::Disclaimer- As is my habit after attending a convention, I am going to review my thoughts and impressions of the event. This means that I will be discussing both strengths and opportunities.::
Aki Con was the first convention that I registered for upon moving to the Pacific Northwest. I had not had the opportunity to attend a con over Halloween weekend, and the idea was exciting. Some of my first acquaintances recommend the con for me to attend. It was only later that I learned of the convention’s past history, but by that time my mom had book a plane to attend the convention with me, my friend and I had reserved a hotel room, and everything was set. I decided to go through with my plans, and Halloween 2015 found me at Aki Con!
Background: Aki Con was established in 2008. Under the convention’s creative decor and panels hides a dark history. While known for their less-than-ideal treatment of artists and guests, they also face allegations of sexual assault. In 2013 Aki Con hired Leslie Shotwell, known as Victor Malice, as their guest DJ. Shotwell is a convicted sex offender who spent four years in an Arizona prison for sexual conduct with a minor, attempt to commit a sexual act with a minor, and dangerous crimes against children (ANN 2013). Several con attendees voiced their concerns about Shotwell to convention organizers, many of whom had personal experience with Shotwell. Upon discovering his record, the attendees posted a link on Aki Con’s Facebook site, though the link was deleted (Addicting Info 2013). A woman attending the convention alleged that Shotwell drugged and raped her in a hotel room (Ibid.). Shotwell was arrested on October 30, 2013 for rape. Aki Con released a statement to Anime News Network, stating,
“We are inclined not to comment further as we do not know anything other than there was a serious situation between the two parties. As we have said we are the one’s who told both parties to notify the police. Since then we have not been contacted by either party or the police. This is a very sad situation and Aki Con will not be party to any speculation on what happened as this is a police matter. Also since the situation happened in a private hotel room, Aki Con has no control over what happens in a private room. Aki Con works very hard to constantly check the convention area for any issues and the hotel provides security in the public areas of the convention.”
Aki Con continued to impress that they did not pay Shotwell, as he was acting in a volunteer position and had performed a few days prior at Everfree and Kuroneko Con. They also did not conduct background checks to avoid discrimination (ANN, 2014).
The Convention, 2015 Edition:
General Impressions: Walking into the main hall of the convention was a lot of fun. Say what you will, Aki Con has some very creative staff and volunteers. The hallways were decked out in elaborate anime-themed cutouts, posters, and displays, most with a Halloween twist. The second floor boasted an anime pumpkin patch on the way to the haunted house, large, creative signs reminded cosplayers to display their badges, and large banners hailed the registration booths and panel rooms.
Aki Con has a fairly young demographic, dominated by middle school and high school students. For many of them, this is one of their first conventions, coupled wit their new cosplays and entry into the community. Their excitement and energy was evident throughout the convention halls, especially when you took notice of their hard work.
The Size: Aki Con is a medium-sized convention, complete with a Dealer’s Hall and a small Artist’s Alley broken into four small rooms. At their size, the convention is able to host larger panels and attract big-name guests such as Josh Grelle (Armin’s VA from Attack on Titan) and J. Michael Tatum.
Location: Aki Con is held at the DoubleTree Hotel in SeaTac, WA. It is in a close vicinity to the airport and freeway, making it easy to get to. The hotel offers a good selection of meeting rooms for the panels, which accommodated everything from your medium-sized panel to large guest panels and contests. The hotel itself is large, so reserving a room and finding a parking space was not difficult.
The food scenario was rather dismal. The hotel offered an expensive restaurant and a small coffee shop. Convention attendees were not allotted breakfast vouchers, which is customary at most other convention hotels. Options surrounding the hotel are also limited. If I attend events at the DoubleTree in the future, I will be bringing my own food.
Hotel staff were pleasant, though difficult to track down if you needed something. They seemed distracted, and appeared uncomfortable by the cosplayers in their hotel. They made a point to stay away from the convention.
Safety: Oh, boy. Hold onto your hats! I have a lot to say on this topic for Aki Con.
1. One of the first things that I do upon getting my badge at a convention is get my weapon/prop peacebonded. This convention was no different. I followed a convenient sign labeled “Peace Bonding” to an empty table with a notebook. A paper print out of Aki Con’s weapon policy was taped to the table next to an open notebook. Cosplayers were expected to print their name in the notebook, next to the cosplay, prop, and their phone number. I have several issues with this system. First off the cosplayers name and phone number are personal information that should be protected.
Peace bonding is usually applied in the form of zip tying a bright zip tie to the weapon or prop in question. This is a recognition that the weapon not only meets convention standards, but that the holder understands the expectations and responsibilities of carrying the weapon, in other words, they won’t be stupid with the weapon and hurt someone. Not manning a table for peace bonding means that the weapon/prop in question was not inspected and verified to meet expectations, nor was someone able to explain the expectations around the weapon/prop and answer questions. A smaller convention in a protected area can often get away a relaxed form of peace bonding, but a convention of this size cannot. Furthermore, the con area is in an open hallway. Regular hotel guests and outside people are utilizing some of the same hallways as the convention. It is too easy for an outside person with malicious intent to sneak into the convention. Furthermore, there is no easy way to verify that a weapon/prop meets convention standards. If something goes wrong, the person in question has full deniability that they did not understand the weapon/prop standards.
2. The convention location was in a rough part of SeaTac. While the hotel itself was relatively (see my next security bullet point) secure, the immediate area was not. This is a convention that I would highly recommend using a buddy system while outside the hotel grounds, and avoid night time excursions.
3. Con security was negligible. While con staff and volunteers were around, there was no con security present. This lead to several unfortunate incidents, one of which stood above all the rest.
On the second day of the convention, my mom, a few friends, and I were lounging in the coffee shop waiting for the masquerade to start. An acquaintance and a couple of her friends joined us, visibly shaken. My acquaintance asked us to hide her from her stalker. Concerned, my mom and I probed more into the situation. A man had been roaming the convention that weekend, hitting on girls, waiting for them outside of the women’s bathroom, and making sexually explicit comments. Throughout the first two days, he had settled his attention on my acquaintance. Keep in mind that this acquaintance is in high school. The girl did not want to draw unwanted attention or vindictive actions, so she asked her friend to inform convention staff. The staff was informed on Friday, but did nothing about it, and the man continued to stalk the girls. My mom and I decided to take action.
While my mom stayed with the girls, I first asked to talk to con security, and was told that there was only hotel security. I then approached hotel security. At this point, I was dressed in my full White Witch cosplay. I asked to speak to hotel security. The man at the security desk chuckled and asked what the problem was. I gave a brief synopsis of the situation, and was told to go talk to the convention. He stated that the happenings at the convention were out of the control of the hotel. Angry, I reminded him that the convention, while separate from DoubleTree affairs, was still happening on DoubleTree property, therefore DoubleTree has a responsibility to an extent for matters of security for guests, especially given that the guests in question were minors. The security guard continued to give me some grief, but a man overheard out conversation and helped me convince the guard to send security, but reminded me that they couldn’t really do anything. I agreed to meet the security guard near the entrance to the convention.
At this point, I returned to the registration booth and demanded to speak with a manager. I was given slack and push back. After I mentioned that there was a matter of security and I insisted on seeing a con manager, the manager was reluctantly summoned. Upon arrival, I gave the manager a synopsis of the situation, after which the security guard finally arrived. My acquaintance was brought over, and she subtly pointed out the stalker. The manager and security guard approached the man and, seeing that he was a registered con attendee, left him alone. The security guard said that, as the man was a con attendee, it was out of his jurisdiction. However, alert him if the stalker does anything while outside the convention and still on hotel property. Yeah, he was pretty useless.
The manager then escorted us to a staging room so she could record the incident via a voice recorder on her phone. After my acquaintance has explained the situation, the con manager reminded the girl that she should be using the con “safe word”, bubbles, when something made her uncomfortable. Furthermore, when reminded that the beginning of this incident was reported the day before, we were told that the con staff could not do anything because my acquaintance herself did not report it. They also mentioned that their volunteers were not fully trained to handle such situations, so my acquaintance and her friends should only have gone to their S.A.S.H (Safety and Social Heath) team. This train of conversation continued, and ended in victim blaming.
Later that evening, while in line for the masquerade, I spotted the stalker in question. Noticing my irritation, the manager pulled me aside and said that she had talked to the stalker. The stalker said that he was only getting into role play, and did not realize that when the girls said to leave them alone, that they were not acting. She assured me that now that the man understood “bubbles”, the situation would improve. Right.
As luck would have it, a group of the stalker’s acquaintances were standing behind me. They validated my concerns, in that this man pulled these tricks at all conventions he attends and that Aki Con was the “easiest” to do so. At these events, these acquaintances keep their distance, “just in case.” I brought my concerns once more to the manager, but was blown off.
Organization and Communication: This was negligible.
There was a distinct lack of organization on the part of the convention staff. The managers were more interested in having a good time and promoting their hover board giveaway than actually managing the convention. Panels that were run and opperated by select con volunteers went well. However, those run by con staff did not. Let me give you a couple of examples:
- Pocky Tower Building Contest: The basis of this panel is pretty fun. The elimination rounds consist of contestants building domino towers. The tallest towers continued onto the final round. I was lucky enough to be one of the final three. In the final round, you were given a supply of Pocky boxes and told to construct a castle. The castle with the loudest audience applause wins. This was pretty cool, except that I, as the third contestant, was placed behind a large speaker, so only a quarter of the audience could actually see my creation. This could have been easily avoided, and when I pointed this out during set-up, I was ignored.
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Firerose Phoenix entered the powerful Katara! Cosplay Contest: The Cosplay Contest is usually one of the main events at a convention. My friend and I both entered the competition as Katara from Avatar: The Last Airbender and Avatar Gray from Fairy Tail respectively. First off, the contest ran very late. There was not pre-judging, and our briefing on how it will go down consisted of someone yelling at us as they walked up and down the line. We were expected to take as little time as possible on stage, and were pressured to keep the event going quickly. As such, judges could not get a feel for our cosplays, nor could we establish much of a stage presence. This was an event that could have been very successful, but failed.
- The Masquarade: Oh, dear… the masquarade. Like most of the convention, the masquarade was very pretty. The decoration were fantastic. Once we entered the panel room, that is. After all, the doors opened an hour late.
- Photoshoots: Aki Con had a pretty cool photo shoot room, which I will discuss later in this article. However, the process by which to organize photo shoots was a whiteboard outside of the room. Rather than arranging for pre-organized shoots or even fan-organized shoots, con attendees were expected to write down when they wanted to do a shoot and with what series. You had to continually pass by the white board to see if it had been updated. As such, shoots had a low attendance.
I could continue my tirade on panel and event disorganization, but I think you get the picture.
Panels and Events: Overall, the events and panels offered at Aki Con were very creative and, given a grain of salt, pretty fun. While I had my reservations, I did enjoy myself in the Pocky Building Contest and the panels that I attended (given a grain of salt for a few…). The con guests presented excellent panels that were directed towards the con demographic, and I enjoyed listening to the con’s VA guests.
I also loved the photo shoot room. Like most of the convention, it was very pretty. It was a lot of fun having a dedicated room with multiple scenes with which to work. The con staff and volunteers had set up four distinct scenes: a casino, a back alley (pictured right), a Japanese garden, and a school room. This allowed for fun opportunities to explore and enjoy cosplay. This was also a good tool allotted to photographers. Located inside, photographers were able to make full use of their lighting and camera equipment to get the exact shot they wanted.
Overall Impression: I was incredibly underwhelmed. This is the first convention that I’ve left feeling livid. I have been frustrated with con happenings before, be it from con attendees or staff, but I have never left a convention feeling so angry before. Convention disorganization and miscommunication can be very frustrating, but is often a part of convention growth. A blatant disrespect for con security and con goers, however, is inexcusable. After my experience, I am not surprised at the events this convention experienced in the past. Honestly, I’m surprised that Aki Con is still around.
The convention’s reputation and history has pushed most veteran cosplayers and con attendees towards other conventions, leaving behind attendees that are new to the scene. The problem this presents is that these people do not often know any better. The culture and staff at this convention assert that their practices are perfectly acceptable and, unfortunately, the young demographic of the convention accepts them at their word. Most conventions continue to grow and flourish because veteran attendees show new attendees the ropes. This includes convention safety, what behavior is acceptable, and how to reach out for help. Con goers that make their start at Aki Con do not get this community initiation. They are on their own, forced to deal with misinformation.
Will I attend Aki Con again? ABSOLUTELY NOT!!!!! Given my concerns and experiences, I will never attend Aki Con again, and I urge the rest of you to find another convention to attend! There are several conventions in the area, including Geek Girl Con at the beginning of October. If you’re looking for some Halloween fun, check out Jet City Comic Con in Tacoma or Kumori Con in Portland.
Works Cited
Addicting News. 2013 Dec 7. Anime Convention Hires Sex Offender ‘Guest’ DJ. Guess What Happens Next?. Addicting Info. [online]. Available from: http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/12/07/aki-con-cosplayer-assaulted/. 3/21/2016.
ANN. 2014 Jan 8. Convicted Sex Offender Attends Aki Con 2013 Event As Guest DJ. Anime News Network. [online]. Available from: http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2014-01-08/convicted-sex-offender-attends-aki-con-2013-event-as-guest-dj. 3/21/2016.
Xac Cecil Cosplay 