Misty with Pikachu
Way out in Somerset, NJ this past weekend was the annual Anime and gaming convention AnimeNEXT. We didn’t have any official coverage leading up to AnimeNEXT because it is pretty far from Baltimore, and thus out of our normal coverage range. We decided to have a recap article because four people from BaltimoreGamer, including myself, attended the event. Our webmaster Dom was there only on Friday, while long-time BaltimoreGamer readers Kenny Johnson and Meagan “Ducky” Buster stayed for all three days.
The other three had to travel for hours, but I didn’t need to go very far at all. As many of the regular readers of the site would know, I am the only member of the staff who is not from Maryland. I live in central New Jersey, and I’ve traveled down to Baltimore for several events, but this was the first time that I met with BaltimoreGamer members on my own turf.
AnimeNEXT was a massive event spanning four buildings. The main building was the DoubleTree Somerset Hotel, which included the welcome desk, the artist’s alley, a slew of rooms used for panels, a photo area, and a karaoke room. Nearby and connected by a covered pathway was the Garden State Exhibit Center. This large building housed the registration desks, the (huge) vendor’s area, the food court, a few theater-sized panel and concert rooms, and an area for a sword-fighting competition. Outside the Exhibit Center, there was also a dunk tank. On the other side of the parking lot was the “Training Center” which housed screening rooms for Anime and movies. Across the street was the Holiday Inn, which housed the video game rooms.
EHH OHH!!!
Travis Touchdown from No More Heroes on the Wii
One of the three Katamari costumes I saw
The part of AnimeNEXT that immediately stands out is the costumes. There are a lot of them, and many are very impressive. This is far being any kind of scientific survey, but I would guesstimate that around 70% of the people attending the convention were dressed up in some degree of costume. There were more RPG and Anime characters than even the geekiest could identify. I saw Ashes, Mistys, Pikachus, a Brock, and even a Pokeball (yes, a giant Pokeball with legs). I saw three costumes of the Prince from Katamari, each of them with an accompanying Katamari ball. There were people carrying around props and weapons that were almost as big as they were (sometimes bigger). Many of those who didn’t have full costumes had t-shirts or hats with characters on them.
The video game room in the Holiday Inn had a wide range of games, from currently popular games on the latest systems to arcade classics to rare and obscure games that few people own. There were several rhythm games including one based on piano, one based on hitting various round buttons, and one that involved waving one’s hands (or legs) over 5 sensors. I had the misfortune of playing a Philips CD-i for the first time, and it took a matter of seconds to see why the system failed so badly. I spent a few minutes playing Mario Hotel on it and could hardly take the pain. Among some of the other obscure titles were Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker, Zelda: The Faces of Evil, and a Japanese Bomberman game.
The video game room hosted several tournaments during the three-day event. On Friday there was a BlazBlue tournament which Kenny entered. He won two rounds, but was eliminated in the quarter-finals. According to Kenny, many of the competitors didn’t even know what any of the prizes were. This didn’t stop them, however, because they were driven by their competitive gaming spirit. “I didn’t care what the prize was,” said Kenny, “I just competed to see where I placed”. On Saturday there was a Super Smash Bros. tournament which resulted in all of the Gamecube controllers being taken away from the Gamecubes that had been set up with other games. In many cases, though, watching other people play some of these games was just as entertaining as playing games yourself, and it was quite common in the game room for crowds to gather and watch a few people playing a game even if they had no intention of playing it.
Making a comeback this year will be AnimeNEXT’s sister convention MangaNEXT. It will be held October 29 – 31 at the Hilton in East Brunswick, NJ. I was told by a MangaNEXT representative that MangaNEXT tends to have more gaming than AnimeNEXT, despite being a smaller event overall.
5 Comments
Couldn’t you have picked a more hot misty? Looks like the event was fun otherwise. Maybe we should cover this event next year.
We do need to expand, but we can’t lose sight of making sure we continue to provide the best gaming news coverage for the Baltimore area. Maybe we can move onto other area if people give us support by buying t-shirts (HINT HINT HINT).
Lol, and that WAS the hottest Misty…
But you know what… I”m going to be mean here and say I honestly did NOT like AnimeNext as much as I expected… Perhaps I’m going to be forever partial to Otakon, but it would seem to me that having a convention that’s less than half the size of Otakon would mean It’d be WAY more organized than Otakon ever could be, correct? I mean, it’s less people, and itimized into smaller buildings instead of one huge one and a hotel, so it would be SOO much more organized right? And, it’s its 9th year, so they’ve worked out all of their kinks right? Not at all…
AnimeNext was more unorganized than College-level conventions I’ve been to and hearing that this is its 9th year in operation, that was very disappointing to me. Everything from line direction and management for big events, number of allowed people in panels (Mike, you know what I’m talking about, there’s NO reason they should have to wait until a room is 2x or 3x capacity to say, “Oh, my fault, half of you have to leave…”, why isn’t that being monitored at the door?), abusive security, lack of trusted information from the “employees”, lack of ”training” from the employees, the way the video game room and tournaments were handled… I mean I’ve gone to house parties with more organized and moderated tourneys….
And as far as the vendors room goes…well… again, i’m being partial but it was easily 1/3 or less the size of Otakon… and it struck Kenny and I as odd that 90% of what we saw in there was stuff you could EASILY find online for cheaper, and not too many “rare’ things… BUT the thing is, after reading forums [From lurking the AnimeNext forum, I learned a # of people had less than awesome experiences] and talking to people who were there, I heard that this year the vendors room WAS smaller than usual, it WAS more unorganized than usual, and all around this AnimeNext was ‘meh’ in comparison to the ones of the past.. .. ..
Overall, despite all of that, I DID have a good time, don’t get me wrong! Truly!! I absolutely loved the art room, and the one good panel we actually made it into. I grabbed a few shirts from the Dealer’s Room. It was good times… but as far as making that 3.5 hour trip back up the road come next June… I’m not sure if I’m pressed to return. It was a good experience but, for my first time, not sure. Chances are, depending on how classes next summer goes and money, we’ll find a way to get back up there… but as of now, I’m not really sure. lol, AnimeNext just left me extremely thirsty for Otakon and MAGfest so… we’ll see.
I have to agree with you partially. Having gone to MAGFest and AnimeNEXT, I have to say MAGFest was a lot more fun. The concerts were awesome, and there were a lot of great vendors. I actually thought the vendor’s area was pretty big at AnimeNEXT, but the stuff just wasn’t as interesting as it was at MAGFest. At MAGFest there were a lot of people with tables who were there to promote a band or a website (like us!), but I hardly saw any of that at AnimeNEXT.
The game room was a lot of fun, but yes, the tournaments were somewhat disorganized. The panels also needed much bigger venues. Many of the panels were crammed into tiny rooms where most of the interested people could not get in. Yet at times, that huge panel/concert area was completely empty or had some odd event with only a handful of people attending. I thought the panel schedule could have been managed much better.
Overall, I had an awesome time, and I will definitely go back next year. I’m going to MangaNEXT too. However, that’s partially because I like just minutes away. I don’t have to travel or stay in a hotel. It’s ultra-convenient for me, just like Otakon is ultra-convenient for you guys.