overblown anime club meeting

Ah, Ani-Magic. It's the one con in Southern California that I've started to tout as nothing more than an overblown anime club meeting. And yet, one thing makes me wrong in that: the cosplayers. As you can see from the galleries we have up already, there were hundreds of them.

Three days of anime, cosplayers, and intermingling with other fans such as myself, and the whole thing all went wrong from day one. I forgot to get the one thing I'd been getting for the other two years of the con and that had turned into a tradition for heading to Ani-Magic: a pomegranite to eat on the road. Now, this wouldn't have been as bad if I could have found some at any of the stores I stopped at on my way to the con. Three stores, three strikes. I should have just crawled back under my rock, but that would require driving back to Los Angeles, and the last store was about a mile from the con. So I sucked it up and continued on my way to the hallowed halls of Ani-Magic.

Day one was... odd. The staff was obviously so sure that everything would go right, that they incurred Murphy's Law and ensured nothing did. An hour after the con was officially to start, none of the video rooms were set up or ready. The dealers' room, on the other hand, was the one part of the convention that did seem to work right, and start on time. So with no real anime to watch, a computer sitting in the trunk of a car, and my slighly aged camera in hand (and total lack of a pomegranite in said hand), I did the only thing I could: I took pictures. Now, mind you, these never come up as well as Nishi-kun's, but that's to be expected. There's a reason why he's the photo editor, and I'm just the lowly managing editor with a Beeblebrox complex. He's actually taken classes for taking pictures, and knows what he's doing with a camera. Needless to say, Nishi-kun will ensure my pictures wind up in an entirely seperate gallery for my pictures, far away from his, so they cannot contaminate the wonderful pictures he's taken. (ed note: to make him feel better, it should be known that I was terrible in my photo class - but at least it helped me learn to use a camera ~jtn)

Even on the first day during the first couple of hours of the con, in the middle of the Antelope Valley, with the sun shining at it's fullest, doing horrible things to my underexposed to the sun skin, there were people in crazy costumes. We're not just talking about little clothing costumes like Tira and Chocolate Misu, oh no. Ani-Magic brings out the true cosplayers; the ones who don't let a little heatstroke stand in the way of their portrayal of ridiculously overdressed anime characters. So I walked around, took pictures of the cosplayers, looked in on rooms being prepared, and stared at window displays being set up. I found out what room I was to stay in, set up a computer with 40 gigs of anime, and declared it, "an overblown anime club meeting".*

Day two was my last day at the con (I don't count the third day as I had to head back to LA before anything really got started) and what did I spend it doing? Alternating between stepping outside and snapping shots of cosplayers, and going back to the room, only to step back out and repeat for hours on end, or at least until the masquerade was about to start, except for checking out the swap meet.

As an actual anime shop retailer, I have to look for things we've been asked for, and surprisingly, I was able to find a couple of things that were asked for and probably hard to find. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I had not in fact missed the swap meet as I had first thought.

It is kind of sad when the swap meet they hold in order for con goers to get rid of some of their not-so-cherished-any-more anime goods has more authentic items than the officially sanctioned dealers' hall. I was actually able to find more authentic CD's and DVD's at the meet than I was in the hall.

The masquerade was even more proof of how underprepared the staff were for the con. For the past two years, there have been rows of chairs set up around the pool deck closest to the stage for people to sit in. This year, there were no such chairs. The only chairs present were the ones directly in front of the stage, and everyone else had to make do with sitting on the ground, or extending lounge chairs and balancing people on opposite ends. Needless to say, these chairs are closer to the ground than the actual chairs that were set up in front of them, and so actually watching the masquerade was worthless at that position as was taking pictures, not to say that I didn't try.

After the masquerade was the dance. I really wish I didn't have so much bad stuff to say about the con, really I do. However, I'm a pessimist at heart, and some cons just make it kind of hard not to say something bad. The dance was held in a different room this year than from last year. It was held in the room that last year held a panel and video room. This is not the premiere-type video room where you hold the video you want everyone to watch, but a normal video room size for this con. The DJ's and their equipment took up a good fourth of the room, and the sound levels were too high for a room that size, causing a few people to flee the room or risk feeling nauseous. Why wasn't the dance held elsewhere? It was because the video game area took up the room the dance was usually held at, and let a lot of space go to waste. The video game room was way roomier than it really had to be. I myself am used to being shoulder to shoulder with my neighbor while playing, whereas this video game room gave you "elbow room" to spare. It can only be speculated this was because they wanted the video game room to be open all day and all night, and the other rooms "had" to be closed for certain hours, as well as to accomodate any DDR games should the need arise.

Back to the dance. It started three hours too late, and ended at normal time: 2AM. I'm sure it's because of California's law that institutions (read: bars) have to close and stop selling inebriating liquids at that time. The dance started late because, as masquerades are prone to do, it ran long, and for some reason, someone thought it would be nice if the DJ's for the dance would also do the sound for the Masquerade. Normally, this would have been a nice change and might actually have worked, if: A) you had two sets of equipment, and B) you also had two sets of DJ's. One set of DJ's might be enough, but at least two sets of equipment would be best for sure. Neither of those conditions were true for this con. So with the Masquerade running late, and the DJs having to haul all the equipment, as well as set sound measurements for a room at moment's notice, the dance was delayed three hours. However, they managed to get it all up and running at midnight. But it took them about an hour to figure their sound levels were too high, and another hour to cool the people down from their short, but fun, dancing frenzies, and before you knew it, it was 2 and they had to send everyone off. Hopefully, they will learn from their follies, and do better next year.

Just before heading back to LA, there was a group who obviously had too much food with them and didn't want to haul it all back, so they offered it out to those con goers less fortunate, or just plain gluttonous, for free, as well as playing some tunes to listen to.

Goodbye Animagic, bye Akiyume, hope to see you next year. Despite all my naysayings, I still love a relaxing con, where you can go home and say, "Yeah, it was an overblown anime club meeting, but a lot more fun!!"

—aldo

*someday I'll get into why I call it that, just not today.