Anime USA 2005
November 17-19, 2005
Sheraton Premiere - Vienna, Virginia
There’s no doubt about this year’s Anime USA that’ll go into the history books as being one of the loudest anime convention for it’s size. Again Anime USA was held at the Sheraton Premiere at Tyson’s Corner in Vienna, Virginia. Surrounded by renowned companies such as Sprint Nextel and Airbus, made it sound like it would be a high-priced convention to attend, but was in fact one of the more affordable conventions to attend, with the nicely priced rooms, and free parking. For those who are flying, there are decent prices to Washington Dulles and/or Washington Regan airport.
Like many of the other anime conventions around the nation, it included the usual events such as the masquerade, anime music videos, panels, and well, just the works. The masquerade at this particular convention was quite marvelous with the comedy and it didn’t lighten the laughs of the audience one bit. Some of the skits made up of One Piece, Lupin, Pokemon, Battle Royale, and many others including a lot of walk-ons for their share of the stage and possible fame with a possible date with a trophy. There was something about Anime USA this year to make judging a little more strict and fair for both the hall cosplay and the walk-ons by having the judging be judged by well known cosplayers. Unfortunately from some of the audience side, there was however some inequality the workmanship in a winning the hall-cosplay (from hearing around).
A line tended to form anywhere for anything through out the convention. Anime USA had all the components of an anime convention, but they tend to start around the similar times of each other, so the lines just constantly form.
The dealer’s room expanded from last year, switching with the main events room, it had the capability to put more booths for more dealers. There wasn’t much of a line to enter the area, but there were quite some amounts of people in there at all times. The Pocky and Ramune were quickly sold away to the attendees, probably from the lack of those two components were missing from Nekocon’s dealer’s room a few weeks earlier.
Down in the lower dungeons areas of the convention presented the artist alley and video rooms. Dealer like room supplied the artists with their art to present and possibly pocket some cash. Beyond the artist alley were the Video rooms, having all of the rooms in location in a hallway. On the other side of the room was the location for tickets to the Move concert, where what seems the endless line for the tickets situated. The line for the Move concert stretched from the table to some mysterious stairs leading to some racquet rooms. Some interesting finding were found amusing of what the hotel did, like the hotel using one of the racquet room to store foldable beds.
The panel rooms were filled with, well with panels run by some volunteers. All sorts of panels were held from numbers to Z, including the 4chan.org panel, JRock panels, to Yaoi panels for those who are interested.
At this particular convention, they were able to obtain a musical group for those Initial D fans out there by having Move to perform a the convention. Most of the people who attended Anime USA 2005 had primarily their mind set on attending the Move concert, since after all, when are you going to see them again in the US? Then again, it’s like all the Japanese concerts performing at anime conventions, when are you going to see them again? The concert technically sold out, possibly breaking fire code by having all the attendees of the concert in the main events room, and with that amount of people; it probably shook the entire convention due to the raucous of concert. Before the concert, people staffing for Move (not Anime USA) were selling CDs and DVDs (Region 2 so get a Region Free DVD player if you bought a DVD) in the line. Little by little, BOXES of these merchandises were sold IN the line for the concert, showing that there were a lot of Move fans at the convention. With the purchase you also get a pass to get in line to get an autograph and a handshake from Yuri, Motsu, and T-Kimura.
Other guest of honors included many voice actors that you may have seen at other conventions. Some of the voice actor industries include ADV and Funimation explain their past, current, and future works of anime licensed by their company.
There was also Kristine Sa who also shook the convention with her Sunday performance and Nen Daiko on Friday. During Sunday morning, you could find Khristine Sa in the convention doing Autographs and promoting her new album too.
Some security issues aroused at the convention but went without notice, including photographer setting up a booth without the convention’s consent and having all the people who had their pictures taken by him fill out a release form for their photo. At the concert there were some minor problems with the crowd, some with having one another sit on each other’s shoulder to have a better view of the band, lighters being lit, and just the usual hyper sensitive crowd going wild but again, it was minor and not detrimental to the convention.
At Anime USA they have three levels of registration. First there’s the regular membership, which will allow you to attend the convention and attend regular events requiring no extra payment. Next is the Silver membership which is the same as a Regular membership but it comes with an Anime USA T-Shirt and an Anime USA pin. Last of all there’s the top of the line membership (that costs quite some money) called the Sponsor membership, which can only be acquired with lots of money, and there are only fifty slots were available. The Sponsor membership attains all the benefits of a Silver membership WITH your name listed in the convention booklet, the privilege to be allowed into the cosplay before the regular attendees (behind Anime USA staff and press).
Anime USA being a small convention can also being considered as being a “chill” con, so without the hectic of having to run around from one end to another. It gave plenty of time to enjoy life and time with friends.
With the entire weekend filled with everything from immense concerts to impressive costumes throughout the convention center, there was pretty much everything for every otaku’s taste.
Personal Memoirs:
Not as bad as my experience from last year where I stayed only one day. There was a lot more running around and things to do rather than walk around and sightseeing the whole time. The Move concert surely banged up my ears as I keep saying, “What?” when my friends would ask me questions. Like all hotels, I surely got an exercise as I used the stairs a lot, even on Thursday night when I stayed on the 18th floor. Luckily on the days Friday – Sunday I roomed with people on the 7th floor instead.
Although the floors had a weird design, once you get use to the hotel, you can get anywhere, and possibly find shortcuts around there.
The hotel staff was like all other Sheratons, where they were exceptionally polite, even if there was a Naruto running around screaming something. Since it was a small convention, the GoH seemed to enjoy the convention a lot, well apparently Greg Ayres since a friend of mine was able to do an interview with him for her project, where I got the chance to video tape it in night vision, since it was 2:00am at the bar area where lights were off.
The flight wasn’t all that bad form RDU to IAD via United Airlines and it was smooth enough to work on homework. There were a few problems with United Airlines at the airport though as they were slow at RDU to service customers (even with express check-in) since they do work for Air Canada (requiring passports and some stupid people), and at Dulles International Airport, it took them 1.5 hours to get our luggage from Terminal G to the main terminal, but since I did a whole presentation on the airport a couple months ago, it was an experience to observe the original Terminal designed by Eero Saarien. I’ll probably return to Anime USA again next year if everything goes well in planning.
-Quadrain.com Staff