Hi, all. I’m back from my break feeling refreshed and re-invigorated (at least as much as is possible considering my generally poor sleep habits and what-not). This past weekend I had the chance to head to Chicago, Illinois for Anime Central, one of the first anime conventions I ever attended and definitely one that’s worth popping back into every few years if you have a tolerance for big conventions.
The past couple of years the convention has been on a hiatus due to the pandemic, but like many other similar in-person events that had smaller online components in the interim, this year marked a (possibly financially obligatory) return to a more typical setting and format. Like my local convention, Anime Detour, Anime Central was forced to cancel its in-person aspect two years in a row simply due to the timing of when the event is scheduled (mid-late May), so I was curious to see how things were going to shake out – especially since ACen is something like 5 or 6 times as large as Anime Detour (in a normal year).
There was a bit of a cloud hanging over this convention, to be sure; Covid cases once again seem to be on an uptick, yet 3 days before the beginning of ACen the convention announced what appeared to be a major change to their masking and vaccination requirements that they’d previously insisted would not be altered prior to the event. Anime News Network reported on the situation as it unfolded earlier that week. Part of the fallout from this news were some staff resignations; being a part of a similar albeit smaller-scale event myself, I’ve seen firsthand the consequences of a strained volunteer staff, and to lose additional staff members, some of whom were reportedly from Covid-vulnerable populations, so close to the event seemed as though it might result in a catastrophic shortage for such a large convention. Though the convention partially reversed the policy a day or two later, requiring masks in essentially all indoor event spaces save for some of the hallways, I can only imagine that the damage was already done. I can’t speak to what may have been happening behind the scenes – there’s been some chatter regarding whether the original policy may have become unenforceable due to some disagreement with the venue – but whatever the cause of the change, it was certainly a source of stress.
The Trip
As per usual, we drove to the convention – from our home in Minneapolis and removing stops and breaks, the drive to suburban Chicago is typically around 6 hours, depending on traffic. There were two orders of business we wanted to take care of prior to reaching our hotel; the first was a stop for lunch at Mitsuwa Marketplace, which if you’re not familiar is sort of a Japanese indoor mall with a few shops, a grocery store, and a food court. The second was a stop at a local yarn shop in between the marketplace and the hotel. I’ve been managing my anxiety lately through the fiber arts (knitting and crocheting), and now every time I visit a different city I try to also seek out a local yarn shop to visit.
We arrived to Mitsuwa around 1pm and were somewhat surprised that it hadn’t yet gotten really busy – in the past this has typically been an initial stop for out-of-towners obtaining provisions to hold them over throughout the convention. ACen has historically been something of a food desert, but with the addition of an outlet mall with attached food court some years back, it’s been a lot easier to eat actual meals throughout the weekend. In any case, we (my spouse, a friend, and I) grabbed lunch and bubble tea from some of the shops. Afterward, we made a few purchases at the Kinokuniya book store, grabbed some drinks and snacks from the grocery store, which seemed to be undergoing some remodeling, and made sure to hit the Pastry House Hippo bakery for some various buns and rolls.
After that, we made a bit of a detour to Mosaic Yarn Studio in Mt. Prospect so that I could mark it off my list of things to do while out of town. Like many yarns stores I’ve been to in the past, it had a decent selection of yarn brands common to my area, along with some I wasn’t familiar with. I picked up a coordinated kit containing two colors of yarn (a gray and mustard yellow), some beads, and a leather clasp, meant to be used to make the Kairos Shawl, a pattern by Laura Nelkin (I’m not sure how usable the link will be to those of you who don’t use Ravelry, sorry!). Because I tend to have an… issue buying random pretty yarn that I don’t have a specific purpose for, I’m trying to stick to items with a stated purpose (kits, patterns, etc.) when I go to these random stores. I’m pretty sure I now have enough concrete projects to last me the rest of the year and then some.
After that, we made our way to our hotel. We stayed at the Loews Chicago O’Hare, which was located a couple of blocks South of the main convention center. This turned out to be pretty convenient, since we were close to the outlet mall as well as a little bit closer to a few other food places about a half of a mile further South that were walkable. The room was nice, with enough floor space for our friend to set up an inflatable mattress. It was also a little quieter than the main convention hotels and the elevators weren’t as difficult to catch.
Events and Shopping
When the convention schedule was released a couple of weeks prior to the event, I set to marking off the things I wanted to see or attend. Almost immediately I noticed a relative dearth of programming as compared to previous years. In the past, I’ve attended some really interesting panels and discussions related to various manga and anime, as well as art, theater, and culture. This year there were many time slots where I didn’t see anything I was interested in. I’m guessing that this is probably both a consequence of the general pandemic situation – while in the US we’re treating it as it’s mostly over, that’s not really the case – as well as the general make-up of the guests. The last time we were at the con, fan scholar Helen McCarthy was in attendance, as well as guests from an anime production studio in Japan (Kinema Citrus) whose work we generally enjoy. This time it was the more typical contingent of voice actors and such. I imagine that this was possibly a cost-saving measure, as local (US) voice talent appearance fees are more manageable that bringing multiple people in from Japan. That said, it was a bit of a disappointment for me to feel like there just wasn’t much programming that I wanted to see, especially since that’s typically the main reason I go to conventions.
That left a couple of bigger events I wanted to see, as well as some shopping I wanted to do. The main order of business was the Revue Starlight movie, which was having its US premiere on Friday night. Long-time readers will remember that I just love Revue Starlight, and I was really excited for this move. It definitely didn’t disappoint! While I’ll likely have something more extensive to say about it later, the brief word is that the music slaps (and there’s a lot of it) and it manages to continue from where the series left off without completely providing any point-by-point explanations. It’s all about character relationships as usual, which I think it one of the franchise’s strengths.
On Saturday I attended the Rightstuf/Nozomi industry panel (which appeared to be the only industry panel on the docket at all, though I didn’t look that closely). They didn’t really announce anything new (besides a Blu-ray release of Rental Magica, which previously had a DVD release), but they’re a company I really like and it was fun to see some of the people who work behind the scenes. One of the things I was specifically shopping for was the Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei release that Nozomi recently put out, but they didn’t bring any with them to stock the booth so I ended up purchasing it from my seat during the panel once I was reminded again. If you’re interested in the boxed set that comes with the book of notes you’ll want to order it soon – there are limited quantities left and they’re not going to re-print the book (though the actual show will still be available).
And… that was basically it. Early in the weekend I also attended an anime jeopardy panel that my spouse was interested in, but that sort of thing just isn’t my cup of tea. Setting aside the obligatory know-it-all dude playing the game who both monopolized the first round and also thought he was very funny, I don’t think those types of games tend to be very well-balanced in general. Either the questions are too basic to be a challenge, or they’re too attuned to the creator’s very specific tastes and impossible for others. Not to mention that this one had some dubious questions/answers (no, “shoujo” and “shounen” are not genres).
The shopping portion of the weekend was somewhat more successful. ACen has a very extensive dealers room with both industry booths and smaller sellers selling almost any kind of anime and fandom swag you can think of, from physical anime and manga releases, to body pillows, posters/wall art, model kits, figurines, and fashion. My spouse and I have put a moratorium on buying wall scrolls and other wall art, because we haven’t even put up a lot of the items we already have. But we had a few franchises in our heads that we were interested in buying items from, and that helped to guide our purchases.
The problem with having pretty broad tastes in anime and manga is that, while my tastes tend to overlap with what’s popular to some extent, there are also a lot of franchises and fandoms that aren’t nearly as popular and tend not to get much representation in dealers rooms. It makes sense – importing items can cost a lot of money, and US dealers want to make investments in what will sell. Unfortunately, though, that leads to very anemic variety in what can be found, in spite of the large scale of the sales floor. We ended up with a couple of figures from SSSS.Dynazenon – Chise and Gauma Popup Parade figures, as well as a Yume figure we randomly found during a last-minute walkthrough of the place on our way out. I also picked up some buttons and such from Revue Starlight and Shirobako that we happened to find digging through some bins at an import place. Beyond that I picked up a couple of sewing patterns from a booth specializing in general cosplay and kawaii-inspired fashion, which should be fun to mess around with.
The Artists Alley was similarly huge and I could have spent quite a bit of money there if I hadn’t limited myself to a couple of very specific fandoms and styles of items. I’m on a quest to put together a Goro Majima ita bag, and because Yakuza isn’t the biggest of fandoms in the world, I’ve been kind of grabbing what I see when I see it. My friend had assured me that there was Majima stuff in the Artists Alley, but it took me scouring every booth to finally find some charms and a couple of buttons. There were a couple of additional posters with some good Majima art, but unfortunately as I mentioned I’m not in the market for those items. I also picked up an Ogata (from Golden Kamuy) charm.
Beyond that, most of what we did was hang out with some other friends who were also attending the convention (we weren’t sure if they were going to be there and had assumed not, so it was a nice surprise when we happened to run into them on Saturday morning). We got dinner at a nice-ish restaurant and just kind of laughed and had a good time – something that’s honestly been difficult to do the last couple of years.
The last place we stopped on our way out of the convention on Sunday was gaming, where the convention had lots of arcade cabinets set up. In June we’ll be attending Summer Games Done Quick in Bloomington, Minnesota, and wanted to brush up on some of our rhythm game skills before that time (I’m mostly kidding – we don’t really have skills). Despite not being good at any of them, I really enjoy them. I got in a few games of Jubeat while my spouse got in a few last games of Scotto (a ping-pong ball bouncing game) and MaiMai, which looks like a washing machine.
One thing I’d really wanted to do this year was attend some more of the convention’s AMV programming. I run an AMV contest at the convention I staff, and I like to get some insight into how other conventions run their contests and programming. Unfortunately, even though there was a video room designated for AMVs, it didn’t appear to be in operation. I’m assuming this was an effect of the aforementioned staffing issues, but I was a little bit bummed to see this. While AMVs were a really big draw at conventions past, I’m getting the impression that the appeal may be fading, at least to the general convention-going public. I’m not sure if this was a calculated sacrifice or whether it was just fully due to staff fallout, but I hope they can bring it back next time.
Heading Out
We left around lunch time on Sunday. Before sitting down for an actual meal, we took a bit of a detour to a store a friend had recommended to us called Hello Tokyo in Niles, Illinois. My friend described it as “basically a Daiso,” which I’ve never been to but which I understand is similar to a dollar store or Five Below. It was a pretty cool place – they carry a lot of Daiso-branded products. I picked up a reusable tote bag, a Gundam water bottle, some food, and a couple of kitchen items.
After that, it was back to Mitsuwa for our final meal in town. This time the place was incredibly busy – I’m positive it being a weekend day was a contributor to that, as well as the fact that there were likely many other convention-goers leaving town at the same time. This time the udon noodle restaurant was open, and I got some of the best soup, noodles, and tempura I’ve had in a while. We also made another stop for baked goods before heading back to our car and back toward home.
Final Thoughts
I think it might be a little tempting to call this year at ACen a bust due to the lack of programming and some of the issues that sprung up literally days prior to opening day. I’m not going to indulge in any of that because I have some sense of the stress that the staff of the convention has to have been dealing with. While I can’t condone every decision, I also don’t know any of the background of those decisions nor the factors contributing to them, so I’ll leave that alone.
So leaving that aside and simply going by my experiences, I have to say I had a fun time. I wasn’t busy, but I think that was what I needed. I got to have some good food, see a few interesting things, and hang out with friends. I had down time to do some knitting in my hotel room. The weather was pretty decent (at least as far as I’m concerned – I tend to prefer cloudy and cooler over the Summer heat). I got to see a movie I ended up really enjoying. I got to leave my normal life behind for a weekend and just hang out and people-watch and window shop. It was, dare I say, a pretty fun time.
I’m not sure if there’s anyone else out there reading who was also at the convention, but I’d certainly be interested to hear your thoughts. I know that there were a lot of negative reactions to the Covid protocol changes and I’d certainly be interested to hear more from those who were more directly affected by the change.