RI Anime Con 2026 was lame
This post is a month late but the topic is still bothering me.
This is the first con I’ve gone to where I didn’t buy a single print from artist alley. A lot of the artists had similar styles, and they were styles I don’t personally vibe with. I don’t want to say the art was “bad” but a good chunk of it was gaudy. The con also puts dealers hall and artist alley in the same room, and it creates a discombobulating experience where you can’t tell where you are.
They had panels but didn’t advertise them in-person. They didn’t even put signs outside the doors. They had loud speakers but couldn’t be bothered to use them to announce panels, especially when there were va panels that no one knew the locations of (or that they were even happening).
Speaking of voice actors, the Altered Reality attendee for an actor I wanted to meet had no idea who this person was. I asked if there were any funko pops of a character he voiced (“E”) since I only saw a different character, and she went behind the curtain and grabbed one of the exact same pop that was on the table instead of “E”. I get the attendees don’t have to know about the actor they’re helping, but it felt off that she couldn’t take a second to actually check if they had “E”.
For reference, my first year attending was 2025 and I was impressed by the con. I bought a lot of diverse prints, and there were actual things to do instead of just peak into the game room to see what wasn’t being used.