It's 15 minutes from your house, yes, but it's also incredibly small. The modern day con is so f*cking massive that all of CCG could fit into 1/8 of the amount of space used for bathrooms at a major thing like Acen.
Hey hey, it was at a bigger venue last time! It's gotten progressively bigger, but it's still small. I kind of like that. I don't think I could handle a larger scale "TurboGrafx know it all" crowd. There's always still one or two people every year that go HOW HARD IS IT TO PROGRAM TWO 8 BIT CPUS.
I went to the first few Acens. It was a big deal at the time because the Midwest had never had an anime con that big before, big like the east cost stuff. I can't honestly handle new cons though. The terminally exhibitionist cosplay scum took over the entire scene. It's really sad. Anime cons pretty much suck now. Nobody wants to talk about newtype philosphy or Yamato deck plans, it's all cosplay and officially licensed stuff I could just watch at home.
Yep. I pretty much hate anime conventions because some of the most unintelligent dumbshits are basically parading around in outfits, sometimes from shows they didn't watch, but liked the characters.
You see tits everywhere, and then sometimes see those girls complaining that people are staring. You're presenting cameltoe / cleavage. Of course we're staring.
Those high-end cosplay f*ckers have ruined cosplaying. If you show up in some goofy outfit you slapped together for fun, you get ridiculed. It's all super professional/high end bullshit. It defeats the entire purpose of going just to have fun and screw around. Everyone's so uptight about their shitty outfits.
You also get the desperately trying to be weird weebtards that run around like a ninja, and the "omfg I am so desu" people that think they're experts on Japan despite never exiting Cleveland.
They're all eating Chinese takeout or gas station sushi, as if any of that is close to being authentic food.
Samurai Dan or whatever shows up to school us on the ancient arts of Bushido. As if random dumbass white dudes have much clue on that:
http://www.theknoxstudent.com/news/2012/10/10/samurai-v-s-ninja-performance-disappoints-organizers/The one time I was at a local anime con, I slapped together a halfass Harlock outfit at the last minute.
I just took my toy Cosmo Dragoon and Gravity Saber, put on my usual clothes, and a Harlock tshirt I made myself years ago out of white paint and a black tshirt.
The
only person that recognized it was some 45 year old dude at the hotel for a jeweler convention. He told me the attitudes of the people at that con were terrible, and nothing like when he was at cons in the late 80s, enjoying himself.
It was depressing. I got mistaken for Squall from FFVIII. The only person I talked to besides him, was a vendor selling cool trinkets.
other than that, the entire vendor hall is always just "Hey, have any of you dumbf*cks heard of Amazon/Ebay? Your prices suck"
They're a disappointing waste of time. Acen's organizers seem a bit slow, too. They are unorganized and make dumb news-post choices. They split the Scandal concert info onto TWO pages, and put the sale links on the second, harder to locate page. I almost missed the upgrade thing (you can pay 10$ to upgrade your seats at the concert or some shit)
Fortunately, the 50$ entry to Acen gets me into the Scandal concert for free, plus 10$ to upgrade. My other option was to fly farther (CA), and pay 60$ to see them. So, basically, the shitty Anime con is just a tacked on bonus while we run around the O'hare area, trying to not get shot.
It'll be great watching an entire convention of idiots waiting for Scandal to play the two songs that were theme songs for Bleach and whatever, and then blank out when every other song gets played.
I hope there's other crap to do in the area, because I am bettering the convention bores me within an hour.