Anime Mid Atlantic 5
June 17-19, 2005
Holiday Inn Koger Select Center - Richmond, VA
It's the 5th year for Anime Mid Atlantic to Richmond, VA. After arriving Friday morning, not much activity happened until registration around 10:00am, so for the mean time before registration and getting into the hotel room, people were lurking around the hotel chilling in the bar area. Some however were walking around promoting what they were...well promoting. One group was walking around passing out blue ribbons to support a Psycho Le Cemu member to support him through his methane bust, so this showed how much of a fan they are.
The Holiday Inn Koger Select center provided a decent amount of ample space for the convention, spanning across two floors, with plenty of room to move about. Anime Mid Atlantic is considered a small convention, but provides all what an anime convention needs, including a generous sized dealers room, ample space in the main events room, a handful of video rooms, but the elevator situation still exists, like in all anime conventions.
Later Friday, a handful of cosplayers aroused later in the day presenting their costume to the handful of photographers that were easily found throughout the convention. It wasn't until Saturday where most of the crowd for Anime Mid Atlantic came out enjoying the convention, giving signs of what Anime Mid Atlantic is. More and more would come out, making it seem to be a big convention with cosplayer far and wide filling up the convention.
There wasn't just one artist alley, but in fact there were two artist alleys. In the downstairs artist alley in front of the main events room, a row of tables stretched from one end of the hallway to the other and making a right turn for about one more booth. Then there was the upstairs provided again a row of tables stretching from outside of the hallway all the way to the other end of the hallway inside of the hallway. It wasn't until Saturday when the artist alleys were being filled and ubiquitously were substitutes there for empty reserved artist alley booths. Either way people were making Anime Mid Atlantic alive no matter what, or there was a lot of showing of that action. Fans flock whatever space needed to enjoy them, including a person in a box chilling with his laptop.
The dealer's room was filled with many dealers waiting for the attendee's arrival. In the dealer's room it filled what Animazement was missing in their dealer's room, presenting more variety of things to buy. Being a small convention, there wasn't much of a wait of a line to get into the dealer's room, so therefore there was a chance to get whatever was needed, and get out for other events.
In the main events room, there was almost everything happening. During the opening ceremonies, there was a quite of a welcoming of all the guest of honors, with a comedic feature. All of them seemed to enjoy Anime Mid Atlantic, and chatted with the attendees of the convention. The cosplay brought in a lot of attendees to watch all sorts of genre play out on stage with quite a few comedic acts.
For the convention staff, they encourage attendees to come to the events they offer by advertising themselves to the masses. There were staff in front of the AMV contest trying to encourage anyone coming by to come in and evaluate the AMV contest, which was smart even though there was a considerably amount of people attending the contest.
Overall this convention is growing no matter what and over the course of years there will be more events and things to do for the attendees. There was more running around the convention, hanging with friends, than attending the events it seems, but again it's a small convention, after all people were exhausted during the convention where a lot of people would rest in the bar area.
-Quadrain.com Staff