Aki Con 2011
October 7-9, 2011
Hilton Bellevue
Bellevue, WA
Day 3
My one-day trip to Aki-Con 2011 predates all of my surviving social media by a year. My recollection primarily depends on interpolation from the scant photo record and one or two particular interactions that stand out, all these years later.
- A hallway with mirrored ceiling.
- A central lobby with a glass elevator.
- The vendor hall, where a stranger harrassed me as I bought a figure.
One image that stuck was the staircase to the left of the entrance and the cluster of cardboard cutouts. There was a tower with what, Godzilla? Certainly Sailor Moon. Maybe Invader Zim (which I am now horrified to think was still fresh in the cultural memory at the time). Faintly lingering, far in the background, detail stripped away, the impression of those images remain.
Where did I pick up a badge? Did I actually get one? I must have, because I ended up in the dealer hall. Only now do I remember that I didn't know I'd be going at all until that morning... Think! Roll back one more day!
...
This was only the beginning of my junior year of college. For the first time I was out of the campus dorms, and for the only time in my life I was living with other students. I took over a room in a duplex rented by an older student, who had the master bedroom with a bath. His girlfriend was a de facto roommate who should have been paying rent. But in the far room down the hall was Henrique.
Henrique was a philosophy minor who had memorized the southern hemisphere night sky as a kid, and I knew he liked anime. "You've got to watch Higurashi", he told me, in between pitches that I invest 80 hours apiece into Persona 3 and 4 (all of these things would come true, but not until he was long gone). In retrospect he set off many red flags that I didn't heed. I was still in my anime honeymoon phase. A friend of mine in the Bellevue area was also headed off to Aki Con for the weekend; wouldn't it be great to go?
I had no car and the con was a solid 2.5 hour drive away. Why would I not have lobbied for the full adventure? Was he busy? A hotel too daunting? We came to the agreement that he would decide how he felt at 5am Sunday morning for a one day spree, and went to bed.
At 0500 I tip-toe out of my room and bump into him in the hallway. "Yo, you ready?" he says, in a costume. As if he had confirmed beyond a doubt that we were doing this.
Of course I'm ready.
I don't remember the drive or what car Henrique drove. I do remember getting near the city and seeing the skyline and feeling giddy.
I didn't really know what an Aki-Con was, but I was about to find out. This was my first experience with an anime convention and I Paid Attention to the lesson. Not very many pictures survive. Some data may become available over time, and I will be sure to fill in the blanks as appropriate. There might be a con haul photo that I've overlooked somewhere.
Update: there was indeed a con haul photo sitting on my old phone! They've been added to the gallery below.
At the very least, this is the convention where I went to buy my witch Tsukasa prize figure. As I pulled out my wallet, I must have flashed the fake Vocaloid credit card that came with Vocalonation. Someone in a Kirisame Marisa outfit saw the card and decided to mess with me.
"Wow, nice Vocaloid credit card [sarcastic]!"
"Hi Lars."
"Oh, wait, shit, Ryan?"
Our early interactions are a beautiful thing (our first interaction, maybe a year before this one, is a favorite memory because my first impression was "fuck that guy").
Five hours at an anime convention is not a very long time, even when writing from the battlefield. I'm afraid not many memories remain now. Steve Jobs had died just a few days before, and I'm certain I saw a cosplayer with a chain around his leg, dragging an iMac instead of an iron ball for his prison shackles. The rest, I'm afraid, belongs to my own private oblivion.
Posted 05.31.2026
