Geek Babble- Sakura-con 2019

 

Trying out new anime conventions over the past few years has yielded mixed results for me, resulting in either something that is excellent or terrible, but usually nothing that is mid-pack so to speak.  Now, one convention that has held some intrigue for me has been Seattle’s Sakura-Con, a convention that fights with Anime Boston for attendees, as both are held over Easter weekend.  I was thankfully able to bring together a few friends to make this trip a reality, to see which convention one should make an effort to attend for Easter weekend.

 

Sakura-con didn’t leave a good first impression, as by November, hotels for the convention were still were not ready to be booked yet, and messages (email, Twitter, and Facebook) to staff regarding this issue were not answered whatsoever.  It also didn’t help that the only messages being posted up on Sakura-con’s ancient Livejournal-esque website were a slow trickle of guest announcements and that information was difficult to navigate to or nonexistent.  Instead, rely on the unofficial Facebook groups that have popped up.  It wasn’t until the end of January that hotel bookings for the convention were up, and even then, there were issues with many hotels not offering room rates for Thursday evening, and Sakura-con had also committed Nan Desu Kan’s sin of offering convention room rates for more than non-convention room rates at nearby hotels.  Thankfully, the $189/night convention room rates offered at nearby hotels were only slightly higher than the $170/night non-convention room rates I booked at the brand new Hyatt Regency about 2 blocks from the convention center, and were not too difficult to swallow considering this is the heart of Seattle.  One thing I will note, however, is that I did try booking both the nearby Sheraton and Hyatt Olive 8 hotels (along with the nearby Grand Hyatt which did not automatically book guests into a room with two beds in it) outside the convention room block.  The Sheraton cost $239 (in line with other nearby hotels) and the Hyatt Olive 8 required one to book a higher-tier room in order to get one with two beds, at a cost of $279/night.  Thank another convention taking place at the same time (for Amazon staff members) for the high rates, but hopefully the Hyatt Regency will continue to undercut other nearby hotels costwise during Sakura-con’s weekend, since it is a most excellent hotel (though skip the value-poor breakfast buffet).

 

Thankfully, the schedule was released with plenty of time to look it over (about 3 weeks before the convention began) along with maps of the venue itself.  However, information regarding the convention’s hours of operation and location of various items were scattered everywhere, and Sakura-con did a poor job of consolidating everything so they were conveniently located in a place that was easy to find.  Sure, there were FAQs on the website, but if your question was not answered by the FAQs, good luck finding a response through official channels.  Sakura-con’s maps also did not lay out the venue in a very easy-to-understand fashion, and it was only when I got to the venue was I able to put everything together: there was the Washington State Convention Center containing some panel rooms, game rooms, main events rooms, and autograph rooms, a hallway leading to a different building housing the enormous dealers room, a building kitty-corner from the convention center housing registration, some panel rooms, and the artist alley, and a large park behind the convention center where most photoshoots took place.  The entire venue is accessible by the Link Light Rail System from the airport, with the nearest station about 2 blocks from the convention center and the ride lasting approximately 1 hour.

 

 

Things began to look up once arriving at the venue itself:  despite a line streaming out the door for registration around 15 minutes before it began on Thursday afternoon (Sakura-con does not mail out badges), the line dwindled to nothing when I went to pick up my badge about 3 hours later.  It was a perfect opportunity to grab lunch at a nearby café, explore the local Pike Place Farmers Market (a 15 minute walk away from the convention center), and also figure out the venue itself.  It was odd to see just how few people were present at the convention on Thursday afternoon as compared with other conventions of similar size.  One noteworthy thing I discovered whilst walking around is that while there are plenty of places to eat, nearly all of them consist of restaurants close to the venue, and affordable options were sparse: outside of a coffee shop, concessions stand, and gyro restaurant in the convention center, there was a nearby crepe stand, a Cheesecake Factory, Subway, a shopping mall under renovations, and many high-end restaurants close to the venue.  Do also note Seattle’s approximately 10% sales tax and mandatory service charge.

 

By Friday morning, small crowds were another story.  Despite playing host to about 25,000 to 27,000 attendees, the venue did not strain too much and had sufficient space to hold everyone and then some.  Thankfully, attendees at Sakura-con were relaxed and laid back, with folks mostly just wanting to have a good time, being patient and eager to help out and socialize.  Cosplaywise, Sakura-con attendees bring out excellent costumes though big clunky armor ones are rare, and group cosplay is present but the groups are small.  This split venue disperses the crowd very evenly and pushes the hotels off elsewhere to siphon off more of the crowd.  Thankfully, unlike Youmacon, the split venue does not require too much time to navigate from one spot to another.  Sakura-con opens up its enormous dealers room and artists alley at 10:00 AM on Friday and splits the venue, unlike most other conventions.  While the artist alley has a somewhat bizarre layout (it is split amongst two floors), the quality and selection or merchandise can best be described as “average,” with most vendors selling prints rather than nick-nacks such as buttons and pins and little that interested me and stood out versus other conventions.  Instead, a much better bet is the dealers room.  It combines the best aspect of Anime Central’s dealer’s room, its opening time, along with the former AKON’s best aspect, its wide hallways, and has a better selection of merchandise than both.  The variety is endless, including food, a huge variety of shirts, artbooks, accessories, video games, figures, DVDs and manga.  This is by far the best dealers room of any anime convention I have ever been to, and is best experienced in multiple trips.  Making shopping easier is the fact that every row of the dealers room has a large sign over it as a reference point, such as in a grocery store, which makes notation and meeting up with others much easier.

It is not the only place at the convention where signs are used, however.  Throughout the venue, there are signs in strategic locations informing attendees where certain rooms are located, and with arrows attempting to guide them to the correct location.  There are also signs outside the exterior of the largest rooms along with TV screens outside minor panel rooms informing attendees about each day’s schedule.  Also noteworthy are the yellow-and-black Durarara-style strips of tape on the floor by the escalators noting where attendees need to keep moving and stay away from congregating, and there are plenty of staff there to give you a gentle reminder to please stand elsewhere.  Once at the venue, this is a very user-friendly convention.  A noteworthy and slightly odd thing was that at this venue, said staff members were not convention volunteers, but either from an event management company or were convention center staff members, and basically went through the motions with an adequate amount of professionalism.

 

 

One other task that these individuals were responsible for was panel room counts.  Now, at Sakura-con, it is best to line up approximately 30 minutes before a panel begins in order to obtain a seat because once a panel room is full, these staff members do not allow other attendees to enter until a seat is vacated.  When one considers the layout of the venue and the fact that panel rooms are scattered all over the place, this turns into a somewhat annoying way to maintain compliance with the fire code, without taking into account how much the staff members cost to hire.  Thankfully, with how the schedule was arranged, there were usually large enough gaps between things I wanted to attend to ensure I was able to make it from one place to another.  If only I did not have as many schedule conflicts, considering that there seemed to be fewer panel rooms than at other large conventions.  But I guess that is the sign of a good convention, right?  The panels themselves overall were run well, by folks who had excellent knowledge in their subject matter, though if one had problems as a panelist, getting said problem fixed is pretty futile as staff bureaucracy is appalling.  This is coming from me, who ran a panel at this convention, mind you.  Another example of haphazard organization would be the crowd management tactics used for the “Code Geass Lelouch of the Ressurection” movie, which had its North American premiere at Sakura-con on Saturday afternoon.  Now, attendees were very patient in waiting at the designated area, though nobody had any idea how the line was going to form, and neither it seemed did the staff.  The crowd of people instead were moved and rearranged about four times before orderly filing into the theatre, and while things went orderly and eventually got organized, the “last minute” nature of Sakura-con’s administration is irritating, along with the ability to address unanticipated problems or attendee questions.  While I did not attend the “Rookiez is PunkD” concert on Saturday evening, I am sure that a similar thing took place before that major event as well.

 

But at least there is some sense of organization with the staff members, as we get to another low point of Sakura-con:  the photoshoots.  Now, granted, the variety of photoshoots was excellent.  However, 80% of the photoshoots were held outdoors and many required a long walk from the convention center, and the indoor location was only suitable for photoshoots of less than 20 people.  Said indoor location was also full of tables and chairs and had no space whatsoever for photographers (for reference, see my Persona/SMT photoshoot photos) unless all the furniture was pushed aside.  This was also one of, if not the, first year that Sakura-con decided to not have its photoshoot schedule or map in the convention guidebook, unfortunately choosing to disassociate itself from what it considers unofficial “fan-run” events.  Many of these photoshoots were disorganized or poorly attended based on the change in relationship with the main convention, schedule conflicts, unknown existence, or distance from the convention center.  It’s not enough to make one avoid the convention itself, but when considering schedule conflicts, the first thing on the chopping block is an easy choice.

 

 

So which is the better convention to attend over Easter weekend?  Well, Sakura-con did not make a good first impression whatsoever, mainly due to its outdated website, unresponsive customer service, and terrible administration.  But as the convention approached and things began falling in place, they started looking up, and things kept improving throughout the weekend.  I would say that the attendees are the main contributor to this, as both online and in person, they elevated the parts of the convention that would have been a bad experience into at least somewhat enjoyable ones.  A middling photoshoot experience is more than made up for with rather good panels, a most excellent venue, and the best dealers room of any anime convention out there.  When one considers the price, the proposition further improves, despite the high food costs.  But Sakura-con’s biggest downfall is not its expensive food or mediocre photoshoot experience but instead its inconsistent administration:  it goes above and beyond to make sure attendees know what its rules and expectations are, how to navigate the venue, and how to have a good time.  However, when there are issues that Sakura-con has not actively addressed previously or areas where attendees are left wondering when things will get done, the staff instead chooses not to respond or bureaucracy makes things grind to a halt.  I will grumble about this despite my overall good experience since I am concerned there will be a time where something occurs which the staff will flounder in their response, or someone will make a colossal screwup.  Nonetheless, staff shortcomings did not cause too big of a problem for me over the weekend and there were enough resources available to me as a congoer to begin resolving the issue myself.  Is this black mark enough to shift my attendance to Anime Boston?  Well, the last time I went to Anime Boston was in 2016, so a comparison next year will only tell, but overall, Sakura-con made a most excellent case to attend.