So another convention has come and gone and this time I set my sights on Anime Weekend Atlanta #AWA. To be honest I planned for this way late because I wasn’t originally going to go to this but they announced some awesome guests about a month before the event that changed my mind. I’m really glad I did, the convention was fun and it was surprisingly organized considering how massive it was.

Guests:

I think you can tell from the intro that this category will receive a lot of praise. Laura Bailey, Travis Willingham, Keith Silverstein, Christina Vee, Stephanie Sheh, Luna Haruna and I can still go on and on with the awesome guests this convention had. Not only was their a variety of shows and games represented by this guest list, but it also had a lot of really big names.

Panels:

Panels were pretty good at this convention. While most of them honestly did not get my attention, one panel was absolutely amazing. They have an ask an anime character panel where you ask the actual anime characters questions and the guests will speak in the character’s voice and answer them. It was a really creative experience that overall was very enjoyable. They also have a lot of work shops and really in depth discussion panels. So while the panels were great, I wasn’t motivated to go to many of them.

Vendors/Artist Alley

The convention had a very reasonably sized dealers room and each vendor really felt unique. Normally you see a lot of people with the exact same merchandise so you shope more for deals than anything, but in this case it wasn’t as much of an issue. I found several dealers where I just had to stop and look around because I found something I haven’t seen at the convention yet. Even my fiance found a book that caught her attention and she’s never considered reading anything based off of anime. Anime Weekend Atlanta did a great job bringing several vendors and my wallet is enjoying some space because of it.

Autographs/Staff

I know I usually split these sections up, but for this review it’s best to talk about them together. The autograph lines were pretty organized. They would line everyone up for one line and then pull people out for specific lines once it was close to time to line up for the autograph sessions. If you wanted another person you would have to go and re line up in that person’s line. It was easy to follow and fair to each attendee. The staff was great at helping people get to where they need to be and they were constantly near the lines to help people if they were not sure where to go. The staff worked really hard to make the autograph lines go smoothly, also the signing sessions were an hour and a half long so it was easier for more people to get autographs. I applaud how well this convention made autographs fair. I even broke a personal record for my maximum number of autographs at a single convention.

Overall I’m already considering this convention for next year. I’m really hoping they get some great guests. Normally for a convention several hours away, I will only consider it if they have a few guests I really want; however, I had a great enough time that I’ll go to this convention if they just have one person I need. This convention clearly knows how to treat fans fairly.