Ichibancon 2010

By: quadrain | January 14, 2010 on 12:50 am | Category: Events | No Comments

This was one convention where it makes a person appreciate good small cons again. Aside from the lack of information on their website prior to the convention and what looked to be disorganized with their DNS, the convention itself came to be a first year success it seems. One of the main advantages of Ichibancon was location and the support of Collosocon that has been going on for eight years now.

Ichibancon’s first year was held in an unusual place called the Great Wolf Lodge in Concord, North Carolina (up the road from Lowe’s motor speedway) which is a resort geared towards family fun deal. I will admit the first time I walked into the lobby of the hotel to check-in the back of my head went, “Uh oh…” Fortunately when checking in the staff told us the convention was held in the furthest end of the hotel, which was a bit secluded from the rest of the hotel activity.

Speaking of the hotel, this was an interesting one for an anime convention on the east coast. The Great Wolf Lodge resort is a family resort with children activities and an indoor water park. Over the course of the weekend, there was a big divide between con goers and the hotel. For one during the day around the lobby area and the floors above, there would be kids running around with wands with RFID tags in them playing “Magic Quest” throughout the hotel. Then there is the water park itself where if you get bored with the convention there is 400,000 gallons of water to play in.

For the convention itself it was pretty unique since it was small. Not meaning that there weren’t many people, but the space was small. There were two panel rooms, dealer’s room, and main events room. Jokingly we said the video room was out in the lobby area since there was a LCD TV with some couches around it. Also with the layout, there was the “Business Hub” that was taken over as the video game room, so it was truly a small convention.

There were a lot of people for that size convention, especially during Saturday. This was probably one of those conventions where there were more cosplayers than non-cosplayers running around the convention. Notably there were the usual mainstream cosplayers; however, there were a good number of cosplayers from animes that have not been released in the US yet.

During the entire weekend the lobby area served a multitude of events. Some random fun from the con attendees come from what seems to be a combination of Who’s Line Is it Anyway and LARP, to the random projectors and consoles brought out at random times by the convention. In the lobby were the registration area and the Artist Alley.

There wasn’t a formal 24 hour video game room; however, Saturday night, one of the panel rooms was converted to a video game room until the late night.

Dealer’s Room wise, it was expected to be small with not many DVDs for sale. A lot of random tidbits and plushies, but that was about it.

Ichibancon’s main events had almost all the usual events such as masquerade and the rave, but also a few other things that was unique this time. Earlier Friday was a ramen eating competition where mostly cosplayers would outdo each other in eating two cups of ramen at a time. There were of course “Name that anime” where contestants would hear an anime tune and in a similar style to “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” (minus phone a friend and 50-50 chance) would have to figure out the anime. There was also the formidable Cosplay Chess that was Anime VS. Video Games as their theme.

The same goes for the panel rooms where just various fan based events were held. Some of the notable ones that stuck out were probably the Pictionary and some of the 18+ such as Hentai Pictionary and Don’t Be That Otaku. Every panel at the Ichibancon looked a bit packed as they were enjoyable or had good stories from the host.

For the masquerade, the main events room was packed. There was a slight rush getting into the main events room at the time, but with the size of the convention, it really didn’t matter. During the masquerade, there was about eight skits and a bunch of walk-ons for the event. Like a small con, there would be some interesting skits on the stage and it showed.

Down to it, the convention was a first year success and hopefully the second year show that Ichibancon can be a future success.