My Anime Central 2026 con report from a first-timer
Here's my ACEN26 report. There was a complaint post made on the Saturday of the con, focusing around AI, and this other brief report, but I felt my con report is meaty enough to warrant its own post. This was my first ever trip to Chicago, and naturally my first ever ACEN.
ACEN is typically estimated as a top 5 con in the USA terms of size. For reference, I have been a conventioneer for 20+ years. In recent years, I've picked up more cons per year, having attended 16 anime cons in the past 3 years. These include the largest con in Canada (Otakuthon in Montréal) and the second-largest con in the USA (Anime NYC). So I am experienced as to how modern large cons should operate, and will be drawing comparisons to other recent cons I've attended. Let's go!
Thursday (sightseeing, skip if you want the con)
Arrived in Chicago in the morning to do some sightseeing.
11:15: Restaurant - Pizza Dada: Went here because of this video and ordered a Tartufo (pesto/mushroom/ricotta) slice. Incredible (9/10). Thanked the staff and even saw the general manager in the video!
12:00: Millennium Park: Got a mango italian ice at one of the stalls. Overpriced but pretty good and had a smooth feel (7/10). The liquid metal slime AKA Cloud Gate was interesting.
12:30: Restaurant - Wildberry: Just north of Millennium Park. Got the cinnamon roll pancakes (9/10) and blackcurrent iced tea (7/10). The iced tea wasn't very sweet, but that was a good thing, as the cinnamon roll pancakes covered the sweetness. There was only one size with a stack of 5 pancakes, and I could barely finish it after having eaten the pizza slice earlier. It was also top tier, easily worth the cost.
14:30: Chinatown: Walked further north and took the Chicago Water Taxi to Chinatown. This was a bit of a letdown, as it appeared to be stuck in the 1990s, and there was no significant indoor mall. I got some ginseng tea packets for our hotel room later but that was it. It's not really worth a special trip if you've seen Chinatowns in other cities.
16:30: Restaurant - Milly's Pizza In The Pan: Afternoon came, and tried out two pizzas (Leandoer and Clickbait) here because of this video. Milly's is hyped becuase you need to pre-order the pizzas, and many people have said it's the best pizza in Chicago. Well... they are wrong. It's not the worst pizza I've ever had, but definitely the most overrated given the hype. The dough was spongy and has a strange texture. It's like eating a foccacia with gourmet toppings on top of it. Clickbait was 3/10, Leandoer was 4/10. Pizza Dada was easily a league above this.
20:00: Con pass pickup and Hotel: The pass pickup was simple and easy. After that, my friend and I checked into the hotel and tried out the ginseng tea. It was standard as expected (5/10).
Friday
Con day! Went to Hall F (Entertainment) first because that's where the lockers were. Attempted to play both DDR Extreme and PIU Phoenix but the right sides of those machines were broken. The DDR Extreme cab would be fixed later, but the PIU cab would remain broken throughout the weekend. Then I went to the exhibit hall and bought some personal items.
12:00: Panel - Itabagging 101: The panel presentation itself was average. But the highlight was that was a huge display of itabags by all of the attendees, and I got to put my Akai Haato itabag among them! Plenty of people took pictures of it.
13:00: Panel - Unapologetic Love for Hated Characters: Entered a little late due to the post-panel mingling at Itabagging 101. Gave this one five minutes before my friend and I walked out. It was a speedrun of how not to do a panel with slides like this and the panelist going off-topic with too many personal stories.
14:30: Panel - FictionJunction: Lined up 1 hour in advance for this. Good guest panel, learned a lot about the members and Yuki Kajiura's thought process. Thankfully, all of the questions were curated beforehand to prevent idiotic questions from being asked.
18:00: 18:15: Concert - Idolmaster: The key event of the day. ACEN dropped the ball here:
I had bought a con locker expecting that bags were not allowed. They changed this rule on the day of the concert, allowing everyone to bring in bags.
They made everyone line up outside in scorching hot weather instead of having a dedicated indoor line hall like Otakuthon and ANYC.
It started 15 minutes late, and while the con schedule showed a 2-hour timeslot, the concert itself was only 1 hour. In fact, because it started late, it also ended late, and I heard that afterwards, they had to resort to pre-signed shikishi boards instead of having the guests personally sign them. I'm not an autograph person and didn't go to this, but I heard this pissed off a number of VIP attendees.
No encore. Seriously?
20:30 21:00: Premiere - Goodbye, Lara: Started 30 minutes late. The first slide showed the schedule which would have the actual episode itself start at 21:30 instead of immediately because they wanted to pad it with guest talk beforehand. My friend and I thought this was insulting, so we walked out after the first slide and skipped the premiere.
It was at this point we realized that ACEN was a food desert. The exhibit hall had closed, and it took all of the food stalls with it. The only food in the immediate area were extremely overpriced restaurants by the hotels such as Gibson's. Look at those prices, insanity. So my friend and I took the Blue Line one station over to Cumberland to visit Mariano's supermarket. We bought the 4/$10 Stouffer's frozen dinners deal, as well as some tea beverages. Our hotel room had a fridge and microwave, so this was ideal, and would feed us for Friday and Saturday. Skipping the premiere turned out to be a good move because Mariano's would close at 22:00.
We went back to the hotel room, skipping all of the late-night programming because it just wasn't worth it.
Saturday
11:00: Gameshow - Who's That Character? This was alright, but very casual: it consisted of attendees lining up and getting one shot to guess a silhouette. Most of the questions were very easy, but the gacha games category was difficult. I won by naming Bidoof, and got a small rubber duckie with sunglasses. About 30 people got to play, so if the plan was to get many attendees to participate, it was fine.
12:00: Panel - Good/Bad/Ugly Anime OPs: Okay in theory, poor in practice. People were randomly called up to choose a random paper slip out of a box, which contained an OP. Then they would give their thoughts on it and the audience would determine whether it was good/bad/ugly. Unforunately, everyone who was called up didn't want to talk much, and almost every OP chosen was good. The only one the audience rated poorly was Skullface Bookseller Honda-san. Mediocre panel, but not poor enough for my friend and I to walk out.
13:00: Panel - Japanese Commercials: Filled to capacity. Couldn't get in. Walked around the con instead.
14:00: Concert - Elite Four Jazz Band: Not bad, though they played all video game music and no anime music. I wish they had tuned the audio for quality instead of loudness, but they were performing in a concrete hall anyway. They were scheduled for 2 hours, but I left after 1 hour to line up for...
16:00: Concert - FictionJunction: This was the biggest highlight of the con, the main reason I came to this con. There was some subbass distortion, but other than that, this was an excellent concert with the four FictionJunction members harmonizing perfectly. Yuki Kajiura's piano could've been slightly louder. Unlike the Idolmaster concert, they did plan and play an encore to end it.
17:30: Panel - Study of Tatsuki Fujimoto: Barely made it to this one, as it was filled to capacity only moments after I entered. Finally, a good non-guest panel! The only nitpick was that there was a heavy focus on Fujimoto's original manga work rather than the anime adaptations.
18:30: Panel - So You Want to Be a Vtuber? Didn't know the three Vtubers at the panel. I tuned out of this but sat at the very back to relax and adjust my itabag, as this panel was in a large room that was only filled to about 25% capacity.
20:00: Cosplay Meetup - Hololive: Believe it or not, this was my first ever cosplay meetup! I didn't cosplay, but I was wearing my Akai Haato/Haachama happi and itabag. I was the lone Haaton, and was called up almost first because Akai Haato is Gen1 JP. I didn't know that you needed to perform 3 poses in 20 seconds! Sorry if my poses weren't good! I'll know for next time! This was really fun, the 2nd-best event of the con after the FictionJunction concert.
21:00: Panel - If It Can't Kill Me, I Don't Want It (18+): This was supposed to be a panel about controversial manga and anime. Walked in about 30 minutes late because the Hololive meetup went overtime. Gave it five minutes... and yup, another poor panel. Walked out and went back to the hotel room.
Sunday
09:00: Panel - Oldtaku Unite! Really ACEN? A panel at 9AM on Sunday? They talked about 12 different anime where one the main characters was at least 30. I've watched 5 of them. Don't know if I'll get around to watching the other 7. It was an okay panel as the panelists were very enthusiastic.
11:00: 11:15: Panel - Ayaka Ohashi: Filled to capacity and started 15 minutes late, but lasted a full hour. Another standard guest panel... or it would've been, except the final 15 minutes were spent on trying to make her learn 4 memewords: sus, no cap, mid, and lowkey. Was this the interpreter's idea?
12:00: Gameshow - Um, Anime! Because the Ayaka Ohashi panel ended late, I was late getting into this one and was unable to get a player ticket. So I couldn't play at all. This was a creative gameshow where the players needed to pick apart a slightly-incorrect synopsis. In between were some creative quickie rounds such as identifying the anime based on a map, or identifying the real horse that inspired the Uma Musume. Unfortunately, ACEN only put 2 mics in this room instead of 4+, which caused the players to be quiet. I couldn't make out a lot of what they said because I was at the back. Despite that, I gave this one a thumbs up just for its creativity.
13:30: Panel - Romance Anime: Out of nowhere, this ended up being the best panel overall that I attended, and the third-best event after the FictionJunction concert and the Hololive meetup. The panelist was an older gentleman who was very informative. It was more than just a recommendation panel, as he went into how the genre evolved and why certain shows work while others don't. I didn't agree with all of his views, but he was very informative and persuasive. Bravo!
CON OVER! But there was one last special trip before returning home...
16:00: Restaurant - Honey Butter Fried Chicken: Ordered the 8pc meal to share with my friend, so we each got 4pc and 1.5 sides. Chicken was excellent (8/10) though I ate it plain, as I thought the honey butter was disgusting (2/10). The corn muffins were bland (3/10) and trying the honey butter on them didn't help. The mac and cheese was a letdown (3/10). It had a sharper nacho cheese sauce using fusili pasta. The biggest problem was that it was totally oversauced. The pasta was drowning in the cheese sauce, which wasn't great to begin with. However, saving the meal was the mashed potatoes (7/10) which were very good. Even though the chicken and mashed potatoes were very good, this was significantly more expensive than Jollibee while having chicken that was merely on par or slightly better. Not a total disappointment like Milly's Pizza In The Pan, but I wouldn't come here again.
Overall, I had a mostly positive experience at ACEN. Time to address the ugly:
Panel quality and planning: I had posted earlier about the lack of good panels on Saturday night. If it were not for the Hololive meetup, Saturday night would've been a complete failure for me. Gameshows being held in rooms with only two mics is something that should never happen. There should be at least one room with 4+ mics, and the gameshows should be in that room. Finally, It felt as though half of the panel rooms were underutilized. At several times throughout the weekend, I walked around the panel area and saw several panel rooms empty. Don't know if many panels were a no-show or not, but it was disappointing to see, especially considering I had my gameshow submission rejected. I can certainly accept rejection, but at least use the panel rooms for something!
Early Sunday shutdown: I saw ACEN staff removing some panel rollup sign stands at 13:30 as I was entering the Romance Anime panel. What? Panel rooms were shutting down that early? This was the shortest Sunday out of any major con I've been to. I know people want to get home, but come on! At least have programming until 17:00 or 18:00!
AI: The complaint post on this subreddit was all about the use of AI at the con. Yes, I noticed it. However, I'm ambivalent about this issue because its usage didn't directly affect me. I feel it's more of a highbrow issue after more important and pressing matters are addressed, like the panel quality.
Outdoor lineups for the main event concerts: Awful. Friday's high was 27C (81F), and Saturday was a sweltering 31C (88F). I didn't bring sunscreen, but thankfully I didn't stand outside for very long for both Idolmaster and FictionJunction. However, some Idolmaster fans were outside for several hours in line for the concert.
Chicago food costs: This isn't really something that the con can fix, but I noticed that food in this city is shockingly expensive. The slice at Pizza Dada was $7.78 USD ($10.71 CAD). Both the the pancakes+iced tea meal at Wildberry's, as well as the meal at Honey Butter Fried Chicken, were $30 USD ($42 CAD) after tax and tip. I had an ice cream treat at the con which was $8 USD ($11 CAD). Even the 4 for $10 USD Stouffer's frozen meals at the supermarket was on the high side, as that translates to about $3.50 CAD per unit. Maybe Chicago residents earn higher salaries to make up for it, but all of this cost more than the equivalents in Toronto, Montréal, New York City, and Detroit.
That just about wraps it up. Total damage was $1200 USD ($1650 CAD). Will I be back next year? Mmm, tough to say. But I did have a good time! Thanks for reading! I'll be happy to answer any questions to the best of my ability.