In the last few years, many conventions’ fan artwork sections have become a little dull; there has been a sameness creeping into the works where I found myself wondering where the personality of the artist was in it. I wasn’t originally planning to do a special post on AnimeNEXT’s artist alley, but once I got to take a look around the quality and diversity made me need to do one. Artist Alley ended up being one of my favorite parts of this year’s convention and helped restore my desire to see what people were doing with fan-art again.

Continue reading →

AnimeNEXT has become something of a tradition at this point. Discussing it at the con I realized I’d been going since even before the move to Secaucus, let alone the move to Somerset. I haven’t been every year since my first one but nowadays it seems like I wouldn’t know it was summer until AnimeNEXT comes along. This year they celebrated their 10th anniversary and they’ve had many changes over that time. This year had some great moments but also some bumps as always.

When I went to Castle Point Anime Convention this year I stated I should put my money where my mouth is and do more panels. So at AnimeNEXT 2011 Narutaki and I did more panels than a busy Bob Vila. In fact we did a combined total of five panels this year. Four were Reverse Thieves originals and I also did a guest spot on an Ani-Gamers panel as well. I will go into that more when we talk about panels later in the week but it was unusual that Friday was my busy day  and Saturday was more of a casual day. I think that has a lot to do with the cosplay masquerade going on but it was mostly just a fluke of how the panels were divided up this year. Other than that the highlight of the convention was Satoru Nakamura who has some fairly impressive credentials as a key animator. This once again solidified AnimeNEXT 2011 as a strong midsized con that has many of the perks of the biggest cons in the US while having the more relaxed atmosphere of a local con. That always makes it a great con to attend and talk about.

Continue reading →

Even small conventions are exhausting feats, and AnimeNEXT is not that small! While we finish up our con reports, here is a micro-journey with me through the convention. Some highlights include Production I.G moments and some “overheard at AnimeNEXT” gems.

Friday

http://twitter.com/#!/narutakiRT/status/79171251737858049

Continue reading →