I went to Anime Boston with my friend Darth Imperios (no, not his real name :P) today, to check out what was there. He waited through the (then) 20-minute line to get a pass (you “need” a pass to get in, read on to find out why it’s “really”), then payed the $30 for an all-day one. Then after a bit of mishap finding eachother, we met up and went to check out the line for me to buy a pass…
…Which I would have done, had the line not been snaking through a ballroom then going out the hallway and snaking through two mid-sized ballrooms. We didn’t even get to the end of the line before deciding it wasn’t worth it. So we went back to the exhibition hall.
At the hall, we found a few things. One, about 75% of the people there were cosplaying, and about 90% were either a character from Naruto or Final Fantasy. Second, we found out that we were actually in the “Artists’ Alley,” not the exhibition hall. Finally, we found out that there were no guards checking passes to get into the Artists’ Alley, so we both got in and started looking around for AppleGeeks, who said they were there.
We spent about 10 minutes just looking around for them, because they didn’t have a big sign or anything. Finally DI pulls out his map that he got with the pass (he also got a free 14 day trial of WoW) and we look for them on that. We finally realize that we’re standing right next to their table, so we turn around and buy some merch. We had a short conversation (“Hey, can we get some shirts?” “Yeah, $20 each.” “Cool.”) and left nervously. I also got an awesome Hawk Bandana. 😀
We stopped at the next table over for me to buy a Kindom Hearts Sora necklace (the crown on a chain) and for DI to buy a Naruto high criminal headband. We looked around some other areas of the place, but most of them had guards out front checking passes, so DI went in to scope them out then reported back to me. Eventually my mom (who was with us) went to get us autographs from Hawk and Ananth (I was too shy to go myself…they’re my idols), and came back with two signed drawings for us!
She then convinced us to go talk to them, which we did…but hardly at all. (them: “Hey guys!” us: “Hey” (mom: “They wanted to thank you in person”) us: “Thanks so much!” them: “No problem,” then we shuffled away nervously.) I almost died. 😛
The rest was relatively uneventful, other than DI going into the merch store next to the Alley (the Alley was a broom closet compared to this place…), and emerged 30 minutes later plus one Naruto sleeping cap. It’s kinda geeky, but the same could be said for my shwag (which by this point also included a Heartless logo tee shirt), I guess.
Yeah, my name is Max…shhh…