This year will be the …fourth? year I will be attending AnimeBoston.
The first one was a fluke. Brendan texted me there was a convention in town and to meet him at Boylston station. I had nothing better to do, so I met him and a friend of his named Thanh. A fateful first meeting to be sure. All that aside, not realizing we needed to register and pay to get into the dealer room, we went in anyway. It was cool to be sure, but it was only the dealer room. The convention was spread across multiple venues in the city so we stayed in the building with the dealer room. We wandered up and down aisles for hours looking at all the cool schwag. That was the first time I had seen a Naruto headband. Two weeks, 52 episodes, and over a hundred chapters of manga later, I was all caught up and hooked on the series. Certainly not my first anime series obsession, just my latest. All in all it was a good time.
The second convention was significantly better since it was entirely encapsulated within the Hynes Convention Center in the middle of the city. I was actually dressed up for this one. We walked around the dealer room for what seemed like the entire day on Saturday and once that closed, I went panel hopping while Brendan and Thanh decided they had a more urgent need to go bowling. I sat in for a few amusing panels which I enjoyed until they returned for the highlight of the evening, Dick and Buster’s Live Hentai Dubbing Extravaganza. Basically audience members are selected and brought to the front to do live voiceovers for animated japanese porn. Good times. I couldn’t stay for the whole thing, but we saw most of it. I was exhausted and had a terrible headache.
Last year, Brendan, Thanh and I went again with the extra company of Brenna and a brief cameo of Paul. The prior year, Brendan had won a prize in the charity auction. He got first pick of any table in the artists’ alley. It turned out to be a great idea. We were right against a wall next to the door of the hall. I gave out over 100 business cards for PowetTV, Brenna sold some art, Thanh sold all of his ribbon origami fishy things and Brendan sold 2 shirts. Not only that, but it gave us a base of operations. We could put down all of our stuff at the table and take turns going to panels and the dealer room, while the others sat down to relax and mind the table. It was by far the best plan of action we had yet and we all vowed to do the same next year. Brendan decided not to bid in the charity auction though and to sign up for a table the normal way through registration on the site.
AnimeBoston this year will be in March. For months, we all have been eagerly monitoring the AnimeBoston front page for updates on when the artist alley registration would open. Unfortunately, that update never came. It was posted on the Artist Alley page of the site only. Thus we missed registration 2 weeks ago and didn’t find out until today.
Brendan and I are following up a couple of unlikely leads, but its looking as though we will be returning to a nomadic approach to this convention. It is not a prospect we look forward to.
The charity auction will be a top priority this year.
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