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ANIME
CENTRAL
TEXT BY ALAN SCHOLTING
/
IMAGES BY MATTHEW SPERZEL
A
couple of years ago, we attended the biggest anime
convention in the mid-west. Well, when we caught wind that
the convention juggernaut was turning twenty this year, we knew we
had to go back.
Anime Central spared no expense making sure its double decade
anniversary was one for the ages. Held once again at the Donald E.
Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, Illinois, ACen was fully
loaded with celebrity voice acting guests, panels galore, and more
cosplay activities than you could shake a stick at.
Heading up the guest list were fan favorites such as Shinichi
‘Nabeshin’ Watanabe, Crispin Freeman, and the ‘Kevin Bacon’ of
anime himself, John Swasey. The convention also hosted a huge
lineup of amazing musical performances by the voice behind Macross
Frontier, May’n, the always energetic stylings of Gacharic Spin, and the
progressive compositional melodies of IMERUAT, to name a few. That,
of course, is in addition to over a dozen different electronic DJ’s that
kept the raves lit ‘til morning on both Friday and Saturday.
Maybe concerts aren’t your thing though. Maybe you prefer to
kick back inside the nice cool panel rooms and discuss literally
ANYTHING related to anime? Well, Anime Central has you covered
there as well. This year’s edition featured over two-hundred-and-fifty
panels ranging from children’s programming all the way to the late
night NSFW Hentai and adult themed discussions. That’s well over
three-hundred hours of programming just in panels alone for those
keeping track out there.
Now, some of you might be thinking, ‘with everything they have
going on, they probably don’t have much room left for cosplay events’.
Well, rest easy, because Anime Central hasn’t forgotten about the
cosplayers. In fact, in many regards, cosplay seems to be one
of their primary focuses. For starters, this year’s convention hosted
over one-hundred-and-thirty different cosplay photo shoots…yeah,
you read that correctly, over one-hundred-and-thirty! However, the
most important cosplay event of the weekend took place during
the Saturday night masquerade; and no, I’m not talking about the
competition itself.
In late August of 2016, a wonderful person and incredible friend
to the mid-west cosplay community was tragically taken from this
world. Her name was Dani Roelandt. Since this was the very first