Do people come to cons to meet other fans or see guests? American East Coast cons are known as much—if not more—for the comraderie of the fandom east of the Mississippi as for their special guests. Indeed, the number and caliber of Japanese guests have been more the specialty of California's Anime Expo with its ties to the Japanese industry. Nevertheless, Otakon 1998 was able to score well on both counts in its largest attendance yet and arguably its biggest billing of guests.
The guests included the usual suspects such Studio Ironcat's Steve Bennett and Kuni Kimura, EX's own Scott Frazier, Viz's Trish Ledoux, and Mixx's Stuart Levy. This year, Otakon also hosted two prominent Japanese guests in their first North American convention ever. Aro Hiroshi is a popular Japanese artist (YUU AND MI) who is about to become more known to English-speaker fans thanks to Studio Ironcat's release of his FUTABA-KUN CHANGE! gender-bending comedy manga. Among the guests, the biggest draw had to have been Kawamori Shouji. Kawamori came on behalf of Mixx and its SPRING AND CHAOS (I-HATO-BU GENSOU: KENJI NO HARU) English release, but he is probably best known in Japan and America for co-authoring MACROSS and ESCAFLOWNE.

Friday

This year, Otakon moved to Virginia's Hyatt Regency Crystal City, which is close to Pentagon as well as Washington D.C.—a plus for some of the guests. Without opening ceremonies, the con started right into the video programming Friday afternoon. In the live panels later that evening, magazine and manga publishers talked about their upcoming works while English character voices shared war stories and anecdotes with their fans. Mixx announced its new teen magazine SMILE, which will include Mixx's SAILOR MOON S manga adaptation. Mixx also announced its plans to move SAILOR MOON into its own title and its replacement in MIXXZINE (a MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM side story manga). Other panels covered topics ranging from fan fiction and costuming to the state of fandom.
The Guest of Honor Introductions were held a half-hour before midnight, but due to airport difficulties and understandable tiredness after his Brazil trip, Kawamori could not join the other guests. Friday's live programming ended with Mystery Anime Theater 3000, a side-splitting new tradition that emulated the Comedy Central/Sci-Fi Channel spoof series. The target this time was the dubbed version of the BATTLE ARENA TOSHINDEN video series.