Once again, I had the genuine pleasure to attend and panel at the Yurithon programming track of Otakuthon, in Montreal, Quebec.

Otakuthon is a large general anime convention, held in the Palais des Congrès in downtown Montreal. For people like myself, who enjoy touristing in a city as well as attending the event, Montreal is near-perfect. (With one exception – the construction is ridiculous. Whole streets in what is meant to be a walkable town are ripped up and blocked off. On Gay Pride weekend, while Otakuthon is on, in the middle of tourist season in August. Great idea, Montreal.)

My wife joined me on two panels, the amusing “Yuri Court” game, where we prosecute or defend Yuri series and the traveling to Japan as a Yuri Otaku panel. For the History of Queer Manga, we has Historian James Welker, who was absolutely brilliant and fascinating. And of course I ran my Must-Read/ Must-Watch panel, letting folks know about good stuff coming out right now that they should be reading. (I will try to get this up some day in the near future, but I make no promises.)

I tried to sit in on the Queer webcomics panel but no one arrived to run it. I briefly considered jumping in, but thought it wouldn’t be fair to the folks looking for gay content, as it’s not really in my wheelhouse.

4 Panels over 3 days is perfect. Enough to keep me busy, to provide a chunk of programming, but also give me time to shop! The real benefit of the Otakuthon Dealer’s Room, is that it is very large, with a big Artist’s Alley. I always meet new folks there. This year we spoke with Koyamori, Lollipop Sisters, both of whom had really unique art.

This year we bought one piece of original art by Kelli Kiakas, from her Giggly Game series in which she draws the childhood games we played in the style of 1930s comic/animation art. We bought “Marco Polo” because it made us both laugh.

We had multiple amazing meals, including a poutine at a fancy French restaurant. It was reallly gooood poutine. Best we’ve ever had. Yes, there can be a “best.” ^_^ Here’s a rundown of the weekend’s food:

Biiru
Japanese izakaya(ish) featuring what James named “wafusion”. Exceptional.

Now the fun part, where I will assuredly skip someone and break their heart. Many sincere thanks to everyone who made this event an absolute blast: Meggie and Kim, once again gracious and cute conrunners. James for joining me on panels, for the first and, I hope, not the last time. Fujimoto Yukari-sensei for coming to the panels and to dinner and just being a delightful person to speak with. Mark for being a great laugher and long-time Okazu friend. We look forward to more French-language manga reviews from you! Nick T for being someone I was delighted to meet in person. I had been on his Nickcast some months ago and we had so much fun. It was a genuine pleasure to put a face to the name.  Special thanks to Severine, for conveniently being in Montreal while I was there; dragging you into the colorful world of anime fandom and shiny cosplay was a delight (and smoked meats are always a good thing.) I want to shout-out to Sam Pinansky of the J-Novel club, who are putting out a bunch of Yuri novels! And of course, my wife who is brilliant and funny on panels and all the time.

If you attended any of my panels, thank you! The audiences were great. I forgot to remind people to not ask my opinion of series in the Must-Read/ Must-Watch panel and, since it was my fault, I gave my opinions. I expect some of those people will be recovering for a while and I’m sorry, but not really. If you will insist on asking me what I think, I’m going to tell you. ^_^

I basically come to Yurithon to give away candy and books, and eat smoked meats (Montreal’s version of pastrami, essentially) and at Biiru, so all objectives were achieved.

During the very same weekend, New York City hosted Flamecon and I hope we’ll be getting a report on that later this week, too. I can think of worse ways to spend my Augusts, alternating between Flamecon and Yurithon. ^_^ I hope to see more of you in both places~!