Geek Babble- Sakuracon 2024

Easter is a hotbed for hosting anime conventions, and this year was no different, with Anime Boston, Anime Detour, Kawaiicon, and Sakuracon all being held on the same weekend this year.  4 anime conventions, 4 time zones, across 4 different parts of the country- take your pick as to which one you wish to attend.  Now, I had been wanting to return to Sakuracon for a while now as my attendance in 2019 left an excellent impression, but 2 years of cancellations due to the pandemic and another 2 years of schedule conflicts meant I was heavily delayed.  This is a con which was as enjoyable as Anime Boston, another convention that almost always fell on Easter weekend, for being the premier anime convention to attend for that weekend.

Now, I was informed by a few panelists during Youmacon 2023 that Seattle had built a new convention center which now housed the convention, and this new building was completely detached from the existing Seattle Convention Center, where the convention was previously held.  My impression was that the new building (Summit) would serve as a small overflow space only, with the convention continuing to house the majority of its events and attractions in the old building, and I thus booked my hotel accordingly.  Now, Sakuracon had decided to send out emails to attendees who had already registered as of a certain date to inform them that hotel bookings were up, which worked out great only for those who were already registered at that point in time and who caught the email in a timely manner.  I had booked the Sheraton, located across the street from the old convention center building (Arch), and it was a more than adequate hotel in regards to space, furnishings, and staff understanding.  The cost was also surprising, at $182 per night, with other hotels (there are around 10 total with convention room blocks and additional ones nearby) costing $10 to $20 per night more, but this would still be very reasonably priced considering the convention is held downtown and the increased lodging costs for other conventions in recent years.

It wasn’t until I had arrived in Seattle on Thursday late morning when I began lining up to pick up my badge that I realized I had made a mistake.  Instead of using Summit as an overflow space, the convention had instead moved the majority of its operations there, including registration, most of the panel rooms, guest autograph area, and the dealers room.  Arch housed arcade gaming, some panel rooms, and the artists alley, and my hotel was about half a mile away from Summit, and there were several hotels much closer, including the Hyatt Regency I stayed at last time.  Now, Sakuracon still does not mail out badges to its attendees, but thankfully badge pickup began on time at 12 noon and took about 45 minutes for me to finish.  Unfortunately, however, Sakuracon has started utilizing wristbands to designate whether one was an adult or not and the physical badges themselves were very flimsy.  Also do note that Sakuracon has around 5 or 6 different price brackets depending on when one registers, and costs are high (around $120) if one decides to attend at the last minute.  Besides registration, there were no other events taking place on Thursday.  This allowed me to browse around Summit, where I noticed one main restaurant in the new building along with several popup concessions booths, almost all of which were just the same booth but in several different locations.  A few of the outside concessions booths next to Arch were also closed down, but there were several hot dog stands that set up shop outside of each building.  There are also quite a lot of restaurants nearby offering different food options, with some attendees also going to a small nearby shopping mall to get food.

Now, come Friday morning, I finally was able to get a sense of just how big Summit was.  This is not an overflow building but instead could easily serve as a second standalone or replacement convention center, with plenty of open floor space and a very open, airy feeling throughout the building.  The convention began early, with both the massive dealers room and even more massive artist alley opening up at 10:00 AM.  Sakuracon has once again put up banners to prevent attendees from getting lost in each of the enormous rooms, and it is clear why both buildings are needed now to house the convention.  The dealers room has grown in size by at least a third since I last attended, and despite 3 other conventions taking place on the same weekend, the room was over 90% full with vendors, but never felt overly crowded from the number of attendees who were there.  Allow yourself at least 2 hours here just slowly browsing through all the various vendors, who did an absolutely fantastic job of bringing a variety of items to the convention.  There was even an enormous cat-bus from “My Neighbor Totoro” out in front, along with promotional displays and merchandise for the upcoming Gundam Seed movie.  The only not-so-great experience was at Sakuracon’s convention store, where there was often a long line of at least 15 people to both order and pick up merchandise due to clunky procedures being used to inefficiently allocate staff.  There were also at least 2 times on Friday where the payment system failed and the store had to revert to being “cash only,” with no way of bypassing problem by ordering items online or asking that items be reserved for pickup at a later time.

Now, clunky procedures and a series of unfortunate circumstances would also result in a disaster of an autograph session for two of the main Japanese guests on Friday evening.  Now, I will admit that this is not something that I focus on heavily since it is usually not my primary interest, but I was surprised to discover that Sakuracon was hosting two of the main voice actors for one of my favorite anime series, Gundam Seed, and there were two autograph sessions being held.  I attended the “free” session on Friday, and I later found out that getting access to the “paid” session on Saturday was an exercise in futility because the merchandise that one had to purchase in order to attend the latter required sprinting straight to a certain booth in the dealers room within seconds of the floodgates being opened.  But nonetheless, a staff member had informed me that getting to the autograph session within 15 minutes of it ending would ensure that I would be able to get autographs.  This unfortunately, turned out to not be true, and one needed to show up about 30 minutes before the free autograph session even began to get a spot in the room as it was soon closed off after around 100 to 150 attendees entered.  The hour-long autograph session started 20 minutes late and went 10 minutes later to “make up time,” but in the end, after the staff, ADA attendees, and around 30% of the non-ADA attendees obtained autographs, the event was over and everyone was asked to leave.  Now, the disappointment in the room could be felt, but there was no protesting, shouting, or threats emanating from the attendees as they dispersed, nor was there any sort of apology from any of the event runner parties involved.  I am still conflicted about what happened at this event and how it was organized, in that I should feel more upset, but can’t bring myself to feel more upset.  I will also note, however, there were other guests who hosted autograph sessions whilst seated in the dealers room where attendees could line up at certain times to get autographs.  There was also an autograph session for the main concert guest, Spyair.  I did not attend this Saturday night concert which was held at Summit, nor did hear any news on how the autograph session went.

After the autograph session, the two Gundam Seed voice actor guests hosted a panel to discuss the upcoming movie, including their feelings on all of the setbacks and delays to getting the film finished.  Now, this is a series that I watched back in the mid-to-late 2000s, and I had not really given it that much thought after finishing it up other than cosplaying one of the characters in the late 2010s.  Sakuracon attendees were great at keeping order and queueing before the panel began, and staff did a great job of keeping things organized and to make sure there was enough space in the room itself for all the attendees, which I had also noticed at another panel I had attended.  Now, both panels I attended were in Summit, which has a fantastic and easy-to-navigate layout for the panel rooms as they were all clustered together in rows on the upper floors.  The voice actor panel was excellent, as it got to hear about what these folks truly felt about the film and how much they connected with the characters they voiced, even 2 decades after the original series was released and even if audience interaction during the panel was minimal.  A 6-minute preview of the movie was shown and I look forward to watching the film when it comes out in theaters in early May.

Now, the next day, I had intended on checking out the artist alley, but one mistake that I had made was underestimating its size.  The artist alley in 2019 was miniscule, crammed into a small rectangular area right near the entrance of Arch and another small dugout one floor below that.  Now, the new artist alley took up the space of the dealers room 5 years ago, and then had another space one level below that about a third of the size.  I was told there were 450 booths, and again, Sakuracon had banners hung up to list out the aisle numbers to prevent folks from getting lost, plus made occasional announcements to ensure that attendees knew that the artist alley was split across 2 different levels.  As with the dealers room, allow yourself at least 2 hours to browse through all of the booths.  This time, I noticed that there were many booths which featured trinkets like keychains and sculptures, and noticed more traditional rather than digital art.  The aisles were wide and I noticed many of the items being sold were not related to a specific show or game, but instead were items which had mass appeal for the attendees.  By far, this has to be the best artist alley I have ever been to at an anime convention, even more so taking into account the other conventions taking place this weekend.

I attended my one and only gathering that afternoon, and while there was a system set up for coordinating gatherings, this was done completely outside of Sakuracon’s official channels, with attendees instead setting up a Facebook group where they submitted and scheduled gatherings throughout the weekend.  This worked well enough, as the new venue offered a nice outdoor garden area to take photos along with quite a few large indoor open spaces in case the weather was bad.  However, there were many open gathering and photoshoot slots available, and folks who didn’t know about this Facebook group would have been out of the loop.  It would have helped quite a lot if Sakuracon could coordinate with these gathering coordinators to allow something a bit more formalized.

Throughout the weekend, neither the new venue nor the old venue for the convention felt overcrowded, and there instead was a steady stream of people at the convention centers throughout the weekend and even into early afternoon on Sunday.  Instead of overwhelming levels of enthusiasm that dwindles down to nothing shortly afterwards, Sakuracon has a stream of steady, constant enthusiasm that lasts longer and doesn’t overwhelm the senses.  Despite having been away for 5 years now, it was relatively easy to reacclimate myself to the convention.  The split venue was much easier to deal with than for Youmacon in years past, as the two venues are relatively close together, only about 0.2 miles apart, versus 0.6 miles for Youmacon.  There is now much more space for the artist alley, a past weakness, and the venue itself allows the convention to not feel crowded and give it room to grow.  The panels I attended featured good content and started on time, though the botched autograph session was a disappointment.  But beyond that, perhaps my biggest gripe is that the website for the convention is beyond dated and does not display all pertinent information in an organized, easy-to-find fashion.  Certain policies such as for autographs was not on the website, and just like AKON, the hotel booking link was sent only to pre-registered attendees at the time.   But speaking of hotels, it is their steady pricing that surprised me the most, especially considering enormous price increases for convention rates post-pandemic.  When it comes to conventions over Easter weekend or during the springtime, this is one that is worth serious consideration.  I do not intend on waiting another 5 years before returning.