Anime Raves

GauntletWizard

I've gotta say, I've only been to three appropriate raves, and while I agree with you in theory, practically I've not seen it. The Anime Club Dance, while cool, and exactly what you guys suggest: lots of geeky people dancing to anime and para-para and eurobeat... with Luke DJing and keeping it interesting, but nobody danced. Aside from just about everybody in the room getting rolled up into the katamari congo line, it was mostly just the same 8-10 people raving with occasional other people busting a few moves. It was hard to get all the people on the floor.

At Tora-con, all I saw was regular techno-rave stuff. However, it was really thumping. The Cheat was being thrown around with lots of glowsticks and everything you despised: But it was thumping.

Then at anime boston, it was half and half, but the anime stuff seemed decidedly less fun. But I didn't stick around for that much...

I'd love to see more of the Anime music raves, but I've just not seen them work. Anyone want to contradict me? I'd love to hear of a good anime rave, because that'd just be awesome.

Rym

Katsucon. They've played a lot of parapara-max, OC Remixes, and Japanese dance music, and the crowds really get into it. I've never been to a con dance that was better than Katsucon's.

The anime club dances really only work if you have ringers on the floor dancing and basically cajoling everyone else into also dancing. We used to have the eboard and most of the EAs stay on the floor dancing the whole time just to get other people into it; the music alone won't get the more nerdly types. It takes a lot of effort and planning to break them out of their socially-awkward shells ;^) Also, there's the sad fact that only the first couple way back were ever really successful, and various factors brought them into decline since. (No anime music night ever topped the first two in terms of attendance, and none of them ever had more people than the previous one).

Now, I wouldn't mind the non-Asian music at all at these cons if it weren't also typically very boring. There's a lot of good techno and dance music out there, but Otakon seems to always have the most generic 4-beat base-thumping boring mixes. They seem to be more interested in having "live" DJ talent, which I've never really been a fan of. (Produced techno tends to be a lot more complex and a lot more interesting than the semi-live stuff).

Also, I note that hardly anyone was dancing at Otakon's Friday night rave this year, so it really isn't much of a comparison to other con raves. I was there for a while getting interviews and talking to people, and there were far more people making out in the corners or standing in circles than dancing. Maybe a quarter of the crowd was dancing in any fashion, and the music was dreadfully simple thump-thump techno.

Apreche

They should get Derek the Bandit from South Africa, then they could have an awesome party without geek music.