#hibanacon

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Those of you who follow me on Twitter will have noticed all my tweets from the floor at Hibanacon 2018. I’m back now, and have had a bit of time to decompress, so now’s a good time to post a write-up.

Some of this is going to seem a bit too in-depth, so I apologise in advance! It’s for my later reference too, so I’m going to include a bunch of stuff which might seem a bit superfluous.

The con took place at the Jury’s Inn in Milton Keynes, over 3 days (Fri/Sat/Sun), and pretty much took over the whole first floor of the hotel for that time. It had the typical stuff people would generally expect from a hotel-based, private-attendance anime convention - so panels and events, dealers’ rooms, a traditional gaming room, a video game/DDR room, a Bring&Buy and evening parties with a bar.

I attended this con both as a dealer and an attendee - in that my dealer’s pass entitled me to full participation in the event, with the understanding that I was to try and be at my dealer’s table while the room was open as much as possible.

This post will focus on my experiences as an attendee. I will post up a dealer’s write-up in the next few days.

The dealer’s room was open 10-5 and 10-4 on the Saturday and Sunday, which meant I had all day Friday, then the evenings of the other days - plus I was able to duck out for a couple of events that I really wanted to attend (though I was at the table for nearly all of both sessions).

So speaking as an attendee, I had an awesome weekend. I chose to stay in the hotel next-door, but I was still really close to the event.

We arrived the night before, and went for dinner at a place called Craft & Cleaver with our friend @starwulfen (the ribs were really something special - will definitely go back there).

Also worth noting that Starwulfen showed us where the nearest supermarket was; pretty much a stone’s throw from the event, so that was useful in cutting down the food costs.

We started early on the Friday to drop off my dealer stuff ready for the next day. I headed over to the Historical Manga panel, which was put on by Elliot Page, in which he took the room through a series of different manga that were strongly rooted in historical events. Many of these were new to me; I knew about a few (like the Tezuka ones) but the others were completely outside my area of experience. In particular, there was a manga called A Bride’s Story which looked fantastic, which I’ll definitely be checking out at some point.

Then, Starwulfen took me through a introductory game of Weiss Schwartz (an anime-themed TCG) which was fun... Though I’m not certain I’ll get into it. Still making up my mind on that one. Even so, the game had some innovative ideas that I hadn’t seen in a TCG before.

After that, we went to the Cosplay Disasters panel, ran by @mystmoon (who it was great to speak to in person, after only previously having spoken via Tumblr). Her stories were as hilarious as they were informative (mostly involving glue, and getting burned - and one painful one involving a rivet gun!!).

We then went to a live recording of the Screentone podcast, in which they talked about a bunch of different manga, and a panel about Itabags. Both were really informative, and whilst I’m not an itabag person myself, it was an interesting look at that subculture.

The opening ceremony was just after, which packed out the main hall for the usual announcements. Should probably say, at this point, that everything I attended for the entire weekend ran on time, including the big ceremonies, which is a real achievement on part of the committee.

A band called SuperLimitBreak performed afterwards, and we hung around to watch them for a bit (highlight for me was their performance of Bad Apple), before heading over to the traditional games room.

Over there, we had a look through the games. There were a few we wanted to try, but we settled on Boss Monster, as this is a game I actually own but have never gotten around to playing. It was pretty fun; very simple once we got going, so I’m glad we took the time to learn it so I can maybe play it a bit more with other people. I also got the chance to visit the video games room, and try ZOE2 on their PSVR setup; that was surprisingly good (I played the PS2 version all the way through years ago, but it’s a third-person game, so I didn’t know what to expect from the VR version).

That went on pretty late, so we finished up, hit the bar, and then wrapped up for the night.

Day 2 started with dealing until 5. However, I took a brief break to go to the MMORPG panel, which took the form of a kind of improv-RPG, where a game-master presented a chaotic campaign played by 3 members of the audience, in which the crowd shouted out ideas for characters and situations. It was presented by Paul Flannery and brought genuine roars of laughter. This was one of the highlights of the weekend; I would certainly see this panel again with different contestants and prompts.

I also had the chance to look through the Bring&Buy, during which I was able to pick up a real bargain on a Nendoroid of Tomoko from Watamote:

The dealing day was extremely busy, which is to be expected for a day-1. As a result, I ducked out of the Masquerade (I’m sure there are videos online somewhere if you want to know about that) as I really needed an hour in the hotel room to chill out before coming back down to the event space.

We attended the MADstravaganza, ran by Brian Smith - a panel I’ve attended at a previous event. It takes the form of a series of videos; some of them Japanese ads, some of them edited music videos, others nonsensical anime sketches reminiscent of the “AMV Hell” series of videos.

I spent the rest of the evening in the trad games room with some friends along with cosplay princess EmmyRose, who collectively (very patiently) showed me how to play The Red Dragon Inn; a card game about trying to drink your friends under the table. (FYI Emmy had a fantastic Belle costume for the cosplay ball; if you like cosplay I recommend having a look at her work).

The game involved playing as D&D-style characters, each from different decks, where you’re playing about with everyone’s health and drunkenness in an attempt to me the last character standing. The artwork was great and the pace was quick once we got going. I’ll be looking out for it at future trad gaming events.

After that - party, beer, bed.

Sunday started with another dealer’s session, 10-4. However I was able to go to an event in the afternoon, when things started to quiet down, called Too Many Nobunagas, in which the host took us through the various representations of the historical character Oda Nobunaga from different anime and manga, trying to piece together a picture of how the character is seen in modern pop culture.

There was a charity auction during the day, for which I happily donated a copy of both books. Whoever it was who won them, thanks for donating to a good cause (Mind, the mental health charity) and I hope you enjoy them!

Afterwards, I was looking to attend the panel on Yurei and other Japanese ghosts (a fact that shouldn’t surprise anyone, given my books) but the panel filled to capacity and I got there too late. Still, one panel out of the whole event isn’t bad.

Soon, it was time for the closing ceremony, in which they announced they’d raised over their target for the con charity. They did all the usual stuff; thanks to committee members, plugs for other cons, but it was all very “dense” and over quite quickly (like it wasn’t any longer than it needed to be). That was followed by a performance by Jollyboat, who performed a pirate-themed comedy act that began with “Pirates of the Karaoke”; really funny stuff, though unfortunately due to dealers’ work I had skipped lunch, and had to duck out of this before the end to go for dinner. 

Following that was a cosplay ball - and note to self: I need to bring my suit next year, or something formal. I did actually take a formal shirt, but I’ve lost weight this year since I started cycling to work (I’ve lost over 30lbs) and it looked more like a smock once I put it on, so I stayed largely clear until it became a less formal party later in the evening (for the record, there was no specific dress code - I just felt under-dressed).

With the night coming to a close, I met up with a bunch of people I know from various cons (after being so busy throughout the days leading up to this), and by 2am I was back at my hotel room.

So, if I was to summarise:

The Good

The event was very compact. Everything was close to everything else. It wasn’t the biggest venue but I think it was perfect considering the size of the con. It was great to be able to go from one event to another within the same building. Also, I wasn’t in cosplay, but this also meant cosplayers didn’t have to walk into non-convention areas in order to get to where they needed to go, which can be a plus.

Signups were brief and instructions were clear.

The map was clear and the schedule was clear. Also, the con book had a listing of every event and a few words explaining what each event was about (not every con does that; it’s really helpful).

Everything seemed to run on time. In fact nothing I attended was late.

All of the tech worked fine. There were no problems at any panels I attended with projectors, microphones, or anything of that sort.

The stuff above can’t really be overstated. I know from my own experience with event planning that these things only come about when people work very hard to make them work, so kudos to the con organisers for that.

The Bad

Not much, if I’m honest. In truth, the word I would use to describe it was “slick”. If I was to nit-pick, and it is nit-picking, there was no “anime pub-quiz” style event. I’m quite a big fan of those, so that’s a shame. Still, who knows; there might be one next year.

In Summary