Animazement isn’t a big convention. Among other East Coast anime gatherings, it’s dwarfed by the likes of MomoCon (held on the same weekend in Atlanta) and hasn’t built up the same notoriety as something like Katsucon. Even so, it’s hard to find a convention that still feels as indebted to its community, one that exists without the looming pressures of mega-company sponsorships or corporate branding. Animazement, as they say, is for the fans.
That’s the sentiment I got through chatting with multiple folks in the Raleigh Convention Center on Memorial Day weekend. We swapped stories about other conventions that had gone from enjoyable excursions to claustrophobic obligations. And this isn’t just due to the crowd sizes (though it certainly helps that Animazement is capably staffed and arranged in a way that prevents gridlocking in the foot traffic). There’s something distracting about banner-driven conventions, the ones that constantly remind you of who has the biggest wallet or who has the most to sell. In these, the defining trait of the anime fan is their ability to consume, and no amount of “So proud to be invited!” Influencer photo ops can change that.
Animazement’s greatest feat is that it still makes room for the personal touch. One look at the section in the Artist Alley devoted to the Anime Home Video Museum, and you learn that the niche is just as important as the immensely marketable there. With each screen attached to a different home video device from the past 40+ years, you get the sense of anime history – Blurry tapes and vinyl discs of Macross evolve to crystal clear remasters of Evangelion, with some Game Boy Advance cartridges of Dragon Ball GT thrown in for good measure. The effect is profound – technology will change and one day, the little package that you just bought that contains your favorite anime will go out of print and perhaps even be forgotten entirely. But the adoration you had for it will remain.
Though I wish that there were more home video options in the Animazement marketplace (That was another thing that led to bittersweet reminiscing – the fact that home video booths seem to be less and less of a frequent find as time goes by), neither it nor the aforementioned artist hall were lacking in diversity. Go to enough pop culture conventions and you’ll find that many of them live and die based on the most popular IP that year. In the past decade, we’ve had a Demon Slayer year, a Genshin Impact year, and so on. This is another thing, often driven by the whims of the marketplace and creation, that can be dictated by the prints and stickers people seem most eager to pick up. But Animazement will have you believe, shockingly enough, the anime is a rich and intricate medium, and not one defined by a single bestselling Weekly Shonen Jump adaptation.
Surrounding these larger halls are concert spaces, panel rooms (full of new and fan-favorite events), an arcade, a manga library and one of my personal favorites, the karaoke room. There, I watched a fan sing a popular tune from Yakuza 0, just minutes after someone belted out the theme for the second season of Kaguya-sama: Love is War. And of course, there was a spirited rendition of One Piece’s “We Are!” The line for this room steadily increased over the weekend, but luckily, Animazement tends to provide a way to pass the time between activities. While I waited to play a rhythm game in the back of the arcade, I was able to indulge in the Japanese professional wrestling matches being projected on the wall. Truly fine art.
Entirely unrelated to anime but crucial in keeping the ship afloat was the fact that the Raleigh Convention Center clearly understood that we all gotta eat. Especially those of us that tend to lose track of time when we’re browsing for manga in the merch hall. Every floor provided multiple options for food and drinks, and the line of food trucks just outside offered even more sustenance. Some of the larger conventions tend to abscond from actually feeding their guests sufficiently, or they force them all, cattle call style, into a single place to dine on overpriced chicken strips and murky salads, so the options were much appreciated. Also, a huge thanks to the manga library for offering free water bottles – Stay hydrated!
It’s hard to imagine any of this running as well if Animazement was to become sizably bigger. No amount of nearby parking decks, hotels, or accessible stairs and escalators can escape the sheer crush that occurs whenever a convention reaches critical mass attendance. And that’s when the horror stories begin: the lines forced to stretch outside in the heat, the dismantling of disability access and available staff support, the inability to react to guest emergencies promptly, etc. And meanwhile, you’re underneath a veritable sky of promotions, mascots and advertisements, each one telling you to ignore the fact that there’s an elbow in your ribs. Just go buy.
There’s no way of knowing what the future holds for the convention. For the most part, 2025’s Animazement left me thankful that there’s even an Animazement at all. I got the chance to be reminded of why I’ve loved anime for so long, while surrounded by old friends, new friends, and the ever-growing demographic of “new friends who are technically old friends because we’ve been around one another on social media for a few years.” Doesn’t get a lot better than that.
As such, Animazement’s lesson is this: Cherish the anime conventions that you love when you have them around to love. You never know when they’ll decay and cease operations, explode in popularity and mutate into something unrecognizable, or simply change for no other reason than to follow the industry they’re built around. They’re a lot like the Anime Home Video Museum – constantly shifting into new forms, forcing everyone to adapt and move with them. But the love you have for the art, the one that makes you sing your heart out during karaoke, or concoct a deliriously intricate cosplay, will always be there. You’ll hold it and share it in any place that will have you.
And, for right now, we’re just lucky that one of those places is Animazement.
Header photo by zimmytws via DepositPhotos, used under license
