Anime Midwest, Con Marathon Week 1.

I should have started this recently. Right now I am in the middle of a Convention Marathon and feel that With all the differences between them that I should give my opinion to them as best I can. This is from the personal POV of my experience of what I've attended and who I've interacted with so It's will become a partial review.

First week was Anime Midwest in Lisle, IL. Let's start with the location at the Wyndam Hotel which I gotta say was pretty good. The layout was simple with Main programming right next to the dealers and the two panels next to each other though some were hard to find because of odd design plans everything was well mapped out via the program guide given to us at the con. Now some of the panel rooms were...different. I'm used to just an empty room filled with chairs in a row but they had a very nice Auditorium with a college like setup that included an ether net cord and power outlet at each chair space, that was really nice. The other one had a series of circular tables which felt out of place and the projector setup was awkward against a wall but still a nice space in general. One major issue was the need for Speakers for laptops. In most of the panels I went to a recurring problem occurred where people needed speakers for the audio portion of their presentation some were rectified others were not and I'll explain how in a moment.

A couple of things that are just general fun I should mention are the Battle Arena and the Unlimited Ramen, Rice, and Soda. The battle Arena was a great part that got kinda pushed to the side in a fairly small room they made work. I've seen these guys before I believe at Anime St Louis one year and they brought in quite a crowd but this time not so much probably due to their less than obvious location. Still I would love to see them again. I actually took a fight with the lady in the photo and we were surprisingly equal in speed but she accidentally hit my male parts for a critical hit. We laughed it off and continued after five minutes on the floor. There's a reason they have a waver.

Now the Free food there was a great idea! Ramen and Rice are plentiful and cheap when bought in bulk and easy to make which also made my wallet happy. The only issue was the rice took a while to cook but other wise everything was well attended and kept plentiful.

The Video game room was very small but still nice. They had all the games people wanted to play and implemented the Badge for Controller system for safety. A couple table top games were played including a very patient man teaching Mahjong. Sadly no arcades but I didn't really miss them and I'm doubtful there would have been room for them.

The dealers was surprisingly varied though still small. they put the artist alley in the same room and I don't really like when they do that because of the confusion between the two. Still there was plenty of merchandise and other item to check out.

Now on to may days and events. Friday I saw little but nothing really interested me. My biggest interest was running my panel Anime Jeopardy. Since the panel ran before Greg Ayers I decided to drop in and see what he has to say and I was thoroughly entertained. He actually gave a great incite into 4kids Entertainment saying that they had to make changes but the Japanese studios were the ones that were fully behind the changes. I was excited at the end as I was setting up for my panel I got to ask the last question at his panel and the following happened.
Greg: Yes you!
Me: Wanna Play Jeopardy?
Greg: No!
*Everyone laughs including me*
Greg: I don't have a competitive bone in my body. Like, I never really cared about winning things and that's like reflected in the games I play. Sometimes my friends want me playing a fighting game like Street Fighter and they'll be like 'in your face!''I beat you, loser' and I'll be 'I will punch you in the kidneys man'. But, y'know go ahead what's your Jeopardy question?
Me: Oh no, that's the next panel.
Greg: Oh and your running it?
Me: Yeah.
Greg: Oh I'm sorry man but no I don't think I'll play.
Me: that's cool man I understand.
Greg: Do you have prizes for the winners?
Me: Yup!
Greg: Cool, Guys stick around if you wanna win awesome prizes in Anime Jeopardy!
I liked that he was so friendly about the whole thing. Despite how he didn't participate he was still nice and supportive in my panel. It would've been cool if he played but if you don't have the spirit of competition I understand.

So then Anime Jeopardy Hosted by me! Great times had by all. I tried something Different this year by taking advantage of my Jeopardy programs Audio and jpg function and created categories based around it. Sadly this is where the speakers became a problem. Now it wasn't that the speakers didn't work its that no one knew where to find them. It turns out there is an unmarked box in the middle of the audience full of supplies we were supposed to use but nobody knew. I was lucky to have an audience member find it so I could use it and I put  it back hoping someone else who needed it could use it sadly no one did. Generally the panel went great. I always seem to pack the room when it comes to Jeopardy and it might be because it's a generally fun thing to play as apposed to my other panels.

Afterwords me and my lovely girlfriend proceeded to the Formal Dance lessons where we just sucked. I used to be alright at dancing in highschool but I was never this bad there was just no sense of pattern with me and I know it was me because we switched partners and I still sucked. *sigh*

Then I got dinner and afterwords headed to Nabeshin's panel which was all very hush hush but I tell you it was fun. After word I made some paper claws and gave Nabeshin a thumbs up with them. He took notice and I decided to try something. In the heat of the moment I proclaimed "A-MA-ZON!" and he totally got what I was saying! Of course it was a reference to Kamen Rider Amazon one of my favorite old Tokusatsu series. I was told he was looking for me afterwords but I needed to head back home for work.

Saturday! I didn't get around until the afternoon but despite how late I was I gt into the Little Kuriboh panel. Which was fun to hear all the Q&A and he also showed his unfinished episode which was hard to hear because of the lack of speakers. I should have said something but I was shy and the speakers were hard to get to at the time but over all still fun.

I then stayed to get some work done on my next panels and work out the kinks and found out I was staying for the Nerd Rappers Panel. Now I gotta say that these guys knew their stuff when it came to games and rapping but sadly their panel was small and under appreciated. When I find there info I'll put more here.

So with that I went to check out the panel before mine. The How to DJ panel. Which was entertaining but the guys didn't show up for a while which was understandable since they were con staff. But once they were rolling they were very informative and very short. Which depending on your panel can be good but I felt underwhelmed. It eventually wound up becoming a tutorial class on using a DJing program.

So then my panel came up and immediately I had a problem...NO SPEAKERS! I thought the first panel room was bad but at least you could find the speakers. Lucky the DJ guys let me borrow theirs. I was surprised that the room was packed! everyone wanted to know about the Adaptations Across Countries. But originally I asked for 2 hours and instead they game me 1, funny enough my next panel would get 1 and a half hours when I only asked for one. I modified my panel for just such a thing though and everyone enjoyed it and stayed! YAY for not being boring! Although everyone had questions which I couldn't answer due to time crunch. There were some good questions but one person felt like making it into a little MST3K and made fun of some of the vids I showed off. Mind you I liked that and laughed alot and eventually became friends with that person.

I noticed that Nabeshin's panel was up next and decided to wait and connect again by showing him the live action Spiderman from Japan and he totally knew it. It was great to connect to the guy via classic tokusatsu like that. I stayed for as long as I could but needed to rush out to start my last Panel.

Tokusatsu for Beginners. I love talking about rubber suit monsters and armored heroes! So I created this panel to try and get more people into it. After the Panel I took some Q&A to help people become interested but it turned out most people already knew most of what I had to say. I'm thinking I should make a Tokusatsu for Advanced fans panel to make things interesting. I was glad to receive information that I actually did affect some people into getting into Tokusatsu. After the con I got a message to do all my panels at Maneki Neko con. I was so flattered and happy to hear all this so of course I accepted it.

I wanted to get into the Karaoke room later but my panel over lapped so I wasn't able to make it at all. The only reason for that was the room was too damn small for karaoke. No one else was allowed in because the room was filled to capacity so I wound up just talking with some friends the rest of the night. but I got tired and called it in early and went home. I was tired I didn't even head to the Rave dance and even more tired Sunday where I didn't even show up.

All in all a good time to be had I want to go again since it was so much fun and do my panels again next year.