AnimeNEXT is spending only its second year at the Garden State Exhibit Center but they have made a great transition into the new space, of course there are still kinks but there were vast improvements from last year. And when asked about moving back to Secaucus it was a firm and unanimous “no.” This space has room to grow they said (though I didn’t notice too much empty space, but Secaucus has even less so) and that’s exactly what they want to do.
When AnimeNEXT is firing on all cylinders it is a great anime convention with a little bit of everything despite not being one of the big boys like Otakon, Anime Expo, or New York Anime Festival. This year NEXT had a good mix of American and Japanese industry guests, solid and diverse panels, entertaining musicians, and good-sized dealer’s room and artist alley. With Kenji Kamiyama as a guest AnimeNEXT felt more like a top ten anime convention than Anime Boston despite having less attendees. Even if the location has become more inconvenient for me I still watch to see who they get each year.
As press things were better organized this time around and they were even able to setup an impromptu round-robin press conference with Kenji Kamiyama which was, to say the least, the brightest moment of the convention. While we’d all, including the staff, like to know things further in advance, I realize with guests sometimes this just isn’t possible. There was some confusion about whether press could get into panels early or not, and I’m not even sure of the answer myself. So next year I would like to see press privileges a little more outlined, concrete, and communicated to the staff. And then I can print-out the rules to keep in my back pocket!
I know everyone assumed they would be allowed into the “IT CAME FROM FRANCE!!” panel because they were press but were a bit thrown off by not being able to get in. I myself was lucky enough that never came up as a problem. We made sure to arrive a little early for the “Bad Anime Bad!” panel after hearing that. But I have have been to several cons where there is no set press privileges which can definitely be a bit confusing. Clear rules would help everyone involved on both the press side and the staff side. But I was always treated very politely by the all the con staffers of AnimeNEXT and they were as accommodating as they could be.
Reverse Thieves 