Anime USA 2022 Convention Report - It Lives!
/Front of the Hyatt Regency Crystal City
The Anime USA convention made its long-awaited return during the week of October 14-16, 2022 after weathering a few rough years. After closing its doors to the COVID-19 global pandemic in 2020 and then missing out on 2021 due to the shutting down of their venue, AUSA makes its return to their previous location in Crystal City, VA.
Now, Anime USA has never been known for being a large convention. Their last publicly reported attendance number according to Wikipedia is roughly 5,000 attendees back in 2011 which was their final year at Crystal City before making their move to a larger venue in the Washington Marriott Wardman Park in Washington, D.C. I’d imagine that during the first few years in DC that their numbers may have gone up from that a little, but there’s no question in anyone’s mind that AUSA in the years prior to the COVID pandemic was definitely on the decline. The hallways were becoming more sparse with foot traffic and then back in either 2017 or 2018 (I can’t quite remember when) they stopped including a free printed program book with your membership badge and instead tried to make the attendees purchase the program books for a price. They were most assuredly a convention in financial hot water. So when the Washington Marriott Wardman Park hotel and convention center became a COVID casualty and permanently closed down, this change in fate might have actually been a blessing in disguise for Anime USA as they were now free to move the convention back to a smaller and presumably cheaper-to-rent venue.
And here we are a full three years after their previous showing in 2019, Anime USA is back in business in a familiar location (well, familiar if you’re actually old enough to have attended AUSA more than a decade ago). Some unofficial attendance numbers being floated around on social media puts this year at around 2,400 attendees which feels about right according to the size of the crowd that I observed. It might not be a large number but it’s definitely a start to get their motor going again. The con ran fairly smoothly from what I experienced in the one day that I was there on Saturday the 15th. I thought it was also interesting how they set up the Dealer’s Room and Artist Alley in a way to direct traffic with arrows taped to the carpet to show the direction where the traffic is supposed to flow. I’m not sure if it really worked out 100% but I felt that it did help a little with keeping the lanes from getting too clogged with people.
I do feel like some things might have been rushed or planned with a small staff. This was evident with the cosplay Masquerade contest. I think they might have opened up registration for the event really late so it wasn’t a big surprise to me that there were only a handful of contestants for this year’s show. Hopefully next year there will be better coordination with the event so that more people will enter the contest. They also had some issues with information dissemination on their website to help people plan or prepare. For instance, this year there was no Maid Café service available but they did have the Host Club available. However no mention about these services could be found on their website beforehand so lots of people were asking about it while at the con.
Maybe in part due to the rushed nature of this year’s event there were also no organized cosplay photoshoot gatherings this year. Although to be honest given the layout of the venue at the Hyatt Regency Crystal City hotel I’m not sure if there is even any location that would be suitable to hold a large cosplay photoshoot gathering. Photoshoots would either have to take place inside a reserved panel room or someplace outside. This is definitely a tough problem and I am curious to see what AUSA might decide to do in the future for the cosplay photoshoots.
In terms of food options outside of the hotel there are a number of restaurants within reasonable walking distance of the Hyatt Regency hotel. Although there’s apparently a Kabob Palace across the highway and further down the street from where the McDonalds is that I absolutely must try out next year. One interesting thing to note though is that Crystal City has a partially underground shopping mall called the Crystal City Shops. When I was walking through there I was really surprised at how deserted and empty it was. It was actually quite sad to see its sorry state. The pictures below were taken during a Saturday afternoon which in theory should be the busiest time of the week.
Overall the convention was not bad for its small size. Hopefully things will be bigger and better next year. And to end with just a few photos that I took around the con:
