Japan Hero's Second Event! Anime Syracuse Report
By Jeff Couto

Many thanks go out to Funimation for making this event possible.

Introduction

On paper it sounded easy enough, “Why don’t we put together the area’s first big anime festival next?” I said to my pals at Flying Turtle Toys back in November. Syracuse is a town full of anime fans, but little in the way of venues or events catering to them. In fact most of us in the area usually end up traveling 3-5 hours away to attend other cities’ events because there’s really nothing happening here, something that I’m sure is true of many other parts of the country.

Having just hosted our first event (Godzilla Final Wars) a month prior we had some idea of what we were getting into, or at least so we thought. Building and running an event around one 2 hour movie it turns out was child’s play compared to hosting a 7-hour anime festival with 14+ features.

Preparations and Planning

For me the most exciting part of organizing an event like this is having a blank canvas to work with. What would the event’s name be? What would our colors be? What kinds of cool things can we do? The possibilities are endless and of course no matter what we went with there would always be that evolutionary path that would eventually takes us to places we could have never imagined at this early stage. So after a couple of weeks of deliveration between the three of us we settled on the name “Anime Syracuse”, which was inspired by such popular cons as Anime Boston.

When I started working on the website and logo I kept everything purposely simple and focused. To me this wasn’t the time to spend days crafting a cool looking logo or flash movies to load on the site, all we needed were the basics to help us get started. Once everything was in place and we had a rudimentary site setup we sent out our first press release to the media as a way to let them know we existed. Needless to say that didn’t get much attention if any.

Running parallel to the press release we also started our promotional efforts on the web, which in itself was a full time job, given how many anime communities there are out there. Little by little we got the word our and people started getting excited about the event, it wasn’t an avalanche of interest, but enough to keep us encouraged during those hard months of January and February, when we were working out the logistics and background details of the event.

Once March hit, we knew we really had to get out there and start getting the attention of not only local anime fans, but also the local media. Being a marketing professional in the real world I knew that having an ad budget of $0 dollars meant we needed to focus exclusively on the PR side of things and that it was crucial that we get something happening on that end so that people in the region were aware of Anime Syracuse.

This is were we called in a few favors to friends we happen to have in the local press and radio stations.

The end result? In the week leading to the event we had a radio interview with one of the most popular drive-in radio shows in town, we were able to get a week-long contest running on one of the most popular rock stations, we had a full-fledged article written up about the event in the paper and we beat Billy Joel out of the cover of the weekend section of the paper which came out two days before the event. With all of those hitting simultaneously on the week leading up to March 25th we were finally able to break through the communications clutter and get the word out. Now the question was the classic and very predictable, “We built it, but will they come?”

The two weeks leading into the event were particularly hard for me as I tried managing not only Anime Syracuse, but also Japan Hero and a couple of smaller side projects I have. I was exhausted all the time and more than once fell asleep at the keyboard, something that has never happened before. On the Japan Hero front things to me felt like they felt apart those two weeks with updates being mostly of the photographic and video-type. I wanted to write more reviews, but my mental stamina just wasn’t there. Thankfully the time flew by and before I knew it, the morning of March 25th had arrived.

Anime Syracuse Is Go!

It was 6:00 A.M., three hours before I would have to leave the house. I did final checks of everything, double checked all DVD’s, made sure I had everything I would need throughout the day. By the time I finished this, got ready and took the dog out for a walk it was already eight in the morning. I spent the rest of my time playing with my daughter and trying not to think too much about Anime Syracuse.

Once I left the house at around nine I stopped by a McDonald’s on my way to the theater and had some Hot Cakes (pancakes) and a soda to get some caffeine in my system. Half an hour later I was at the Palace, surprised to see that the crew from Flying Turtle Toys was already setting up shop. The staff from the Palace Theater was also already on hand so getting the tables out and ready didn’t take too long. Before we knew it everything was setup and ready to go. Better yet fans were already arriving! As more and more people made their way in prior to the first screening I found myself more relaxed and happy that the last 3 months were not wasted (we ended up bringing in over 500 anime fans). Now with 10 minutes to go it was time to get things rolling with our first ever screening, Panda-Z!

From there we went to Full Metal Alchemist, Kaleido Star, Galaxy Railways, Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu, Gundam 08th MS Team, Samurai 7, the Count of Monte Cristo, Gundam Seed Destiny, Tenjho Tenge, Macross, Desert Punk, Animation Runner Kuromi 2 and Negadon. A line up that while limited compared to weekend long cons, offered a glimpse into several different genres and themes. Needless to say that seeing these on a large movie screen added an extra “bang” to each anime we screened.

Unfortunately the only ones of these that I saw more than 2 seconds of were Macross and Negadon. During the event my job was to make sure that the screenings were running on time and as scheduled, that everything in the lobby was going smoothly and to ensure that any issues were being attended to and fixed. The only downside to this (aside from missing out on the screenings) was that I didn’t get too much time to talk to everyone who came, which was a real bummer.

It was well worth it though as everyone looked to be having a blast in the lobby and inside the theater. Fans were trading tips on their favorite shows, others were hunting down toys or DVD’s from their favorite shows and cosplayers were getting their photos taken by everyone.

After the screening of Desert Punk (which was a HUGE hit with everyone) we then went into a hour-long break so that we could bring in Peter Tatara from Central Park Media to give a presentation on what they’re up to and a Cosplay contest for everyone who came in dressed up as their favorite characters. These both went tremendously well and everyone had a ball, especially when the channel 5 news camera guy came in and started getting it all on film for their 11:00 P.M. broadcast.

After Negadon, (which went over quite well) wrapped up everyone packed up their goodies and costumes and headed back home. It was funny to see how it all ended so quickly, three months of preparations came and went in 7 hours. Our first con was over and surprisingly it went extremely well by all accounts!

Epilogue

After the show we’ve gotten tons of requests for a follow up, which is quite humbling and we have been happy to announce that we are definitely doing a follow up event/s that will build on what we’ve done with Anime Syracuse’s first film festival/con.

Right now though I think I’m going to catch up with my Zzzzzz’s.

Jeff Couto