May 22, 2011 3:32 PM
Anime Central 2011 impressions
On May 20th and 21st I attended the Anime Central, a Japanese anime, culture and gaming convention that took place at the Donald E. Stevens convention center in Rosemont, IL. near Chicago and these are my day impressions during the con.
Friday:
- The opening ceremonies were nothing all that special, was awesome to see the J-Pop/rock band and biggest con guest FLOW up there but nothing else. Still is a bummer they couldn't get any more decent Japanese guests this year.
- The dealer area/artisit's alley areas were practially the exact same as last year although there was this huge glass door display of completed Gundam models and some others (see my pictures). My only purchase this time around was one t-shirt which has the Portal companion cube design on it.
- Nothing all too special in terms of cosplay that day, also seems like Deadmau5 is a pretty popular choice this year, I saw at least 7 of them.
- Becuase I had nothing else better to do, I got Spike Spencer's autograph. :) I would of brought my copy of the Eva 1.11 to sign but would of really helped if ACen put the autograph schedule in the program book, they dropped the ball on that one.
- The gaming area got a big upgrade, especially in the video game area where you have a bunch of the quarter machines and then nextdoor you have a room where you can play almost every home console in exsistance, from Atari 2600, NES, Sega Master Sys to the currents. Someone even brought in a Philips CD-I and I think the only systems missing were a 3DO and Turdographics 16.
- Before the FLOW concert I had to endure through some fairly mediocre singing from a rock-anime cover band, the dudes on the instruments were decent but that singer really needs work bad (or just quit).
- FLOW was the absolute highlight of the whole freaking day! Practically played every single of their anime song work and then some, even some of their tunes sounded highly better than their recorded tracks ("World's End" and "Go!" were big highlights). They were also selling their anime best of collection but at $27 a pop which I got suckered into buying.
Saturday:
- While I surprizingly got there super early I checked out the moring AMV contest entries, only saw six videos and all but one of them didn't impress me one bit so I ditched it. (and that "one" involved Soul Eater's Exclibur and the "I'm So Super" song from the South Park movie, check it)
- Next was supposed to be the Funimation industry panel but due to the small room size they moved it to 5:30 during the cosplay masq so I got shafted, although I heard they got the series "Kore wa Zombie Desu ka?" and, duh, of course the new Fullmetal Alchemist movie.
- I did go to the bad anime panel and was only random clips from such artistic classics as M.D. Geist, Art of Fighting, Garzey's Wing and Harmageddon. Lucky people even got DVD copies of some of those said movies and as well as comics, soundtracks and even a freaking VHS movie copy of M.D. Geist
- After that for the hell of it I went to the Touhou panel and it went like this: imagine three dudes cosplaying as Patchouli, Fujiwara and Suika from the game series. Then imagine them doing Touhou 101 and a Q&A session IN CHARACTOR. Definately not what I was expecting, and not only that but didn't really get into any of the fan creations which I'm more of a fan of than the game's themselves.
- And the last item of the agenda was the almighty cosplay masquarde and this year had some really impressive walk-ons, some highlights were the two Shiva bike halves from Final Fantasy XIII, both versions of Love Machine from Summer Wars (the god-like version and the account legion version) and a blue Gouf from Gundam 08th MS Team. Sadly none of the skits really impressed me the same way. Also would make more sense if I actually watched some of these shows they were paroding, Hetalia is easy to understand but I've only seen 4 episodes of Black Butler for Christ's sake. Also sadly I didn't take any photos from the masq due to the blah seating I was in, either this or take photos of a projected screen but I'm sure other websites had this covered why better than I did.
Overall this year gets a "C-", If it weren't for FLOW I would of not even cared about coming this year but hopefully next year will bring bigger and better stuff. Maybe see you next year guys!
Friday:
- The opening ceremonies were nothing all that special, was awesome to see the J-Pop/rock band and biggest con guest FLOW up there but nothing else. Still is a bummer they couldn't get any more decent Japanese guests this year.
- The dealer area/artisit's alley areas were practially the exact same as last year although there was this huge glass door display of completed Gundam models and some others (see my pictures). My only purchase this time around was one t-shirt which has the Portal companion cube design on it.
- Nothing all too special in terms of cosplay that day, also seems like Deadmau5 is a pretty popular choice this year, I saw at least 7 of them.
- Becuase I had nothing else better to do, I got Spike Spencer's autograph. :) I would of brought my copy of the Eva 1.11 to sign but would of really helped if ACen put the autograph schedule in the program book, they dropped the ball on that one.
- The gaming area got a big upgrade, especially in the video game area where you have a bunch of the quarter machines and then nextdoor you have a room where you can play almost every home console in exsistance, from Atari 2600, NES, Sega Master Sys to the currents. Someone even brought in a Philips CD-I and I think the only systems missing were a 3DO and Turdographics 16.
- Before the FLOW concert I had to endure through some fairly mediocre singing from a rock-anime cover band, the dudes on the instruments were decent but that singer really needs work bad (or just quit).
- FLOW was the absolute highlight of the whole freaking day! Practically played every single of their anime song work and then some, even some of their tunes sounded highly better than their recorded tracks ("World's End" and "Go!" were big highlights). They were also selling their anime best of collection but at $27 a pop which I got suckered into buying.
Saturday:
- While I surprizingly got there super early I checked out the moring AMV contest entries, only saw six videos and all but one of them didn't impress me one bit so I ditched it. (and that "one" involved Soul Eater's Exclibur and the "I'm So Super" song from the South Park movie, check it)
- Next was supposed to be the Funimation industry panel but due to the small room size they moved it to 5:30 during the cosplay masq so I got shafted, although I heard they got the series "Kore wa Zombie Desu ka?" and, duh, of course the new Fullmetal Alchemist movie.
- I did go to the bad anime panel and was only random clips from such artistic classics as M.D. Geist, Art of Fighting, Garzey's Wing and Harmageddon. Lucky people even got DVD copies of some of those said movies and as well as comics, soundtracks and even a freaking VHS movie copy of M.D. Geist
- After that for the hell of it I went to the Touhou panel and it went like this: imagine three dudes cosplaying as Patchouli, Fujiwara and Suika from the game series. Then imagine them doing Touhou 101 and a Q&A session IN CHARACTOR. Definately not what I was expecting, and not only that but didn't really get into any of the fan creations which I'm more of a fan of than the game's themselves.
- And the last item of the agenda was the almighty cosplay masquarde and this year had some really impressive walk-ons, some highlights were the two Shiva bike halves from Final Fantasy XIII, both versions of Love Machine from Summer Wars (the god-like version and the account legion version) and a blue Gouf from Gundam 08th MS Team. Sadly none of the skits really impressed me the same way. Also would make more sense if I actually watched some of these shows they were paroding, Hetalia is easy to understand but I've only seen 4 episodes of Black Butler for Christ's sake. Also sadly I didn't take any photos from the masq due to the blah seating I was in, either this or take photos of a projected screen but I'm sure other websites had this covered why better than I did.
Overall this year gets a "C-", If it weren't for FLOW I would of not even cared about coming this year but hopefully next year will bring bigger and better stuff. Maybe see you next year guys!
Posted by
GodHandGuts
| May 22, 2011 3:32 PM |
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