ACEN 2010 Review
Anime Central 2010 brought many thousands of attendees to the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center and Hyatt Regency O'Hare over the weekend. ACEN, as usual, continues demonstrating the best reasons for an anime convention to reach critical mass; when there are thousands of anime fans in one place, they will have fun no matter what. That's not to say the convention wasn't fun itself: they offered panels and events for just about everyone, and over a dozen guests for the attendees to meet.
Personally, I'm a fan of smaller conventions. At a convention the size of Anime Central it is very hard to make new friends and see them throughout the convention. When there are 20,000 other people in one small place, it gets hard to keep running into people repeatedly.
View Pictures from ACEN 2010
But a big convention can offer what other conventions can't. ACEN's Friday night rave, which had some fantastic music going, featured Japanese DJs mixing up the beats. And the Aural Vampire concert would be hard to experience elsewhere as well. There were also over a dozen guests, ranging from Fullmetal Alchemist stars such as Vic Mignogna (Edward Elric) and Wendy Powell (Envy) to Samurai instructors like Daniel Coglan.
This year's Anime Central also featured lots of cool announcements, including an appearance from Yoshiki (X Japan) announcing X Japan playing at Lollapalooza and premiering the short film "YOSHIKI: History through X JAPAN" to introduce X-Japan. FUNimation also made announcements of several newly licensed shows including Gun X Sword (Premiering Winter 2010), Chrome Shelled Regios, Chaos Head, and Heaven's Lost Property, Rideback, and Rosario + Vampire. They also noted release dates for Hetalia (September 14) and Eden of the East (September 28).
The ACEN Exhibit Hall also featured what can't be found at smaller conventions, with nearly every anime exhibitor represented. Almost anything anime-related could be found in the exhibit hall, and there were probably around 50 artists in the artist alley as well. ACEN also gave attendees the chance to learn about other conventions, with a handful of conventions represented in the Exhibit Hall ranging from QC Anime-zing! to Youmacon. The masquerade was also well organized, with four large screens for people in the back to watch and a separate area in the hotel simulcasting the show live.
The convention hotel, the Hyatt Regency O'Hare, cost just over $500 for our stay from Thursday to Sunday. The hotel, with hundreds of rooms, only had four elevators, which had attendees spending as much time waiting for elevators as they might have spent time waiting in lines for events. The place was fairly spacious, and when combined with unused portions of the convention center and nearby hotels it was clear that ACEN could fit there for a long time to come.
Overall, ACEN had dozens of great events and lots for attendees to do. There were plenty of exciting and unique events, but sometimes having so many attendees makes it tougher to make new friends. Attendees loved the surprise appearance of Yoshiki of X Japan along with the other guests they met throughout the convention, and the convention was a blast for the attendees we interviewed.