While I might have complained about the management of panel I had very few complaints about the content of the panels. I had a full schedule and often had to miss out on fan panels I wanted to see in order to attend guest panels. I really wanted to see the Who Stole This Panel?! Thieves in Anime/Manga panel but it was right against the Studio Trigger panel. I always like having a conflicting schedule like that. It means I am always doing something that is stimulating my brain at the convention.

One random note: There seemed to be a rise in the number of “click bait” panel titles. Pass the Haterade!: Most Hated Characters in Anime, Shingeki no Eva or How I learned that all Anime is the same and there’s no such thing as an original plot anymore, and 2 Deep 4 You: Shows You Didn’t know You Didn’t Know featuring Monster Musume stood out as the most click bait panel titles. I’m not complaining about this. Unlike the In-character Q&A panels these are actual legitimate panels with actual content. They tend to be a little more negative for my palate but I’d never wish them to be removed from the schedule. They cater to a specific taste and they can do it very well. One of the keys to getting people into the seats with your panel is having a catchy title. It just seems these panels are taking their cues from what would be popular on the Internet especially when talking about “click bait” articles. If anything I’m a little surprised it took this long for titles like this to get as popular as they have. Titles like this were hardly the majority but as the Internet permeates people’s lives I expect this trend to only increase. I expect to see a panel about the 21 Weird Secrets About Attack on Titian and The Cowboy Bebop Panel Only 90’s Kids Will Understand next year.

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 I went into AnimeNEXT this year with some pretty high expectations. Last year was the convention’s first year at a new venue so it had the prerequisite amount of growing pains. You never really understand the limits, quirks, trouble areas, and true potential of a space until you have spent at least a year at the site. Theory is all well and good but strategy always changes when the rubber hits the road. That said you expect the second year to run much smoother. Overall the first year ran rather smoothly with some notable hiccups which I mentioned in my previous report. This year sadly was not a major improvement. It was not as if nothing had improved. It is mostly that the things that went wrong were different. For every needed improvement that was implemented another egregious problem popped up. Much like the Little Dutch Boy, they have plugged many of the holes in the dike but in turn, a slew of new problems have appeared.

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