Animazement is not a convention unless things just go weird. Just like last year, there was a wedding in one of the convention hotels, and a ton of rickshaw business going around for the masses. Even at one point there were two rickshaws racing down Fayetteville Street. On Saturday night of the convention, the Sheraton and the area went through a black out.

For the performance sector of the convention, Kotoko was brought in for a concert. Kotoko is well known for bring in I’ve and performing many anime themes. Some of the names would be Onegai Teacher (Please Teacher), Hayate no Gotoko (Hayate the Combat Butler), Shakugan no Shana, and many others. Attendance was quite packed for the ballroom and the loudness was just about the same as last year’s concert (Note to self, stay back).

The Jacabals came into the convention showing their sword fighting techniques. The attendees were impressed with the techniques as they performed. It was also a good supplement for the intermission between the masquerade and the awards ceremony. Either way the three men looked like they could kick anyone’s ass the convention.

Cosplay overall improved from last year and finally Naruto isn’t so annoying anymore. Animazement has always been the type of convention where both the novice and veterans of cosplay come at once. Quite a bit of new photographers have come in with full gear to show off their skill or equipment too.

Masquerade wasn’t too bad, but there are still remnants of the past. From the novices who performed a few dialogue skits to the full-out dance skits in the veterans of the masquerade, some were enjoyable, some were just alright, but for the first time it was bearable to watch to the end. The few skits that retained in the mind were the Bacanno choreographed dance, Left 4 Dead zombie action, and the different intermission with The Jacabal’s. During the awards ceremony, a few things could’ve changed; showing what costume was being awarded for would’ve been quite useful for those who doubt the winner.

One thing animazmenet does well in is that they like to experiment. There’s always something different from animazment that is different from any convention in the surrounding area (probably since it’s so secluded from any other convention). At one point a few staffers took over the bridge overlooking the lobby area and used a slingshot to launch t-shirts to the attendees below. It’s always to get the crowd in a raucous about where their at once a while at the convention.

The Raleigh Convention Center is probably one of the best places for a convention and all the cosplayers,as is provides places for a person to take a photo. With a lot of venues for many conventions, there’s usually no place to do anything. The convention provides the lobby area and the outside area, but there were a lot of potential areas. Raleigh invested in Cree LED walls that would change colors for all the photographers who wanted a unique background compared to the usual walls.

One thing the convention brought back in full force was signs. There were plenty everywhere warning people from escalators to irritating staff, but if they’re known for sign con, then them go at it at full force. Signs stating no camera or photography were clearly marked, so there was no excuse for not seeing it.

For the most part Animazement is getting better for the first time in a while. Everything at the convention went smoothly and people didn’t seem to mind just being at the convention. Hopefully Animazmenent will continue to grow and be entertaining as everyone’s first convention experience.

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