Friday I attended the kickoff event of PMX featuring the Nami Tamaki/TM Revolution concert and was pretty impressed with that. Wow, a convention devoted to all aspects of Asian pop culture! If they open with something as cool as Nami and TM, they gotta rock!

Um...

Now I know Pacific Media is a brand spanking new convention. There are going to be kinks and stuff and it's not going to be the blowout con like Anime Central or Anime Expo is. But I have to admit, it was really hard to get into the spirit of things. Now it wasn't for trying; I like more than just anime, I do like some Jpop music, Visual Kei, and Gothic Lolita fashions. But looking at the schedule for the full 3 days of the convention, which fit on a single 8x11 sheet of paper, there was nothing that seemed to jump out at me. At most conventions the programming is pretty packed, giving a con-goer a diverse selection of panels to attend. The schedule for PMX was thin, with large swaths of time between panels. It looked like it would have fit better on a two day convention.

Signing up for the convention was not a big event; most of the lines were long gone and I was redirected to a terminal to self register. After typing in my info into the web-based system, on curiosity I hit the back button to see if after taking my info could someone else see it. Scarily enough, I could. Seeing some of the terminals that still had personal info on them long after the attendee was gone didn't sit too well. I made sure to close my browser before leaving the terminal. (If there are any other conventions that do this, PLEASE make sure your registering systems do not allow that to occur!) I got my day badge (25$, ouch), the obligatory huge anime advertisement tote and the program guide. I flipped through the short, glossy, fourteen page program to the middle section where the convention information was being highlighted. Not seeing anything in my immediate time frame on either the program or the flyer, I did what any good fan would do... go hit the dealer room.

I really didn't want to compare it with Anime Expo, but being in the same location as AX didn't help. The dealer room, which is something you have to fight through on even the slow times at AX, was only filled with 1/3 the dealers it could have held. I was expecting to find few anime vendors and mostly JPop/cinema goods vendors but the Anime heavily tipped the scales. They were companies I was very familiar with from AX, so most of the goods were things I had already gotten. I did talk to a few of the vendors, who said the dealer's room had been much busier on Saturday, but many dealers had packed up and left that morning. And it was only the second day.

After I was done, it was late and I tried to take another peek at the schedule. Masquerade was the next thing up, but Masquerade is best when you know someone in it. No other panel seemed to be on at that time, and the next event was the Psycho Le Cemu concert. I knew that Psycho Le Cemu was still trying to carry the Visual Kei torch, and they had an interesting look that was sorely tempting to go see (costumed bands always rock). But, it would have been 2 hours of hanging out in the video rooms before that event. As much as I wanted to give this convention a chance, at that point I threw in the towel and went home.

I felt sorta guilty as I tried to write this review. I'd spent twenty five dollars to get a badge and access to the dealers room. I really wanted to get a taste of a panel, something that would let the essence of this convention to speak to me. But as tasty as the treats were put in front of me, I just couldn't bite. I looked at the other days to see if I had missed all the good stuff on Saturday, or would miss out on something on Monday, but no dice. It was a scattered sprinkling of diverse topics that either I'd never heard of or were covered already well by other conventions. The highlight of PMX had been the opening concert.

This is one person's opinion, and only a few hours attendance, somebody who attended might think I'm smoking something for what I've said above. But to me PMX just didn't seem to gel. There are many smaller conventions out there that do fantastic two day affairs worth the 45$ or more full admission. But Pacific Media Expo seemed to be a little convention trying to fill much bigger shoes. A drop in price, a much thicker schedule, programming grouped by genre and possibly dropping a day might have made this convention better. It may need to start out smaller, but there is no shame in that, Anime Expo had to start out small too. But there's huge potential there, a really wonderful idea that drew some spectacular act on its first year. Next year's convention might be fantastic. But PMX still has a long way to go to being the mega star it wants to be.