Having recently moved to Houston following a year-long hiatus from conventions, finding out that Anime Matsuri was less than a thirty-minute drive away was a sort of blessing in disguise. Slated to begin the same weekend as Anime Boston (Which I’ve cited as my personal favorite convention for several years now), I was sure that Matsuri would be the substitute needed to fill the void in my heart once occupied by eastern conventions. What I wasn’t sure of, however, is how exactly it would measure up in terms of content. I even saved myself from looking up any information about panels (Apart from the highly advertised Evangelion Exhibit) and limited my search to strictly foreign and local guests. Unfortunately, the seams of Matsuri’s neatly presented package started to unravel at this very moment.
You see, what I didn’t know about the convention prior to registering was that it had been subject to a pretty big scandal over the last year or so. And while this is in no way confirmed or official, it seems like said scandal laid a pretty huge impact upon one of Houston’s largest annual conventions. What I mean by this is- there was pretty much no one notable there. Sure, some of the Japanese guests were okay. Doug Jones was even there (You may recognize the name from Del Toro’s recent Academy Award-winner, The Shape Of Water.) And if that doesn’t ring a bell, you’d probably recognize him as every other monster in every monster movie ever. But even though his appearance is much more than just ‘notable’, there’s already the issue of the biggest guest at an anime convention having…well, zero affiliation with anime. Combine that with the next biggest guest being a former Japanese AV actress (Yua Mikami) and you have a rather…interesting lineup, to say the least.
But hey, I can look past an unimpressive and rather offroad guest list. I mean, Anime Boston is a much bigger convention and I’m sure that plenty of the VIPs flocked over there instead. I’m also sure that some of the American industries like Funimation and Sentai Filmworks will be there. I mean, Sentai is literally stationed in Houston and- Wait, what? Neither of them are going to be there either? Well, what about Aniplex then? No?
So, as you can see, Matsuri already had an underwhelming itinerary before even kicking off on Thursday. The bright side, however, is that this meant shorter lines for everything. And, to be fair, these lines were managed rather well. What was not managed well was literally everything else. I’ve gotten accustomed to the whole “You can’t go in through this door! This is an exit!” spiel that you’ll get when trying to enter the dealer’s room (Or exhibit hall or vendor floor or whatever the hell you call it), but Anime Matsuri kicked that up a notch. If my counting was correct, there were about six different double-sided entryways. With two doors at each passage, this equates to around 12 different ways of getting into the only exciting area of the convention. You’d think this would make things easier but, in all actuality, it was one of the most unnecessary, tediously micro-managed processes that I’ve ever witnessed at a convention.
