Report by Aramitama and Ms. Tifa

Before the start of the report, here is some information about Hungarian anime conventions. Since we’re a small country, we started making official animecons in 2005. After that time 3 were organized per year. Two bigger, in spring and in autumn at the capital city, Budapest, and one in the summer at another city. One of the biggest event in every convention is the masquerade (we just call it cosplay contest). We have 2 main categories: craftmanship and performance. Through the years the costumes’ standard became more and more higher, thus every competition is a new challenge for the participants.
Anime Christmas 2009 stands out of our ’ordinary’ cons for being held in the winter, therefore a lot of people walked around in Christmas-themed costumes.
The place was the same where the last minicon was held, the large K pavilion among the Hungexpo buildings. Here were a huge hall with the stage and seats and a few other audience rooms. The vendors had place in the back of the hall having new mangas and anime stuff. It was also a pleasant surprise that the visitors could spend half of their entry ticket’s price on a manga. In the small rooms were events like DDR, game consoles, drawing competition, workshops and karaoke. The masquerade, AMV contest, fanfiction reading and anime quiz took place in the big hall.
Compared with the bigger conventions, there were not as many contestants as used to be. Because of this, cosplayers could also registry at the information desk. Still, there were many great costumes and interesting performances. The participants’ costumes were from a great variety of animes, mangas and games. Next to the Hungarian mainstream animes, Bleach and Naruto and the well known Final Fantasy, the more and more popular Kuroshitsuji and D.Gray-man and, among others, the (yet) not widely known animes like DearS and Prince of Tennis were all present.
Luckily nearly everything was on time and no technical problems were found during the masquerade excluding the short blackout [power break] after the contest, which made some leave the place. The stage wasn’t large enough, however, unlike the main con’s stage, the projection screen was next to it so it was better for the photoshooting. It had only one small but relatively steep stair, which made difficulties stepping on for some contestants. As we both cosplayed from Utena, we were allowed to use the dressing rooms. There were problems with these, too, where the ladies had to trudge themselves through the boys’ dressig room.
The audience was also a bit passive, but hopefully it was because of the new place and the sudden cold weather.
All in all, it was a joyful, well organized convention adapting to the few scarncities. The cosplayers were great and everyone found something for him-/herself on the counters and could spend a day together with the old and new friends.
We’re looking forward seeing another con organized by Mondo!

consplayers Reports