I Enjoyed Sac-Anime 2008 But It Could Become A Bit Better
Posted on January 16th, 2008 by CalAggie in Conventions
Last weekend I drove to Sacramento for Sac-Anime 2008 and enjoyed this year more than 2007’s iteration, although it still wasn’t as great as it could have been.
My first day was Saturday and when I got to the pre-registration table, my name was on the list twice (even though I paid once) and so they gave me two “WEEKEND” badges and I gave one to a friend to use on Sunday. There was a table of freebies for being on the newsletter including figures and item cards for Manga Fighter, a third-person shooter game that’s in open beta, as well as Bleach trading card game packs. I then walked around the dealers’ hall and found a couple tables with $2/$3 posters. There was also one guy who had a bunch of older magazines like issues of Animerica from 1998-2000, Tokyopop, Protoculture and this journal called V.Max from around 1993 - I bought about 8 Animericas and one V.Max, just to check them out.
I spent a bunch more time at the artists and asked them questions as I was looking at their stuff and buying something from most of them. I got into an interesting conversation with Tim Ferreira, who apparently really admires Range Murata along with Yoshitori Abe. (He’s also a comedy magician.) I had planned to attend one, maybe two of the concerts taking place that evening but by the time 5pm rolled around, I was tired and didn’t want to wait another two hours so I drove back to Davis, attended a friend’s birthday party, and ending up having more fun there than I would have had by myself in Sacramento.
SUNDAY:
I drove myself and a friend who inherited my extra badge to Sacramento Sunday morning and it was a bit surprising to see it less populated than Saturday at first. Some people suggested that it may have be due to church commitments and I guess that’s a good explanation for many. Anyway, the reason why I went as early as I did (10am) was because I wanted to attend an AMV panel that was put on by Pwolf and Scottanime, the AMV contest coordinator for Sac-Anime and Nan Desu Kan. I saw some videos I hadn’t seen before and others I had but I thought some of the advice was worth it.
We then went to the video game room and played some Taiko Drum, and then back to the dealers room to look for a couple other things. I ended up buying a FLCL deck of cards and a cheap Gintama poster (it has “Made in Taiwan” in small type on the side…) while my friend got lucky in purchasing figures, getting a 1/8 Yuki Nagato PVC figure with the witch hat and cape and, to a lesser extent, a Nendoroid battle maid Mikuru figure. After assembling the figures, shuffling the cards, and playing a couple hands of Go Fish, we went to stand in line for autographs from Laura Bailey and Darrel Guilbeau. I had brought a Kodocha DVD for Ms. Bailey but I didn’t have anything in particular for Mr. Guilbeau so I just had them both sign the color art that came with the program book.
As I was driving back home on Sunday, I thought that going for two days made it more enjoyable than last year but it also made me realize that half of the stuff didn’t particularly interest me. I had idly considered checking out the FMA panel Saturday afternoon but that filled up pretty quick and the other panels besides the AMV one I attended didn’t pique my interest. One of the video rooms was transformed into a panel room when it needed to be and I thought that there could be more panels if they moved into a larger space than the Scottish Rite Center.
The one in July 2007 was held in the Red Lion Inn and garnered over 2000 attendees but apparently it went “way over budget” (according to the About page) and it was more stress than it was worth for the staff so they moved it back to the SRC where it will likely stay until the demand grows enough to require a new location. A larger space could let a few more “small press” artists to have tables but it worked this time with all of them residing within their own dedicated area and not having some among the dealers. I’ve been trying to think of a good, slightly larger space as a potential future site but no good ideas are surfaced. *sigh* I guess it’s still better organized and more accessible than having it in Sunrise Mall…
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