Sakacon: Sacanime Winter 2014

One of my sister's many Christmas gifts this year was a ticket to Sacanime (Sacramento's anime convention)..So I guess that kind of makes it a present to Sak and I as well since we were going with her :)

We drove up on Friday, and went straight to the reg line. A sweet, short 20 minutes for wristbands and badges.

Penga-Sis on the end, surprised there's no 6 hour wait!

Apparently since we booked our hotel (hyatt) through the con, we got a VIP badge upgrade! The upgrade let us into main events early, and also came with a tote bag, VIP autograph sessions, borderlands poster and a few art prints. Nice!

After badges we walked around to get a lay of the land. Sacanime uses the Sacramento Convention Center (though it was shared with a local home show!) and a hotel across the street.

Oh - and it's right across the street from the state capitol!

No one wanted to go on the building tour with me though :( Next time!

Anyway, this convention was interesting. At about 10,000 attendees, it's just a bit bigger than Kawaiikon in Hawaii, and about the third the size of Fanime. Dealer's Hall and Artist Alley were bustling - as I'd expect from a California con - though I think they could definitely add more artists in the future :)

Playing with panorama~

Video programming was sorely lacking in my opinion. I get that it's a smaller con, but really, only one small video room?

Fan-made video is my favorite thing, so I was a bit dissapointed that there was so little of it at this con. They did have an AMV contest, but it was very small with only a few entries per category. I can't really hold that against the con though, since you can only work with what's submitted.

So since there was no video programming, that left us to panels. We went to History of Magikarp, which is an OCD dive into everything Magikarp.

Sis in her Armin wig. We didn't finish the costume in time for con =_=!!

We also went to some of the voice actor panels. What Sacanime lacks in video programming, they make up for in guests! The voice of Mario was there, as well as several Halo people and the cast of Avatar/Korra.

Cortana (halo) and Mario.

Mario seemed like such a nice guy. Such a unique voice!

Korra - Amon, Zuko, Korra

We decided to bypass the cosplay masquerade in favor of a cold reading with voice actors. They ended up reading War of the Worlds, which was an odd choice, but they hammed it up anyway.

Anime dub voice, 2 Halo guys, and 2 novice voice actors.

I thought it was interesting, but I think Penga-Sis got a little bored. Sci fi isnt quite her thing.

Anyway, I enjoyed the con - but most of the events (aside from the dance/rave thing) ended at 8 or earlier. Lame. Even lamer is the fact that downtown Sac is pretty dead (food-wise), even on Friday/Saturday! So Saturday night we were sitting around with nothing to snack on and nothing to do. I yelped and found a cookie delivery company. What.

Cookies & Milk, baked to order and sent straight to our hotel. SO NICE. And the cookies were good too. Pricey, yes. But so worth it.

So in summary - I really enjoyed the con, but in a much different way than most anime cons. With the emphasis on guests and little else, I felt it was trying to be more of a comicon than a fan con. Having a con in winter to fill the summer con void is nice too. I wouldn't mind going again, but Sak says it won't be a yearly trip for him. Lol. For whatever reason it seems like northern california con attendees just don't understand hygiene/deodorant. I thought it was just Fanime, but Sacanime smelled just as bad. :P

That aside, since Penga-Sis was with me this time, I have her cosplay pics to share, yay!