05/06/07

Masquerade - Anime St. Louis (permalink)

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One of my favorite features of anime conventions is the masquerade. Well over half of the attendees of anime cons generally show up in costume, and the masquerade is a great way to show off the incredible workmanship that goes into some of the costumes. Not only that, but the participants often perform short skits or performances as well.

The Masqerade at Anime St. Louis, while one of the smaller cons I have been to, had one of the best run Masquerades I have seen. Not only did it start on time, which is rare for a convention, but it also was run very smoothly and with minimal problems. It was a great show with many impressive entrants and several awesome skits. I am looking forward to next year's show already.

04/27/07

Piano Squall - Anime St. Louis (permalink)

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"Piano Squall" is the stage name of a pianist who specializes in video game and anime music. I attended his concert Anime St. Louis last week and was very impressed with his performance.

Piano Squall began the show with an entertaining story of his origins and gave some insight into why he chose to pursue the performance of anime and video game music as a career. The bulk of the concert featured a variety of songs from anime such as Naruto, Full Metal Alchemist and Evangellion, and video games such as Chrono Trigger, Super Mario World, and most of the Final Fantasy series. It was obvious by his actions that Piano was very emotionally attached to the music he was playing. The crowd erupted into enthusiastic applause after the conclusion of every song.

At the end of the concert, Piano once again spoke before the audience to promote his new album "Game" which he produced with the aid of EA games. I found his salesmanship of the album to be a bit on the tacky side -- he very much seemed to be channeling the spirit of a thousand infomercial hosts in his presentation. Nevertheless, at the conclusion of the concert he was swarmed by the crowd elbowing their way to his table to pre-order his album and obtain a signed poster. While I did not join the crowd mobbing him at the end of the presentation, I was very impressed with his performance and the quality of the piano arrangements he wrote for many of the songs. I hope I get a chance to see him in concert again.

04/26/07

Dragon’s Keep - ShowMeCon (permalink)

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While at Anime St. Louis and Show Me Con last weekend, I saw a production by the theatre/LARP troup "The Dragons Keep." From their website:

"TDK is a unique role-playing game and improv show that mixes improvisational theatre with a Dungeons & Dragons style LARP (Live Action Role Playing). Think Saturday Night Live meets Lord of the Rings with Audience Participation. The cast play all of the NPC's (Non-Player Characters, like monsters) and a few selected members of the audience are called up on stage to be the PC's (Player Characters). Only audience members that fill out a character card prior to the beginning of the show will be eligible to be called up on stage. These audience "party members" are given a quest. To assist them with this quest they are given a spell orb (with seven spell charges), weapons and armor. With the aid of a guide (one of our cast members), the party is lead through a somewhat perilous adventure that tests their wits, strength, and overall moral worth. Some party members successfully make it through the entire adventure, and others.well, let's just say they aren't as lucky. Every show is a chapter in our ongoing, two-year story arc, so every show is unique. "

While normally they use an on-going story arc, for the purposes of the convention the troupe chose a stand alone lighter story line so that people new to the experience could better appreciate it. The story they chose was based upon the premise that a new mega-dungeon named "SlayMart" had moved into town and was running all the smaller dungeons out of business. The heroes then had to travel into the SlayMart and attempt to shut it down for good. Overall the production was interesting if a bit clumsy, and the story was pretty funny. If they are performing at any future cons I attend, I will definiitely be in the audience.

04/25/07

Anime St. Louis / ShowMeCon 2007 (permalink)

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During my trip last weekend, I attended the ShowMeCon and Anime St. Louis held at a Marriot hotel. It was a joint anime/science fiction convention and attracted over 1000 nerds, geeks, and other socially awkward types to come together and celebrate their nerdiness for a weekend.

Aside from the other anime convention I attended this year, Naka-Kon in late march, I hadn't attended a convention of this type in several years. Prior to this year the last one I attended was Otakon in 2000, at a time when the anime fandom was just starting to get huge and there were still only a handful of anime conventions. Now, even living in the midwest, there is one or more convention almost every month within driving distance of my home. Even more surprising is even the smaller cons are attracting upwards of 1000 people.

This year was Anime St. Louis' first year at a bigger venue, and the first (and probably last) time they partnered with SciFi con "Show Me Con." According to the numbers they gave at the closing ceremonies, last year's con attracted only 300 people and was located on the college campus. This year they were hosted at a Marriot Hotel (who treated the con horribly) and had upwards of 1000 people in attendance. At least 80% of those in attendance were there specifically for the anime portion of the con.

Overall my convention experience was awesome, though there were problems. The hotel, a Marriot located in south-west St. Louis, pretty much dicked the con over with some bad business practices. Originally the convention organizers had reserved many of the meeting rooms and salons as well as the grand ball room to host the activities in. The hotel, however, decided it would be a good idea to double book everything and also promised the grand ball room to a wedding, a fashion show and a bat mitzvah, and gave the anime convention several smaller rooms instead. This made the larger and more popular events uncomfortably crowded, and caused many con-goers to be left out.

The combination of Anime St. Louis and Show Me Con caused some problems as well. Though the two cons were supposed to be partnered for the weekend, the two had separate schedules, meaning people without both did not know the full extent of what was scheduled when. Additionally, from what I heard, the Show Me Con folks did not fully live up to their part of the obligations and left Anime St. Louis to do much of the running of the con. Finally, most of the con-goes were attending only for one con or the other, and the two groups of attendees mostly ignored each other. In the end, it would have been better if either the two cons were kept separate, or, if they spent more time truly integrating the conventions with crossover panels, joint events and a shared schedule.

Even with it's problems I had a blast at the convention, and only wish I had more time to see more of the panels. The ones I did make it to were: Dragon's Keep, a combination LARP and play, Piano Squall's Concert, the Masquerade, the Swimming party (and Mankini Con, which will only make sense to those who were there), a Filking concert with Gary Hanak, the strange Japanese fetishes panel, a panel on MMORPGs, a panel on single player RPG gaming and the closing ceremonies. I will make a more detailed post later on a couple of the bigger events. I was definitely glad I attended the events of the convention last weekend and hope that I can make it back next year.