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Anime Boston - Author's Notes - 2007 Anime Boston started large, unexpectedly, in 2003 when the convention organizers hoped for 600 people and got 4,100. The convention got big in 2007, with more than 10,000 fans on hand. As far as we can tell, that's the second-largest anime convention attendance on the eastern seaboard, topped only by the 22,000 or so for Otakon. It was enough for Anime Boston's organizers to announce March dates for 2008, even before the 2007 event was over. So why has Anime Boston outgrown several established events in five years? It's the only major show in New England, centered on a major population region, in an area full of the colleges that once provided anime fandom's base, but also with many of the families that have produced the high school kids that are fueling fandom's increase. The big attendance did not lead to a crowded feeling, since the fans were spread over two convention center levels with wide concourses, many fans were swallowed by the large dealers' room, and the biggest events also captured lots of fans. The Sunday cosplay chess game had a larger attendance than some conventions we've attended this year. And we're told that the Hynes convention center, Anime Boston's home, might have enough room for double the 2007 attendance. Boston is a vibrant and busy city during the spring, and that energy bleeds over to enthusiasm toward the convention. The area around the Hynes convention center has some major attractions - the famed Berklee music school, the First Church of Christ  Scientist and Symphony Hall. On the convention weekend, Bostonians got out of their homes to enjoy the weather, and the many restaurants and shops located from the Prudential Center to Copley Square. The foot and taxi traffic seemed nearly as busy as Times Square, but the crowds were less abrasive and and the taxis easier to hail. Everywhere we traveled away from the convention, there were large numbers of pedestrians on the streets. Maybe the weather was a factor. The previous weekend was raw and windy for the Boston Marathon, but the convention weekend was bright and sunny. It was perfect weather for the Greek independence parade staged on the street in front of the convention center, and a great time for people to get outside and work up some spring fever. Around the convention center, we saw more people in Red Sox regalia than in anime costumes, but that probably was because most of the costumed fans stayed in nearby connected hotels, while the baseball fans needed to be outdoors for obvious reasons - the Yankees were in town. This writer needed some time to get used to the convention's revised layout for 2007. In 2006, the dealers' room was on the main level of the convention center, but it was moved to the second level in 2007, with the main level rooms unused. The artists' alley, which has wandered from year to year, was in a third-level room which, by our memory, was once used for the opening ceremonies. The room seemed off the beaten path, but we were told they had a constant crowd all weekend. That room also had four times the space of the artists' alley from two years earlier. If you were wondering where we were on Anime Boston's Friday, we were sitting behind a desk, watching Japanese television on our notebook PC screen and flipping between the Busch race in Arizona and the Yankees-Red Sox game on an office TV set. It wasn't a bad way to spend a Friday night, even if we would have rather spent all three days at the Massachusetts convention. However, we had only Saturday and Sunday for travel, so we had to pass up the convention's opening day. We spent Friday evening booking travel, finding a way to use frequent flyer miles to take $600 off the cost of our plane ticket and locating a decently priced hotel that wasn't too far from the Hynes convention center. The Japanese TV was a live feed from Twin Ring Motegi of the Indy Racing League event, which was tape-delayed on ESPN but live on the IRL's web site. It wasn't the first time we've done that - on the night of the American Anime Awards in Manhattan, we watched the Busch race from California on the same computer, thanks to our Sprint EV-DO card - but it was the first time we've split our viewing between events so far apart at the same time. We ended the weekend in the same fashion. On Sunday afternoon, as fans filed out of the convention center, we used the Hynes' free wifi to call up the Champ Car video feed and watch Sebastian Bourdais win the Houston race. Then we headed back to our hotel room, keeping an eye out for a skittering cockroach, and watched the final game of the Yankees-Red Sox series on ESPN. Anime Boston Main Page