ACEN 2024

[dorchadas]

It's been five years since I made one of these posts, since ACEN 2019, and boy has a lot happened since then. COVID cancelled ACEN 2020 and ACEN 2021, and by the time ACEN 2022 happened I had a family and couldn't just run off for a weekend and leave a nearly-invalid sashagee at home with Laila, so I went just for Saturday night to see people and then came back home. I did the same in 2023, but now sashagee is feeling well enough that she could attend the entire con, so back last year I bought her a badge too, and we got a hotel room sorted out, and she got excited about doing a family cosplay. Well, I'm not going to bury the lede--we did:

And now, here's the rest of what happened at the con:

Thursday

We woke up at the normal time—i.e., when Laila started yelling “LAILAAAAAA! LAILAAAAA! GET UP! LAILAAAAA!” at 7:30 a.m.—and prepared for the day, eating breakfast, packing, distracting Laila as she ran around like a crazy baby:

Me: Are you excited, Laila?”
Laila: “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”
Me: Okay, let’s be a little less excited, Laila.”
Laila: “ah!

At 10:15 a.m., I got a note from the Hyatt that our room was ready, so we finished packaging, had a quick lunch, and while originally we were planning to catch the bus, we had so much stuff that taking the car seat and calling a rideshare was definitely less of a hassle. Since we had a toddler, a “quick lunch” took over an hour and we finally left at noon. Fortunately the rideshare was an SUV so all of us and our luggage and Laila fit.

We arrived at the Hyatt and checked in at 12:45, with a brief stop back at the front desk because we walked into our room and found the bed unmade and presumably un-cleaned. I’ve never tried to check in on Thursday before—it was much more chill than I’m used to, with a short line, mostly empty halls, and barely anyone using the elevators. While Laila spent the whole time singing Drama by Aespa, we switched our keys to the new room, sashagee bought a coldbrew coffee, and we went back to the room to make sure the keys fit. They did, and after a couple K-pop videos to get Laila dancing, we left to go meet up with what I call “the anime kids.”

When we arrived, spacedragon, gmarchan, gracielizabeth, and pezroan were all there in the hotel restaurant, though we didn’t see them at first. They still didn’t have a room yet—Embassy Suites was running quite a bit behind schedule, so we waited around with them as Laila for some energy out, told spacedragon how much she likes her purple hair, chatted with pezroan, and generally acted like a toddler until staina.x arrived. That’s about the time that Laila started getting sleepy, so we made the long walk back through the walkways from the Embassy Suites to the Hyatt…and of course when we got back, Laila was too excited by the new circumstances and refused to take a nap, so we watched a couple episodes of Cardcaptor Sakura instead. Or at least, we tried too. Laila was too excited to sleep and too excited to sit still and watch anything either. After half an hour of her running around, saying she wanted to go for a walk and changing her mind, she finally settled back down to actually watch the show with sashagee and I went down to the lobby to people-watch.

Of course, it’s Thursday. I already wrote about how empty the halls were, and so there were barely any people to watch. I did see some guys going by with three cases of Coors Light, an armful of boxes of Buds, and (showing foresight), a bunch of bottled water; a couple confused people in suits here for an infosec convention; people still in masks; and some people going by in street clothes with huge prop weapons. When sashagee texted me that Laila was getting tired, I saw that it was 4 p.m. and suggested we go pick up our lanyards and goody bags, so we dressed Laila in the cute mermaid dress she wore at her birthday party and walked back to the other hotel.

This time, there was an itasha parked outside:

While we were standing outside, robin.hammer8 walked over from the parking garage and we went up to the rooms with her. There were fairy lights strung all around the entrance, which immediately captivated Laila since they matched the lights on her dress. She was full of frenetic energy, running all over the place, grabbing things, trying to sit in laps, and dancing along to the Kpop that pezroan put on over the portable speaker, but plans were a bit confused and we eventually had to leave before the scheduled dinner and go feed a hungry child. After asking at the front counter for the best way to get through the parking lot, we walked over to the Rosemont entertainment district, ate at Bub City (amazingly I did find something that didn’t have either pork or cheese on it), and then went back to put Laila down for a nap. She watched a couple episodes of Cars on the Road, we sang to her and prepared her for bed, and I left to go down to the Red Bar for the Anime Chicago meetup.

…or so I thought. When I got there, after walking past a group of people playing Werewolf on the lobby chairs, no one I knew was there. The staff at Red Bar said theta they had left, and checking online I found they had moved across the street to Liberty Tavern in the Hilton, apparently because Red Bar wanted $2,000 in advance to seat everyone(?!‽). I sat down and chatted with people about Japanese zoning laws, Fullmetal Alchemist, and my history with anime (never seen any until I was at university) until 8 p.m. when it was time to tag out with sashagee. When I got bank I found Laila in the bed—user site="instagram.com" name="sashagee"> said she had thrown a huge fit, probably from all the excitement and from sleeping in an unfamiliar place—but I still convinced sashagee and so off she went while I sang to Laila, slowly transferred her to the crib the hotel had supplied, and sat next to her. Every once in a while she would stir, reach out a hand until she touched me, and then she would call down. At least until sashagee suddenly came back! She had gotten lost, getting to the Hilton but being unable to find the bar, so she came back instead since I didn’t respond to texts (since I was singing to Laila). We sat in the bathroom and chatted for a bit and then, when we were 💯 sure Laila was asleep, got ready for bed ourselves and called it a night 10 p.m. Need to have at least one night where we get enough sleep.

Friday

Our attempt to stock up on sleep was dashed by Laila waking up at 6 a.m., so because it was so early, we threw out our usual schedule and sashagee put on some Hello Kitty and Friends Supercute Adventures and asked me to go out and get ice and tableware so Laila could eat breakfast. I found ice at the ice machine and tableware at the coffee shop on the first floor, and when I brought them back Laila ate some breakfast while sashagee got dressed. Then it was sashagee’s turn for breakfast, and that meant going to Starbucks to get her her morning coffee.

On the way down to the walkway, we noticed this:

America.

While Laila had loved running through the corridors yesterday, she was more sedate today, probably because of the larger number of people there. She wanted me to carry her most of the way there, only really walking when I put her down and refused to pick her up, but she charmed the woman at Starbucks and another woman set to keep a watch on the crowds in the walkways. When we got back to the room, I took a shower and got dressed while sashagee drank her coffee and Laila bounced off the walls, and then we watched Ponyo until around 9:40 a.m. when we finally got dressed in our cosplay and left the room.

At that point, the ominous feeling proved right as we were stuck in the security line for half an hour. We made it through, past an extremely frazzled security guard, and after a brief stop at a busker we went over to children’s programming. When we got there, at 10:40 (40 minutes after start time), basically nothing was set up yet and so Laila just ran around the empty room for a while. Once she slowed down, we left and I ran into a Tighnari:

We went over to the exhibit hall because sashagee was on a mission—to get a Ponyo plush for Laila. We wandered up and down, with sashagee noticing some bunny-themed T-shirts she was planning to come back for later, and occasionally having someone stop and ask to take our picture. Much to sashagee’s delight, since she wasn’t sure that anyone would be able to recognize it. After fifteen minutes of searching we did eventually find a booth selling a bunch of Ghibli merch, so we bought a Ponyo plush, which Laila immediately kissed and held on to for dear life, and just as we were turning to leave Laila said “Princess! Princess!” There were Princess Peach and Daisy cosplayers she had spotted, and so I walked up to them. They immediately asked to take our picture, and once they had done that, we got a picture of Laila with Peach:

Then we left and went back to the Hyatt to feed a hungry child. We ate beef summer sausage, farmer’s market cheese, blueberries, blackberries, and carrots while Laila kept trying to escape, and after we were done we left for a brief stop in the room to pick up Laila’s luggage and then it was down to the front to meet my parents, who were taking Laila away for a grandparents weekend and giving us some vacation time. My father took a picture (the one at the top) and off Laila went with hugs and kisses and a “Bye bye!” We went back to the room to drop stuff off and tell housekeeping to come clean. When we got there, the door was open and housekeeping was already cleaning, so one problem solved, we took off our cosplay and left again to let housekeeping do their job.

We walked back to the convention center, this time taking the outdoors path, and got through security in less than a minute. After sashagee refueled on Starbucks, we went to the Origami panel out in by the Japanese Cultural Center. It was free folding—there were patterns and paper at the front of the room, and you could pick what you wanted and make it. I grabbed a yakkosan pattern and managed to do it on the first try, though it looked a bit more like Pyramid ahead than a samurai's servant. The panel host also said he could see it when Imentioned it, so it's not just my impression of my (lack of) origami skill. Folding done, we left and went to the dealer's room because sashagee was on a different mission--buy cute clothes from the shop she had seen earlier. As we were waiting there, gmarchan walked up and said hi! He had been across the way looking for the last card he needed for the perfect deck for the ACEN One Piece CCG tournament, so we chatted for a bit while sashagee shopped, and once she bought a cute cropped hoodie with a magical girl bunny on it, we parted ways. We walked all around the dealer's hall, buying a couple things--I got another Kirby, of course, holding an umbrella, and she got a keychain of a cute bunny getting grabbed like in a crane game--and eventually sashagee started overheating, so we went back to the room so she could wipe her brow and soak her feet. On the way out, we saw the Great Serpent of Ronka:

Scree!

While there, we got a dinner invite from the anime kids, so after a brief rest we heard out to Gibson's steakhouse. Their table was already full, burger got a table next to them and after a bit, mm55134 and his girlfriend showed up and we invited them to sit with us, so we had a nice conversation over dinner. We left and headed back to the room at 5:50 p.m., where sashagee sat down to take a nap and I took the chance to go back to the convention center, where I found Muad’dib:

After a brief stint in the video gaming area where I sadly could not find a Missile Command cab, I went over to the AMV contest. I was a bit worried, since the last time is rent to ACEN in 2019 it was stuck in a small room on the far end and seemed like an afterthought. That was not true this year—it was in a big ballroom, about half-full. When I arrived they were just finishing the Horror category and moving on to Sentimental, in which the best AMV was definitely We Are Here by PantsAMV, which once again made me want to read the entirety of One Piece, an urge that strikes me at least once every couple months. I really need to actually give in to it. I can’t say what the best Horror AMV was since I only caught the last one, but MARA by GK was compelling. After Sentimental was Upbeat, which didn’t stick with me at all. The best was apparently Double Take by BecauseImBored, which I did not see but which has amazing editing having watched it later. They posted a full list of all the entered AMVs online available here.

After an hour or so of AMVs, it was time to go back and wake sashagee up. I arrived at the hotel to find her already awake and waiting, so we rested for a bit before heading out to the anime kids’ room crawl. Each room had a theme and a time slot, and of course the first room blew it away:

It was Cardcaptor Sakura themed, including (as you can see) a printed menu, an actual table at which to sit, photo opportunities, and a special dance. It’s obvious why jeremy.podczerwinski wanted to go first.

That room took the longest, but the other rooms were also lovely. The second room was Dance Dance Revolution themed,, but with “enhanced” songs that gmarchan had set up himself, including disappearing bombs, fake arrows, collapsing arrow charts, and any number of other tricks. The room after that was “The inside of made.unglu3d’s mind and it was almost entirely about Yuri on Ice. After that was the “Hydration Station” (quotes in original), which did feature water and a lovely cactus tea I drank, as well as cookies and muffins made by mm55134’s girlfriend, which I ate like eight of. The last room was American military base in Hawai’i themed, which mostly came out through showing Bravern in the background, though there was also a whole giant backdrop of an aircraft carrier. We drank drinks (mostly me—sashagee is trying to avoid drinking too much) , discussed Dark Souls, talked about Laila, and had a lovely time until 11:30 p.m. hit and sashagee was turning into a pumpkin, so we said our goodbyes and headed back to the hotel room.

Saturday

The alarm went off at 7:40, but I was already awake. sashagee woke up soon after and after a quick shower and getting dressed, we left to go to “Egg-cellent: Eggs in Anime.”

It was effectively mostly a clip show, featuring different egg-related scenes from Cowboy Bebop, Beastars, Dungeon Meshi, Horimiya, and a few others I’ve never heard of, though there was an analysis of Gudetama and kawaii culture to start the whole thing off. There was also a lot of puns:

How many eggs does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
None. Eggs don’t have hands.

Why did the egg regret becoming an omelet?
It wasn’t all it was cracked up to be

And of course, they had the classic I love eggs song.

After a huge breakfast buffet at the hotel sashagee elected to stay back at the room and rest while I went to the Angels and Demons in Japan panel. Unfortunately, when I got to the convention center even the outside had extremely long lines, and since the panel started in like three minutes I elected to turn around and go to the other event I was thinking of attending: “Anime Openings and Endings that Are Now AMVs.” Most of them I didn’t know, though they had some classics like the transcendent Eva Bebop opening, and awoke neat ones I’ve never seen like Cardcaptor GX (Cardcaptor Sakura visuals, Yugioh GX English OP) or Enyangelion 3.0 + 1.0 - Thrice upon a nyan?. This was followed by the advertisements portion, which I enjoyed so much that I stayed through to the end of the bloc.

After AMVs were over I went back and got sashagee from the room and we walked over to the convention center. I was panning to meet up with redpikachu there, but literally while I was texting her that we had arrived, I heard a “hello!” and looked up to see redpikachu right there, along with alicetheallstar and kevin.l.kmet! sashagee got to meet redpikachu, we chatted a bit, and then they went off to eat lunch and left us with an invitation to anime jeopardy later in the evening. We went into the dealer's room, since sashagee still had some things that she wanted to buy. She got a sushi cat plush and a a little Totoro figurine of one of the mini-Totoros, and while there we saw an Enderwoman:

...which I had to get a photo of since I cosplayed an Enderman myself back during ACEN 2016.

Shortly after, I chased down a deku scrub, mailman, and Tingle:

We thought about checking out some more booths but sashagee and I were both getting a bit dehydrated, so we went throughout the Artists' Alley and the gaming area and then all the way back around to the panel area to get some free water. Water secured, we went back through the main area and waited in line for Starbucks for about five minutes before sashagee gave us and said that she'd go tot he Starbucks in the Hilton later, so instead we went into the gaming room and I took her straight to the Taiko no Tatsujin machine. She caught on immediately and understands now why I’m talking the game up so much, but we only had two songs, so after we finished on a strong note--"Cruel Angel's Thesis" on hard--we left and went back to the main room, where I saw a Terry (Eng: Beedle) and a Kasshīwa (Eng: Kass) playing the Breath of the Wild song that always tells you he is near:

He was actually doing the Straw Millionaire trading game, taking what he had and giving out new things in exchange. I wonder how many things he had already gone through?

I should have taken a video to get the song, but I just have this picture:

After twenty minutes of sitting in the empty Starbucks, we walked back to the Hyatt to catch the Bocchi the Rock AMV selection, coming in on the very last of the "multiverse" AMVs, the classic The Wizard of Osaka. I haven't seen Bocchi but sashagee has, so I don't have a context for most of the AMVs. My favorite was Bocchi the Blade Runner, but for reasons totally unrelated to its Bocchi-ness. Around the AMV where Bocchi was transported to a Minecraft world alone with some other characters I didn't recognize, I started falling asleep, so sashagee suggested we leave early and go rest in the room, where we spent the next hour. A bit before five we left again with the mission of looking at the price of a retro-console-styled itabag that sashagee had her eye on. We avoided the skybridge again, even through the heat was getting pretty bad outside, but when we got to the convention center the lines were nonexistent and we could basically just walk right in. And soon after we entered the convention center, I saw a Zhongli cosplayer including a full Staff of Homa, but he was in a hurry somewhere and when I hesitated a moment, he walked off to the panel area. I followed through the panel area door to see him a dozen yards away and still walking with purpose, so instead of interrupting whatever his mission was, I came back to sashagee. A moment later an NCR trooper walked by, so I not wanting to miss the second chance, I hurried and asked for a picture, and when he turned around I was surprised to see sgtsticklyman!

We only had a minute or so to catch up before mabown saw me and said hello, so sgtsticklyman said his goodbyes and went on his way. I chatted with mabown, and with alicetheallstar (now in cosplay), but meetings in the convention center main area are always brief. We parted with home that we would see mabown later and went into the dealer's hall. It took us a bit of walking up and down to find the itabag shop, since sashagee thought it was in the back and we had to search through a few rows to find it, but at the end of the last row we were looking at, we found Konbinii and sashagee bought a vintage console/cute bunny themed itabag, and having done that, we needed to find something to put into the itabag, so we went over to the Artists' Alley where she finally found a vendor selling Final Fantasy XIV merchandise, so she bought a moogle pin and put it into the display part of the bag. I also finally bought something! A deskmat with a stylized tree grove on it, though I can't currently remember the shop where I bought it. sashagee felt a little bad that she was getting so many different things and I got only two, but I pointed out that I've been going to cons for twenty years, so I already have a large collection of art and goods from all the cons I've been to. The first Kirby I bought was the sum total of my Kirby collection, but now every Kirby I buy has to earn its place. sashagee doesn't have a pre-existing collection to add anything to, so she's building it up from nothing. Anything new she gets is the first example of its kind.

We still don't have any more wall space for posters, though.

It was now close to 6 p.m. and our mission done, we left. On the way out, we saw the Mandalorian:

And then we left the building, since it was time for the traditional Hentai and Waffles party! When we arrived most of the anime kids were already there, so we dropped off our dorayaki on the counter, ate some stroopwaffles (or at least I did), and almost-immediately went to the back room where it was cooler. That's where we say for basically the entirety of the party, chatting with people, eating waffles, and relaxing after a day spent wandering around. Like the first of these parties I went to back in 2019, there was a sign on the wall that said "Please leave by 9" and we took that advice since we had another party to get to. We said our goodbyes and left, going back to the Hyatt and up to redpikachu and alicetheallstar's room. We came in at the beginning of the second round as bythehammeroftholl was announcing:

Real ones know.

We did not show up in time to join in, but we watched as people answered the questions (apparently round one had Japanese color names, which I would have dominated at) and then chatted when the game was over while people slowly drifted out. Just before we left, MoreVoltz showed up and I chatted with him for the first time in a decade! We're both older, we're both dads now, a lot has happened, so we talked about our children--as dads do--and then we left. sashagee and I went back to the room to rest. Her feet were really hurting her at this point, so while I wanted to go back to the video game room, she didn't, and eventually we both went to sleep.

Sunday

Not much to tell for Sunday--we woke up, checked out, and left. But the reason I'm giving it a heading is that they seemed to put almost all the interesting-sounding panels on the last day:

• No Cable, No Blockbluster, & Dialup: Struggling As an Anime Fan in the 00s
• Saiyuki: History of a Journey to the West
• Japanese Treasures of the Milwaukee Public Library
• Farming Fandom
• AMV Contest Awards
• Wands, Spells, and Magical Girls, Oh My! (sashagee noticed this)
• How I Educate Educators About Anime
• Heroes of Fairy Tail with the Gaming Lady
• The Horror of Godzilla
• Far From Folklore: Japanese Myths and Legends in Modern Culture

Literally three times as many cool panels on the last day as there were during the previous two days of the con! We could have dropped our luggage off at the front desk and let them look after that, but since we had not just a bag but a carseat (for bringing Laila originally), a bag full of food, an extra bag of shoes, etc., we decided it was too much, and also sashagee's feet still really hurt, so we went home. Next year!

Edit: The winning AMV was Run Makoto Run, which is probably the greatest AMV I've ever seen in terms of technical skill. I can't recommend it highly enough.


It's been five years since I last went to a full con but the experience was still the same! Always being on your feet, seeing old friends, traveling from place to place to place and collapsing into bed at the end of the day. It was different this year since we had Laila with us, and we kept telling people how she would run through the skybridge shouting "DRAMA-MA-MA-MA! DRAMA-MA-MA-MA!" but she was only there for half a day of the real con, and a good thing too. We took her through the dealer's hall on Friday morning and she was getting overstimulated already--if she had been there on Saturday she would have had real problems, but instead she was having tons of fun with Papa and Nana while we were wandering around the con.

sashagee had a great time is already planning how to have an even better con next year, starting with bringing sneakers. sashagee and dorchadas con-goer arc has begun!

Comments

[gwendraith]

What a wonderful photo of you all together, it's lovely to see your happy family :)

It sounds like you had a terrific time at the ACEN 2024, lots of Anime fun 🐱‍👤