Cosplay US 01612

ANIME CENTRAL TEXT BY ALAN SCHOLTING / IMAGES BY MATTHEW SPERZEL A couple of years ago, we attended the biggest anime convention in the mid-west. Well, when we caught wind that the convention juggernaut was turning twenty this year, we knew we had to go back. Anime Central spared no expense making sure its double decade anniversary was one for the ages. Held once again at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, Illinois, ACen was fully loaded with celebrity voice acting guests, panels galore, and more cosplay activities than you could shake a stick at. Heading up the guest list were fan favorites such as Shinichi ‘Nabeshin’ Watanabe, Crispin Freeman, and the ‘Kevin Bacon’ of anime himself, John Swasey. The convention also hosted a huge lineup of amazing musical performances by the voice behind Macross Frontier, May’n, the always energetic stylings of Gacharic Spin, and the progressive compositional melodies of IMERUAT, to name a few. That, of course, is in addition to over a dozen different electronic DJ’s that kept the raves lit ‘til morning on both Friday and Saturday. Maybe concerts aren’t your thing though. Maybe you prefer to kick back inside the nice cool panel rooms and discuss literally ANYTHING related to anime? Well, Anime Central has you covered there as well. This year’s edition featured over two-hundred-and-fifty panels ranging from children’s programming all the way to the late night NSFW Hentai and adult themed discussions. That’s well over three-hundred hours of programming just in panels alone for those keeping track out there. Now, some of you might be thinking, ‘with everything they have going on, they probably don’t have much room left for cosplay events’. Well, rest easy, because Anime Central hasn’t forgotten about the cosplayers. In fact, in many regards, cosplay seems to be one of their primary focuses. For starters, this year’s convention hosted over one-hundred-and-thirty different cosplay photo shoots…yeah, you read that correctly, over one-hundred-and-thirty! However, the most important cosplay event of the weekend took place during the Saturday night masquerade; and no, I’m not talking about the competition itself.

In late August of 2016, a wonderful person and incredible friend to the mid-west cosplay community was tragically taken from this world. Her name was Dani Roelandt. Since this was the very first