Saturday evening had plenty of programming all over the board. There were late night 18+ panels running through the wee hours of the morning and of course, the masquerade, where cosplayers show off their best cosplays in competition. The nice thing about having Anime Boston at the Prudential was that there were many quiet places for cosplay photos once mall shoppers left. Additionally, given the Boston is a college town, there were also plenty of places to have a late night dinner.

My Waifu's Not Weird by Jared The Greek
Presented as both an educational and entertaining panel the team of two men and two women analyzed how the mind works and why people get attracted to fictional characters.  The presenters were not scientists, but did use information from various studies to build their case.  After the brain discussion there was an analysis of the uncanny valley, the aspects of attraction, and personal anecdotes about anime crushes.  This was a great panel that not only allowed the audience to better understand their own minds,, but to also reflect on your own tastes and what they mean.

More Foreign Anime Openers by Jared the Greek
While it is generally common knowledge that some anime openers have been changed or translated for US broadcast or release, but most people don’t know that this is also done all over the world.  The panel showed off the openings to Naruto, One Piece, Pokemon, Fushigi Yugi, and Sailor Moon from all over the world.  The Turkish and German openers tend to be the most over the top and fun.  The panel discussed some of the openers that got changed from licensing reasons as well, which is something you don’t usually consider when an opening is changed.  This was a fun panel and hopefully they will be back with new and more crazy openers from all over the world.

Jojo's Bizarre Adventures and Manly Poses by Jared the Greek
This panel has two main parts.  The first part looks over the series and the various supplementary materials and gives a decent summery for the audience that might not be familiar with all things Jojo.  The second half of the panel has volunteers from the audience go up on stage and try to reenact some of the crazy poses from the Jojo series.  This is another fun and informative panel that anyone interested in the Jojo franchise should check out.

Masquerade by Eri Kagami
This year's masquerade started off without a hitch. Roadie and Mario returned as our intrepid MC's. The first half was the runaway show where craftsmanship entrants did their walk on the stage. Walk ons were solely judged on craftsmanship. Music was provided by the convention. The next segment was the skit competition where cosplayers came up with creative presentations to act in character. We had a great mix of comedy and drama this year. Highlights included Yuna the Drag Queen (where someone lip synced for their life; death drop included), Game of Thrones vs. Berserk, a ballet done to Psycho Pass, a gymnastics routine set to Kaleido Star, a comedy / fight routine set to Street Fighter, etc. There were a lot of great acts this year. Anime Boston truly has one of the most stand out masquerade competitions in the country. It's definately worth taking a look at. If your intro to cosplay competitions was through Heroes of Cosplay, Anime Boston's masquerade is something different and has some of the best cosplay acts in the Northeast. Halftime performances were done by a local dance crew that did a break dance routine to the films of Hayao Miyazaki.

AMV Award Winners by Eri Kagami
Halftime also included a showing of the AMV winners. Anime Boston is one of the few cons that still showcase the anime music video winners. This year's award winners were some of the best anime music videos I've ever seen. Not only the videos were well edited, they also got the audience pumped up. Normally, this is the part where people started filtering out. However, we still had a full audience. We had a Kuroko No Basket set to "Remember the Name" by Fort Miner that had people singing along to the chorus, Anime Cannibal Shia Lebeouf brought in laughs, Awwkward was a really cute romantic comedy video set to Monthly Girls Nozaki-kun, Fight Song by Newton's own Rachel Platten was set to various Ghibli Films gave the audience feels, etc. You can find a full list of Anime Boston amv winners on YouTube. However, this was one of the best competitions I've seen in years. It was clear that the audience was very satisfied with the winners.

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