Anime USA 2009

By: quadrain | November 25, 2009 on 12:47 am | Category: Events | No Comments

This year’s convention was a great way to end of the year for many people. From the day it started, the convention seemed to be the slow cooking stew that was cooked to perfection. All the ingredients were in placed and slowly made its way to perfection. This year’s Anime USA seemed to have less people than last; however, the same ol’ Hyatt was still crowded and the elevators jammed packed.

From every event, it started off very slow. From the concerts to dances, it felt a little lack luster until sparks finally lit up the entire scene.

Friday’s events seemed a little slow as only a few panels or events were really an eye popper. The usual Formal Ball and Formal Dance lessons were a big hit and no one can forget the rave afterwards. More notably, the panels are the events that kept the convention moving when there wasn’t much to do. Things from Ask a Ninja, world cosplay summit, Quaff Concert, and worst of the internet. But again most of the eye popping events did not start until the evening.

Saturday had a little more of a kick to the day as everything that a weekend of a convention can do was pretty much jammed pack into Saturday. Cosplay Chess, Cosplay Fashion Show, AMVs, Geist, and of course Kaya were just shoved into one day. This was a good thing as there was a lot more people attending Anime USA on a Saturday compared to the Friday. Most likely this was because of the amount of students getting out of school Friday and arriving Friday night.

One of the most formidable events for any anime convention on the east coast is the Masquerade. This year at Anime USA came with a big surprise. Typically a masquerade would have about thirty to forty skits and walk-ons; but this year there was about fifteen. It was probably one of the shortest masquerades to date. This helped with remembering most of them too since most of them were actually good. Everything from the Gundam and Kanye West skit, Ah! My Goddess, Resident Evil stand up comedy, it all went well. Since there were not many skits, some of the skits showed there was not much of a time limit. The skits seemed to just stand out from each other too by not having a repeating skit of one series or one joke. Even the channel surfing was well done too. Since the theme for this year’s convention was steampunk, there was a steampunk fashion during the masquerade as the judges went to their hideout to choose their winners.

One of the most anticipated events during the convention was the Maid Café and the Host Club. Up in the Cinabar restaurant of the Hyatt Hotel located the Maid Café where there’s not other way to explain it than Maids are waitresses, but with a little more finesse. The system goes arcade style, where you exchange money (even credit cards) for tickets that are worth $2.00 each down by the bar area. You then can redeem those tickets for ordering food on the menu. Along side the menu you could also purchase playtime of certain games such as Hungry Hippo, Jenga, Uno, and other various games with the maid that’s serving you and/or with your friends at the table. Of course the prices are paying a premium for the hotel food; however, whoever was the cook making the food that day, I personally tip my hat to you for making it worth the money. Personally I did feel bad that some if not many of them did not get to sample the food. It would’ve probably helped them with explaining how the food is in a personal point of view. Overall this portion of the convention seemed orderly, minus being able to obtain more tickets at the spot to get more food. This was a bit unavoidable as from what the head of the café explained; the point of sale machines were down to be able to get more tickets at the restaurant and it’s against contract to work the café like a normal restaurant. Hopefully this will be resolved by next year.

Then there’s the Host Club all the way on the 19th floor of the hotel in the restaurant. I did not personally go to this one; however, I did go up there to see what’s going on. For being a male, it was just too weird. As you walked into the restaurant, you meet the host who stands next to a poster with pictures of various hosts that’s working. From what that was told, you go in and merely it’s a lounge where you buy single drinks or bottles to share between your friends and host(s). Bottle varied on prices from $20? and up to much as $75 and more. From the stories that had leaked from the 19th floor, some of the hosts did get drunk and had to be pulled from the floor to the back to be fed rice. This is to get the starch to soak up alcohol that was consumed.

So on forth to the concerts. Two of the three bands that people wanted to see were Quaff and Kaya. Can’t go wrong with a jrock band and a metro performing on stage. Both of the bands were surprisingly good and were decent to hear, if not the audience. During the Kaya concert, people shoved themselves as close to the barricades as possible. Like all standing concerts, it was definitely hard for the shorter people to see what’s going on stage.

Back in the tech crew area was a whole different story. Crews were just in the zone when an event happened, since every second counted to keep the performance going. Everything from the video to sound was synchronized with thousands of feet of cable running from the back to the front.

Overall the convention was a success, as typical of the convention of Anime USA is. Probably the hardest part of the convention was taking pictures of cosplayers.