2020 Conventions

Yup, It's that time of the year again. A new year, a new lineup of anime, comic, and video game conventions. And this year it's not exactly much different from 2019 in terms of the lineup, with the same six major conventions that I attended since 2018.

The one major factor here however is, well, North America, in particular New York and New Jersey, is currently under the scare of the Coronavirus and politics clearly hyping it up to be some mega ultra deadly virus that will absolutely kill anyone who contracts it. And this month with cases flying around the locations of these cons among others, conventions have either had to cancel or continue on with less attendees. This graph, however, assumes none of the conventions are harshly impacted by the virus by the time May rolls around with Castle Point Anime Convention 2020, in which the rising temperatures will force the virus into dormant state.

But enough about some virus, let's get into the big meat of the post. Once again I pulled out some characters to represent the trips to the six big-name conventions I'm targeting this year (though I tried to make the image more stylized and detailed) and for the most part the cons are all as you remember them, two in New Jersey, two on my homeland of Long Island, and two deep in New York City. The change comes in what months two of the cons take place: Castle Point got the very early May slot (which is usually the slot it does get if it does not secure a late April timeframe like last year) and Eternal Con moved from late June to mid July. The rest of the conventions are still set in their typical timeframes: AnimeNEXT in mid June, Long Island Retro Gaming in early August, NYCC in early October, and AnimeNYC in mid-late November. With the timings being adjusted, that means I get four months straight of conventions followed by a break in September, then two more months straight of cons. It's honestly pretty crazy, but I've seen friends of mine that attend lots more conventions year-round. And while I would like to attend more cons myself, I'm... not exactly sure if I'm ready for venturing out further away.

You may have noticed that unlike last year, I did not pick out exact dates for the conventions as I did last year. There were multiple times last year where I had to change the date I was planning on attending a certain con (including changing the accompanying con timeline image) after pre-planning for that one day for months. So this year I will just go with announcing the date on social media but for the most part expect em to attend a convention on either Friday or Saturday (for three and four day cons) or Saturday only (for two-day cons). I still don't have it up to me to attend a con for two or more days straight as I always "exhaust" the con on the day I do visit (and not to mention even if hotels are getting steadily better if you pick the commercial ones, I don't have a laptop to game on or work on projects while I'm away). If you all remember, I spent 10 hours at AnimeNEXT last year and walked several thousand steps that day- I don't think my legs would be up for another day of what is effectively running a marathon across the convention centers.

(seriously where are the spare benches and seats in these cons? People just parking their butts on the concrete floor should have sent a message to con organizers by now).

Anyways I'll be back when I have more stuff that's worthy enough to stick in a blogpost.