Man – this reminds me of old school JACON.
MomoCon is the largest free anime convention in the United States. Last year, the event had over 8000 attendees on the campus of Georgia Tech and this year it looks about the same. Wasabi Anime is on hand to “bring anime to the people” and (of course) to promote InvaderCON which is happening down the street in two weeks.
We came with a box of 5000 flyers for our crazy little Invader ZIM convention and we’ve handed out all of them before the end of Saturday. Thus confirming the numbers for attendance to be pretty damn accurate.
As far as entertainment, we did DARE! The Transformers Panel Ultimate to a standing room only crowd. For an hour and a half I talked about giant robots that turn into cars and stuff with Ryan subbing in for Joey Snackpants. The crowd loved it and we got to meet a bunch of awesome new fans… and one pissed off Beast Wars fan. (Sorry dude, that series still sucks.)
Afterwards, we went to The Vortex for burgers. While there, Katie and I scored some awesome hipster gear.
That’s right. We’re WINNING!
Then we went back to MomoCon for Mystery Anime Theater 3000 to roast the Sailor Moon R movie. Then TRAGEDY STRUCK! The college decided to close the building at midnight because they (I assume) had finally had enough of the hyper anime kids running around. This caused an issue with our panel since 1.) the movie was scheduled at 11:30 PM and 2.) it runs over over sixty minutes.
Solution? Run the movie a 3x speed and do commentary. John (also subbing for Mr. Snackpants) brought down the house with a cleverly placed Scott Pilgrim gag in the film and I scored with an obscure How I Met Your Mother gag.
Now it’s Sunday and I have been sitting at the Wasabi Anime table writing this for the past hour… and during that time, I’ve been reminded that the fans really do make it worth it. A guy recognized me from the Transformers panel and walked up to tell me how much he loved it – and then showed me his Autobot and Decepticon tattoos on his legs.
An hour before that, a woman from the Sailor Moon showing last night dropped off a picture she drew for me because “I reminded her how much she loved Sailor Moon.”
Make no mistake – THE FANS ARE AWESOME.
March 14, 2011 @ 10:13 PM
Love that Sailor Moon picture, amazing.
Also I agree with how important fans are to a convention, I think its one of the reasons I find Anime Day Orlando so fun to be at.