Worst con ever. Ok, so not really, but it sure was mediocre.
Hmm. What can I say about ALA? Well. It was a nice attempt, I guess.
Anime LA has everything it takes to be a good convention. They have a nice con suite, where they offer you free drinks and snacks; they have their own room block, guests of honor from the industry, a masquerade, friendly attendees, a dealer’s hall and an artists’ alley. So, what was it about ALA that made it seem so half-assed?
Perhaps it was the small scale of things. Everything about Anime La is small. That may sound desirable, but unfortunately, it’s small in both a literal and figurative sense. Guests of honor were has -beens and virtually-unknowns, and worse, they didn’t really care about the convention. For example, a president of a publishing company arrived late to her panel without her visual presentation, and a certain voice actor’s band showed up without a lead guitarist. While this isn’t the con’s fault, it does reflect poorly upon Anime LA.
Another problem was an overall lack of variety. The artists’ alley had perhaps three unique tables, the others were all incredibly similar to one another. The dealer’s hall mirrored this trend as well. The “schedule of events” would have been more aptly named the “schedule of panels.” Seriously, your options were A) sit and listen to someone talk, B) sit and listen to someone talk, or C) sit and listen to someone talk. There were very few actual activities to be done (make a recycled basket, do origami on day 2, watch a pitiful fashion show or martial arts demonstration on day 3). Worse still, the basket making activity (I would have liked to do this) required that you either bring materials from home or buy them on site, which would have been nice to know about ahead of time. At the end of each day, there were live bands performing, but the hotel’s pa system was awful, and unless you enjoy anime music or emo, the bands weren’t very impressive. We spent the majority of the day sitting around and waiting for things that ended up not being worth the wait.
Ok, so that’s not totally true. There were a few things I really enjoyed. The Rum Party was great, minus the stinky guy that sat next to me at Blackjack and kept raising the pot and annoying everyone. We had some great cosplay gatherings. There was a panel on cosplay accessories, weapons, etc that was very informative (thank you to the two who presented that). Of course, there was DQ’s panel, too. Plus, the attendees were great. Everybody was friendly and you could tell they just wanted to enjoy the con with everyone.
While Anime La wasn’t a total loss, there is definitely room for improvement. I’ll wait to pass judgement until I hear news on next year’s con, but I think I’ll probably be saving my money for AX.
