Is Anime Boston Worth It
Over Easter Weekend, Chris, Bill, and I covered our first East coast anime convention of the year, Anime Boston! For Chris and I, this was our first anime convention since 2019 as well as our first east coast one! For Bill, this was only his second convention ever (both for Anime Boston), and the first in many years!
Anime Boston is a three-day convention held annually in Boston, Massachusetts, USA under the supervision of the New England Anime Society. Their focus is to celebrate and promote Japanese animation, comics, and pop-culture.
Temperatures were in the high 50’s/low 60’s during the day and mid-30’s at night. It was sunny and windy for most of the weekend.
Anime Boston Takes Over Hynes Convention Center
We ended up getting into town a day before the convention started so we could get settled and pick up our press passes. We stayed 3 nights at The Westin Copley Place – Boston. Overall a very beautiful hotel!
Our room was quite nice & the bed was comfortable, which was super nice in comparison to sitting on the cold convention floor to rest our feet.
It was definitely one of the higher-priced hotels available via the convention’s hotel portal. Most of the other hotels were booked by the time we got around to booking, so we had very few options. On top of it, it was also Easter weekend which probably inflated the prices even more so.
Anime Boston 2023 Announces More North American Guests
We are hoping that next year prices should be less since it won’t be taking place during Easter weekend at that time.
(Just kidding! 2024 Anime Boston will be taking place over Easter Weekend, so something to keep in mind!) We also drove to Boston so we had to pay for valet parking which was an additional $70 a night.
It was a bit of a walk for us to haul our equipment/backpacks around so we couldn’t quickly head back to our room to decompress or take a nap. It wasn’t until late Saturday night that we realized we could have gone through the mall and pedestrian crossway to get right to our hotel. It was still a walk, but at least we didn’t have to brave the bone-chilling wind going to and from. If we have to stay here again, we will make use of the alternate route.
Anime Boston 2023
From Anipike to Gaia, anime fans have always found hubs to talk about anime online. In this nostalgic panel, we’ll talk about these sites, their history with the anime fan community, and the impact that they’ve had on anime fandom even today.
Our first panel of the day! It took place early in the morning and the panel room was a bit tucked away from everyone, which was a bummer because we truly loved this panel. Kennedy (RedBard) & Sam (Anime Herald) did a fantastic job turning back the clock and bestowed the relics of ye ol’ web. From Gaia Online to AMV.org to even FanFiction.net, I, personally, felt very called out in a good way.
The 1990s: the youth of Britain was mad for anime and manga, The Government of Britain wanted to ban what they saw as oriental filth. The fanzine creators of Britain came out of nowhere, literally smelling the Cow gum as they pasted and stapled and photocopied their tributes to their passion in 20-to-50 issue print runs, many of which would not survive into the digital era. Helen McCarthy was part of the insanity. She’ll tell you why it was so important to the growth of British fandom and where to track down some of the surviving relics of those crazy days.
Vibrant And Exciting, Anime Boston Brings Worlds Together
If you ever see that Helen McCarthy is going to be hosting a panel at a convention you’re attending, absolutely make it your priority number 1 to attend & line up rather early (they are usually capped well before it starts). For those who may not know, Helen is the British author of multiple anime-related books such as 500 Manga Heroes and Villains, Anime!, The Anime Movie Guide, and Hayao Miyazaki: Master of Japanese Animation. She is the co-author of The Anime Encyclopedia with Jonathan Clements. Helen is an absolute delight. You always walk away from her panels with new-found knowledge about the anime industry and how things were before the digital era. In this panel, in particular, she went over how fanzines in Britain came to be, the struggles of producing them (one person was printing long-running fanzine Trash City (NSFW) using their work’s photocopier!), and running her own zine in the 1990s.
In February, one of the most influential manga artists of all time, Leiji Matsumoto, passed away at the age of 85. As the creator of Galaxy Express 999, Space Battleship Yamato, Interstella 5555 and others, his influence on manga and anime both in Japan and worldwide is immeasurable, influencing fans of many generations. Guest panelists Helen McCarthy and Zack Davisson have studied and written extensively on Matsumoto’s work. They join us as we honor the memory, celebrate the life, and examine the lasting legacy of this larger-than-life creator.
Helen, Zack, and two other panelists chatted about various ways Leiji Matsumoto’s work and his influence made the anime and manga industry and the impact on their lives. It was quite insightful since Chris and I up to that point haven’t watched or read any of his works, but have known about him through osmosis.
Anime Boston 2022: Cosplay Comes Back To Boston
“Shiny Questions, just like Shiny Pokémon, are worth the same amount of points, they’re just slightly different and a little rarer.” – Mike Trapp (Dropout/College Humor)
If you’re a fan of Dropout’s Um Actually show, then this is one panel you didn’t want to miss out on! This is probably the most fun & hilarious panel we went to! Whether you’ve heard of the show or not, it’s something anyone could participate in easily. The premise was tweaked slightly to incorporate more than 3 contestants, but most of the rules are the same.
Several contestants (picked randomly from the audience) are all attempting to win bragging rights by correcting incorrect statements given by the host on various pop culture topics (in this case, it was mostly anime & video games).
Anime Boston 2022: You Can Always Come Home
There are only two rules to the game which are mentioned at the beginning to everyone; all of the corrections must be preceded by the phrase “Um, Actually…” and you can interrupt the statement at any time. If you don’t precede the correction with “Um, Actually…”, you lose the point and someone else can buzz in to steal the point. You are allowed to interrupt the host from finishing their statement if you already spot the error.
Chris and I both truly hope they bring this panel back again and again. The panel went through two batches of contestants but we had to duck out after the first one since we needed to head off to the Masquerade.
The Masquerade brings together our Craftsmanship and Performance cosplay contests. Performance skit entries compete, while the Craftsmanship entries showcase their work. Come see cosplay, Anime Music Video winners, and more at the biggest event on Saturday night! Pick up your free seating pass at the pass table on Saturday.
Anime Boston 2023: The Cosplay Cometh
We are so used to these events being called the Cosplay Contest, so it took us a moment to realize that the alternative name used at Anime Boston is Masquerade and not an actual masquerade ball. I’m a sucker for Princess Tutu so when there was a legit ballerina cosplaying as Princess Tutu dancing to The Nutcracker, Op. 71, Act II: No. 14a, Pas de deux. Andante Maestoso, I was in full-on tears through their whole skit.
In the beginning, the anime community was small, scattered, and quiet; cons like Anime Boston were but a pipe dream, and the “newest anime” was whatever your local connection could scrounge together. Suddenly, in 1998, a Pikachu-shaped meteor crashed into the fandom, causing seismic ripples that would reshape the industry today. In the years that followed, the quirky subculture we all knew and loved would blossom into a behemoth, as new fans entered the hobby by the thousands, and publishers scrambled to keep them happy. It seemed like the great times would last forever, though if one put their ear to the ground, they could hear the sounds of a bubble that was getting ready to burst…Samantha Ferreira delivers an on-the-ground chronicle of the 2000s anime bubble, combining years of research and contemporary sources, to paint a picture of the times leading up to and through the period, and the immediate aftermath.
Sam (editor-in-chief at Anime Herald) presented a very in-depth, insightful panel about the rise and fall of the anime industry in the 2000s, along with giving her predictions on what might be on the horizon. Chris, Bill, and I learned a lot from this capped panel! While it was very information dense, it also leaves you thinking about all the pieces long afterwards. Hopefully, Sam will be able to present this panel again and in an even bigger room!
Anime Boston Cosplay Gallery [2022 05 31]
Creating an inclusive experience at the convention is great to see! I wish there were more conventions that would adopt these inclusive options!
As you
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