ACEN Anime Convention - Chicago 2010

Recently I attended another convention, but this time it was all about anime: ACEN or Anime Central the Thirteenth in Rosemont, Illinois on May 14–16, 2010. My friend Josep was selling his SpacePunks comic there and I went along to help and snag some pictures to share with all of you.

ACEN was held in the Hyatt Regency hotel and the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center. Here are a few overhead shots to give you an idea of the convention space. It is the largest anime convention in the midwest. The convention hall contained the main exhibitor space and artist alley. The hotel housed the table top gaming area, video gaming area and additional rooms for panels and discussions.

I admit I felt out of my element here. I enjoy several anime shows like Ghost in the Shell, Inuyasha and any movie from Studio Ghibli but I soon realized that I was only at level 1% fandom compared to the anime fans who attended ACEN. These girls and guys loooooove anime and they know their stuff. They can tell you the difference between a Charmander and Charmeleon and give you the stats on both.

Yes, I quickly learned at ACEN that Pokemon retains a huge cult following to this day. Many people carried around a Pokeball-shaped gadget. I think they were the Pokewalkers that came with the Pokemon HeartGold DS game. They are part-pedometer, part- Tamagotchi. The young woman in the table next to us had one and people kept coming up to her and without saying a word they would touch their two pokeballs together. I am not sure what the cultural significance was in this. I thing the devices were sharing information probably pokemon or game abilities.

Main Exhibitor Area

Here are some overhead shots of the show just to give you an idea of the size of it. It was a fairly large convention and one of the larges anime shows in the US. The pictures only show about a third of the total area of the show. So multiply by 3 in your mind or you could use a calculator.

The comic conventions I visited this year (Wondercon and C2E2) both had large displays from comic publishers like Marvel and DC. But ACEN the big name was Funimation, the anime entertainment company.

The funny thing is at those other comic book conventions Funimation was a small fry with a tiny table compared to Marvel and the rest. But at ACEN the tables were turned, literally. Funimation was top dog with a huge display.

Here are posters of some of the companies Liscenced imports. Sgt. Frog I hear parodies a lot of other anime titles like Gundam and Dragon Ball. Do you recognize any of the other titles shown above?

Venders

ACEN had plenty of venders selling everything from t-shirts and manga to bento boxes and DVDs.

This was my favorite shopping spot at the show. They had all kinds of cool Japanese stuff. I am a big fan of creating Bento so I picked up a few of the lunch box making accessories. They had rice molds, little sauce bottles and tiny shape cutters. It's hard to find this kind of stuff in America. Happy Japan is located in Tennessee but you can order stuff from them online here - Happy Japan.

Look at all the plushies! Aw ain't they sweet? Can you spot the big Totoro? I like the big lanterns.

This guy had a nice selection of stuff. I think he must have been known as the Hat Guy by the end of the con.

"Hey Mister Hat Guy, what do you know?"

"That you should wear a hat where ever you go!"

Gundam anyone? Plenty of model kits on sale at ACEN. I don't think American kids build models of planes or jets anymore. When I was little I built a Star Trek Enterprise D ship model. Yea, nerdy I know. But to this day I still know how the warp necelles connect to the power drive. And that kind of skill always looks good on a resume!

Manga, manga, manga. Yes, there was lots of manga for sale at ACEN. They had every title you could imagine in English or Japanese. Eat that Barnes and Nobel with your one shelf of manga titles!

I actually was familiar with most of these titles. Host Club is a raunchy little show about a prep school escort service. I think everyone knows Sailormoon! Have you ever seen the live action show of Sailormoon they made in Japan? It is amazing. Go find it online somewhere. Look where ever it is you find such things. You'll be glad you did.

Oh! I see a Ghost in the Shell poster! Sadly one of the only GITS artifact I did see at ACEN. Readers of x-tropia.com know that Ghost is the Shell is possibly my favorite show of all times. I have all the episodes on DVD and I watch them often. Check out my review of the first episode of Ghost in the Shell here.

More hats? Oh look it's the Hat Lady. I wonder if she has met the Hat Guy. Hmm, those two were made for each other.

"Hey Hat Lady, what do you say?"

"Make sure to wear a hat every day!"

Look at the adorable character head caps. You can not imagine how many people were wearing these things at ACEN. Like 60% of the people had one of these hats on their melon. The remaining people were in full costumes. For reals.

Here is a shot of artist alley. I spent most of my time there helping my friend sell his comics at the SpacePunks table. In the foreground you can see a gallery of framed art they had in the center of the show.

T-shirts

One of the best things offered for sale at ACEN were the cool t-shirts. Along with the anime characters and typical pop culture imagery were some really funny shirts with humerous catch phrases. Here are a few of my favorite phrases...

-No Free Hugs

-Vampires aren't shiny (watch out team Edward!)

-I Never Liked Pokemon (You could be shot at ACEN for having this on.)

-Zombie Crossing: Headgear Recommended

-Got Soap?

People were telling me that "Got Soap?" is actually an unofficial slogan for the ACEN convention. The close second being "Got Deoderant?" Oh boy, did some of those people need it. Wow!

Here's another good one. "Don't make me go Zelda on you!" I love all things 8-bit.

This was my favorite of all the t-shirt designs I saw at ACEN. Look it's a Magikarp from Pokemon and he is not happy with the humans.

Expoteria

Since the official hours of ACEN's main exhibit was from 10 thru 7 that meant needing to eat at least lunch there. Luckily the convention hall had it's own restaurant attached to it and the food was surprisingly good. The odd thing though is that the restaurant, called the Great Expoteria, was totally locked in a time warp of the 1970's.

Check out this retro wall paper. I was waiting for Disco Fever to start playing over the radio. Though I took these pictures when it was kind of empty this area was usually packed with people, in full costume, eating cheeseburgers and such. "What? Doku! I thought you were a vegetarian!" It was surreal.

Continue on to Part 2 of my ACEN 2010 review for a closer look at the gaming part of the convention as well as some awesome pics of the costumes people wore.

Continue on to ACEN Anime Convention Chicago 2010 Part 2