Anime Boston 2009: Mystery solved

VIDEO: Scenes from Anime Boston 2009

This past weekend marked the ninth year of the Northeast’s largest anime convention, Anime Boston. Gamers, geeks, and cosplayers flooded the Hynes Convention Center by the thousands, and luckily for them, much has improved since last year. For one thing, AB finally outsourced its registration to professionals, so long lines for pass pick-up are a thing of the past. Unfortunately, 4-hour lines for every other event seemed unavoidable, but that’s the downside of conventions with upwards of twelve thousand attendees. (View the slideshow)

Although AB can’t fully shake its nickname of “Line Con,” the convention this year expanded much further into the Hynes and the Sheraton, meaning that fewer people were turned away from events after waiting in those long lines. Also, this year’s AB included a more comprehensive “cosplot” (a running gag/story throughout the con). The convention’s theme was Clue (note the Clue cosplay group in my video), and so in the cosplot, the Anime Boston mascots dressed as a detective and femme fatale, and they solved the murder of various famous anime characters. As fun as it was to see Sailor Moon gunned down in cold blood at the 18+ Dating Game, I was growing weary of the mystery by the time the Masquerade rolled around. The idea of a running story was good, but the characters dragged it out too long before the plot unraveled on Sunday at Cosplay Chess. However, it was a better job at cosplot than I’ve seen at any other con, and next year the story will doubtless be more fleshed out.

AB was definitely fun -- albeit very loud and crowded, and with more events than I could ever have conceivably attended. It’s definitely the right experience for people who want a sensory-overloaded, sleep-deprived weekend (and that’s precisely what I had).