Anime Weekend Atlanta Convention Report: Day One

Hello there my lovely readers! It is I the lazy one. Why didn’t any posts get blogged yesterday? I have no idea. 4 days of straight fun/travel can take its toll on your body. Like MOG all this laundry and housework and blogs to catch up on? However shall I catch up with my crappy reality shows and looking at my own pictures from the convention while reading other people’s opinions of AWA?! XD Silly, silly me. Hopefully most of my AWA will get posted today. We got anime posts to blog, before the new season descends upon me and I start off Fall behind.

Piglu is up bright and early before cosplayers descend upon all corners of the convention center.

So Day 1 of Anime Weekend Atlanta! Will Tenchi spend all her money in the Dealer’s Room before the convention has barely started? Will confunk be present despite the convention being hours old? Will cosplayers be out and about or saving their best costumes for Saturday? Lets find out. XD

Ah. Peace and quiet.

Starting off getting sleep at AWA is hard for people like me. The way the hotel is set up sound just travels upward no matter what room you are in. And while I stay up late in my everyday real life…I don’t do so while on vacation. Or at least I stay up late in my room doing quiet things. Ah the loud people at conventions. It is almost this event is many people’s main source of fun for the entire year thus they need to stay up all night and have the maximum experience or they will die. I just wish there was more downtime. 2 am is when the noise starts to die down but I need my sleep. I am old folks.

The husband trying to be artistic. Pretty yes?

After dragging myself out of bed and finding out that I forgot to charge the camera battery from my trip to Disney it was off to the lobby to take some random pictures and head towards the Opening Ceremony. The Dealer’s Room never opens on time so why wait in line when we could see the special guests for the weekend? XD I actually have no knowledge if the Dealer’s Room opened on time but I am sure it didn’t so…I will just pretend it didn’t.

I have been every single anime dub EVER! Enjoy!

The start of the Opening Ceremonies was so funny. Very entertaining. So glad they went with Johnny Yong Bosch instead of another voice actor that gets on my last nerves yet is loved by the masses. At least some of the masses at AWA. But Johnny Yong Bosch and his explanation of AWAs past and how he has been in every single anime ever was entertaining to me. LAUGH EVERYONE! Then the special guests were introduced and they said their quick hellos and promoted their events. I think we stayed for about 45 minutes, enough to get a feel for the Opening Ceremonies but I think things were starting to die down so off we went.

No pictures from the Engrish Jamboree so...more pictures from the Opening Ceremony.

I think I will wait to talk about the Dealer’s Room on Day 3 as that was our lightest day. So after the Opening Ceremony the first event we attended was the Engrish Jamboree. We missed the first few minutes of this panel as it was full and we had to wait for people to leave. Partial our fault for not getting in line before the panel started but for some reason panels that were pretty full last year were put in smaller panels. Why weren’t they using that room off the side of hotel check in? This panel room was small and the sound system was terrible. The scene wasn’t high enough off the ground so it was hard to see the subtitles. So…while some of the jokes were understandable without much effort the panel wasn’t as successful as last year because of the sound system and video screen.

High School of the Dead anyone?

I had other events on my list at this time but since a certain voice actor was at the event The 25,000 yen Pyramid I decided to skip that. So after food, walking around the Dealer’s Room, and seeing most of the artists in the Artist Alley the next event we went to was the Totally Lame Anime panel. Out of all the panels that we went to that were supposed to make fun of anime/Japanese culture this one had the most relevant content. One would think that would be obvious, having anime at an anime convention you would be surprised. There was a good mixture of old clips and current material that everyone in the audience should have been entertained. I do wonder if 2 hours is a bit too long for ANY panel though. While I had fun how many more events could we fit into the schedule if these panels ran for only an hour and a half? So good panel, had some laughs, and people were entertained.

Being with Yuno is like being in hell sometimes right?

The next event on our list was Anime Hell. This seems to be the most promoted event at the convention and there is an obvious reason for that. But I am beginning to wonder why that is. The panelist seems to think that the audience wants to hear ONLY the bass, not the actual words or music in a clip. I nearly left after the first clip of the little blue monsters fighting with humans. It was that loud. The amount of anime/Japanese material showed at this panel was probably not even 50 percent. It was almost like the panel was geared towards people who have been to every Anime Hell with people reciting lines from certain scenes when the dialogue wasn’t even understandable. I did enjoy some of the scenes shown but if your panel is called Anime Hell maybe there should be more anime in your clips? And maybe you shouldn’t try to blow our eardrums on the first night.

Sweet dreams cosplayers!

After 4 hours of crazy clips we decided to skip the last event I had on the maybe list. It was already 12:30 and the husband was fading fast. We did spend about 6 hours doing event/panel things today which I think is a pretty decent chunk of time. Off to bed we go as we are old people who need sleep after so much fun. Day Two will have more events, more cosplay pictures, and Tenchi spending more money in the Dealer’s Room. Onward we go!!!