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an13 thoughts
May. 28th, 2013 02:00 pmIt was sometime around 7pm on Friday at Anime North this year that I realized it wasn't going to be like other years. Sure, there was a line for the Nominoichi yard sale event. That's normal. What wasn't normal was that there were TWO lines. When a third line formed, was herded against the autograph session rails, was herded again against the other side of the hall, that's when I pulled the "abort" lever and noped out of that situation.
I mean, that's a helluva lot of people who just want to look at other people's anime junk. But let's face it, there were a helluva lot of people at Anime North this year. My sources say we're looking at over 23 thousand attendees. That's paid customer numbers - AN's not counting staff, guests, dealers, complimentary passes, friends of friends, "turnstile" numbers, or any of the other questionable accounting methods some conventions use to Potemkin Village their way into the big leagues.
When a show starts getting numbers like that, it becomes its own unique beast. Congoers were spread between hotels stretching two kilometers worth of Dixon Road, marching back and forth between the TCC and the Doubletree and two Holiday Inns and a Sheraton and a couple of Marriots, a Radisson and a Crowne Plaza and something called The Sandman. The video games were over a highway bridge, the panels were down a hall, up a flight of stairs, and over and around the lineup for the Costume Contest, and the dealers room meant a hike across Dixon Rd, around the front of the TCC, past halls A, B, C, D, and E, and into F, where you'd hang a right past the artists alley and a left into the crowd control fencing. They say geography is destiny and if that's the case, the destiny of an Anime North attendee who wants to experience most of the show is to have very sore feet at the end of the weekend.
And when the weather cooperates, it can be very pleasant. After a long winter nothing pleases a Torontonian, or an Ontarian for that matter, like getting out into the friendly sunshine and the fresh air, surrounded by furiously blooming trees and grass and flowers. Usually the late May weather gets with the program and things are warm and sunny. Unfortunately this year the weather turned on Anime North with a vengeance.
Thursday was, in fact, a goddamn nightmare right out of "The Wreck Of The Hesperus". 60kph winds, cold rain blowing in your face driven by a wind that simply would not quit, it all seemed like a cruel betrayal of the wonderful weather Mother Nature had seen fit to give us for the previous weekend's Victoria Day. The weather made airport runs and hotel pickups a serious pain, and even though the rain cleared away for Friday, the cold wind remained, driving a large proportion of what would have been outdoor photo-swapping cosplayers inside to jam lines for events like the Nominoichi.
I used to sell at the Nomi, but it's tough to cram in an hour of setup and three hours of selling on top of the normal Friday responsibilities of checking into the hotel, setting up the flyers and placards for the AWA promo table, plastering the convention with flyers, getting some kind of food into the body, and being mentally prepared for my 10pm assignment in the Plaza Ballroom to deliver Anime Hell. So this year I took a pass, which meant I had time to get a burrito on the curbside in the cold wind, take one tour through the Nomi, whose tables were jammed three and four deep by bargain-hunting fans, and then make my way back over to the Sheraton to get my act together for my 10pm start time.
My AN was like that all weekend; making sure my events happened on time, combined with the logistical efforts necessary to get from point A to point B to point C in a sea of wandering anime fans herded from crosswalk to choke point to sidewalk to hallway, added to the normal human problems of food and sleep and clothing, it all meant that when I wasn't getting one thing done I was getting something else done. We barely had time to forage through the dealers room for cels the Beguiling had spirited out of Mandarake, and carving out a half-hour to enjoy green-tea ice cream and con gossip took luck and planning.
There is so much happening at AN, spread out over such a large patch of real estate, brought into being with sort of a cheerful disregard for anything resembling the "big picture", that the show really has attained a kind of amorphous, benign-tumor sort of growth; swelling into parking-lot raves and improv performances and highway median photoshoots. It's become fashionable to complain about the mission creep; check out AN's Facebook group for a stirring call for the convention to ban all non-anime cosplay (because you can tell people what to wear, apparently), and the con itself is in its second year of crowd-control capping the membership. My inner OCD sufferer is behind this 100%; thin out the ranks, keep it for the true believers, force the attendees to submit to strict regulations concerning dress, activities, expressions of fandom... because that would be fun, right? That would be entertaining? No. Not at all. Which is why the con doesn't do it. Last I heard these things were supposed to be fun.
These aren't TED talks. Nobody's getting their ISO-9000 certifications here. Important industrial regulations or brokered political deals will not be resulting from an anime convention. People are going to dress up in silly costumes and buy useless junk and see their friends. So relax.
As an anime nerd I find the non-anime stuff- the Avengers cosplayers, the Homestuck game shows, the My Little Pony panels- irritating and a waste of time and space. But as an observer of human nature it is fascinating to see how people take something that was meant for one purpose and turn it to something else, use it as a launch pad for new and different experiences. To see how what used to be a teeny tiny niche culture influence nearly everything around it. At any rate, what we call 'anime' is cartoons, cartoons for young people, and what is MLP but cartoons for young people? I don't want to be the moral scold standing there pointing my finger at somebody to tell them they're doing it wrong, that they're not having fun in the right way, to holler "JUDAS!" at an electrified Dylan. That's not why I got into this.
What I will say is that it's time for AN to do some serious big-picture re-engineering of the show itself. To rethink how they're using their available space, see if it can't be used more efficiently. AN has grown without any overall plan or focus, and from what I hear & see, it's now at a point where overall planning is needed more than ever. If only to spare the tired feet a few steps here and there.
By Sunday the weather was back to Anime North standards - sunny, warm, a little breeze. I wound up being on three panels that day, and then it was time for an early dinner, some hotel suite relaxing, and then the long haul of junk back to the house. Monday I witnessed the achievement of high scores in Battlezone, Asteroids, and Tron, but that's another story.
I mean, that's a helluva lot of people who just want to look at other people's anime junk. But let's face it, there were a helluva lot of people at Anime North this year. My sources say we're looking at over 23 thousand attendees. That's paid customer numbers - AN's not counting staff, guests, dealers, complimentary passes, friends of friends, "turnstile" numbers, or any of the other questionable accounting methods some conventions use to Potemkin Village their way into the big leagues.
When a show starts getting numbers like that, it becomes its own unique beast. Congoers were spread between hotels stretching two kilometers worth of Dixon Road, marching back and forth between the TCC and the Doubletree and two Holiday Inns and a Sheraton and a couple of Marriots, a Radisson and a Crowne Plaza and something called The Sandman. The video games were over a highway bridge, the panels were down a hall, up a flight of stairs, and over and around the lineup for the Costume Contest, and the dealers room meant a hike across Dixon Rd, around the front of the TCC, past halls A, B, C, D, and E, and into F, where you'd hang a right past the artists alley and a left into the crowd control fencing. They say geography is destiny and if that's the case, the destiny of an Anime North attendee who wants to experience most of the show is to have very sore feet at the end of the weekend.
And when the weather cooperates, it can be very pleasant. After a long winter nothing pleases a Torontonian, or an Ontarian for that matter, like getting out into the friendly sunshine and the fresh air, surrounded by furiously blooming trees and grass and flowers. Usually the late May weather gets with the program and things are warm and sunny. Unfortunately this year the weather turned on Anime North with a vengeance.
Thursday was, in fact, a goddamn nightmare right out of "The Wreck Of The Hesperus". 60kph winds, cold rain blowing in your face driven by a wind that simply would not quit, it all seemed like a cruel betrayal of the wonderful weather Mother Nature had seen fit to give us for the previous weekend's Victoria Day. The weather made airport runs and hotel pickups a serious pain, and even though the rain cleared away for Friday, the cold wind remained, driving a large proportion of what would have been outdoor photo-swapping cosplayers inside to jam lines for events like the Nominoichi.
I used to sell at the Nomi, but it's tough to cram in an hour of setup and three hours of selling on top of the normal Friday responsibilities of checking into the hotel, setting up the flyers and placards for the AWA promo table, plastering the convention with flyers, getting some kind of food into the body, and being mentally prepared for my 10pm assignment in the Plaza Ballroom to deliver Anime Hell. So this year I took a pass, which meant I had time to get a burrito on the curbside in the cold wind, take one tour through the Nomi, whose tables were jammed three and four deep by bargain-hunting fans, and then make my way back over to the Sheraton to get my act together for my 10pm start time.
My AN was like that all weekend; making sure my events happened on time, combined with the logistical efforts necessary to get from point A to point B to point C in a sea of wandering anime fans herded from crosswalk to choke point to sidewalk to hallway, added to the normal human problems of food and sleep and clothing, it all meant that when I wasn't getting one thing done I was getting something else done. We barely had time to forage through the dealers room for cels the Beguiling had spirited out of Mandarake, and carving out a half-hour to enjoy green-tea ice cream and con gossip took luck and planning.
There is so much happening at AN, spread out over such a large patch of real estate, brought into being with sort of a cheerful disregard for anything resembling the "big picture", that the show really has attained a kind of amorphous, benign-tumor sort of growth; swelling into parking-lot raves and improv performances and highway median photoshoots. It's become fashionable to complain about the mission creep; check out AN's Facebook group for a stirring call for the convention to ban all non-anime cosplay (because you can tell people what to wear, apparently), and the con itself is in its second year of crowd-control capping the membership. My inner OCD sufferer is behind this 100%; thin out the ranks, keep it for the true believers, force the attendees to submit to strict regulations concerning dress, activities, expressions of fandom... because that would be fun, right? That would be entertaining? No. Not at all. Which is why the con doesn't do it. Last I heard these things were supposed to be fun.
These aren't TED talks. Nobody's getting their ISO-9000 certifications here. Important industrial regulations or brokered political deals will not be resulting from an anime convention. People are going to dress up in silly costumes and buy useless junk and see their friends. So relax.
As an anime nerd I find the non-anime stuff- the Avengers cosplayers, the Homestuck game shows, the My Little Pony panels- irritating and a waste of time and space. But as an observer of human nature it is fascinating to see how people take something that was meant for one purpose and turn it to something else, use it as a launch pad for new and different experiences. To see how what used to be a teeny tiny niche culture influence nearly everything around it. At any rate, what we call 'anime' is cartoons, cartoons for young people, and what is MLP but cartoons for young people? I don't want to be the moral scold standing there pointing my finger at somebody to tell them they're doing it wrong, that they're not having fun in the right way, to holler "JUDAS!" at an electrified Dylan. That's not why I got into this.
What I will say is that it's time for AN to do some serious big-picture re-engineering of the show itself. To rethink how they're using their available space, see if it can't be used more efficiently. AN has grown without any overall plan or focus, and from what I hear & see, it's now at a point where overall planning is needed more than ever. If only to spare the tired feet a few steps here and there.
By Sunday the weather was back to Anime North standards - sunny, warm, a little breeze. I wound up being on three panels that day, and then it was time for an early dinner, some hotel suite relaxing, and then the long haul of junk back to the house. Monday I witnessed the achievement of high scores in Battlezone, Asteroids, and Tron, but that's another story.
