Keropi wrote:There was a "hentai" panel. Wow...what a trip. I would go to that one just for the heck of it.
Yes, it was held at midnight just to keep parents from bringing their kiddies by without knowing what "hentai" meant. I seriously thought about it, having developed a liking for
Usagi-chan de Cue which is just clever enough to justify all the boob-bobbles, and being an admirer of
Chobits, which pushes the curve at significant moments. But in the end I ran out of gas and didn't go, and I was told afterwards that it was a madhouse, with the room filling to fire-laws capacity about a half hour before it started.
The organizers know they need to manage the panels better next year, but many times it's not clear what will draw a crowd. There were one potentially interesting panel that I (and most of the other audience members) walked out of because it was clear that the panelists really hadn't prepared anything but were chatting in a giggly fan-girl style about how queuul [
fill in name of queuul anna-may series here] was. Happily, all the panels were in one place so it was easy to duck out of one and back into another that was doing something constructive. Both our panels were beneficiaries of this factor, as we started with slim crowds, which gradually grew during the hour as people panel-hopped into our room and stayed.
Keropi wrote:]The main problem I had attending my last two conventions was that I didn't have enough to do between the two or three really interesting events they had there. Most of the best events were overcrowded and had extremely long lines and wait times. I've never been much into crowds in general.
I know: sometimes it's worth it, as with a really strong Otakon year, but that in itself can be a drain on energy. People are in over-stimulated mode, not knowing where to look, what to do, what to say, or how to avoid stepping on someone's tail while being whapped by someone's wings or huge plywood weapon.
The green space around the AnimeNext con center was a sanity saver, as it gave people a chance to spread out between events, and so there were only a few avoidable bottlenecks. There was even a shuttle bus to a nearby mall with restaurants, though I felt the con food was pretty decent. (The pulled pork sandwich is awesome!)
I'm sorry you had so many negative experiences, starfighter. I'd been for the full AnimeNext experience once before, so I knew what to expect and what to avoid. For instance, if you know that the panels are all in the hotel, you just bypass the officious con guard, walk around the side of the exhibit hall and go in through the adjacent hotel lobby straight to the room where you're presenting. Same deal with early-bird video screenings which are in a side building with no fussy security guard.
(Con people do peek in from time to time to make sure that people watching MKR episodes have badges, are cosplaying, or are at least sporting a Mokona cap.)
The line for the badges (as at Otakon) can be a trial, but that's one reason why the first morning's schedule was so light. The line for the dealer's room, too, could be irritating, but the up side of that is that the crowds inside were kept a little less intense than at Otakon. You didn't get knocked over quite so many times while looking at body pillows. (For some reason, the dealers had brought lots and lots and lots and lots of body pillows.)
Not having gone to many more local cons (just Katsucon in DC) I can't say for certain how AnimeNext ranks in general. I've always figured that the company you meet is as important as the events, and as my daughter has lots of contacts from the CT/MA/Long Island otaku community, I always end up getting to know different people and being dragged off to see things I'd normally not choose on my own. So maybe this dimension made up for some of the deficiencies.
I'll say again, though: the tech support they give is superb, the best I've seen including professional academic meetings where I've presented. They really do make sure that your laptop links to the projector and that your video clips will run. (Even the strange DiGiCharat clip with German subtitles!) They even spent time fooling with the table so the PowerPoint image would be square on the screen and not tilted or trapezoidal.
We didn't get a lot of cel collectors at the start of the periods (and I learned something about making sure that the panel titles on the pocket program match the blurbs for them in the glossy program, which they didn't this time). But like I say we got more watchers along the way, and the people who walked in stayed, flipped through cel books, asked questions, and went out knowing something about what makes Frank and I so intense.
In the lobby afterwards, I even demonstrated how to remove a stuck sketch from a cel as an encore for a new cel collector who had this problem with some of her new pretties. I knew the one I'd brought wasn't stuck badly, and luckily it came right off with no damage on either side: I was so delighted I gave it to the newbie as a souvenir.
Again, I'm sorry if starfighter felt a bit cheated. But I think we delivered the goods: I had fun, Frank obviously enjoyed talking with the audience, and so I think the overall result was good for the animation art community. Perhaps with a few more aficionados we could take over a part of the con process and get a few more things our way (like sending some ninjas to abduct Asylum Anime's Curt and a bunch of cel books in his stock to help upgrade the dealer's room.)
