June 7-9, 2013

Another year and another AnimeNEXT. On Friday we were met with a deluge of rain. It practically rained all day without stopping. So everyone was stuck inside, waiting in the pre-registration line to go through. And if you happened to get through registration there wasn’t much area to move around as everywhere was packed solid with people and that was just the Friday crowd. Looking at the schedule. Not much was scheduled for the main events room all three days. They had only two all ages events on Friday, one being C.R.A.Z.Y.O.T.A.K.U. a group that has been running their panel for years at ANEXT for years and now given the main events room to run their panel. They had a game show like panel that invited the audience to participate and brought in a musical guest.

At night there was the band that was brought over from Japan, Moon Stream. Their management works with the fashion lines that have been showcasing at ANEXT in the previous years and other conventions around the US.   We ran across people who were fans of the music and bought a pass just to see the band.  The Moon Stream performance was overall good.

So for Friday most of the panels had good turnout because of the rain. As there was nowhere else for people to go. ANEXT even rented a tent as a futile attempt to create an area where people could stand if it rained.

Saturday was still a bit wet from the day before but clear skies were nice. The main events stage started with a couple fashion shows. They had the two brands MINT NeKO and Baby, The Stars Shine Bright have runway show. The first brand MINT NeKO designs consisted of various cat like designs, hence the name. After the designer had a short Q&A the next runway show as the Lolita brand Baby, The Stars Shine Bright. With all the Frills and accessories you might expect in a Lolita fashion show.

After running around we just took photos of the cosplayers and debating if we should go to the masquerade. The con itself was crowded but just like last year the crowd has changed. We got the heads up that there weren’t going to be that many performances so we passed on photo coverage of the event.

The line for the masquerade was routed outside and you can see the tent they setup to protect people from either the sun or the rain which was futile from the number of people and the size of the tent. When the masquerade was over we found out about half the acts were solo performances. There isn’t much ANEXT can do about it as it is a volunteer performance and it depends on the attendees.

Sunday we just ran around photographing cosplayers as the weather was nice. The attendee planned Digimon/Pokemon soccer match made its return. This year there were more soccer like uniforms rather than people running around in mascot style cosplay. In all ANEXT was average. They still had to deal with the space situations. The video rooms were moved into the Double Tree and the Holiday Inn was relegated to the video game room. We also got word that for next year there was going to be some personnel changes in head office which might not be a bad thing. The panel scheduling was made extremely late and the printed schedule wasn’t even correct. We were told to check online for the schedule. Which isn’t helpful when your reception is bad in the area indoors. The staff barely had and communication between themselves, we saw most of the staff that wasn’t a department head not have an idea where to direct people. Our hope is that they’ll get their act together for next year. Which also means we won’t be seeing a MangaNEXT this year unless they really surprise us.