June 10-12, 2011
AnimeNEXT is a convention we look forward to every year. It is one of our home town conventions and one we make it a point to try and never miss. This year was its 10th year anniversary and they invited a lot of prominent Japanese guests this year and brought in a lot of the domestic talent also.
We were able to hit a few panels this year. One of them was run by voice actor and fellow anime geek Greg Ayres who is known for his “state of the anime industry” panel. We were expecting the usual “anime and manga industries are dying” and “don’t pirate” kind of panel, but we were pleasantly surprised to hear some hope in his voice. He was excited to announce that he was starting to work on new projects and gave the audience some information on what he was working on. He also talked about how Funimation recently bought itself back and is no longer under the discretion of its former parent company, Navarre. Although it wasn’t the most informative of panels, it was laid-back and entertaining when he added his hilarious convention horror stories.
Another panel we dropped by was “The Complete History of Manga.” We thought this panel was going to be extremely interesting and were pretty excited about it. Unfortunately, the panelist was fifteen minutes late and was shaking as he gave the presentation. He worked at a manga museum in Osaka, Japan ( author’s note: we would kill to have his job), and he had some very old and rare manga with him that got passed around. It would’ve been an interesting panel had he been a little more confident.
AnimeNext continued this year in bringing in Japanese culture by bringing in the fashion designer h.NAOTO, they packed the main events hall surprisingly. We didn’t understand the size of the crowd but when they had Vic Mignogna make an appearance at the end in their clothing, we knew that his fans came to support him.
On Friday night they had a concert by Mix Speakers, Inc. a visual kei band. We didn’t know much about them but the concert was good show. Each of the band members was a character and the lighting made a great show.
A couple other Japanese guests were Kanon and Takamasa Sakurai. Kanon’s a musician and Mr. Sakurai is a self-proclaimed culture ambassador who’s been to the area once before at the last NYCC/NYAF in 2010. They held a joint panel where they did a general Q&A with the audience fielding questions like what did Kanon think how Vocaloid software would effect the music industry. Even though it was audience questions I wish the questions were per-screened a little just so the the guest’s wouldn’t confused with the translation. Afterwards the pair hosted an Elegant Lolita tea party where anyone dressed in Lolita Fashion could attend. This took place in a small suite in the hotel and we were only able to take a couple of photos in order not to intrude too long.
As always Saturday night always take a chunk out of our schedule to wait in line for the masquerade. The line was extremely long. I got far back and took a photo(below) to show the length of the line. It was 4 piles deep. The problem with the venue is that there is no indoor waiting space if the main events space is being used. This years masquerade line problem was a compound problem. Vic Mignogna’s panel using the main events space was over by an hour and right afterwards sadly, the Production I.G. Panel was right after it. While it was a great idea to bring in an anime producer heavyweight to the con like Production I.G. it wasn’t the best idea to stick them right after popular panel and during the time everyone needed to start lining up for the masquerade. The crowd for that panel was minuscule. We couldn’t even stick around for the panel in order to wait for the masquerade.
So after the two hours of waiting everyone piled into the masquerade for short show. We took photos of all the groups which is in our photo side. There were only 10 groups that showed up to perform. They also had another performance Saturday night by Yu Kimura after the masquerade groups performed. This however we were not aware of it until hours before the event when we were able to talk to AnimeNEXT’s press liaison. Nobody else seemed to know of any information that she was singing. Pre-con we knew she was showing up but other information was scarce. She had a fun performance keeping everything upbeat.
And finally our favorite fan event. Its not even an official AnimeNEXT event. Pokemon VS Digimon Soccer made another appearance this year. Much more organized, a little less costume and much more action.
For AnimeNEXT’s 10th anniversary, even though they had a ton of guests foreign and domestic, they really lacked advertisement of when guests would appear before the convention began. It would of been really nice to know ahead of time when featured guests were going to be performing or what panels they would be doing days ahead. So it could of felt better knowing what you are going to miss rather finding out later what you did miss. The other issue that’s hard to overcome is the location still. Only in good weather is it good enough for a convention of this size, but then again being from the area we don’t know where AnimeNEXT could even be held at other than the current location. Hopefully next year they’ll continue to work out the issues and make their 11th year what the 10th had the real potential to be. We also should be at their next schedule event MangaNEXT in February. See you there!
