The Good:
-Badge handout went smoothly and quickly on Thursday.
-Restricted Rock Paper Scissors was excellent (and I won, too!)
-Momoi Halko was a great guest - extremely friendly, involved, and excited. She also turned out to be a very good performer, doing probably a better live performance of God Knows than Aya Hirano herself (who often seems to miss notes in her live performances)
-The classic anime viewing room had a cool selection of thing sthat you don't normally see at a con, especially including things that are actually harder to get ahold of than the newest fansubs.
-The mini-pamphlet schedule was really handy and convenient. Please bring back this format for next year!
-The Artist Alley was lively and busy. Unfortunately I didn't get enough time to browse it thoroughly, but I saw a fair amount of good stuff there.
-The Charity Wii is getting really epic. I wish I could've bought it, but I simply did not have $600 to work with. I'll have to remember to save up for next year.
-Forum Badges, as usual, came out pretty nice, although the lower print resolution this year was a little disappointing.
-Console gaming was pretty solid with all-around selection. It could've used more machines, but that's always the case and it's understandable as fans have to provide their equipment to the entire con at their own risk.
-The Visual Novels panel was surprisingly well-informed. The panelist supposedly running it didn't have a lot of informative and useful things to say, but he had the good sense to bring along a friend who knew his stuff. The audience, too, seemed surprisingly knowledgeable.
-AMVs at closing ceremonies again! I love this tradition, although next year the people in charge should make sure the sound and picture are working properly in advance.
The Meh:
-This year's AMV contest was pretty weak outside the action section, especially for drama. People really need to cut back on the Makoto Shinkai/Various stuff. I'd have put the Kodomo no Omocha video in that category, actually, and I'd've voted for it there, too.
-There wasn't a whole lot that appealed to me in the dealer's room. I did manage to find a couple things I wanted, but a large proportion of the things available were just overpriced.
-Similar for the swap meet. Kudos to the girl who sold me all 10 volumes of her Moon Phase manga for $25, but shame on the person trying to sell .hack//INFECTION for $35. I saw that game at GameStop for $12 not even two weeks ago.
-Stage Zero was once again largely filled with uninteresting and embarrassing programming. Come on, the Meme Game ("Replace a word in a song title with 'Yaoi' to make it funnier!") is just... dumb. Though, it was neat to see it going basically all night.
-Tabletop Gaming's selection of board games was initially very slim. It did, however, grow to quite respectable size later.
-Speaking of Tabletop, the number of tables available was thankfully large, but often still full. I think it could do with even more next year.
-Arcade prices were inflated as per usual. $.75 for one play on BlazBlue? Sad, especially when Aksys was offering free play on the console version in the dealer room.
-Badge checking seemed rather lax. I put my Forum Badge on the same clip over my actual badge, and I was only questioned on it like 3 times out of the, like, 50 that I went in and out of rooms.
-The Gurren-Hen movie was more rehash than I thought it would be. It felt like rewatching the series, except they gave us a montage instead of some full episodes. They even reused almost all the animation from the series.
-The Rock Band tournament was freestyle-only? How about an actual point-based tournament of skill?
-Makenai needs a new sound tech who knows how to turn up the right instruments at the right time. Also, their singers need to learn some mic technique, or better yet, how to sing. When a fan from the audience is better than you, there's something wrong.
-Guest Selection. If last year's Fanime felt a bit like GAINAX-con, this year's was Resident Evil-con. Unfortunately, RE has never really been my thing, so a good number of the guests involved meant nothing to me.
Things I (Regretfully) Missed:
-Asian Film. Just never managed to find an opportunity to check out any of the movies.
-The Dojo. The panels that seemed most interesting to me always ended up in a scheduling conflict with other stuff I was doing.
-Cowboy Bebop: The Song Remains the Same. For the second year in a row, I meant to go check it out but didn't manage to make it there in time.
-Yamaga-san Guest Party. Again, the time and admissions information for this event were kept so under-wraps that I was unable to go even though I wanted to.
-Maid Cafe. It was fun in previous years, but the lines were a little long this year and I was trying to be frugal with my lunch spending, so I missed out.
-Black and White Ball. Between Restricted Rock-Paper-Scissors and the Momoi concert, I couldn't make it.
Overall it was one of the smoothest Fanime cons I have yet seen. Staff generally seemed to have their stuff together and I didn't witness any major problems. If anything, the largest problem with the con is that, having been to so many, I'm a little blase about the whole thing and didn't bring my full enthusiasm to every minute. If that's all I have to complain about, then I guess you guys are doing something right.
P.S. I agree about real name/fan name sizing and text color. Of course, for finding badges during pre-reg handout, it makes sense for the real name to be larger and more visible, but fan names this year were almost illegible. Maybe just make both of them larger and easily visible.
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Topic: Fanime 2009 Convention Feedback (Read 25360 times)