Anime Boston 2013

So, about a month ago, I went to Anime Boston with my friends and I had a blast. I didn't really take too many pictures of anything besides Raj and Origa at their concert Saturday night, though.

Pictures: http://caelk.shutterfly.com/pictures/1085

I'd have to say that this was a pretty good con. Normally, I gauge how good a con is by the guest list, and by how much time I try to waste at places like the gaming room and stuff. Well, the guest list... wasn't exceptional as we didn't have any Japanese voice actors, but I was kinda glad Raj Ramayya was there. I heard of him first when I played Gungrave, and he's one of those minor names you want to do well 'cause you know nobody's heard of him much. I grabbed his CD there and got him to sign it and my American, used (and slightly banged up) copy of the game. It now bears two signatures (the other by one of the mechanical designers, Noriyuki Zinguzi), and I am happy.

The director and producer of Sword Art Online, Tomohiko Ito and Shinichiro Kashiwada, were there, and I got them to sign a Sword Art card box for me.

So, even if I wanted some seiyuu popping into town, the guests were cool.

The panels... actually kept me busy. This is not something I'm really used to, as I have memories of hanging out in the dealer's room for a sheer lack of anything else to do. But that didn't happen here. On Friday, I went to the Idolm@ster panel (of course) first thing, and the guys there did a pretty good job of explaining all the little in-jokes and references of the characters. The rest of the day was spent on the initial dealer's room scouting run, signing sessions, and waiting for the Yousei Teikoku concert to open. The guitarists got to show off a little bit during the concert (with varying levels of epicness), and everyone got to show their (over?) abundance of hair, but well... the music could have been great, but because of the horrible sound mixing, I couldn't really tell. Vocals were frequently drowned out, which was a real shame since the performers, individually, were all great - it just never came together because of the atrocious acoustic setup. I think more care should have been placed in a sound check.

On Saturday, I spent the morning... fixing my cheap hakama since one of the straps ripped. Thankfully, there was a cosplay repair station at the con, and it was staffed by a rather flustered (understandably) but incredibly helpful person who could sew. Which is good, because I can't. After it was fixed, I had lunch and went around to a bunch of panels. The swordsmanship panel... unfortunately wasn't as good as it could have been, and I think it all was because they weren't allowed to bring swords in this year. Security to the place was really tight - there were bag checks and sniffer dogs, so to a certain extent I can't really blame them... but at the same time, couldn't they have brought shinai? I dunno. Maybe security said no to that too.

Other than that, I went to the indie music panel, which was rather enlightening, before getting dinner and waiting in line for the Raj/Origa concert. I think they got their sound mixing together that second day, and the concerts were pretty good. Raj... was hilarious. He sang some of his songs, cracked a bunch of jokes, and introduced us to the intricacies of gang-bowing in Japan. He even was a gentleman and allowed us to do it to each other, so we could see how it felt like from both sides of the fence. As he disappeared into the darkness of the backstage, his maniacal madman laugh left us cheering for Origa to come on stage. Past this point, it was pretty much a standard concert, though without a backup band (hey, this is Origa we're talking about). Photography was allowed, and so I took a bunch of pictures. Maybe too much, but eh. After the concert, they were selling CDs (and a Raj T-Shirt), and since I was a loser and came to the con with only Gungrave to sign between the two, I snapped up everything they had.

Sunday at the con was like Sunday at most cons, though since Raj and Origa were doing a signing, I went to that too. My final dealer's room check left me with all my con buys coming from either ChinAnime or Anime Sekai, with just enough time to check out Raj and Origa's panel before leaving the con... running all the way to our train.

So, it was a great con, with a healthy dose of guests, interesting panels, and a few concerts. Yes, they could've improved a couple of things, but I was busy having fun the whole time, which is good. About the only thing that we missed that would've been interesting to go to was a bar/lounge where you could have your drinks with relaxing Yoko Kanno music in the background. We would've had to choose between that and the Yousei Teikoku concert, though.

Well, next con on the list is AWA in September - ZUN's going to be there, as well as Yuu Asakawa! Time to get my figure bases signed...

Pictures: http://caelk.shutterfly.com/pictures/1085

... And as a final note about con harassment, just don't do it. We had problems with this, so apparently there are people out there who lack anything resembling common sense, as surprising as it might sound. So, I'll just pass the message around. Out-of-the-blue glomping is odd enough. I shouldn't have to go into what happens when you try anything closer than that. If nothing else, some people's reflexes could be violent. Just sayin'.