Anime NJ++ 2024: Sharp!

Anime NJ++ enters its second year, and it's a massive step up from last year's convention.

The organizers were able to attract double the number of panelists, schedule double the number of film screenings, and get New Jersey native LOTUS JUICE to perform a music concert for two nights of the convention!

Did you know Lotus Juice was a NJ native?? Because I didn't!

There were a multitude of fun and interesting panels, and plenty of interactive events. I was pretty much spoiled for choice on what to attend.

With all these enhancements, it might be more accurate to call this year's convention: Anime NJ Sharp

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Some other notes:

Artist Alley was still very cramped, something that was not improved upon from last year. Most of the artists were stationed in a smallish room that reportedly got very hot as the day went by on Saturday. There were one or two that had their tables in the main hallway, but with the cold draft coming from the front doors, I don't know if that arrangement was any better.

I didn't like how the main events stage was on the 12th floor, but it really wasn't that much trouble to get up and down from there. It felt like there were only two working elevators, so during the concerts, I opted to take the stairs down.

The bathrooms were well maintained, or at least as well as I could hope for.

The map was a bit hard to read. The path to Panel Rooms 2 & 3 were cutting right through the hotel restaurant.

The provided panel schedule only included the panel titles. Usually conventions will have a whole section of the pamphlet dedicated to panel descriptions and who is running them, but all we had to go off of was the title.

I appreciated that Anime NJ++ allowed people to film the Masquerade and the Lotus Juice concert. Anime NEXT notoriously forbade anyone from filming their Masquerade, then neglected to publish or share their official footage with anyone, even with the performers themselves.

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Music Used:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtudDINkc_w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vV7OmRpgXh4