\u201cWorst\u201d anime convention ever goes viral on TikTok for being a \u201cdisaster\u201d CrunchyrollA recent anime convention has left people with the wrong kind of memories, as attendees and vendors have been posting about Anime Nation Fest being a total \u201cdumpster fire\u201d. Anime Nation Fest combined anime and tattooing for a weekend-long event running April 19 to 21 at the LA Convention Centre. Billed on the official site as an \u201canime extravaganza like no other\u201d, the weekend has been the subject of criticism across TikTok and Reddit for poor attendance and organization, and allegedly misleading vendors. One vendor, Ayime, posted a TikTok highlighting lacklustre advertising and signposting around the event. Signage putting out where to go within the venue was minimal, and the trade hall was \u201ctucked into\u201d one part of a much larger room within the centre. Ayime mentions low footfall across the three days they were selling, showing clips with barely any attendees spread across the weekend. They mention that there was never a surge in people traffic \u2014 expected at certain hours throughout a convention between major panels and such \u2014 and lights on the Artist Alley went off for a period of time at one point. \u201cWe were told to prepare for thousands of people, but I probably only saw like 500,\u201d Ayime states towards the end. In a stitch on TikTok, another artist vending at the convention, Keyyahnuh, makes similar observations, adding that numbers were allegedly skewed by the parent company to attract sellers. \u201cUpon booking the event, they had told all the artist and vendors that they had sold 13,000 tickets, and they were expecting upwards of 30,000 attendees over the course of the three days,\u201d Keyyahnuh says. \u201cIn day three, we were informed by somebody who was a private contractor for the company, who had worked with this coordinator for a long time, that these numbers were base don their best event they did in 2004.\u201d Anime Nation Fest is run by a company called Mega Show, a self-described \u201ctrailblazer\u201d who\u2019ve been running events for 30 years, according to their website. This convention, per the official blurb, \u201ccaters to the heart and soul of every anime lover\u201d, and was the first of several tattoo and anime shows booked throughout the year, with events listed for Houston, San Jose, and Scottsdale across Mega Show\u2019s sites. Keyyahnuh brings up the cost of selling at these conventions, with independent artists and vendors having to pay for a stall over the course of the weekend, in addition to transport, accommodation, stock and more. Keyyahnuh states that artists paid upwards of $400 and vendors around $800, and mentions that even those prices carry the implication of getting access to a large audience. \u201cAny time you see a table with a fee this high, it\u2019s associated with larger events, and we were promised that expectancy,\u201d they add. \u201cA lot of vendors came from out of state based on that expectancy, and they lost a lot of money.\u201d Anime Expo and LA Comic Con, massive pop culture conventions that run annually, take place at the same venue. The guest list for Anime Nation Fest included Kyle Hebert, DC Douglas, and Darius Marquis Johnson, typical names for this sort of event. Over on Reddit, similar criticisms emerged. \u201cIt took me 20 minutes to see everything, and then I watched the cosplay contest\u2026 Unfortunately some categories had zero entries,\u201d writes one user in a thread. \u201cI spent about an hour total. At $35 plus fees, it\u2019s definitely not worth it.\u201d Another user added a bullet-point list of issues, including long opening hours of 11am to 11pm, as well as poor accessibility for sellers bringing stock in and out. \u201cNo one from the coordinators were on site at all. It was all third party security, staff, etc,\u201d they write. \u201cThe loading dock was locked until 7pm Sunday, so if you wanted to pack up and leave early you had to wheel your stuff very very far to your car.\u201d \u201cAfter a disaster weekend at Anime Nation Fest, I\u2019m glad to finally be home and not at that dumpster fire anymore,\u201d a third user wrote. So far, Mega Show hasn\u2019t responded or acknowledged the criticisms. We\u2019ve contacted Mega Show for a response, and will update if we hear back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cWorst\u201d anime convention ever goes viral on TikTok for being a \u201cdisaster\u201d CrunchyrollA recent anime convention has left people with the wrong kind of memories, as attendees and vendors have been posting about Anime Nation Fest being a total \u201cdumpster fire\u201d. Anime Nation Fest combined anime and tattooing for a weekend-long event running April 19 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13844\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}