Back again!

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  • Hey everyone!

    Decided to pop back because even though I live in Germany, I'll be attending a few cons--Sakura-Con, A-Kon, and Anime Expo--in the US next year and I'm super excited! I'm reeeeally passionate about Black Butler, BNHA and Final Fantasy, so any cosplays I'll bring will most definitely be based on that.

    Are there any quainter cons in the US also worth visiting?

  • I suppose it depends on what you mean by "quainter". Certainly where I live in South Florida, we get a whole bunch of cons. The three biggest anime-minded ones are Metrocon, Tampa Bay Comic Con, and Megacon Tampa. Although Metrocon's biggest focus is on anime, all 3 support it pretty well. But each of them have their own attractions:

    Metrocon has a bit more towards the cosplay community in a very well organized contest, and as a convention has been running a multi-year stage performance called The Human Chess Match. The story on that one has been running for years, but it concluded with this years (I think, it's hard to second guess the writers). The biggest downside is that while you get a lot of voice actor, cosplay talent and artists as celebrities, if you're looking to get a photo with one of the cast of Games of Thrones...you'll probably not find them.

    Tampa Bay Comic Con DOES manage to draw out the bigger celebrities, and they're pretty well organized as an execution. The biggest failing would be that if you're looking to compete in their contest, it fills up on the first day (with the contest on the second day), and there's no per-registration. When I went this year, the crowds were pretty good, and I even talked to Yaya Han for a moment who expressed her own minor issue: she was only given 1 panel to host, and wanted to do a couple more. Overall the entire schedule wasn't that packed either, which is something that I hope they fix the next year.

    Megacon Tampa is run by a company who's been doing a similar show at Orlando for more years. While there's no generally set focus, comic books and TV shows tend to lead just a little over anime. Still, it's not that bad a show, although they'll only be on year 3 when 2019 comes around, and it feels like they need to work on some organization issues (the first year they barely booked the convention hall, and so 1/3 of the space was filled with a business convention...it made things very awkward).

    And that's just the biggest cons. I can think of a bunch of smaller conventions that are running around the area almost year long. From March to December, there's a con of some size running every other weekend.