Make Believe Bonus: Patrick's 2010 Flirtations With Anime Events

I Am So Jet Lagged

I’ve gotten a lot of mileage over the last month telling assorted people in my life that I’ve never been to an anime convention before. This sorta revelation is met with shock, not because I’m the sort who one would expect to definitely have attended one at some time in my life, but rather because it feels like an inevitability.

Even before the 2020s symbiotic relationship between J-pop and anime, music has been a central part of “anime culture” in Japan and abroad. Like…I should have gone to some kind of convention given how what I focus on intersects with this world, but it hasn’t happened (though it has come close…I nearly made a last second trip to Anime Expo in Los Angeles two years ago, spurred primarily by the fact I needed to renew my driver’s license. I realized “that’s a terrible reason to upend your summer”).

The whole reason this comes up is because that will, starting tomorrow, no longer be true. I’ll be attending / speaking at Anime Central in Chicago, marking the first time I’ve ever been to something like this before. While slightly terrifying, it is also exciting, and a chance to actually experience a central space where Japanese music — in theory — spreads.

While I’ve never been to an anime convention proper until this week, I have covered a handful of anime-leaning events in Japan over the last decade. This week, to celebrate the personal achievement of going to a con — and, honestly, because I’m super bogged down by work, prepping for presentations and jet lag — I’m pulling two MTV 81 stories out of the digital ether to mark this moment, especially ahead of what I’m sure will be fresh writing on the American experience.