ANIME MID-ATLANTIC 2007

I am devoted to Anime Mid-Atlantic. People should know this by now. When it switched to a wretched hotel, I still loved it. When it moved to a convention centre, I did not lament the loss of the familiar hotel for long, but lauded them for thinking ahead. And now I have ... well, mostly good things to say about it. As usual, small stuff is small stuff with AMA, and the big things are done up proper.

Firstly, let's get the bad out of the way: some of the staff communication left something to be desired. I know I'm a forgetful person, but I did find myself missing some badges, having staff get ahead of me on organised events, and having tech go missing on me. Fortunately, many members of staff are absolute whizzes in a pinch and were wonderful when it came to patching things up along the way. It'd be nice if that didn't have to happen, but ... it's a con. Things rarely, if ever, go according to plan. That's the theme of this damn webcomic.

On to big events. I cannot speak for karaoke because I hosted it ... but I did feel as though, while this was the con's seventh year, this was karaoke's second. Which is not technically true -- I sang at karaoke at AMA1. But from a host's point of view, it feels like it's either starting over or just starting to be important. As the karaoke-mistress, like I said ... don't feel like I'm allowed to review the show, but for my part will do my best to improve it next year and match it up with the rest of the good things about the con.

Cosplay went fast on Saturday night, mainly because there were so few skits. (Come on, people, you had a cosplay idol giving out an international award! What does it take?) From what I could see -- considering I was distracted for a lot of it -- things ran well. I was not aware of any mishaps ... and while it may not be pleasant for those on the other side of the curtain, not seeing any mishaps is just as good for attendees as there not being any mishaps. I'll just hope that, for general stress levels, it was the latter, and be suitably impressed if it was the former.

Dealers' room! Oh, nice. Big and echo-y, but I prefer echo-y to cosy. And they had enough dealers to warrant it (as well as enough attendees). There were few to no 'duds' by way of tables -- AMA has always ended up with a good group of vendors. I applaud a few -- Mugen and Wizzywig -- for having extra-nice staff at them. Now gimme some free shit.

The dance had strobes. I know nothing about it.

I didn't see many panels in general, as I tend not to anymore, but what I did see was handled excellently. I do need to bitch about the pocket program a bit, though. It was very difficult to match times to events.

And finally, guests. Wonderful freaking job. AMA can afford some damn fine guests now. I was thrilled to see Yunmao Ayakawa back (please keep bringing her back!), and just as thrilled to see Unicorn Table live. The setup for the concert, which I was privy to, went well, and while a friend had complaints about the mixing and sound levels, that's beside the point. It was an excellent concert handled very well.

Please, AMA, keep it up. Keep bringing back the good guests, please keep growing under the proper supervision you've been growing under ... but please also CC e-mails to each other. You continue lovely, and I will try to bring karaoke in line with the rest of the con. Cuz this one deserves to be as good as possible in all fields.

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