Saturday thanks to some a-hole pulling the fire alarm. It went off RIGHT as my friend and I were checking on the progress of the judging. Arg.

There were about 30 entries this year across all categories, but only a handful were entered in BAKUC. Prizes were given across many different categories, including Best Small Scale, Best Large Scale, Best Diorama, Best Figure, Best General Mecha, and Best in Show. Both Best Large Scale and Best in Show went to our very own Monty, who wrote a review on the HGUC Unicorn Gundam kit earlier this year. He won for his awesomely-done Char’s Gelgoog, and his prize for Best in Show was a Perfect Grade Titans MK. II! He also won the local BAKUC competition and got a Master Grade Full Armor Gundam for that. The look on his face when they pulled out the Perfect Grade was priceless. Of course, he was in the masquerade, so I had to drag all of his stuff back to our hotel room, along with my prizes.

Oh yeah, I didn’t mention that-my GM Sniper, which I covered here a few months back, won best small scale! It also placed second in the World Championship preliminaries for BAKUC, and my Hi-Nu Gundam placed second in the 1/144 category for the US championship! I didn’t get any prizes for the BAKUC stuff, but I won two SD kits for the Otakon competition (Monty got one as well, which he later gave me cuz he didn’t want it-oh well, his loss!).

It was nice to enter the contest again. The real fun came from getting to chat with other modelers, exchange tips and other random comments. It’s not the kind of thing you get to do much anymore, mostly due to how inactive the Gunpla community has become since 2002.

I’m a little upset that my white Gelgoog-a restoration job made from two kits-didn’t place in any category. Which I find kinda ironic, mostly-as sort of an in-joke from ’08 I made my badge name “Gelgoog Builder”, and I didn’t even enter the winning Gelgoog! Whoops.
It turns out that BAKUC had been looking to do preliminaries are a few other cons before the year is out. I’m hoping to get them to come to New York Anime Festival/New York Comic Con in October. This will give us a second chance to compete, and hopefully bring in more of the local crowd. I’ve come to notice that comic conventions tend to draw in more Gundam fans than anime cons do. Fancy that. Regardless, if this ends up working out, I hope to see some of you there. If not, myself and some of the other contributors will be hosting a panel at the con sometime that weekend. We hope to see you there.