On Sunday, October 1, 2023, held the fifth AnimeCon: RUN Thessalonik i John Vellid Conference Center. This is a celebration of Japanese Pop Culture, Art and Tradition. An institution that was started in 2013 by the Mangatellers in Thessaloniki and returned after 7 years of stopping dynamically and more organized.
Let's enter AnimeCon
This event I did not have the chance to visit before for various reasons, so I have to say that this year I was encouraged by the whole organization and the love that the children had thrown and the guests.
The price of the ticket for admission was 5 euros which I consider to be a good price. We were lucky with my company for getting the tickets in physical form from Cosmic Realms the day before (we wanted them as a souvenir) because they had incredible people!
Without exaggerating the tail was longer than the The Comic Con with tails at the ticket counter both in the series you had made a ticket electronically via Viva and much more in the series the other where you made a ticket on the spot.
And because they say an image equals a thousand words you can get a taste of the photo below.
I liked it in general and «decoration» at the ticket counter near the entrances with various uneven characters where you could take pictures but I found that anime's entire program Con was on a big poster.
Entering the morning you saw that beyond the many people outside there were many people already inside.
Unfortunately he had the half space from what it has The Comic Con So that didn't make things any easier, but it sounds like it's gonna change next year.
I think it didn't help the fact that it was for a day, so most of the people who wanted to get here early.
From above, the banners of the event appeared. One concerned Oriental Express with "East" foods while the other 2 were one with characters from Mythos and the other with those of the Mangatellers RUN with AnimeCon's logo.
Let's see the shops on the counters.
Of the shops selling manga was exclusively the Cosmic Realms, while there were several of the well-known shops selling anime merchandise such as Otaku Store, Anime Portal, Animehouse, Angry Nerd. But I'd rather there were more shops that would sell and focus on the manga. Cosmic Realms as shown by the above two images had a variety of series such as Blue Lock, Jujutsu Kaisen, Chainsaw Man, Kaiju No 8, Attack On Titan some of which we will also talk about in future articles on the site.
Of course, there were other stalls selling merch and figures but also of course Digital Soul Entertainment of which highlight was the new release of the collection of the first half of season 1 of the Demon Hunter ( Κυ) was not missing.Demon Slayer) in Greek. In their stand, you could meet Dimitris Sarlo.
The artists
To tell you the truth, I was surprised that on the benches of self-made artists there were mainly prints and not some manga or generally some other effort.
From the guests to Matteo Brizio I signed the copy of Mythos Vol 1, so I collected all the signatures. I met in person, and the sweet one signed the list. Voula Costa. I got print from him. Naokuren Who was so good that he designed me a sketch at Anka manga that he gave me a gift. THE Just Loui He had an interesting job, but I didn't make it, and in the end I didn't get to know more, but I'll keep him in mind in the future.
THE Event Kotil gave some A6 prints and had some panel on the animation we watched. He had a lot more people than he expected, and he was enough not to reach the 60 chairs the event could have. So, because that was also a matter of space, I hope it's fixed next year. He said a couple interesting things, but I expected more truth is. However, I was pleased that he enjoyed the whole experience and I hope he will come back to the future with any of his colleagues.
From the giant Manos Lagouvardos I got the 2 commissions (Sung Jinwoo – Uchiha Madara) I told him in advance. He told me that because he had them on the counter, people were asking about them. It was really impressive I can say and I was terribly pleased once again by Mano.
The stage
In the general scene there were again characters and statues for photographs but the most impressive was Mihawk's sword Which you could take pictures with! I liked the martial arts show and they had a pamphlet on Akido. The exits/inputs also gave free packages of noodles with various flavors. Let me not forget to mention that there were many nice cosplays and of course the Panda we had seen in The Comic Con was not missing. In the last 2 hours of the event Dragon Band Z sang anime openings like Dragonball Super's first.
How did we do?
In the end AnimeCon was a wonderful event that MUST exist (and why not in Athens) and take place every year for anime fans because Greece has a great audience! I want to give My congratulations to the organizers for the whole effort and I am glad for the success of the event because it justified all their anxiety. We expect next year to be even better and why not with more days. We had a great time!
