Alicia’s 13th Anime North at Anime North 2013!
This year was my 13th year at Anime North and I am so excited that I was able to be there as a part of the press. Last year I dropped by and covered cosplay, but this year I was able to snag an honest-to-good media badge! I work as tech support on the night shift, so I wasn’t able to get to the convention until Saturday this year. But I had my own hotel room, I ordered pizza, I watched anime, met up with some rad Twitter friends and swooned over all the beautiful cosplay I could photograph.
Other than get trapped into seeing My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic in Japanese (thanks, Dave), when I wasn’t snapping photos I attended some smaller panels and checked out the dealer’s room. The first panel I attended was “Transphobia in Anime & Gaming” which I attended with two friends, one of which whom is trans, and I’m really pleased with the attendance. The panel itself fell a little short, but that mostly had to do with how little time the panelists had to really delve into such a deep and intertwined topic. I listened to some cisgender folk ask genuinely meaningful questions (asides from two), heard from trans folk what anime I should avoid (which I’ve now forgotten because I’m a total spaz) and genuinely was happy to support a panel covering such an important human rights topic. Not the anime part specifically, but just how trans folk are treated in the media, internationally or otherwise.
For the first time in maybe ten years, the dealer’s room didn’t feel like a can of sardines. The tables were spaced nicely apart with space for spontaneous cosplay photo shoots and the there were more independent dealers than previous years. Why I love Anime North more than Fan Expo is simple: it’s fan run, it’s for charity and it gives smaller dealers and artists the chance to sell their wares. I’m so used to seeing large dealers like Silver Snail dominate such small areas (I’m looking at you, Hobbystar) that it’s nice to be able to have a mix between mainstream hobbyshop dealerships and small tables with little handcrafted keychains.
Artists Alley was wonderful, as always, despite the overwhelming My Little Pony presence which I found distracting and weird. I had been looking in the dealer’s room all day to try and find something unique and Zelda-related for my girlfriend, but I ended up finding it in Artist’s Alley. I bought her a beautifully crafted Kokiri Emerald necklace (she doesn’t wear jewelry, so it’s currently around a stuffed panda’s neck) and wanted to kiss the merchant who sold it to me because it was the last one of the day.
All in all, Anime North was fun this year! I’m really happy with the operations changes that were made to make the flow of con attendees a lot smoother. This was probably one of the best organized Anime North’s I’ve been to in terms of layout, and I’ve been to a lot. Trust me!
