Conventions started this whole mess for me. I threatened to wax poetic about conventions the other day when I wrote about North America’s five biggest cons. I’m coming through on that threat for the next 900 words or so.
Fan conventions as a whole got their start sometime in the late ’30s or early ’40s, though exactly when and what event was the first true con is debated. The granddaddy of all anime and manga cons, though, is Comiket. Comiket was founded in 1975 and focuses on the sale of self-published dojin. Now held twice a year, it has an estimated attendance of over 500,000.
The history of anime conventions in the U.S. is somewhat disputed. A-Kon, certainly the longest running anime convention in the U.S., is also sometimes called the oldest North American anime convention. But it was beat out by a much smaller convention, YamatoCon, centered around the anime Space Battleship Yamato. Though it had only 100 attendees and only occurred three times (the final time under a different name), it predates A-Kon by seven years, first organized in 1983.
1991’s AnimeCon in San Diego was the first U.S. anime convention to pass the 1,000 attendees mark, but it collapsed in on itself within a year. Many of the convention’s staff would go on to form rivals Anime Expo and Anime America. For five years a theatrical level of drama known as the Con Wars played out between the two competing conventions, including accusations of sabotage, but in 1997 Anime America was canceled and went defunct.
If you live in the modern U.S. or if you’re just time traveling through, you’re not likely to be too far away from a decent-sized anime convention. There’s at least one in just about every state of the union, and there’s one scheduled for just about every weekend of the year.
That gets the history out of the way. It would be easy to do a quick article on con-preparedness, but I’m not going to spend a lot of words doing that.
Eat food. If you can afford food courts and restaurants do that. If you need to bring sandwiches and prepackaged stuff from home do that. Get sleep. Stay hydrated. If you’re at a more adult-oriented convention be mindful of what substances you’re putting in your body and how much you’re putting in your body. I’m a tea-totaling old person in disguise so this hasn’t been an issue for me, but over several years of conventions I have seen some truly awe-inspiring wipe outs caused by too much booze.
And for the love of all that is good and holy, take a shower and use deodorant. There is no reason to make the world suffer because you can’t wait an extra 15 minutes to put your greasy mitts all over a hunk of sculpted PVC that you’re not going to buy anyway.
But why do I love cons so much that I might actually miss today’s deadline talking about them? There are some easy answers. The vendor hall or dealers room or whatever your con calls it is the Mecca toward which most conventions turn. I don’t spend as much now as I have in the past, but I do appreciate looking through all the tables piled with merch that just doesn’t turn up at your average Target. The dealers room is also usually accompanied by an Artist Alley for fans who’ve created prints, key chains, pins and other merch to sell.
There’s also cool cosplay on display. There are guests of all kinds including voice actors, creators, musical acts and YouTubers. There are panels from fans and anime distributors. There’s a lot going on really, but none of those things alone is what really gets me excited for a convention.
I go to Anime Weekend Atlanta every year. It was No. 5 on the list a couple of days ago. It’s not a small con by a long shot, with over 30,000 guests. I go with the same group of friends, and we do our best to get a room in the main hotel.
We get there on Thursday, and if we’re in the main hotel I try to go for a walk after it gets late. Thursday night is usually very quiet and very relaxed. The convention center without the energy of the convention is sort of liminal space. Disregarding all the superstitious beliefs about liminal spaces, what we’re really talking about here is a transitional space or a space dedicated to a certain activity being used differently or not at all. I get a creative charge from all the perceived contrast, and it gets me excited for the convention all over again.
Over the next three days, 30,000 people will turn the convention center into a pop-up town dedicated to anime. I will spend time with friends and over eat repeatedly. Hopefully, I’ll hear a few good anecdotes from voice actor guests (my favorite reason to attend a panel). And I’ll also see some of the same people every year. These are folks I don’t really know, but I see, sometimes have conversations with and then don’t see for a year. I don’t know their names, and I don’t know most of them well enough to actually speak with. But there’s a weird sort of camaraderie there.
There’s Statue Guy, detached from the convention minding his tables of PVC aliens, school girls and kaiju. He’s there to trade quality plastic for legal tender, and he’s not looking for a conversation. There’s a chatty, amiable older guy in Hawaiian print shirts. There’s a cosplayer I met three or four cons ago and watched get semi-famous.
That’s why I like cons. That’s why I wanted to talk about them.
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