Anime Banzai 2017

Anime Banzai 2017

Layton, Utah

October 20^th – 22^nd 2017

Review By: John Fragglepuss Evans

The 13^th annual Anime Banzai took place this weekend at the Davis Conference Center. 2017 guests included: Daman Mills, Alejandro Saab, Michaela Laws, Sean Chiplock, Crit Killen, EmpathP, Jamie McGonnigal, and Steve Nunez aka Warky T. Chocobo.

Some of the events at this year’s Banzai included a card/tabletop gaming room, an arcade/video game room, the vendor hall, Artist’s Alley, a scavenger hunt, Banzai Village, Kid’s Corner, countless panels, and two viewing rooms that offered anime all day long. The main events included Banzai’s Got Talent, the Opening Ceremony, Cosplay Chess (Jesters vs Humorless), Brawl, AMV Contest, Cosplay Contest, Orori Matsuri Ball, VOCAMERICA Live, and the Closing Ceremony.

Anime Banzai’s charity quilting auction returned this year. All proceeds will be donated to Huntsman Cancer Institute.

The AMV Contest showcased 34 videos this year in the main event room.

Some of my favorites AMVs of Banzai 2017 are:

Infectious Affections by Drew Brisco

Anime Master Chef by Chiara Carparelli

Burnt Animu by Anthony Ronquillo

Twintails and Music Clubs by Nathan Gjertson

I attended the How to Critique Anime panel presented by Athena Colt and Josh Jones. The panel took a deep dive into how to critically review anime, from the animation quality to the pacing of the story. It was an informative panel that I’m glad I attended. The panelists were well prepared and thoroughly answered every question asked.

Thanks to everybody that attended our What’s New in Anime 2017 panel. We were happy to have our full panel crew present with Breanne Evans, Brittany Evans, Lindsay Starke, Alec Unsicker, and myself. There’s so much anime that comes out every year so it’s difficult to funnel it down to so few.

The anime we covered in the panel include:

Akiba’s Trip: The Animation
Little Witch Academia
Love Tyrant
Gamers
18if
King’s Game: The Animation
Clockwork Planet
Fastest Finger First
Re: Creators
Dive!!!
The Reflection
Alice and Zoroku
A Centaur’s Life
Clean Freak Aoyama-kun
Restaurant to Another World
Fuuka
Made in Abyss
Girl’s Last Tour
Love and Lies
In Another World with my Smartphone
The Royal Tutor
Ancient Magus Bride
Black Clover
Neo Yokio
Vatican Miracle Examiner

Thanks to everyone that attended our Visiting Japan panel, presented by Lindsay Starke, Alec Unsicker, and myself. We traveled to Japan recently and wanted to share our experience, giving others some suggestions of places to visit and the best way to travel around the country. I apologize that we couldn’t take questions at the end of the panel since we were running late.

If you want a recap of the locations we covered, you can check out my post series on recommendations while visiting Japan:

Thanks to everyone that attended our Appetizing Anime panel and special thanks to Brittany Evans for putting together such a wonderful presentation. The panelists were: Brittany Evans, Breanne Evans, Lindsay Starke, Alec Unsicker, and myself. I hope you all enjoyed it as much as we did.

This year’s iteration of the Anime Banzai convention was well run and organized. I appreciate how the organizers of Banzai strive to make it an interactive convention with something for everyone. There’s a variety of panel topics, various main events, all sorts of games, and even a courtyard for dancing at any time of day! A new type of event this year was ribbon gathering, which involved finding convention-goers with a ribbon badge and answering their question to earn a ribbon to attach to your badge. From what I could tell, attendees were getting way into it.