Anime Conji 2013

What to say about this year's edition of Anime Conji? It's a tale of two cons when it comes down to it - Friday was terribly horrific, Saturday was incredibly wonderful, Sunday was... well - sunday. A lot of open space this year (which was a boon for photographers/videographers but not to general attendees or cosplayers), which made for a very interesting con in that certain areas had high traffic and others... well, a zombie could go through and still be hungry.

Anyway, photos and videos past the jump!

Just some personal thoughts on the con before I just let you look at the pretty pictures and videos. I personally think that this con this year was extremely unorganized - possibly so unorganized it could've fell apart. Leave it to it's staff to pull together in the last moment to pull together and come back strong. There are a number of issues that probably have already been talked about on Twitter and Facebook already - I hope that the staff of Anime Conji get the stuff together and put on a great con next year. Because it has everything but the organization to put one on.

This convention has the potential to be the BEST small anime convention on the entire west coast (if not the entire United States). It's on a site where expansion is easily possible (I can easily see up to 20k on-site). It has THE BEST photo backdrop locations of any convention I know of. It's set in a hotel so you can get that 24/7 party con experience that you would get at PMX and ALA.

The only two things holding it back is the staff and the community. The staff needs to just get this convention running properly and it'll be a runaway success - the community needs to step it's game up just a tad more and bring along programming that'll be amazing (not having Anime Last Comic Standing as the friday main event... or not even having a friday main event hurt the con a lot.) Having one single Vocaloid panel for the entire convention is just inexcusable, and the lack of cosplay gatherings hurt the con as well. Vampy and the Cozmode editor are cool GoHs, but other then them - no one seemed all that exciting. The other elements the con needs are in place - the maid cafe is great from what I hear from others, the gaming room is great, and the dealers hall was great.

I really do hope things get better next year - I think in the long run for SPJA it'll be important it does as it could be AX's "Wondercon".

One last thing, I didn't get around to mentioning this on twitter - but as usual I followed through on my usual Nendoroid tradition at cons. So who did I buy? None other then Marika Kato - the captain from the anime "Bodacious Space Pirates". I'll have a picture of her up in a later edit of this page. So stay tuned to this page for updates!

You can find the edited photos I took at Anime Conji 2013 here on Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/animegamer/sets/72157633254453175/

Videos from Anime Conji 2013 are forthcoming, and can be found in this playlist here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIbutke-iLc&list=PLo3Nhs7tU2Zt0IWycqoUgI4B27-nAmNuM


UPDATE #1:
Just posting this here, I didn't make this video (though I wish I did!) but I actually make a appearance in this video:

UPDATE #2:
The entire Anime Conji Masquerade has been uploaded to YouTube, minus the AMVs and the AMV Hell segment. Fashion Show is being worked on now and will hopefully be up tonight (which will be updating both the YouTube AND Flickr links.)