Friday continued on and kept bringing attendees to Otakon. Cosplay meetups were all over the place. There were plenty of fan panels to check out. Li Mei was cosplaying as Makoto from Iwatobi Swim Club. Jared went as a male Meowstic from Pokemon. Eri Kagami went as Nico Yazawa from Love Live. Dealers hall and gaming room were open during the evening. Late night panels had lines out the door. Though Otakon may have suffered in attendence, the party don't stop.

Free! Cosplay Photoshoot by Li Mei
Did someone say swimming anime...? On Friday at noon, there was a Free! cosplay photoshoot at the Hilton pool. It was an unofficial gathering, but there was a pretty big turnout. At first, I felt nervous since there were quite a few of us in the Hilton hotel hallway outside the pool when we met up, but the photoshoot coordinator was great: she made sure the participants quieted down in order to be respectful. Someone let us into the fitness room with the pool, and from there, the photoshoot began! Just like other fandom photoshoots, we went through solo character photos and then shipping photos. The pool was a great location since you could see the pool in front of the cosplayers in every photo. I was pleased to hear people asking for permission before doing shippy poses with other cosplayers. Good job, everyone! This photoshoot was a lot of fun!

Otakon Photo Studio by Li Mei
Kagami and I checked out the Otakon Photo Suite on Friday afternoon when we cosplayed Love Live! together. When we got there, it was easy to sign up; there were no physical papers to deal with since everything was digital. After being added to the queue, we took our seats to wait until "Love Live" was called. The line was not too long, and after a reasonable waiting time, the photographer was ready to shoot! There were many photographers there, each with their own mini "studio" in the Photo Suite. The photoshoot definitely felt like a studio shoot: there was a variety of professional lighting equipment, a backdrop screen, and a photographer with a DSLR camera. We got to pick our own poses, and it was fun being Maki and Nico! After the photoshoot, we got the chance to view the photos immediately and were given the option of purchasing prints or digital copies. We decided to buy digital copies, saved to an Otakon USB. You can buy one specific photo, a few photos, or the entire lot of photos from the shoot. After you choose a certain number of photos to buy, it becomes cheaper just to buy the entire lot (so that's what we did)! The Photo Suite was a great experience and it's an easy way to get great photos!

Famous Cats in anime by Jared
Cat are beloved by people around the world and in Japan they are part of the myths that go back hundreds of years. This panel looks at the myths about cats including the Nekomata then looks at how those myths tie into different anime series. It gives you the context behind of many popular characters and teaches you about the really interesting myths about protector cats and how a regular cat can ascend to a nekomata. This is a must go for cat lovers and those interested in Japanese myths.

Pokemon Gathering by Jared
One of the fun things to do when in costume is to hit up one of the many gatherings at Otakon. The Pokemon gathering featured a large mix of character and creatures from the long running franchise. I attended as a gijinka Meowstic and had fun meeting up with the other psychics, especially the gal in the fully body Mew costume who earned major points from everyone for enduring the heat. People were generally friendly and the whole meet had a very fun feeling. It is great to see that people still love Pokemon and are willing to go all out for their costumes. If you are a Pokemon cosplayer then I highly recommend meeting up with everyone. You might just make some new friends.

Super Sentai by Jared
This panel went into the crazy world of super sentai in no real order. This wasn’t a history panel or even a comparison panel, instead it looked at different tropes and the weird series that got chosen for US adaptation. The panel jumped around quite a bit and if you were not fully into the world of super sentai many of the references could go over your head. Despite that, it was a fun panel, but there are better super sentai panels at other conventions.

Game room by Jared
Once again the game room was divided into section. One part was for the indie games with some new titles and other returning from last year like Baconman. Then there were tables set up with various console games ranging from Super Nintendo to the PS4. Then there was the arcade section which was mostly made up of rhythm games. Even in the late hours there were people playing and having a good time. It can get a little crowded, but everyone generally has a good attitude and waits aren’t all that long.

Friday Night Rave by Li Mei
I dropped by the rave at around 11pm on Friday night. I was impressed by Otakon's security: I counted four different checkpoints when I entered the rave. Otakon staff checked badges at four different points in the line, and they didn't just glance at the badge since they asked people individually to show the front side of their badges. The rave was held in a large room, complete with loud electronic music, people dancing (in cosplay and out of cosplay), and flashing lights. There were two screens on either side of the stage where the DJ's station was, and I noticed that there were video clips from animes (like Psycho-Pass!) as well as video clips of cosplayers (I saw some Disney cosplayers up there!). There were some people dancing with light-up accessories, and some people dancing by themselves or with groups of friends. There were also clusters of people who did not dance and seemed to be talking to each other, although I'm not sure how they were able to have conversations with all the booming music.

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