AnimeNEXT 2015: My First Anime Convention

Hey everyone! I hope y'all are enjoying the start of Fall. I'm happy things are coolin off a bit, but it's a little too chilly for me in the morning. Anywho, I realized that I still hadn't wrote about my time at AnimeNEXT! The time has really flown by. I can't believe we are almost done with September. Watch winter feel super long lol It was my first time attending an anime convention and it was a good experience. The con consisted of three hotels that were in close proximity to each other. There were a few things that I wished staff had done differently, but I'll get to later in this post.

Friday
Tiff and I made it to pick up our badges at around 10:30. Traveling in wasn't so bad. We took a train from Penn Station and then took a taxi to our hotel. We were excited to find out that our hotel had the gaming room! We weren't pumped to stand in a line in the heat for an hour and a half waiting to get our badges -_- It was hot as a mug!

Don't ask me where I'm looking lol

Pic from when I tried my wig on the night before.  I was feeling myself haha

We headed straight to our hotel across the street from the convention center. As soon as we get in our room we start hearing these porno sounds, and we're like tf?! Is someone just watching porn really loudly, but then it kept going so we decided to be rude and make noises back lol I tried on my maid outfit that I had to fight tooth and nail to get from Bodyline (long story short they're customer service sucks). It was my first time trying it on; it was too big and there were stains on it -_- Tiff helped me salvage what I could of it and headed over to grab food before losing ourselves in the dealer's room. The food at the convention center was okay and nicely priced.

Maid outfit looks

The dealer's room was really nice and there were so many things that I wanted to buy. I decided to fully look around before dropping any cash. The artist alley was pretty sweet and Lolita fashion accessories, art, and other accessories. After exploring artist alley and the dealer's room, we headed back to the game room in our hotel because we wanted to kill a little time before heading to the Flow concert. . They had some consoles, DDR, Taiko Drum Master, and a few other Japanese arcade games. I was so happy that they had the taiko drumming game. I had seen people play it online and thought that it looked like a blast. The line to play a round was super long but worth the wait. And you know I had to hit up DDR!

Uh huh this my sh**

We checked the time and realized we needed to get back to main stage for the concert. We stood in the long line and waited. Sadly, we couldn't get in. I remember seeing on the event app that there was a manga library, so I suggested to Tiff that we check it out since there was a yaoi panel that we wanted to go to that was in the same hotel.

The manga library had a good selection. I was hoping to read the first volume of the original Fushigi Yugi, but had to settle for reading the sequel Genbu Kaiden. The panel room was super close to the manga library so we figured would line up about 45 minutes before.

We came out the manga library and the freakin line was huge even though we were pretty early. This is is where one of my major issues with AnimeNEXT started. We were waited in line for a while only to find out we couldn't get in which is fine, but we were wayyyyy down the line and there was no way we could get in due to the size of the room. You would think they would have had someone count and then break up the rest of the line once they were at capacity. Instead they let us stay in line and upon checking the time Tiff and I were like it should have started. So we go up and they're like there's no more room. Meanwhile another guy had just checked our id for the panel. We left and told people in the long line behind us that there was no more room.

Another big issues was line formation. Staff weren't recognizing lines that had been formed which ended up with people being in line first for panels, but not being able to get in. I personally didn't experience this because I checked with staff multiple times while being in the line.

We just decided to head back to our hotel to the game room for more DDR and Taiko Drum Master. We were slightly exhausted from standing in the sun for a while and need some rest. Luckily there were no more porn noises to disrupt our sleep lol 

Saturday

We woke up kinda late this day, but it wasn't a big deal because we didn't have any panels we were going to. The main thing we wanted to go to was Uncle Yo's panel. Tiffany had seen him before and said he was really good. I cosplayed Chihiro from Spirited Away this day and it was perfect choice because it was ridiculously hot. We decided to skip the fashion show, grab food, walk around the dealer's room and artist alley before heading back to the hotel for another break.

We attended a panel at around 2 or 3 pm called The Abriged and Parodies panel. It's a series on youtube where different people will supply hilarious dub overs to anime. Some of the dubbers present were the creators behind Soul Eater, Mega Man, Pokemon, and Katekyo Hitman Reborn. Most of them were pretty funny.

We decided to start lining up for Uncle Yo after since we had already had bad luck getting into things. Believe me when I say the line was sooooo long. We thought we were too far back to get it, but luckily we were actually at the front of the line. We just couldn't tell lol We ended up making friends with the guy in line in front of us. He was really nice. He was talking to us about how the lining up this year was organized. Staff would say they wouldn't acknowledge a line that people formed on their own and would disperse it but they didn't actually do it. So if arrived super early you would end up being told not to line up and then end up having to get in line behind people you were had been in front of because they just decided to make a line.

Uncle Yo was walking around with his puppet outside and interacting with people in line. He even came up to Tiffany. She was cosplaying Levi from Attack on Titan and he was cracking jokes with her. I thought it was pretty cool how he came out in the line considering how hot it was.

Upon entering the panel room, we could tell that they picked a good size room for it. We were in the front with a great view. He and his puppet came out by lip syncing to Stronger Than You from Steven Universe. Everyone was singing along and really hype. I really enjoyed his panel and thought he was very funny.

After the panel, we headed back to our hotel. We were gonna try to go to the rave, but we ended up eating back at our hotel and watching tv. We're so basic lol I think we may have headed to the game rooms again and played a round or two before heading to bed.

Sunday
The last day of the con we didn't have too much planned. There was a panel I wanted to go to really badly called Kamikakushi by a group called Study of Anime. It was basically looking at stories where a character lives in a spirit world or is taken by spirits in Japanese anime. It did not disappoint; the panelists were very well read and really dug into the topic. They talked about it in relation to shows like Escaflowne, Inuyasha, and Fushigi Yuugi to name a few. I love that a within kamikakushi story the main character becomes more in tune with themselves and become more mature when they leave. They can be influenced by the world they were in or influence it.

After the panel we headed to the dealer's room one last time which was super packed. We looked around the artist alley for a bit and then Tiff had a Haikyuu! Photo shoot. She cosplayed Kenma from Haikyuu! this day and was going to attend a photo shoot with a bunch of other cosplayers from the series. There was a volleyball net set up in a grassy area of one of the hotels, so they decided to have the shoot over there since it's a sports anime about volleyball. People had been playing volleyball all weekend, but it was mostly non Haikyuu cosplayers which I thought was funny.

After the photo shoot we headed back to the city and I meet up with Boba for a bubble tea date and hung out with him that night and the next day too.

He's such a cutie

It's funny because we had just found this bubble tea place that was near his apartment, but he was moving to a new place a few weeks later lol That's the second time that's happened. When he used to leave in Queens we found this amazing wing place a month before he moved. 

Overall, I had a really good time at the convention minus the few hiccups with line management. We heard before the con began that it would be moving to Atlantic City. We'll see if we end up going. I would love to see more Lolita fashion at the con. From what Tiffany explained to me there has always been a bunch of Lolitas and Lolita brands there, but that wasn't the case this year. I am excited to see what a larger con space could mean for AnimeNEXT.  I haven't ever been to Atlantic City, so it would give me another reason to check it out if we do decide to go. I hope everyone that attended ANext this year had a great time!