It is always nice to go to Anime cons in your home town. Especially when those very cons are conveniently located right next to your residence. This was a real plus for this years anime wasabi as I can only honestly say it was an average con. I say Average because there was not much that was interesting about it. And the few interesting things about it were VERY well done. Lucky for me I went to Anime Wasabi last year, so I was not too shocked about how the con went.

So this year much like last year the schedule was more for show. Granted this year I noticed that more things were not canceled. Still the panels that were canceled were ones I would have wanted to go to. Which is always rather demoralizing. I am pretty sure all the voice actor panels went off without a hitch. As well as the cosplay panels and any Yaoi panels. But all the interesting panels, like the History of Square-Enix, seemed to get canceled. But what can you expect when people are not getting paid to do these panels. It is sad, because most of the more obscure fan panels are always done the best.

I have to hand it to the people who made the panels that I went to, they did a fantastic job. While most did not have a very good presentation, I doubt I could have done much better. Call me a bit of a nerd but I always enjoy the information rich panels. And all the panels that caught my attention were just that. There were times when I mistaked being at a con for being at an intersting lecture. The few panels that I attended were great. I really wish that these guys could have gotten more than an hour in but what can I do?

It was really nice that this year the convention was close, because this year the Game room sucked something fierce. First off they had 4 systems dedicated to Halo and 4 dedicated to Gears of War. I know that tournaments are very popular but still can't people learn to suck it up and play split screen? Aside from that they had a nice variety of fighting games. The only problem there was that there was no kind of moderation. I really liked how last year there was a system of sorts. Which meant that even if there was a lot of people in the room you still would get to play in a reasonable amount of time. But not this year. This year it was just play until you got bored. Sometimes even if you asked people would not give up the games. Plus this year the game room was WAY TO CRAMPED. There was barely an ally to walk through to get between the games much less a place to sit and relax and watch people play. Last year they space was big and empty there was plenty of room to stand and watch tournament level players play. This year you felt guilty if you were not playing. Again, thank god it was so close. Last year I would not have survived.

So overall the Con was average. There were lots of small bad things, but the couple of good things mostly made up for the small bad things. I am hopeful for next year however. As it seems Animeland has no thoughts of abandoning this con just yet. It will be nice to have some consistent management helping out with the con next year. Let us hope that something will go right next year. Because a bad con is a bad con. And as much as I would hate to only have one con a year to go to I will give up on Wasabi if next year is terrible.