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(late) midsummer busyness
13 Aug 2025 - digitalily
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undertale
01 Jul 2025 - digitalily
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anime magic 2025
26 Aug 2025 - digitalily
Summer continues, this time with a trip to another local anime con, Anime Magic! The usual group I head to ACEN with had heard some rumblings about Anime Magic a couple years ago, and there was a desire to give it a look since we haven’t really been to a huge variety of anime cons collectively, so after this year’s ACEN some distant plans were made and in the end, a small group of us headed over for a day!
I was debating internally whether to go in cosplay, and in the end decided to reprise my usual Goat Butler (Umineko) cosplay, sans goat mask because I enjoy seeing and not suffering heatstroke. Right after buying my badge and hooking up the blade to its power source to light up, I had some fancy photos taken by someone who I think was con staff? In my haste I didn’t follow up and haven’t found anything yet, but either way it’s that sort of thing that makes it worth it! Unfortunately for me one of the hooks I use to suspend it from my arm gave way fairly quickly, likely due to a combination of a bad glue job and a lot of force being exerted on that hook in particular, so I ended up having to awkwardly carry the thing by sticking a finger (alternating) through another loop, and eventually just electing to carry it. I think really glue isn’t the answer, but that’s a future problem!
Compared with ACEN, Anime Magic is a much newer and much smaller con, filling up one of the side halls of the convention center rather than the main space. I saw some random commentary from attendees online that Anime Magic reminds them of an ACEN of ~10 years ago. Having been to my first ACEN around then (and not trying to think about the implications of that), I’m not sure I agree, in that the ACEN of back then was still a much larger convention, but I get what the spirit of the observation is, which is that it’s just a smaller, more intimate, as these things go, con. The first vendor booth we stopped at after entering the floor, because it was right there at the front, was actually a reptile petting zoo? Always a cool thing to have the chance to handle some snakes (though my hands were much too full for it this time), but definitely not what you think of when you think of anime convention. In ways like this, you can tell Anime Magic is newer, though there is something to be said about involving non-anime-related local businesses and such. I’ll never forget the window booth I saw at Combobreaker haha.
Due to the smaller number of attendees and the layout, Artist Alley was nice to walk through- I got to see several booths I saw earlier this year at ACEN and Combobreaker, as well as many new ones. Although I did get a couple Umineko shoutouts along the way, I didn’t end up finding any booths with Umineko merch, which realistically is to be expected, but I wanted to believe. What really got me was a booth with a somewhat prominent Touhou display featuring Letty Whiterock, who for the uninitiated is definitely a character that’s kind of out there, which is awesome. I ultimately didn’t end up grabbing too much, since I was encumbered due to cosplay and there was a good amount of overlap between cons, but also because the nature of the anime community at large now more than ever is just that everybody sort of has their own niches, and as I don’t keep up with currently airing stuff like I used to, it’s easy to fall behind. It’s still fun to walk around and see physically what the new meme hotness is, so to speak.
All in all, Anime Magic was a good time, and I’m looking forward to attending more casually in future years. I think pretty firmly for now given its size, it’s a one day con, which in some ways is nice, because you don’t have the obligation of the whole extended weekend and can just relax the day after (as I did).
That’s all for now- ‘til next time!