Tuesday, November 10, 2009

The Fan's POV: Zenkaikon 2009

There is a TL:DR section on the next blog

Hey guys, what up? It's Ernie Layug with "The Fan's POV", coming to you form the home of Bam Margera and about 30 minutes west of the city of Brotherly Love. It's Zenkaikon 2009 from the King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. Now, if we did a main show from there that would have been the opening line. However, we decided not to tape a main show. This was the first convention, where we could attend as a regular congoer, instead of a press person. So in other words, I attended a convention as a person who wanted to get in for free and not do anything. I went to the convention along with Jon Ingoglia and Krissy Lawlor, as Out-of-Time Productions. Jon Ingoglia talked about his convention experience (If you had strong feelings about the con, then I would recommend reading this one) and Convention Fans (The Good and The Bad Blog). We're gonna try to be fair and look at the good and the bad of the convention and provide our advice

First Impressions
My first impression of the convention was a "This-is-it?" type of reaction. I knew the convention was small, but I didn't realize that it was this small. The line outside was pretty long to begin with and had a decent amount of people in it. When you entered the hotel, there were even more people waiting to get their badges. Right away, I knew that this was going to be a very long day for everyone involved. We got our badges and decided to scout the area to see where everything is, we had a hard enough time trying to figure out where the panel rooms were and where the main events and dealers' room were located. We went up to the second floor, which was deserted but had sufficient room to move around in a comfortable matter. After seeing the second floor, we went back outside to see the line. It was about 9am and the line grew a little bit more.

The Registration Line
Upon entering the convention, Jon parked his car and we saw this one big line that we thought we had to stand in. If we were going to, we knew that it was going to be a long wait. However since we were press, we were able to pick up our badges at the "Special Needs" station. Actually when we went inside, I asked one of the staffers about where we can pick up our press. One of the security guards knew who we were and escort us to the station. Yes, someone has actually heard of us. Upon arrival to the registration area (which was a VERY small area), I noticed there were only FOUR (Yes, only 4) tables set up for registration pick up. To be fair, all the stations accommodated both pre-reg and at-the-door badges. However, each of the table had their own special needs, one table was strictly dealers' room and artist alley reg, another one was press, staff, and professional, then the other two were specific for pre-reg and at-the-door. Our badge pick up was pretty fast, but I can't really compare to that the others that were waiting 3 hours outside.

As far as the line outside goes, it was got bad at around 11am-ish where the line extended into the parking lot and around some cars. When we arrived at 9am, the line was one whole line that included both pre-reg and at-the-door. By 11am, the line was split into two. At one point, the lines blend itself together and become one line again. The line got so long that the hotel had to add barricades with caution tape to make sure the line didn't cross over into the hotel parking lot where no car could have gone through. As a sympathy factor for the cosplayers, Krissy and I took pictures of them knowing that most of them were not going to get in and that's exactly what happened. About half the line did not go to Zenkaikon on Day 1, but were able to purchase passes for Day 2. The line finally calmed down at around 3pm-ish.

I would recommend definitely a system where you send out badges for those who pre-reg before a certain date. I know for a couple of conventions that do this to help with controlling the line situation and not a lot of people would be waiting with a their pointer up the nose. If those people pre-reg after the mail date, then they wait on line for a little bit and had special admittance at 9am. Those who want to buy them at-the-door would have to wait til either 10am or 11am to purchase them, that way you can squeeze out the pre-reg before the rush of the "at-the-door" people come in.

Layout
If there was one HUGE downside to this convention, it was definitely the layout. The first floor had the bulk of the convention. The main room on the first floor was the restaurant area where you can relax and on both sides of the restaurant were hallways accessible to different areas of the convention. The main events, dealers' room and artist alley in one side and the other side had Panel rooms 1 and 2, along with video rooms and open gaming. Then, there was a second floor where they had Con Operations, the Guest Lounge, the Musician's Artist Alley and Otaku Lounge.

At first, it was difficult to find some rooms and no signage was present to point to where everything was located. During the Eyeshine Q & A panel, the band was trying to describe where the Musician's Artist Alley was (BTW, AWESOME IDEA) and had a very hard time describing it. In the end, they call it "the anus of the hotel". I wouldn't call it that, but as the day progressed on, I was able to figure out the layout and was able to find everything except the Artist Alley. Krissy told me later on that it was past the Dealers' Room.

Secondly, the hotel booked weddings on BOTH days of the convention. Before you start blaming the convention, we were told that the weddings were booked AFTER Zenkaikon booked the hotel for the convention. You would think that common sense would play into this situation, but the hotel was looking at the dollar signs and not the brain. Shame on you, hotel...shame on you. Due to the weddings, the hotel staff had to curtain off certain parts to stop congoers from interrupting the wedding. However, I heard that the bride took a picture with a Kingdom Hearts cosplay group. So there was some good that came out of that.

Overall, it was a lack of space to make everyone feel comfortable. There were other parts of the hotel that they were not using, such as the "Ice Nightclub", where they could have easily use for Main Events II, or place to just hang out and take pictures. Another thing is that they could have used the restaurant as a place where they can pick up registration badges, instead of that small area. There would have been more room for people to be comfortable in and the lines you can add another "Disney World" line inside there. That way, the hallways wouldn't have been crowded with pre-reg people and crowded with sex-crazed yaoi fans.

Panels
One of the essential parts of any convention is always panels. These informative discussions generally attract a con-goer to a convention learn more about that particular subject. Zenkaikon had some awesome FAN-run panels, such as Avatar: The Last Con Panel, Anime in China, and the Power Rangers panel. However, the really popular ones had overcrowding and I think broke the fire code a couple of times. I'm sure there were some fun panels, but not a lot of them really caught my eye. I know on Convention Fans, they really liked the panels and people were enjoying them. Actually, when panels were going on is when there was the most space. From our eyes, the panels were boring and overcrowded.

On the plus side, there was always a panel going on with no "set-up" time other than Main Events. There were no breaks in between panel rooms. I don't think there was a time where the room was just empty.

Dealers' Room and Artist Alley
People from all over the Philadelphia area had the chance to sell their crap and show off the talented skills with a pencil in the Dealers' Room and Artist Alley. Unfortunately, nothing there really attracted me to buy something in either room. The Dealers' Room was very small and didn't have enough variety. After one trip though the room, Jon, Krissy and I knew that we weren't going to buy anything there. However, we found a diamond in the rough. I would tell you what it is, but I don't want to spoil it just in case it's going to be a Christmas present.

The Artist Alley was a decent size and had some pretty good artwork. However, there wasn't enough variety for me to buy something there yet. On the plus side, the Artist Alley at Zenkaikon was A LOT better than the one at AnimeNEXT (meaning that IT DIDN'T BLOCKS THE HALLWAY CREATING TRAFFIC!).

The dealers' room and artist alley were in good areas, if they move the Main Events to the nightclub and rented out that entire space, then it would have been better to attract more people to the convention.

Main Events
I went to three main events, Opening Ceremonies, Whose Line Is It Anime?, and The Masquerade. They were all very entertaining and kept my attention. The opening ceremonies film was very interesting and hard to hear, although it seemed good. I'm hoping that Uncle Yo put it up on YouTube to be viewed. The other thing at the ceremonies that was interesting was the interactive cosplay contest, an idea originating from Anime Boston. This one is based off of "Where In The World is Carmen Sandiego?", where Carmen stole the money from the convention and we need to get back as much as possible. The con-goer with the most money received a grand prize, which I have no idea what it was. The idea was fun and the cosplayers entertained everyone to last possible second.

Whose Line Is It Anime? All I have to say to that is I never thought that I would ever hear Lord Zedd say the world "blowjob". It's a disturbing thought right now, it gives me the willies just thinking aboot it. It was a fun time and the people were great.

The staple to any anime convention is the masquerade, which the room filled up very fast. I only stayed for one skit, which was a friend of mine. Her skit was the second one and the first one was actually pretty good. The first one featured a collection of dance tunes to which delighted the audience and got them into a frenzy. The second skit was a Metal Gear Solid skit, where there was a fight on board a moving truck (or so I assume). The skits I saw were mostly beginner skits and it seemed that this masquerade was for cosplayers to master the craft of the masquerade skit.

Cosplayers
At Zenkaikon, there were not many cosplayers I wanted to take pictures of. Since the average age of the convention was around 15 or 16, the cosplayers were those of American popluarity and not really underground anime series. However they were pretty good, and it looked like work was put into it. I'm sure that going to an upcoming convention like Zenkaikon and AnimeNEXT, cosplayers are able to see what others are doing and see what secrets they can use to improve their cosplay. Also, it seems like the perfect convention for the casual cosplayer. I think I had the best cosplay, I was a New York Yankees fan (Note: This happens just two days after the New York Yankees BEAT the Philadelphia Phillies in the World Series). I got a couple of dirty looks and some people disliked the "cosplay". Overall, successful troll of Philadelphia was successful.

Ratings
On our rating system, I would rate this convention a 6.5 out of 10. I know that some others wouldn't have been as nice as I am about it. The big problem was the lack of space, it was very hard to move around and to get from place-to-place. The good thing about it was meeting Johnny Yong Bosch and Trina Nishimura, along with the idea of the "Musician's Artist Alley". Overall, there was nothing spectacular about this convention. As far as coming back, if the space was right and bigger, I might. It's a strong possibility that we may for the day, but we have to see what the future holds.

The next convention we will be at is Katsucon 16 from Washington D.C. from February 12th to the 14th. Our coverage begins February 11th.

Zenkaikon 2009 in Pictures

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