London Anime Con

Written by Ross Locksley on 21 Jan 2014

Q - London Anime and Gaming Con is back on in February - you've expanded the size of the venue to include a new building dedicated to gaming (with the existing Rocket complex catering for anime crowds) has this fundamentally changed the way you've organised the Con this time out?

A - Yes, it's been quite a lot more work in terms of preparation. The number of meetings that we have had with the venue alone to go over the plans has been substantial! I'd say the biggest change has been that in working to bring in the big Video Gaming-related companies who shall be involved such as GAME, Namco-Bandai and Zen United, we have had to up our game (no pun intended!) and present ourselves nice and professionally!

At the same time, much has remained the same. We're still focusing on our three main areas; anime, gaming and cosplay, and we're still all about the community and being there for the fans by the fans. :)

Q - Gaming is clearly the area of expansion, with tournaments catered for and over 200 titles available to choose from, how do you decide what to include and what to leave out?

A - With the gaming tournaments we have decided to go for quality over quantity. So while there will be over 200 gaming titles to choose from in terms of casual sit down and play, we are restricting it to twelve top-quality competitive tournaments maximum to ensure that each is run to a very high standard. These will be League Of Legends (Pro and Standard), Street Fighter IV, Minecraft, Halo 4, Dead or Alive 5, Call of Duty 4, Mario Kart Wii, Super Smash Bros Brawl, DDR (Sightreading & Standard), Injustice, FIFA and most likely one more game to be confirmed.

We picked these tournaments based on popularity and demand from our attendees in the past. We were also careful to pick titles from each main genre; pc gaming, fighting based games, first-person shooters, mainstream and sports.

The good news is that by focusing on less tournaments, we can guarantee larger prizes. Each tournament will have prizes of at least £50 of merchandise equivalent and an award certficate, so make sure to get practising!

Q - What about more traditional games like TCG's? Is there a big take-up for that, and which tournaments tend to be the most popular? (Vanguard, etc)

A - TCGing has always been very popular at our events with the tournaments frequently maxing out. With it now being moved in to the new building as part of gaming, there will be even more space to expand this!

Yu Gi Oh! is of course the big-one, though Magic The Gathering has been growing in popularity of late which is interesting!

Q - We see you have Colleen Clinkenbeard making an appearance, was she hard to book? She's pretty prolific, I imagine her schedule is hard to get onto :) Who else can we expect to see at the Con?

A - Indeed she is, the number of anime and gaming titles is crazy; someone commented to me the other day that she's done a voice in almost every single anime he's watched!()

We were actually extremely fortunate that Colleen was looking toward taking a holiday in the UK, so she was very open to being a guest with us. We're of course delighted to have a voice-actor of her calibre attending; this is probably the biggest guest we've ever had at one of our events and we are looking very forward to it!

We have a lot of other guests booked in, including Lawrence Simpson (MasakoX) the voice-actor from the hit internet series Dragonball Z Abridged, and a dozen of the most well-known and famous cosplayers in the UK and indeed the world including Kelly Jean, Tabitha Artyfakes, Stacey Rebecca and so forth. So, as you can imagine we have a very impressive series of cosplay talks and workshops lined up!

Q - You have a number of DJ's/bands performing, do you talent-scout for suitable guests or do they come to you? And do you think you'll get time to go and enjoy a set yourself? If so, who's on your must-see list?

It depends! Sometimes they will come to us, whereas at other times we will specifically scout out for bands that might go down well. We've always been very live-music and party focused, so this is an area that is very important to us.

Personally I am looking forward to the Saturday and Sunday parties! We have JakaZid DJing on the Saturday as part of J-Pop Go's party. He's a huge name and very prolific in the DJ community, so I'm looking forward to what will be an awesome set of music there!

Q - Which event in Feb would you class as the "do-not-miss-at-any-costs" event of Feb's LAC?

A - With two stage worths of events all day and night that's such a difficult decision to make! On one hand I want to say an event such as the Cosplay Masquerade or The Talent Show, or the Fashion Show or maybe even the Pub Quiz.

However, I am going to suggest a personal favourite of mine; the Clan Battle Showdown, as our three clans are in many ways the heart of our community. When you arrive, you immediately pick one of three conbadges to wear which show the clan you belong to. Throughout the event you score points for your clan by competiting in tournaments, stage events and so forth. The Clan Battle Showdown is where it all comes to a head with a series of mini-games that determine the final victor. It's basically the conclusion of two days of friendly rivalry and fun and an event I would strongly recommend not to miss!

Thanks again to Michael for taking the time to talk to us. You can buy tickets to the London Anime Convention here: www.londonanimecon.com