AnimeNEXT: The Worst Convention I've Ever Been To: Fighting for Fun Against All Odds

What happens when you go to a convention and it seems nothing is set up to allow the attendees to have fun? You make your own fun. AnimeNEXT 2013 had a lot of things go wrong. I'm not even talking about the torrential downpours on Friday that flooded the covered walkway between the convention center and the adjacent hotels where the panels and contests were held. You can't control the weather. I'm talking man-made errors that put a damper on the weekend.

I was really excited to attend AnimeNEXT this year. They're the same group that put together the wonderful MangaNEXT convention that I raved about last year. I assumed they would, once again, put the focus on the fans who pay to show up and have a good time. They didn't.

When I arrived on Friday morning, it was chaos. The rain couldn't be avoided but the inconsistent directions from volunteers/staff and lack of signs could have been. When one person says to get out of the building through the front door (straight into the rainy parking lot), another says to head into the convention hotel, and another says to go to the show floor immediately, you kind of freeze up. You can't split in three to follow all the directions. It doesn't help that there were security workers trying to get people to leave the information booth because too many people were confused about what to do.

But that's first day registration chaos. Maybe you could write that off as a simple series of misunderstandings.

I walked into the convention hotel and got all my gear ready to go to my first panel. I just needed to find where it was. I looked at the schedule and it said to go to room 2. I decided to locate all the panel rooms listed on the map so I would know where to go all weekend. 1, 2, and 3 were found without issue. 5 and 6 were a bit more problematic; there was no room 6. Room 5 was switched to 4 and Room 6 was switched to 5. All I heard when going to panels that day was confused people trying to find the mysterious Room 4 that wasn't on the convention map. There were also unlabeled workshop rooms and the decision not to distinguish between Main Events A and Main Events B on the schedule.

Typos happen. It couldn't be that big a deal, right?

The first panel I went to started 15 minutes late. It would have been 10 minutes late, but the convention staff decided to browbeat the panelists for showing up late for five minutes. Their excuse? The roads were starting to flood and the drive in took longer than expected. They ran a great panel on samurai stereotypes in anime and manga but they were clearly flustered for most of it.

Maybe there was something in the contract about the lesser-known panelists being penalized if they showed up late. It could just have sounded worse to the line wrapped around the corner than it actually was.

I showed up to the second panel and got my notes set up. I recognized the panelist from MangaNEXT the year before; she ran a great manga drawing workshop. Then she informed the room that her Japanese language and culture workshop had been moved to this room at this time slot and she had no idea where the panel on gender tropes in josei manga and anime was. She repeated this over and over until she started her workshop.

The staff at the door had no idea why the schedule at the door wasn't changed or where the other panel was. They did nothing to help the panelist answer questions or restore order. The workshop itself was great and I'm now far less intimidated to learn Japanese. I did have an article planned that was going to contrast the samurai panel with the gender trope panel for a broader look at gender identity in anime and manga; that's not happening now, obviously. I tried to find out if the other panel was cancelled or rescheduled, but no one I asked could give me a straight answer.

This is where I began to think that the people running the convention weren't really focused on the fans at all. The panels were high quality. The guest list and main events looked impressive. The organization left a lot to be desired.

My next big event was the Opening Ceremony. I looked up some videos from previous years and was excited to get some photos and film the event. I had a huge video planned that was going to represent fan culture at AnimeNEXT 2013 with clips from the big events, photos, and interviews with cosplayers and attendees. I knew that wasn't going to happen before the hour-long Opening Ceremony was finished.

Press were instructed to check in with one of two staff members 10 minutes before the Main Events started. We would be seated at that time in a special press section. Two minutes before the Opening Ceremony started, the three lingering press badge holders walked in and set up. One took a seat in the front and kept his tripod really low; another crouched on the floor between the front and back half of the auditorium; I went to the back of the room where no one was sitting and set up.

I expected to have my badge checked since no one guided me to press seating and I did; I did not expect to see an aggressive security guard doing laps between the three press people in the room, talking directly into the shotgun mics on the cameras so the footage was routinely ruined. New rules were made up on the fly about who we could or could not video or photograph that could have been explained if the press policies were actually followed at the event. When I packed up and left for another panel, I heard the convention staff complaining about how the press just walked in and did whatever they wanted and how it couldn't happen again.

That was when I knew that video shoots and main events weren't happening for me at AnimeNEXT. If they can't even stick to the rules we all agreed to, I wasn't even going to try to push it. I'd do my standard con write-ups of individual panels and cosplay and write it off.

Keep reading.

I went to the next panel I had slated on my schedule and encountered other huge problems at the convention. Here's a bulleted list of why I didn't go back the rest of the weekend:

• The panel rooms for popular topics like Pokemon were so small that if you didn't line up at least 30 minutes before, you weren't getting in.
• The convention staff hired to film and photograph AnimeNEXT 2013 routinely would literally step in front of your photos to direct 5 minute impromptu photo shoots with cosplayers.
• At a hotel and convention center with only a few couches in the lobby, the volunteers were told to not let anyone sit on the floor anywhere at AnimeNEXT.
• Gigantic panel rooms were reserved for any panel with a big name guest on it, even if the topic only drew 20 to 30 people.
• Security staff routinely acted like bouncers at a club, getting aggressive with attendees who were doing such outrageous things as meeting up for a fandom photo shoot or waving hi to friends.
• The schedule was constantly changed with no updates posted on any panel rooms and the information desk completely unable to answer questions.
• Some press pass holders were breaking the rules (not even most, just some), bullying their way into panels ahead of the line when we all agreed to general seating for all but the Main Events.

I didn't want to be associated with that behavior. I've been to too many good conventions to think this level of disorganization and poor communication was acceptable. I knew that something bad would happen before the weekend was up and I didn't want to be there for it. I was right.

Did you hear about the cosplay pillow controversy at AnimeNEXT? It's a lovely story of exploitation and con staff getting their honey badger on over legitimate complaints from attendees.

Cosplayer Marie Gray previously dealt with 2 Image Solutions at another convention. 2ImageSolutions does 3D/360 cosplay photos and offers a number of custom products. Gray was shocked to find out that 2ImageSolutions was selling pillows at the convention were here likeness on them. She had signed a release saying her picture could be used for promotional purposes, not commercial purposes. The fans at AnimeNEXT banded together and got 2ImageSolutions removed from the show on Saturday night. They were supposed to be banned for the weekend.

Sunday morning, the convention staff let 2ImageSolutions back in. The company told the staff they had contracts signed that allowed them to use the photos for promotional purposes at conventions. Think about that: the company point blank said they were selling licensed promotional merchandise--commercial activity--and the convention let them back in after throwing them out for doing the same thing the day before. The only difference was the insistence that the cosplayers signed contracts letting him sell promotional merchandise; when confronted about contracts, the seller couldn't produce copies with the cosplayers' actual signatures on them or text referring to commercial rights. The seller refused to remove or even sell the merchandise to the cosplayers depicted on it. 2ImageSolutions has since admitted they were in the wrong and removed the merchandise.

But why did AnimeNEXT let them back in the building at all? This is a microcosm of the myriad of problems at the convention.

Why were all the rules broken by some press people being ignored? Why were the panelists being forced to face the brunt of the convention's mistakes again and again? Why were the fans attending the convention being punished for the poor facility chosen for the convention?

I don't know. I just know that this is a convention I will not be attending again in the future. No convention is perfect, but this is the first one I've ever been to that you couldn't pay me to go back to again. How something this disorganized has lasted this long and developed a reputation this strong I'll never know. I don't even care about burning brides at this point. I hold myself and my work to a high standard that this convention did not even come close to reaching.

The one small silver lining is that, despite the convention's every efforts, the people who paid to be there found ways to have fun. They met up with other fans who liked the same things. They bought really cool fan art in Artist Alley and found great deals on all kinds of merch in the dealer room. The panels they could get into were top quality and most of the volunteer staff were very helpful.

Check out the cosplay gallery below from the first day. These are the only shots I could salvage with the photo poachers on staff at the convention.