Anime USA

First let me give my sincere thanks to everyone who worked and volunteered their time this weekend so that we could play and have so much fun.

Now, at this con, you don’t really need to get there Thursday night. I suggest getting there one hour after the posted time for registration on Friday morning. Ignoring my own advice, we arrived at the con around 7:00 PM Thursday evening.

The parking lot next to the hotel wasn’t open so we used the valet parking. It was quick and efficient. We got a bell hop to help us with our bags, checked in using the kiosk in the lobby, and were in our room in minutes! All hotels should be this smooth!

We grabbed a burger at the bar and waited for registration. Thursday evening registration started a few minutes late and then only had one station open, but the short line moved fast. This year we got a goody bag with a lanyard and some anime post cards. The art work on the program guide and badges was fantastic. We were awoken Friday morning to the sound of five jack hammers outside our room as the hotel was renovating. Thank goodness they had enough sense not to do this over the weekend.

The dealer’s room opened right on time Friday and was packed with vendors. Lots of great stuff. The art show didn’t have much, but there were a few really good works. The art auction on Sunday never happened.

The video rooms seemed to be full for every show! Some sound problems in some rooms, just a few schedule adjustments, but a great job overall.

The AMV contest on Friday ran smooth and was well received. Some of the AMVs seemed like they should have been in other categories and some were, well, I’ll leave a more in-depth review to someone less bias than myself. Let me say though that there were some really great AMVs again this year! Gratz to all the winners and special thanks to the AMV crew for giving us another con filled with great AMVs. One of the best things about AUSA is that you can stop in almost anytime and see some good AMVS.

We weren’t on the schedule for “Are You a Werewolf?” but people were asking if we would play and I told them that, if we could find room, we would play. My thanks to Roman for giving us room in the video game room! I put up a couple of flyers Friday morning and at 11:30PM Friday night the yells of WEREWOLVES! rang out through the hotel. We had a great group and played on until around 2:30AM. My thanks to everyone who joined us for the fun. I hope to get on the schedule next year. We will be playing Friday night at Nekocon next month!

Versailles showed disrespect for the con by taking the stage very late Saturday evening. They had a lot of energy and looked really good on stage but a poor audio mix and sounded like just so much noise. If you’re going to run the drums, base, guitars, and vocals through the same speakers then you really need a good mixing board and a great engineer. Versailles didn’t have this match up. I really felt sorry for the people who gave up their time to wait in line for this show. There was no need to line up early as we just walked in a little after 11:00PM.

We attended a few panels and they were pretty good. Mostly we just hung out, watched AMVs, anime, and movies, and had a great time.

Another great Anime USA!