After COVID-19 cancelled two years worth of conventions, Anime Revolution came back this year in full swing on July 29-31, 2022. This year, there were a few things that were quite prominent from my point of view: Virtual YouTubers and Genshin Impact. Here’s another thought running dump of my weekend now that post-con depression is hitting.
Day 1 – Friday
I ended up taking the commuter train West Coast Express to the convention centre. This worked out since I needed to go out early to pick up my pass, as I was working the day before. Contrast to previous years, the pass pickup line was indoors, so at least we had a bit of air conditioning as it turned out to be a hot weekend. I ended up waiting roughly 30 minutes in line, so that was better than I expected. In previous years, it was a bit faster because I bought my ticket on the day of, but for 2020 (which was postponed until 2022) I ended up buying the early bird ticket at a discount so waiting 30 minutes instead of 10 was fine with me.
With that out of the way, I queued for the opening ceremonies. It was refreshing to see Jermery, one of the MCs and organizers of AniRevo, appear and open the three day convention. Perhaps that was convention starvation lol.
Afterwards, I headed down towards the vendor hall, where the SFU Anime Club was also boothing and promoting our SFU Summer Festival happening in less than a month from now. I spent most of my time hanging out at the booth, and bumping into so many familiar faces that I hadn’t seen in the last 2-3 years! I reconnected with a con friend, Jonathan, who was a friend of my friend NekoDiv, and we talked and explored the vendor halls together. I also met another person that hand-created a Rina-chan board from Love Live!, and it was so cool seeing the different expressions. It was so cool seeing the controls and behind-the-scenes work, along with the story behind the project itself. I could definitely feel the passion he had while working on it! I also had a fun time wearing it and walking around, albeit with a guide cause I couldn’t see anything!
After exploring the vendor hall, I ended up going back to Kyuriin’s booth to buy some prints, which I had visited and bought from in previous years. I ended up buying a Ganyu, Hu Tao, and Shenhe print, who are all from Genshin Impact. Thankfully, my girlfriend let me borrow her poster holder, so I was able to store them safely without bending them. Bless you.
I also wanted to buy a Ganyu dakimakura cover from TheWaifuCafe (which I had previously bought a Sistine cover from them back in AniRevo 2018 IIRC), but by the time I got there, they were already sold out.
After that, it was getting into the mid afternoon, so we headed out to Harbour Centre and got actual food. Didn’t take any photos, but I went and got some Laksa at Bubble Waffle Cafe. Surprisingly skipped the McD’s run haha.
Aside from the opening ceremonies, I lined up for the Hololive IRyS & Kronii quiz talk show with my friends at around 3:30ish (what’s a convention without lines anyways?) and we just played games and talked. The panel was pretty engaging, as it turned out to be a Zoom call with them and they were able to see the audience and interact with us.
Day 2 – Saturday
On day 2, as per the usual con diet, I got some McDonald’s before I drove out and carpooled with a few of my friends. One of my friends, Lorenzo, hates loves idols and he played some jams, of which Ryouran! Victory Road (繚乱！ビクトリーロード) was a banger. This has now forced me to start watching the Love Live! Nijigasaki series, so hurray for that!
Anyways, once we got there, we lined up for the Tako Negifry ensemble performance. It was pretty nice to hear some nice Anime instrumentals. One song I recognized was Reflectia (リフレクティア) from a 2008 anime I haven’t watched before called “true tears”. It was an “aha!” moment when I recognized it because I didn’t realize that the iDOLM@STER version from Miura Azusa (CV: Takahashi Chiaki) was actually a cover. I guess that’s another anime to add to the “to watch” list. Anyways, it was nice to hear some other tunes from other series I recognized, like Violet Evergarden. Hopefully they’ll come back next year and perform again.
After that, I hit the vendor halls once again to hang out with friends. After doing another round at all the booths, I ended up finding a 3D motion-like Kitagawa Marin sticker from a neighbouring booth. It was so cool, that a bunch of my friends also hurried over and we ended up buying another 5 or 6 of themsummary. I ended up sticking it on my laptop. Apparently, the kind folks at the both also came by and gave us two other stickers (one of them being a Marin as well) and so we left it at our booth for display. Some people asked where we got them from, so we directed them towards the booth, so I guess it was a win-win 😀
Aside from that, after grabbing lunch at A&W, my friends and I lined up for a panel called Anime/Manga in the Professional Workplace. I decided to check it out cause it seemed pretty relevant to me, as interests occasionally come up during my random coffee chats with coworkers. It was a neat interactive format, with the panelists asking the audience questions and giving everyone to voice their perspectives, so I actually enjoyed that.
To wrap up the night, we also lined up for Hololive IRyS’ concert, which was slated to start at 19:30, at around 17:00, and wow did that line fill up quickly. It eventually made it outside of the convention centre. I think the line ended up getting cut off at some point long before the concert started, so gg to those who missed the cutoff. Overall, it was a fun panel, but there was definitely a ~15 second latency with Zoom which was unfortunate.
Day 3 – Sunday
On the final day, I did the same thing as the previous day: McD’s and carpooled out again. This time, my friends and I lined up for the idol showcase, which was a bunch of groups dancing to music. We got a bunch of male idol dance groups, and then there was one Chinese group that stood out the most to me. They were the second final group to appear (before I left, at least), and they performed one GARNiDELiA song and some other ones that I didn’t know, but they were so confident with their strong choreography that it was just so exciting to watch them perform. Of course, penlights were flung around and that was fun.
After that, it was back to the vendor hall to hang out with friends. In my last round for purchases, I ended up buying a few enamel pins for my girlfriend, as she was out sick and couldn’t come for the weekend. I also went back and found out I could do a back-order for the Ganyu dakimakura cover, for which I ended up doing.
After that, our friend, saya, and her friend had a panel called Vtuber 201, which we lined up for. I didn’t know a lot about Vtuber history, so having a succinct presentation with anectdotes and references was really great to see and hear. It seemed the rest of the audience also agreed as well, as there were people sitting in all rows and I didn’t really notice too many getting up to leave for the duration of the panel.
After that, we went for an actual lunch at a nearby Japanese restaurant. Again, surprising to have actual food since the prior years have all been McD’s runs.
With the last day of the convention wrapping up, we went back to rest and hang out at the SFU Anime booth before the vendor hall closed at 5pm. Before that happened, I did one last sweep, and bought two more prints from Kyomonn: one of Keqing and Eula from Genshin. Once the vendor hall closed, we went and lined up for the closing ceremonies. Unfortunately, I think I was sleep deprived or having caffeine withdrawal, as I had a growing headache. Caffeine seemed to be the culprit as a coffee helped ease the headache. Was happy to get home afterwards and hit the sack.
Summary
Overall, I’m so happy to have a Vancouver convention back in person. I think the masking policy this year could have been enforced a bit better, but from what I could see at least 90%+ of people at the convention were wearing masks (not sure about during the rave though, I decided to skip it this year), but the risk level seemed better with masks on for me at least. I had a fun time just hanging out with people I hadn’t seen in so long and walking around buying stuff and whatnot. I did take some cosplayer photos, but I’ll refrain from uploading them here. All I’ll say is that I was very happy to have seen at least 2 Barbara cosplays (from Genshin Impact), which were both awesome!
Anyways, it’s a Monday night, and I have to get ready for work tomorrow, so I’ll leave it at that. Here’s hoping to another fun convention next year with friends.
That’s all I got, so until next time!
~Lui
[…] events finally returned! This year, I went to various local anime events, including MiniComi, Anime Revolution and Anime Evolution’s Akimatsuri. I missed having a place to hang out with friends sharing […]