FanimeCon 2011

So we were lucky enough to get an artist alley table at FanimeCon in San Jose, CA this year. Having only been to conventions in Southern California, this was to be our farthest con yet. We left two days before to allow a full day of driving north with enough time to rest. We spent around 7 hours driving and arrived at the Marriot,, which is one of the 2 hotels attached to the convention center, around 10:30pm. This made everything a lot easier for us since we needed to haul our artist alley wares back and forth everyday. When we were given our keys we were delightfully surprised to find that they were made specifically for the convention. This is something that we had never seen before.

Thursday we waited in the pre-registration line for around 3 hours. I would love if conventions could make picking up your badge an easier experience, but at least it was Thursday and there was nothing else going on. We had reserved a spot in Fanime's Swap Meet for that night so we could attempt to sell off some of our older DVDs, manga and other merchandise. The swap meet was set up along the perimeter of the Arcade and had a lot of people selling there. We were able to unload a few of our items (yay extra shelf space!) and even found some good deals from other sellers. Swap Meets are great things to have at conventions and I hope more cons decide to incorporate them.

Artist Alley check-in on Friday was very well organized and we began setting up shortly after. Having done artist alleys for several years now, we spotted a lot of familiar faces. At 2pm, the alley opened and attendees began pouring in. Even though we were right near one of two entrances, the entrance near us wasn't where the majority of people were coming in. Most attendees check out the Dealer's Hall first and go from there into the Artist Alley through the entrance right next to the dealer's exit. Though we were happy with our spot, we would have loved to be on the opposite side of the alley.

The first day came and went with little excitement. Being the first day, it's never all that busy so we spent most of our time at the table, working on things and chatting with people. We brought some new items to sell at Fanime such as amigurumi plushies, lots of resin jewelry and updated hats with cute faces. We also brought a couple screen printed T-shirts of our popular Mortified Onigiri design, sadly we did not think to photograph them beforehand...oops. We've been working on getting t-shirts made and this was our first attempt. We'll be trying for more shirts for Anime Expo this July :D. That night we checked out the Swap Meet again as well as the Arcade. The Arcade featured an excellent selection of games and even had purikura photo booths! Unfortunately for us, it was very busy and we didn't feel like waiting around to play anything.

Saturday was our first full day in the alley and the convention really picked up speed. A steady flow of friendly con-goers came by the table throughout the day. We noticed throughout the convention that everyone at Fanime were exceptionally nice to us. Even in the crowded elevators of the Marriot, we found everyone to be very polite. We were both able to check out the Dealer's Hall Saturday, although neither of us found anything we needed to buy. There was a nice selection of merchandise from a good variety of dealers. Around 1:30pm, Cindy went off to wait in line for the Yoshiki Panel so I stayed and watched the table alone until she returned around 6:30. You can read about her experience here:

~~~Yoshiki Q&A + autograph session summary~~~
If you've read our past blog entries, you may know that I like X Japan a little tiny bit >.> <.< >.>....*hides hide costume in the closet* When I found out Yoshiki, leader of X Japan, (pronounced YOSHki) was to be a GoH I just had to go to his panel and get an autograph. I rarely ever go to any panels during conventions because of my artist alley table, but whenever X Japan/Yoshiki is involved I make exceptions. The panel was scheduled to start at 4PM, at a little after 1PM Brian informed me that there was already a line forming. By 1:30 I was in line decked out in my hide guitar print dress which I made for the X Japan concert in L.A. this past summer, surprisingly the line wasn't very long at all. I was maybe somewhere around #30-50th in line. I chatted with a few people in line while I waited, it's always nice to meet other X Japan fans. 4:00 came, and we were all still standing in line...I wasn't really surprised because every single X Japan/Yoshiki event I have attended has never started on time. We were eventually informed that the panel was to be delayed.

While we waited during the delay, the staff changed their position on photos and video 4 times. First no photography, then yes photography, then no flash photography and no video, to finally anything you want. We were finally allowed into the panel room and I got to sit pretty close to the front. Press was sitting in the first 2 rows and I made it into the 4th row on Yoshiki's side of the room. Staff announced that Yoshiki's plane was delayed and he wasn't even there yet and that autographs would probably not happen =_=. To keep us entertained they played the X Japan Last Live DVD. The crowd was pretty energetic, during the song "X" a lot of people (including me) shouted X and crossed our arms in the X formation. 

Yoshiki arrived between 5-5:30PM and the panel finally began. First we were shown a making of video of the Born to be Free music video that was shot at Club Nokia during the Yoshiki foundation party which Brian and I attended last June. Due to my bright costume, I was able to be spot myself several times. I was incredibly surprised O_O. We were also shown footage from the North American tour from last year. Yoshiki entered the room right after the video ended, and everyone went wild cheering and taking photos and video. The entire panel consisted of a couple more videos pertaining to Yoshiki's charity foundation and his fashion project. Staff asked Yoshiki some general questions and picked a handful of fans to ask questions as well. 

Finally at the end came what we had all been waiting so long for, the autograph session. Staff announced that there would only be 40 spots given...and it would all be determined by a game of rock, paper, scissors =_=. 4 round were played, and I lost on the last round. A lot of the people who were given a spot were not the ones who had waited several hours in line. This was honestly one of the dumbest ways Fanime staff could have determined who would get a slot. It was incredibly easy to cheat, and from what I have heard/read, there were people who were not honest. Since there was no way to monitor the game, there was no way to tell who was being honest and who wasn't. I was incredibly disappointed and I'm sure all the others who were waiting in line even longer than I did were. 

Overall the panel was rather bland. The video about the fashion project was almost 100% in Japanese with no subtitles and it was fairly long. The introduction video was also rather lengthy and I felt there was too much prior concert footage. Since the panel was advertised as a Q&A session I thought there would be more Q&A. The autograph fiasco kind of just topped it all off into blahville :(. 

~~~Yoshiki Panel Summary End~~~ 

Sunday & Monday:
Our squid plushies and amigurumis found loving homes over the weekend and both of our Onigiri shirts sold! This was very encouraging for us being a first attempt at shirts. We wandered the Artist Alley and got to see a lot of wonderful artists we hadn't seen before. Across the aisle from us was BoxKat who was nice enough to give Cindy a lovely Pikachu keychain they had been selling. She was incredibly impressed with it as this is something we had never seen in an artist alley before. It was great inspiration to see artists trying new things. Just look at the way the image grows when the light shines on it!

Monday being the final day of the con, we had low expectations since most attendees are usually gone by the last day, however, we were happy to discover plenty of business to be had and somewhat surprisingly, we sold the most buttons on Monday. This was also our last chance to buy things. I purchased a beautiful print from Elda The and Cindy bought a shirt from Azuzephre (one of her top 3 favorite artists) who was nice enough to take a picture with her. Our Fanime Artist Alley experience was very good overall and we hope to make it in again next year. The convention is big without being overwhelming and staying in a hotel attached to the convention center makes the experience much easier and comfortable. The surrounding area is also very nice with lots of good places to eat within walking distance.

After taking a few days off, its now time to get ready for Anime Expo next month. We'll be bringing all our Fanime leftovers and lots of other new things to AX. We look forward to another year there and will be updating our online store throughout the summer. Thank you to everyone who came by during Fanime and we'll see you next month at Anime Expo!

(To see all our Fanime Photos, check out our Flickr gallery here)