Madness cured?

The Animania convention, held at Sydney's Town Hall, didn't thrill me this year. Sure, I rocked up after lunch on Sunday, but as events were scheduled well into the evening, it couldn't have wound down *that* much since Saturday morning.

My main complaint is the lack of interesting material in the screening room. In '04 and '05, I'd been introduced to cool new shows like ".hack", "Gravion Zwei" and "Fullmetal Alchemist" (just started the manga - tres beaut). In '06, there was nothing whose blurb in the con handbook made me go, "I gotta see this!"

Next whinge: the altered layout. Why were the artist's stands moved from the room where the panels took place to the rear of the main auditorium? It's difficult to chat to someone about their work ("Got any pics of 'Death Note' characters?") when there's a bloody karaoke duet going on at the other end of the hall!

And another thing... The gaming section. Whose idea was it to scale down the exciting-to-watch beat-'em-up tournaments in favour of a "Nintendo chill-out zone"? I don't wanna see four kids playing "Mario Kart" on Gamecube - bring back the ridiculous martial arts combos! As for the dancing games, the sound of the players (and over-enthusiastic spectators) jumping up and down on the wood floor assaulted my ears like the buffalo stampede from "Dances With Wolves".

In previous years, the only money I spent at Animania was my entry fee. This time, I had to buy a few bits'n'bobs - badges, bookmarks, stickers - just to keep myself amused. The highlights were a nice colour print of Momo from "Bleach" and a badge with a picture of a bearded, middle-aged man dressed as a Sailor Scout giving the peace sign. Caption: "Friends don't let friends do cosplay."

Speaking of which, my final gripe is with the cosplay competition. A past favourite, it seemed too drawn out and a couple of tedious skits saw me off within half an hour (of the allocated three!) to revisit the dealers' tables. I hope that Generic Tentacle Beast guy turned up again.

Despite all those negatives, I'm still glad I attended as I'd hate Animania to disappear and it did give me an idea of what's "hot" in the local scene. The weird thing is, I'm madder than ever about the genre. Can you say "spoilt for choice"? :-)