For the convention itself one major event was at attendance and that would be the World Cosplay Summit (WCS) having it’s preliminaries held in the main events room of the convention. Its purpose was to find groups compete in a masquerade style to represent the US and compete in the World Cosplay Summit in Japan.

Other than the WCS there wasn’t much new to the convention, aside from the hoard of photographers coming out of nowhere to attend Katsucon. As usual the groups of photographers seem to have congregated in the atrium area for the usage of the natural lighting (or just using the classic style scenery). The attendees were just all over the place either to attend an event or finding the event itself.

In the Guests sector, the usual American voice actors were at attendance, but more importantly the musical guests conventions have been pushing towards. It’s been a trend to bring over bands that are new to the US and in the case Kiryu was invited with his variety of genres to play. Another fairly new to the industry was Kazuha Oda/Kazha who is more tamed versus Kiryu while performing.

For the regular masquerade, it was about the same as the WCS. It seems as time goes on the genres comes to one.

For Katsucon ‘s schedule, they seem to push towards having people check things online. Granted this is possible for all conventions, Katsucon’s paper copy seemed to be a bit much. It was one of the more notable complaints even among the staff members.

Overall Katsucon is following many of the previous conventions on the east coast being just a convention. There wasn’t much of any spectacular where veteran con goers would go, “Did you see that” moment; however, it may be for the good.

Granted arriving Saturday morning changes a person’s view of the convention, rather than seeing the convention from the beginning it’s a view from the deep end of the swimming pool. Walking into the convention there seemed to be a larger ratio of cosplayers to non-cosplay members. Things seemed to be calmer compared to the previous years as there was not much of the popular internet memes being thrown around. Rather LMAFO’s “Party Rock Anthem” was played more throughout the convention, which was kind of sad since the song has been overplayed outside the convention.

Compared to other years, there were less gatherings and photoshoots with more people gathering with their own friends than anything else.

Coming backing to Anime USA this year was the popular Maid Café and Host Club. There were some new and old faces in there and of course a new honcho. Some of the few things were back including the popular waffle and a few new entrees.

On with the host club, they finally solved the elevator issue (since it was on the rooftop restaurant) by allowing one of the elevators to be the express elevator to the top. A staff member was controlling the elevator since it was on an override.

The convention brought back another Visual Kei band to AnimeUSA to rock the members and also there was Mantenrou Opera to perform there too.

On non-music side for guests, they were all domestic voice actors and associates. Even the guest artists were all domestic.

A few changes to the layout included moving the game room two floors into the former board game room so it was a bit crowded as all the machines were occupied. It was amazing that they even put the Kinect and DDR machines in the place.

There wasn’t much of a change in the dealers’ room. The same dealers seemed to be unchanged from any convention, aside from the food vendors there.

On the cosplay side of things, Madoka seemed to be the popular cosplay for this year. Aside from the popular ones, there weren’t many cosplays that stood out in the crowd. Granted the scantly cosplayers will have the most shots taken of, but the unique wasn’t there.

Other than the usual things, there wasn’t much of an excitement. There weren’t any police to take away adolescents form drinking themselves to death, no one pulled the fire alarm, or anything. It was surprising what cons were before 4chan started to take over the convention (gah I feel old, not in terms of age but from going to cons since I was 16 now 24).

Hopefully the convention will move onto another location to beat out the crowded hotel. Hyatt is nice and all with the number of satellite hotels to accommodate the members; however, AnimeUSA is starting to outgrow the place.

Photos

Although the setting is mostly based on the Idolm@ster 2 game (since Takane and Hibiki are part of 765) there has been elements from pre 961 pro showing up in the series. One is Azusa’s hair was long until later in the series.

The idols themselves start off in 765 production trying to get themselves to the top; however, they face obstacles in trying to get out to the world. The production group does various of stints from anime shows, odd cooking competitions, to finally concerts.

It was also good that they actually made the Idolm@ster anime rather that mecha because they finally bring out each of the character’s stereotype. Takane and her Ramen, Yukiho and dogs, Haruka and Chihaya relationship, etc. If you have kept up with the fanbase of the game(s), following the anime will be easy.

For the note, the MacBook Pro is now gone (long term loan to the family for emergency) and now rocking a Lenovo X220 Tablet. No offense to the Apple fans, but I just found myself using Windows more than mac for productivity purposes. Granted I’ll miss Sofortbild for the mac (awesome tethering software for certain Nikon cameras), but with the money saved from not buying a mac, I’ll put down for Lightroom 3 in the future. Okay the Wacom digitizer and the IPS panel caught my eye.

In the hot and humid Inner Harbor of Baltimore, Otakon returns along with a tone of people. Over 30,000 people confound the city at the Baltimore Convention Center. Even people who do not work in the downtown area know when the people come as cosplayers start cosplaying from BWI all the way to the Baltimore Covention station on the light rail.

A few things there changed for Otakon, including the new terrace where last year it was closed due to renovations. The terrace was open this year with flowers to create a garden scene. This provided a good place for cosplayers as very vegetation was available around the convention center.

Another notable thing that’s fortunate thing Otakon did was move the dance from the Camden hallway to Hall D of the convention center. This was beneficial for a lot of people for a few reasons; one, this allowed a bag check place just upstairs which was needed (this also allowed the convention to take in some revenue), and the other reason would allow the body odor from the dance to stay downstairs in Hall D.

Everything else about the convention was about the same as last year; however, new events did rise up for this year. One of the more events was the Full Metal Alchemist world premiere was held at this year’s Otakon’s full capacity video room. Charles Street Lobby was packed so dense; staff was at the top of the escalators announcing the full capacity of the event.

Of course there has to be guests at Otakon and as usual, the guests ranges from all over the place. From clothing design, to directors, to singers, it was all at Otakon. Peter Beagle was known for The Last Unicorn, from the novel to the movie, and most recently the graphic novel. Chemistry hit the stage in Hall D being the JPop band with a dance crew entertaining the crowd. Johnny Bosch arrives with his band to play and himself as a former Power Ranger and voice actor for many games and animes. DJ Saolilithwho was known for playing music and cosplay (and the combination of the two) made an appearance, especially with her part of singing songs from Vocaloid.

With Otakon pushing Madoka around a few things related with the series around. First being the exclusive Madoka poster from otakon, which proceeds go towards the Japan relief fund. Atsuhiro Iwakami, a producer, was at Otakon to push Madoka in the United States. He was also responsible for Kannagi and Bakemogatari for naming a few of his works. Other American voice actors were also at Otakon for obvious reasons.

The dealer’s room was just about the same as years before, if not almost like last year. Seemed like the same dealer’s were at Otakon as other cons.

Some interesting things were kind of hidden at the convention that was musical related. In the Hilton hotel on the first floor, there was a room called Jamspace. In the area there were instruments for people to create music to mostly video game or anime music.

As with any other Otakon, the “Butt scratcher” and “Marco Polo” meme kept flying around every couple of minutes it seemed; however, the “Awesome” did not make it’s return. A probable reason why is the cost of what Otakon had to deal with in the past.

Overall the con wasn’t too different from last year. Aside from the new guests and switching a few event rooms here and there, it seemed all too similar to last year.

[update]
Photos are up here

A few things have changed with the following:
1. New gallery system (still working on it)
2. Pictures can be saved easily (instead of clicking on the gray border from the last gallery)
3. New blog layout

Some of the older galleries doesn’t work because they were broken. There’s still a few old things broken; however, it’ll be a slow fix.

If something isn’t working, let me know – snguyen@quadrain.com

Back to the Raleigh Convention Center was Animazement, bringing most of the anime fans from the Carolinas and surrounding area back to a central location. From the initial scene from the weekend, it looked like another successful convention for the most part. There was a crowd in all corners of the convention center at all times, to even Sunday after check-out time at the hotels.

This year’s Animazement seemed more tamed than previous years. There was not ruckus outside the convention center, not Katamari ball in a while, and well it was just another convention. Could be that there were other events people wanted to go to during the same weekend, like Fanime in California, Rooster Teeth Expo in Texas, or even Time Gate in Atlanta.

Some interesting things that were quite good were actually panels. Usually I’m not much of a panel person; however, this year’s panels hosted by attendees were pretty decent. There was the origami panel that was quite enjoyable among many other attendees, to panels that showed the wackiness of Japan, to even the Iron Chef panel that was packed with people. There were constant lines to many of the panels this year.

A few things did have a flash back to this year’s Animazment, one being the line system for the masquerade. Thankfully they brought it back; however, things were not as organized since it was at the old Sheraton hotel. It seemed they tried to line people up at certain times and then go in as one; however, there was little control on how things went and the plan didn’t work out so well. It would be nice to see a snake line system outside of the convention center or at least in one of the bigger rooms at the convention center where each snake line would be the assigned group that people have gotten on their badge.

For the Artist Alley(s) at the convention, it was pretty neat how they moved them to the open space on the second floor; however, it did split the Artist Alley from the upstairs and the down. Granted there was a lot of success among the artists who had a lot of people come up to each of the tables at all times; it was quite nice seeing people support the locals. The only issue was the upstairs artist alley did not get much attention, even with all the signs point towards them. I guess they were hoping for the main events to bring the attention towards them; but things didn’t go as expected.

Friday and Saturday’s nights dance was up in a toss. Some people liked it, some people didn’t. Granted it wasn’t anything like Anime Expo and their Club Nokia scene with, but overall again among the attendees, it was half and half. Then again like last year’s it was mostly hardcore, so of course it didn’t cater to everyone. Hey, what the heck, the scene was pumping with people.

In the Masquerade, some of the performances were high speed with action while a lot of them were just not so memorable. I really can’t say much to avoid offending people; however, like many Masquerade performances, there are a few high action moments but most were just general performance. One surprise adding to the highlight was the proposal during the early stages of the Masquerade.

Cosplays overall was the general scene at any anime convention. There were excellent cosplays, not doubt about it, but it was almost like any other convention. Thankfully most of the Naruto scene has died down, and nothing annoying has come up at the convention. Nice little niche for Animazement to have a variety of cosplayers rather than having a clump of cosplays from one series.

One of the amazing things that Animazement does that makes the convention interesting is the Manga library. Not like it’s like other conventions’ Manga Library, but Animazement has books from the Durham and Wake County Libraries available in the manga library. It was pretty neat seeing how quiet it was in the manga library, which was in the corner of the convention and away from most of the noise of the convention.

Overall the convention was a good convention; however, like with many people, it wasn’t spectacular and memorable.