Anime Uchi-Con = free fun in Chicago. Thank you University of Chicago Japanese Animation Society for putting on the best free one-day convention I’ve ever seen! If you pre-registered you even got a color con badge – wish I would have known they were pretty cool. Either way, volunteer staff kept you ‘in line’ to get your badge and through-out the con.
Con entrance, gaming, karaoke, photographers and access to Ada Palmer, the guest speaker were all free! Yup… FREE (one of the better four letter words I know). Food was available for purchase as was photographic prints of you in your attendee cosplay if you couldn’t wait for the digital version in a few days. Both of these payables were reasonably priced and good quality. Ronald Ladao Photography, UMO Photo and Eddie B photography were present among other well known ‘photo artists’ in the Chicago cosplay community (Ronald Ladao is my personal favorite). This was an Anime gathering but Marvel, DC, Independent and random cosplays were fairly represented. Uchi-Con general convention and cosplay rules prohibited anything over PG-13 (understood the logic behind this as quite a few attendees were still in high school and younger)…
Nicely put together con – (did I mention it’s FREE)!!! Lots of attendees and far more people than I’ve seen at other small cons running for two days. If Uchi-Con wasn’t on your calendar this year and you’re within a 2-3 hour commuting range -get here next year – fer sure! The 2nd best part of this con was the fantastic photo locations on site (as pictured below) and the plethora of professional photographers. I’ve included some of their pics as well! Photo take-homes by the photo booth were $2-$3 dollars for small sizes and less than $10 for an 8X10!! This paltry sum is SO worth it to have a picture taken in the costume you spent so much time working on – it’s a steal!!! Go – Go – GO!!!
