Acen 2011 notes
Convention was mostly eventless; there were an incredible number of boring panels on the schedule. Almost every time we tried to enter a panel room, it was full, because they’d put all the popular panels inside tiny hotel meeting rooms, and put all the unpopular panels inside the main events rooms ((One was a webcomic author retelling the plot to his comic, frame by frame, to an room about 1/10 full.)). Besides that, nearly all the convention seems to occur in the dealer’s room, so we walked around that for most of the weekend.
The FLOW concert (they did that one Eureka Seven OP) was delayed. Instead they put on SWEK, aka two old white guys on guitar and drums who seemed to be escapees from an 80s metal band and a woman wearing a nerd-joke shirt whose singing was even worse than the people at con karaoke. They butchered some assorted 2000s anisongs for an hour. I’m not sure the instrumentalists had ever heard the songs before. Was the “no cameras” rule meant to hide their copyright violation? Are they con staff? Who will solve this mystery?
Ex-internet forum moderator “Menacer” won a prize by completing the sentence “Where the hell is Jack…”. The prize was the Mecha Masters box set including the soundtrack to M.D. Geist II.
I mistook a Pokémon cosplayer for a Cyborg 009 cosplayer, which I found out when she complained that everyone she’d met that day had asked her if she was a Cyborg 009 cosplayer, and what was a Cyborg 009 anyway? I told her but I’m sure she forgot.
We went into a Vocaloid panel (there were two, for no reason, but of course one of them was full) where they spent the first half explaining “what is Vocaloid,” and then asked the audience “how did you get into Vocaloid”? If they can answer that, they didn’t need the explanation, right!?
The Madoka count was 4 Mami, 3 Homura, 2 Kyouko, 1 Sayaka, 1 Kyubey, 0 Madoka. Mami is the most American, I guess.
I had a really good steak. Half the group went to Alinea and never actually attended the convention.
Photos here.
Update: I happened to check the guest list for Fanime, the next weekend, and noticed both the X Japan guy and FLOW are also attending there, where you probably won’t have to hear any local con bands first.