When May rolls around, the Hyatt Regency in Rosemont, IL becomes the place for otaku in the Midwest to gather. Another great Anime Central has come and gone.
At this year’s convention, I decided to hold a panel, dicussing one of the jubjects nearest and dearest to my heart: Saint Seiya. The turnout for my panale was great, considering it was on a Saurday morning at 9 A.M. So I had expected people to either be asleep or in line to get into the dealer’s room. But the true Saint Seiya fan’s fought sleep and the temptating merchandise in the dealer’s room in order to check out my panel. First and foremost, I want to thank everybody who attended. This picture was snapped 5 minutes before the panel started.
I kicked off the panel with a intro video showcasign the different iterations of the Saint Seiya franchise. Soon after, the panel room became standing room only, which was a pleasant surprise. Also a surprise to me was the fact that many of the attendees were big fans of the original Saint Seiya series. In the end, I had a good time presenting an overview of the Saint Seiya franchise, and we even had some good dialogue between the atendees and myself.
So enough about our coo; little gathering of Saint Seiya nerds and let’s check out some pics.
Here is one of a couple Iron Man suits in attendance at the convention.
Also attending was Peter Venkman and his frenemy Slimer.
This Ghostbuster was packing a pretty official-looking proton pack. So if there is something strange in your neighborhoood, you can always call this guy.
A couple of Makoto Kusanagi cosplayers that were at the con.
As a toku fan, I totally geeked out at this awesome group cosplay of the Kaizoku Sentai Gokager; which was sans Pink and plus a Ryuki. That is a pretty legit trade-off in my books.
Tony Stark, being the self-centered guy he is, was totally trying to take the spoghtlight away from these hardworking Zords.
in the end karma came back to get Iron Man; little did he know his photo was about to get Daft Punk’d.
A couple of Star Wars cosplayers. Either they made it to the wrong convention or representing the Star War manga.
Looks like Booker and Elizabeth decided to trade in the skies of Columbia for the burbs of Chicago. 
Some Doctors from Dr. Who… A whole mess of them!
Chalk-artist Eric Maruscak , drew up a nice picture of cover from Lupin the Third: The woman called Fujiko Mine.
While Fridays and Saturdays are usually the days that get the most attention in terms of programming, Anime Central decided to include an special event into the intnerary for Sunday. Yukino treated Sunday’s convention-goers to a special acoustic concert!
Yukino concluded the concert with an acoustic rendition of RanTiKi, the intro for the show Bakumatsu Gijiden Roman by the legendary Monkey Punch. This acoustic version of the song was totally awesome! You can check out our review of the RanTiKi single here, and we will also be reviewing Yukino’s first album “Vocalize” in the following weeks.
This great concert by one of Japan’s up-and-coming new artists was a fitting end to an overall pretty solid convention! I can’t wait for next year!