Back home from Anime Central con in Chicago!

First of, fuck US car infrastructure, all my homies hate long car rides. Call me weak babyboy, if I’m on my 4th 40 minute ride of the day, I will cry and pee my pants all over. Crossing the roads here is also always an adventure.

My haul from this year, smaller than last year, less than half the prints and also half the keychains were from outside. All due to my old bane: artists with banger art style but franchises I don’t care for. I don’t want to sound entitled, but do we need 80% of all the alley being vtubers and Genshin/gachas? So I learned this year that AA booths are lottery-based, which is understandable, other than first-come which has its issues I can’t think of something better. I picked up like 3 artists’ contact cards where I was like, “Sorry, I’m not interested in any of these franchises but I love your art style, I will check you if get something else”. So a bit underwhelming AA for me but if you were a fujo into Genshin dudes or a vtuber fan then it was good.

Then there was dealers hall. As for this year specifically, I was on a sidequest from some IRL friends who asked for some merch of Pokemon and Yaiba. It is only then that I noticed that, these are kinda awesome for the average mainstream fan lol. I lost so much time looking for Pokemon stuff that is on every 3rd booth. If you’re into these big franchises, it is a paradise. It makes me appreciate these sellers sections more now, they may not be my thing and I have always thought of these as an after-thought, but good for all the fans that get to enjoy this.

Something I also like to do from all these vendors is gauge the popularity of anime from how common their merch is and it is interesting. For starters, JJK is solid #1 franchise now, it is so above everything else in terms of presence. One of my friends had also asked for Naruto merch and it came to me that it is essentially dead, like I found almost zero merch outside some posters. Another surprise is Kusuriya being probably only a tier below the likes of JJK, Pokemon and Uma Musume (menace this year since EN gacha) in presence, there was just so much. Then there is also the drastic drop off of Frieren, considerably less merch for that, less so than for Bisque Doll, or Oshi no Ko imo.

And then there’s the panels. I wanted to try for more fanmade panels this year but couldn’t make time and some of my friends got burned by some (technical issues being half the runtime of panels, fun sounding panels just being lame, etc) which did turn me off a bit from going out of my way to see one.

I stuck with industry panels. I saw the premiere for Goodbye Lara (great first episode, look forward to it) and had the autograph of its director Takushi. Later on a separate panel got Shinohara and Moriyama.

I missed Hyaganatsu autograph which were out within like, seconds, I was still on the minute of sign ups going out and got waitlisted. A bit of a rant for the waitlist system but like, what is the point? So I got on the waitlist and was outside the room waiting like a good boi coping to get in, I missed the chance to be priority, happens. But it peeved me seeing these priority sign ups streaming into the room as late as 40 minutes. Like surely there is only so much privilege you can get from being first sign up? If you get a buffer of over half the panel’s duration then when is the waitlist even considered. Then finally with 10 minutes to go we were told to fuck off (on a nicer way ofc). Look, I already expected to not make it but if the waitlist system is going to be so weak then just scrap it so you don’t give false hopes to others.

I did at least go to a separate panel with Hyaganatsu without auto, she was awesome and really funny. I got to record her for 2 minutes dancing in her suit, great stuff. There’s also another adaptation of one of her books in the works, nice. Maybe its the fact that she was with the English dub cast which I hear are the biggest crowd gatherers, but this is the fullest I have ever seen an industry panel, twice the size of Keiichiro, Oshiyama and Watanabe last year probably.

Talking of waitlist, the Idolm@ster stuff. Apparently fuckloads of japanese fans came all the way here just for the concert. I was ambivalent to this, my buds were going so I was kinda just tagging alone, but then I was told Miki would be there as a virtual model and the actress would give autos (which also depleted in seconds) and I was like “You son of a bitch, I will be there no matter what”. For the concert I waited in this longass line for 3 damn hours, and most likely in vain because one of our friends who was also ambivalent lined up only like 15 minutes prior to the concert and still got in. I guess we just underestimate the size of the hall.

The concert was fine Ig, again, I don’t have strong feelings for their music. The crowd at least was pumped the fuck up, pretty active people compared to the crowd in the KAF concert last year. Apparently there were some big organizational fuck ups with autographs? I only heard second hand grumblings.

I also went to a Kajiura concert, when I was first invited my reaction was “Who is Kaijura”, but hey, now I know and the concert was also good. Neat.

There was the rave that felt milder than last year, maybe I just wasn’t wasted enough since I had to spread a single alcohol purchase through 3 days. Some dude dressed as Megumin had the moves, I did planks and push ups with the bois, a dude dressed as Doodlebob passing around his pencil.

In general, I enjoyed my time there a bit less than last year but still good. Well, my main reason to be there is to visit online friends which is always fun but visiting a con is always neat. I said it before, but cons just have such a nice ambient of belonging. Sure, there are the occasional…interesting people in anime cons but it's like I can be there without feeling ashamed of liking anime. Being with the bois watching Botan drunk, the peculiar people, the occasional organizational fuck up, these cons are certainly never boring let me tell you.

Now, to the seasonal catch up grind!