dadwatchesanime

What  a long and entertaining weekend it has been.

This was my first trip to Anime Central, the largest and longest running (I believe) anime convention in the Midwest United States. It is held in Chicago at The Hyatt Regency O’hare and Donald Stephens Convention Center. It runs Friday- Sunday and attracts somewhere around 30,000 attendees. Guests this year included Scandal (band from Japan), fashion designers Akira and Mika Takeuchi, various DJs from Japan who performed at the raves, and American voice actors: Cherami Leigh, Micah Solusod, and Bryn Apprill. This is just a sampling: there were many more.

I took my boys and one of their friends down to the convention. This was our first year going. We headed out early and arrived at the convention by 10am. My younger son and I wandered one direction, the other two went off on their own.

We first watched the opening ceremonies where all the guests were introduced.

After that we went to watch the “One Hour Gundam Rant”panel and the left part way through for the “Meet Cherami Leigh” panel. That was a fun time, she was an entertaining, engaging, and friendly guest. She voices”Asuna”in Sword Art Online, “Lucy” in Fairy Tail, “Lizzie” in Black Butler, “Patty” in Soul Eater, and (the pressing reason for my son) “Natsumi” from Sgt Frog.

He even got a picture with her, along with the autograph on his head piece. She loved it!

After that we headed to the merch room and saw the dizzying array of vendors and artists who were there selling everything anime related.

On our way we ran into a few things…

Like a roaming pack of Skelators.

A yuri bear (Yuri Kuma Arashi) and her super hero friend.

Koro- Sensei from Assassination Classroom.

Nudist Beach and Ryuko from Kill La Kill.

And Elizabeth from Gintama.

After that we took a break back at the hotel room for a bit (which the two older ones had decided to do as well).

My younger son then decided he wanted to get in some “Magic The Gathering” card playing time, so we wandered down to the game room.

He played a sound tech who had some down time and got beaten both times, but to be fair the guy had a really good deck.

While he was playing I spotted a cosplayer from Kancolle across the hall.

Turned out to be a cross player, but that is to be expected at cons.

After that everyone was pretty tired. We ordered a deep dish pizza from Giordanos, had dinner and called it a day.

Oh…I cosplayed too. Who?

Steins Gate’s “Mr. Braun” of course…

Well…If he had less muscles and was a ginger…

Day 2 coming soon.