The Conventions of 2023

It's that time of the year again. With March now almost over I figured now is a good time for a new convention schedule to set up the next few seasons of the year.

Since I still don't really feel like venturing outside my general area just yet, I'll be keeping the lineup of conventions to what I've attended per year since 2018 (disregarding the two years I skipped due to the pandemic). Most notable is the grand return of AnimeNext, which was skipped in 2022 due to ongoing issues with the Atlantic City Convention Center. Thus, the event was moved to a new home--the New Jersey Convention and Exposition Center, which thankfully is much, much closer to my home than the previous location was by a whole two hours. That said, I will miss the aesthetics and atmosphere of Atlantic City- watching the sun set through the windows of the convention center and the beauty of the main lobby area lit by tons of lighting (and the stampede of Jojo cosplayers descending down the escalator at AnimeNext 2019) will forever be a local memory of mine.

For this year, I also decided to mark a few of the "side events" taking place on Long Island that I will be attending. EMcon is a smaller, warmup event the weekend before Castle Point Anime Convention with a few local artists and crafters and an all-ages approach with its presentation, Cradle Con and Long Island Tropic Con are two comic and general fandom events towards the end of Spring and Summer respectively, and Festival of Games is a holiday-themed offshoot of the Long Island Retro Gaming Expo themed around holiday shopping and Christmas-themed games and events. This isn't all of the side events that take place but these are the ones that I figured have enough importance to me (especially after Anime NYC left me too sore to attend one particular side event that was occurring the very same weekend).

For main events on the other hand, there are certainly some I would be interested in attending in the future; however, they would be currently too long of a drive or are too close to other events that they would not likely go onto the schedule without cutting out others. Events like PAX East, Thy Geekdom Con, Anime Boston, and Otakon have been on the radar as events I could realistically attend, but with my physical conditions not being at their best and me only having so much money to spend at big conventions like these, I cannot possibly attend everything even if it would give me more excuses to get out and socialize with more artists and content creators. For now, expect the six events pictured above to make the cut each year for the foreseeable future until I feel adventurous enough to add some new events.