Fan panels galore: Animazement 2025 recap
Jun. 4th, 2025 10:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alchemicinkI said I was gonna write a post about my trip to Animazement this year, so here it finally is. Mostly this is so I'll be able to remember the details later, but maybe someone out there will also be interested in a recap of my convention experience too 😅 (just a warning though that this got very long-winded 😂)
Animazement is an anime/Japanese cultural convention held annually on Memorial Day weekend in Raleigh, NC. This was my 15th year attending! I haven't been able to afford going the whole weekend in the past few years, but there's enough going on during Saturday that I always feel like I still have a good time.
My day started off early at 5:30am 😩 so I could hit the road by 6:30. Last year, I got stuck in traffic on the interstate and had to take some funky detours and it was generally a Bad Experience all around, so this year I wanted to head out even earlier and take a different route.
Thankfully, that all turned out much better than last year. And I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the NCDOT has finally finally repaved the part of 64 that has been literally crumbling for YEARS. God bless. Our tax dollars finally at work. Anyway, the traffic wasn't bad at all, and even with stopping for breakfast on the way, I arrived at the convention center around 8:45am.
Registration opened at 9am and it only took about 20ish minutes to get through the line. Didn't get to chat with anyone in line, which was fine because it meant I got to people-watch everyone else instead. I did overhear at one point a lady in cosplay carrying a large spear saying something along the lines of "canonically, I think I get stabbed with this" 😂
Hopefully no stabbing for her during the convention tho.
After my badge was acquired, I hopped over to my first panel of the day. It was a fan panel called "Aged to Perfection" and it was all about advice for cosplaying as an older adult. I'm not a cosplayer myself but I am in my 30s, so I figured it'd be interesting. (Also there were not a lot of other panels happening at the time.)
I really enjoyed the panel! The two people running it were in their 30s and 40s, and had around 20+ years of cosplay experience. So it was cool to hear how they've seen things change over the years (like better prop-making materials, better wigs, more pre-made costumes available, etc). Their advice was pretty much stuff I already knew (like "you don't have to give up something fun once you reach a certain age" and "you can cosplay whatever you want, not just the old characters" and "it's okay if your tastes change as you get older") but it was good to hear other people affirm these kinds of things too.
Also, there was one quote I thought was really interesting when they were talking about the cosplay/fandom community. They said that if you're feeling like your community is "toxic" then the "toxicity is in the dose." Or basically, it's not that the whole fandom is bad. You're just overexposed to the bad stuff because you're in the wrong space. If you're not having fun, take a step back, find another corner of fandom instead.
I wish more people would consider that!
After that panel, I wandered around the convention center for a bit. It was not very crowded at all in the morning, and attendance definitely seemed down. But I have been here in years past where you're constantly rubbing elbows with everyone, so I'm not complaining about fewer attendees. (There were still thousands of people in attendance.) Lots of people were in cool cosplays, though I feel like I recognize fewer of them each year 😅 I did notice an odd number of people in sports jerseys. (Not like fictional anime teams, but like actually pro sports teams.) It was kinda weird actually!! But hey, sports fandom can be kinda like cosplay too sometimes.
The next fan panel I went to was an overview of Magical Girls. I'm not a big connoisseur of the genre, but I do love the concept of Magical Girls very much and have enjoyed the few series that I've seen over the years. So I figured I'd learn some things from this panel.
And I did!
Apparently, the old American TV show Bewitched from the 1960s became pretty popular when it got to Japanese audiences, and it served as some early inspiration for the earliest Magical Girl anime series.
The panel host was really funny. (I would try to share a few of his dry remarks that made me laugh but I feel like it wouldn't be as funny if I typed them out.) Anyway, the panel touched on Magical Girl basics (such as how you have to hide your identity to count as a Magical Girl). The host and audience briefly debated whether Bubblegum Crisis counts as a Magical Girl series (I haven't seen it so I had no opinion 😂 and no one had a definitive answer). And I learned about some fun parallels between Cutie Honey and Sailor Moon. (My favorite was that they both apparently have some sort of stewardess disguise??)
I gotta watch some more Magical Girl series sometime soon. (Or... *whispers very quietly in an embarrassed voice* ...actually finish watching Sailor Moon)
After that, it was time for lunch! I walked about a block away from the convention center to a new(ish) coffeeshop that had sandwiches, salads, etc. My first time there, but I enjoyed my salad! (Even though it was too expensive).
Also the weather was absolutely gorgeous on Saturday! Usually everyone bakes in the 90+ degree temperature and humidity, but it was a pleasant 70s day instead. This will probably never happen again.
The next panel was simply an hour of watching strange Japanese commercials. I do enjoy video panels where you can just relax for an hour. Unfortunately this one was pretty crowded, so I was stuck at the back and couldn't always see the screen that well. But I could understand enough dialogue to enjoy most of the commercials.
There was one commercial included that the panel host added because it was animated in Studio Ghibli style. "But it's actually an ad for Oregon," he said.
The guy sitting behind me: "the whole state?!"
I missed a bit of the commercial as I was busy smothering my laughter as I listened to this guy whisper to his friends, incredulous as he learned about the existence of state tourism campaigns 😂
Anyway, here is the Travel Oregon commercial.
And here are a few other (actually Japanese) commercials included in the panel that I could find on YouTube:
☆ Mameshiba (this is a compilation and probably my favorite of all)
☆ Georgia Coffee (I've never seen Twin Peaks but this is still really funny to me)
☆ Resident Evil 4 (again, still funny even though I'm unfamiliar with Resident Evil in general)
☆ Wonder Core (repetitive but silly)
There were plenty more, but these stood out in my mind the most (and were also the easiest to find on YouTube lol)
After that, I headed to the Dealers Room to browse. You have to take an escalator down there, which provides an excellent view of the whole large room as you descend. And there were two guys behind me on the escalator, and one said, in his best nature documentary narrator voice, "we are now approaching the capitalist gallery"
I love all the weird things I overhear at the convention 😂
Anyway, there was a good variety of stuff available this year. I'm not really a merch collector, so I was mainly on the hunt for CDs or DVDs/blurays. There weren't as many vendors selling that kind of stuff this year, and I was unsuccessful in my quest to find season 2 of Gundam IBO (I bought season 1 last year). BUT I did find a vendor that had both Kamen Rider Kuuga and Ryuki on bluray.
...I left the dealers room, took a long walk around the convention center, debated whether I could afford one of them, and then came back and bought them both instead 😅 I just really like having physical media, okay!! Plus, now I can watch both series on a TV screen instead of my phone.
I have no regrets but also I'm not allowing myself to buy anything else for the rest of the year lmao.
Moving right along... the next fan panel I headed to was called Shoujo Manga's Lost Generation. To be honest, I'm not much of a manga reader anymore these days, but I do enjoy panels about history, so I popped in anyway. The panel host focused mainly on the 1950s, 1960s era, but also gave an overview of shoujo manga origins pre-WWII.
It was really interesting, but unfortunately I was too tired at that point to really take notes on the various mangaka mentioned and their noteworthy series. The panel host, however, does have a review site called The Manga Test Drive if anyone's interested in that.
After that, it was dinner time. I went with the easiest option and bought a hotdog and fries from the convention center food vendor (located in a corner of the Dealers Room). And then I sat on the floor and ate my dinner, while pretending I am still in my early twenties and can still easily get up from the floor. How nostalgic 😂 (I have eaten many a meal sitting on the floor of the convention center over the past 15 years lmao. For the record, there were many other people sitting on the floor with me bc there were not enough tables in the area.) The food was good and I got to do some more people-watching. There were two guys near the escalators having the absolute time of their lives dancing to music from a little Bluetooth speaker.
I had some time to kill after that, so I walked around some more and also browsed through Artist Alley as well. But again, I am not very interested in merch, so not much caught my eye over there. But I really couldn't afford anything after my Dealers Room splurge anyway. (I did search for bookmarks, but only a few vendors had any, and they just weren't my cup of tea. Oh well.)
Finally, it was time for the Masquerade!
I should preface this bit by explaining that I attend the Masquerade every year, and usually I'm always a little disappointed in the "skits." If you're not familiar, the Masquerade is the big cosplay contest for the weekend. The first part is a simple "show off your costume and pose as you walk across the stage" but then the second part are cosplay skits, where the cosplayers actually do some sort of performance (in 3 minutes or less) on stage. But in the past decade or so, the skits have just morphed into dance routines and thats basically it. Don't get me wrong -- dancing in full costume is still an amazing feat! But two hours of it every year (mostly set to a lot of vocaloid & school idol music) gets a bit repetitive.
So this year I was blown away by how good the skits were! There was still a lot of dancing, of course, but many of the groups included more dialogue this year and more props than usual. It was great!
There were even a couple of skits that included live singing. (And one that was a band performance! Yes, they were dressed up as the characters from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, and they performed "God Knows" just like this scene.Truly fantastic!)
A couple of other standout skits to me:
☆ a Free! skit where the boys do various tiktok-esque dances to save the school's pool from shutting down 😂
☆ a Death Note skit that was basically a summary of the series (with dancing lol) but was performed SO WELL
☆ a Cardcaptor Sakura skit from the point of view of her cards waiting to be summoned
☆ and a fun meta Gurren Lagann skit where Simon and Kamina talk about their story becoming an anime. There were so many good jokes in this one!
So the Masquerade was very fun to watch but lasted SO LONG. I ducked out before the winners were announced because it was already past 9:30pm at that point, and I still had a two hour drive back home.
Thankfully, the drive back was fine. There was hardly any traffic, so I took the interstate route back. Actually, the worst traffic I experienced on my way home was getting stuck behind a slow-moving tractor about two miles from my house 😂 I was like "WHO is out here moving their tractor at midnight??" It's not even harvest season! (I did, in fact, figure out it was one of my neighbors 🙄)
Overall, it was a great day! Animazement this year well-exceeded my expectations. As a long-time attendee, seeing many of the same guests and cultural panels can start to feel rather repetitive, but I'm glad I was still able to find plenty of things to do this year. I even snapped a few photos of cosplayers this time. (For the first time in a few years! I usually have a hard time mustering up the courage to ask for photos. And this somehow has only gotten worse over the years.) And, of course, I was so thrilled with how fun the Masquerade was this year. Seriously, great!
Can't wait for 2026!
Animazement is an anime/Japanese cultural convention held annually on Memorial Day weekend in Raleigh, NC. This was my 15th year attending! I haven't been able to afford going the whole weekend in the past few years, but there's enough going on during Saturday that I always feel like I still have a good time.
My day started off early at 5:30am 😩 so I could hit the road by 6:30. Last year, I got stuck in traffic on the interstate and had to take some funky detours and it was generally a Bad Experience all around, so this year I wanted to head out even earlier and take a different route.
Thankfully, that all turned out much better than last year. And I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the NCDOT has finally finally repaved the part of 64 that has been literally crumbling for YEARS. God bless. Our tax dollars finally at work. Anyway, the traffic wasn't bad at all, and even with stopping for breakfast on the way, I arrived at the convention center around 8:45am.
Registration opened at 9am and it only took about 20ish minutes to get through the line. Didn't get to chat with anyone in line, which was fine because it meant I got to people-watch everyone else instead. I did overhear at one point a lady in cosplay carrying a large spear saying something along the lines of "canonically, I think I get stabbed with this" 😂
Hopefully no stabbing for her during the convention tho.
After my badge was acquired, I hopped over to my first panel of the day. It was a fan panel called "Aged to Perfection" and it was all about advice for cosplaying as an older adult. I'm not a cosplayer myself but I am in my 30s, so I figured it'd be interesting. (Also there were not a lot of other panels happening at the time.)
I really enjoyed the panel! The two people running it were in their 30s and 40s, and had around 20+ years of cosplay experience. So it was cool to hear how they've seen things change over the years (like better prop-making materials, better wigs, more pre-made costumes available, etc). Their advice was pretty much stuff I already knew (like "you don't have to give up something fun once you reach a certain age" and "you can cosplay whatever you want, not just the old characters" and "it's okay if your tastes change as you get older") but it was good to hear other people affirm these kinds of things too.
Also, there was one quote I thought was really interesting when they were talking about the cosplay/fandom community. They said that if you're feeling like your community is "toxic" then the "toxicity is in the dose." Or basically, it's not that the whole fandom is bad. You're just overexposed to the bad stuff because you're in the wrong space. If you're not having fun, take a step back, find another corner of fandom instead.
I wish more people would consider that!
After that panel, I wandered around the convention center for a bit. It was not very crowded at all in the morning, and attendance definitely seemed down. But I have been here in years past where you're constantly rubbing elbows with everyone, so I'm not complaining about fewer attendees. (There were still thousands of people in attendance.) Lots of people were in cool cosplays, though I feel like I recognize fewer of them each year 😅 I did notice an odd number of people in sports jerseys. (Not like fictional anime teams, but like actually pro sports teams.) It was kinda weird actually!! But hey, sports fandom can be kinda like cosplay too sometimes.
The next fan panel I went to was an overview of Magical Girls. I'm not a big connoisseur of the genre, but I do love the concept of Magical Girls very much and have enjoyed the few series that I've seen over the years. So I figured I'd learn some things from this panel.
And I did!
Apparently, the old American TV show Bewitched from the 1960s became pretty popular when it got to Japanese audiences, and it served as some early inspiration for the earliest Magical Girl anime series.
The panel host was really funny. (I would try to share a few of his dry remarks that made me laugh but I feel like it wouldn't be as funny if I typed them out.) Anyway, the panel touched on Magical Girl basics (such as how you have to hide your identity to count as a Magical Girl). The host and audience briefly debated whether Bubblegum Crisis counts as a Magical Girl series (I haven't seen it so I had no opinion 😂 and no one had a definitive answer). And I learned about some fun parallels between Cutie Honey and Sailor Moon. (My favorite was that they both apparently have some sort of stewardess disguise??)
I gotta watch some more Magical Girl series sometime soon. (Or... *whispers very quietly in an embarrassed voice* ...actually finish watching Sailor Moon)
After that, it was time for lunch! I walked about a block away from the convention center to a new(ish) coffeeshop that had sandwiches, salads, etc. My first time there, but I enjoyed my salad! (Even though it was too expensive).
Also the weather was absolutely gorgeous on Saturday! Usually everyone bakes in the 90+ degree temperature and humidity, but it was a pleasant 70s day instead. This will probably never happen again.
The next panel was simply an hour of watching strange Japanese commercials. I do enjoy video panels where you can just relax for an hour. Unfortunately this one was pretty crowded, so I was stuck at the back and couldn't always see the screen that well. But I could understand enough dialogue to enjoy most of the commercials.
There was one commercial included that the panel host added because it was animated in Studio Ghibli style. "But it's actually an ad for Oregon," he said.
The guy sitting behind me: "the whole state?!"
I missed a bit of the commercial as I was busy smothering my laughter as I listened to this guy whisper to his friends, incredulous as he learned about the existence of state tourism campaigns 😂
Anyway, here is the Travel Oregon commercial.
And here are a few other (actually Japanese) commercials included in the panel that I could find on YouTube:
☆ Mameshiba (this is a compilation and probably my favorite of all)
☆ Georgia Coffee (I've never seen Twin Peaks but this is still really funny to me)
☆ Resident Evil 4 (again, still funny even though I'm unfamiliar with Resident Evil in general)
☆ Wonder Core (repetitive but silly)
There were plenty more, but these stood out in my mind the most (and were also the easiest to find on YouTube lol)
After that, I headed to the Dealers Room to browse. You have to take an escalator down there, which provides an excellent view of the whole large room as you descend. And there were two guys behind me on the escalator, and one said, in his best nature documentary narrator voice, "we are now approaching the capitalist gallery"
I love all the weird things I overhear at the convention 😂
Anyway, there was a good variety of stuff available this year. I'm not really a merch collector, so I was mainly on the hunt for CDs or DVDs/blurays. There weren't as many vendors selling that kind of stuff this year, and I was unsuccessful in my quest to find season 2 of Gundam IBO (I bought season 1 last year). BUT I did find a vendor that had both Kamen Rider Kuuga and Ryuki on bluray.
...I left the dealers room, took a long walk around the convention center, debated whether I could afford one of them, and then came back and bought them both instead 😅 I just really like having physical media, okay!! Plus, now I can watch both series on a TV screen instead of my phone.
I have no regrets but also I'm not allowing myself to buy anything else for the rest of the year lmao.
Moving right along... the next fan panel I headed to was called Shoujo Manga's Lost Generation. To be honest, I'm not much of a manga reader anymore these days, but I do enjoy panels about history, so I popped in anyway. The panel host focused mainly on the 1950s, 1960s era, but also gave an overview of shoujo manga origins pre-WWII.
It was really interesting, but unfortunately I was too tired at that point to really take notes on the various mangaka mentioned and their noteworthy series. The panel host, however, does have a review site called The Manga Test Drive if anyone's interested in that.
After that, it was dinner time. I went with the easiest option and bought a hotdog and fries from the convention center food vendor (located in a corner of the Dealers Room). And then I sat on the floor and ate my dinner, while pretending I am still in my early twenties and can still easily get up from the floor. How nostalgic 😂 (I have eaten many a meal sitting on the floor of the convention center over the past 15 years lmao. For the record, there were many other people sitting on the floor with me bc there were not enough tables in the area.) The food was good and I got to do some more people-watching. There were two guys near the escalators having the absolute time of their lives dancing to music from a little Bluetooth speaker.
I had some time to kill after that, so I walked around some more and also browsed through Artist Alley as well. But again, I am not very interested in merch, so not much caught my eye over there. But I really couldn't afford anything after my Dealers Room splurge anyway. (I did search for bookmarks, but only a few vendors had any, and they just weren't my cup of tea. Oh well.)
Finally, it was time for the Masquerade!
I should preface this bit by explaining that I attend the Masquerade every year, and usually I'm always a little disappointed in the "skits." If you're not familiar, the Masquerade is the big cosplay contest for the weekend. The first part is a simple "show off your costume and pose as you walk across the stage" but then the second part are cosplay skits, where the cosplayers actually do some sort of performance (in 3 minutes or less) on stage. But in the past decade or so, the skits have just morphed into dance routines and thats basically it. Don't get me wrong -- dancing in full costume is still an amazing feat! But two hours of it every year (mostly set to a lot of vocaloid & school idol music) gets a bit repetitive.
So this year I was blown away by how good the skits were! There was still a lot of dancing, of course, but many of the groups included more dialogue this year and more props than usual. It was great!
There were even a couple of skits that included live singing. (And one that was a band performance! Yes, they were dressed up as the characters from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, and they performed "God Knows" just like this scene.Truly fantastic!)
A couple of other standout skits to me:
☆ a Free! skit where the boys do various tiktok-esque dances to save the school's pool from shutting down 😂
☆ a Death Note skit that was basically a summary of the series (with dancing lol) but was performed SO WELL
☆ a Cardcaptor Sakura skit from the point of view of her cards waiting to be summoned
☆ and a fun meta Gurren Lagann skit where Simon and Kamina talk about their story becoming an anime. There were so many good jokes in this one!
So the Masquerade was very fun to watch but lasted SO LONG. I ducked out before the winners were announced because it was already past 9:30pm at that point, and I still had a two hour drive back home.
Thankfully, the drive back was fine. There was hardly any traffic, so I took the interstate route back. Actually, the worst traffic I experienced on my way home was getting stuck behind a slow-moving tractor about two miles from my house 😂 I was like "WHO is out here moving their tractor at midnight??" It's not even harvest season! (I did, in fact, figure out it was one of my neighbors 🙄)
Overall, it was a great day! Animazement this year well-exceeded my expectations. As a long-time attendee, seeing many of the same guests and cultural panels can start to feel rather repetitive, but I'm glad I was still able to find plenty of things to do this year. I even snapped a few photos of cosplayers this time. (For the first time in a few years! I usually have a hard time mustering up the courage to ask for photos. And this somehow has only gotten worse over the years.) And, of course, I was so thrilled with how fun the Masquerade was this year. Seriously, great!
Can't wait for 2026!
no subject
Date: 2025-06-06 06:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-06-07 12:19 am (UTC)It's such a long day, but I think sheer adrenaline gets me through the drive home lol. I'm hoping I'll eventually get to return to staying the whole weekend again so I can just go back to a hotel instead 🤞 Either way, it's always a fun time!