I’m a little later than I would’ve liked in posting this, but I had an absolute blast at Anime Banzai and VOCAMERICA the weekend before last!
It was my first time in Utah, and my second time out West… other than attending Anime Expo back in 2014, I ‘d never traveled farther out than Arkansas! The area is absolutely GORGEOUS, I still can’t get over the mountains that surround Salt Lake City. They’re absolutely stunning. I wish I’d gotten the chance to take better photos, but this one will have to do.
My attendance was mostly thanks to Pandemic : doujin music collector extraordinaire and co-host of the Vocaloid Hangout Plug.dj room. I honestly can’t thank him enough for inviting me. I also was happy to have a third convention run-in with Agatechlo (resident LEON stan and Plug room manager) who gave us all nifty little LEON keychains, with art drawn by Untramen!
It hadn’t crossed my mind that Anime Banzai was the convention where Vocatone first debuted V3 Oliver years ago, so I certainly got a surprise when I ran into Chaofreak (now SCRAPxRABBiT), one of Vocatone’s former members. I was more familiar with him as voicer of Kurone Zanda, one of the first couple of overseas UTAU… EVER. It was a giant blast from the past to be able to meet him IRL, since he and Chii were basically the ones that brought UTAU to the US and outside of Japan in general. I had fun chatting with him and the rest of the Utah Vocaloid crowd, even unexpectedly meeting one of Lystrialle’s PV artists, Oxymoroff!
VOCAMERICA was fantastic, with a bunch of new songs added to the setlist (I’ll be linking the official Engloids.info writeup later!) Many thanks to Aki for including the special surprise of Aiko performing HIBIKASE, I’m extremely honored!!
All-in-all, this was easily one of my best convention experiences. I definitely hope to be back at Anime Banzai next year!
My next convention will be Yama-con in Pigeon Forge, TN from Dec 1st to 3rd, which will also feature a VOCAMERICA show! Hope to see y’all there!
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