For my second time on AnimeCon I have been asked to do three one hour activities, a lecture and demonstration, a beginners workshop and a essentials workshop. AnimeCon is a three day 24/7 convention about all things Anime, Cosplay and Japanese pop culture. 

The age of the visitors varies from very young to young to some stray older youth. Because of this large variation in age the organization had a specific 18+ area dedicated to the more sexy/sexual oriented activities. One of these activities was making and eating sushi of naked people, the other was my activities and then some more.

The lecture

The first day was me lecturing, with a full screen presentation, about the origins and history of Japanese rope bondage. The lecture included real life examples (me tying my girl) of the things I discussed in the lecture.

This was my first official lecture with a full screen presentation and all. I really did not know what to expect regarding interest in this and regarding interest from the AnimeCon visitors. I was very happily surprised that I got a full room, 80 people!

The beginners workshop

The second day we were planned for a beginners workshop. This one was more popular than the organization planned for, 80 people were let into the workshop area (a full room!). This is way to much for one teacher to handle. A clinic could work but the setup was not for that. So after a brief introduction I decided to get some input from the participants, what they expected, wanted. There was a near unanimous decision that they wanted a demonstration of the possibilities of Japanese rope bondage. So we did…

I stripped my model, Spring, to the cutest bikini that we think fitted the AnimeCon 18+ mood perfectly and started the demonstration. Now here’s something new, even for me, not even halfway during the demonstration some stuck-up volunteer that was in the room (there were a surprising amount of AnimeCon volunteers in the room 😉 ) left and came back with people from the organization. They stopped the demonstration because there were complaints (from that stuck-up volunteer) about nudity in our workshop. Nudity was not allowed during the event, anywhere, not even the 18+ area… except when eating sushi of a naked body…

At this point things got hectic. The organization demanded I stepped outside of the workshop area with them to talk about this “nudity” complaint. They were ignoring my still suspended girl and at first did not want to let me get her down first. Obviously I was not letting them and I was already tying her down, but also, at this point, the 80 people in the room started booing at the organization and the stuck-up volunteer. They started arguing with the organization to let the demonstration continue. They started arguing with the organization that there was no nudity, that me stripping my girl to her cute AnimeCon 18+ bikini was asked first to them (I did) . They argued the bikini does not count as nudity. They started arguing that there was no reason to stop the demonstration and workshop.

Now the organization wanted to cancel the workshop completely and send the people out of the room. All, I mean ALL, people in the room made a big sit-down strike about this and demanded the demonstration and workshop to continue! The entire room stood as one man against the organization demanding to let us continue They refused to leave the room This was really heart warming for me!

I did have that talk, outside of the workshop area, with the organization. Basically they said not to have seen anything that was out of line, apologized and let me go my merry way with the planned activity. So that was nice, however, all of this took quite some time and the time we had allocated was over. The people from the next workshop were already waiting. We finished up and since we did not got to do the beginners workshop we would not do the essentials workshop next, as planned, but do this beginners workshop again and let the organization know to adjust their planning appropriately.

The essentials workshop

The third, and last, day we were planned for the essentials workshop but seeing the issues we ran into the day before decided to make this the beginners workshop that we never got a chance to do.

When the doors opened there was again a an underestimation of the organization and again we had 80 people in the room, the maximum that was allowed in that room.

I had the same problem as the day before with this amount of people, you can’t really do a workshop with this many people and one teacher. So first we talked a bit about what happened yesterday and it turned out that most people in the room now were also present the previous day to witness the organization stopping the workshop. The general consensus was to continue where we were stopped yesterday. First a demonstration to show the possibilities followed by a Q&A and then some beginners ties.

To be sure, I checked with the room (and the present volunteers 🙂 ), if they preferred my girl in her cute AnimeCon 18+ bikini (some visitors on the floors of AnimeCon were dressed way more “sexual” than my girl in her bikini in the 18+ area), that was a big yes and ok from the people and volunteers. We did a short suspension and a transition.

I’m happy to say the people liked it and the Q&A afterwards could have continued way beyond the scheduled hour that we had. I stopped the Q&A to be able to do some basic ties and asked the volunteers if we could extend our scheduled time beyond the hour, we could (yay!).

The first tie was a basic single column tie and the second tie was a cinched double column tie. The enthousiasme of the people in the room to do these ties was really great to experience. After showing how to do the ties I would let them dabble and experiment and make their own mistakes which was a good starting point to mention some of the safety issues concerned. After having exhausted my extended time I did a brief Q&A again and from what I experienced, including the messages afterwards, was the people really liked this.

Handling 40 couples for only two basic ties is… undo-able. If I’m asked again for AnimeCon 2020 I need to talk to the organization to reconsider the setup for my activities. But the best thing; The AnimeCon visitors are pervs! And I love it 🙂

AnimeCon | Spring | RopeMarks