Raleigh Convention Center holds Animate!, first major event since December fire
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Animate! Raleigh drew about 10,000 attendees after a December fire delay.
- Animate! used Marriott ballroom and shared Center space with another event.
- Animate! kept most panelists and benefited from the robust Raleigh geek community.
At Animate! Raleigh, Janie Haddad Tompkins feels at home.
Tompkins — known for playing Margaret in the Cartoon Network series “Regular Show” and Betsy in the HBO Max show “Hacks” — is originally from Charleston, South Carolina, so the “nice Southern flavor” she feels in Raleigh is familiar to her. The inclusivity and kindness is unique compared to other conventions she’s been to.
“It’s not something that’s easy to put into words, but there is, there is a difference to the culture of the Southeast, I feel like,” Haddad Tompkins said. “A politeness.”
The third annual edition of Animate! Raleigh drew roughly 10,000 people to the Raleigh Convention Center — not far off of how many GalaxyCon, the organizers of Animate!, expected to attend in January before a December fire forced the show to postpone to Saturday.
To make Animate! happen March 13-15, the convention split space with the American Veterinary Medical Association’s SAVMA Symposium. SAVMA took the Raleigh Convention’s Center ballroom, while Animate! used the Raleigh Marriott City Center’s ballroom across the street for its main events.
GalaxyCon founder and president Mike Broder said the convention retained most of its original panelists and even added new ones, including voice actors from the Nickelodeon series “Avatar: The Last Airbender.”
Broder said after the postponement, there were no dates where Animate! could have all the center’s space. So he and Raleigh Convention Center sales director Ashley Auman went week by week and found March 13-15 where Animate! could have two-thirds of the space. Broder then coordinated with Marriott sales director Irene Peterson to clear the dates for the convention to use the ballroom.
“I wouldn’t say it was the easiest thing in the world, but having good partners like Ashley at the center and Irene in the Marriott made it as painless as it could be,” Broder said.
Having hosted GalaxyCon and related events in Raleigh since 2017, Broder said the convention center has built a strong brand to weather postponements like Animate! this year. GalaxyCon in Raleigh garners the highest attendance of all the company’s shows in the United States — and that’s despite other shows’ floor plans, like the 350,000 square feet found in Columbus, dwarfing the Raleigh Convention Center’s 150,000 square feet.
Broder said the Triangle, with its many universities, has a lot of young people who are into anime and animation. It’s a market with a lot of comic stores and a strong video game industry, too.
“This is a very strong college town,” Broder said. “This is a very strong video game town. So there’s just a lot of that in the community here.”
Down in the Convention Center’s exhibit hall, Terrence Johnson caught several eyes with his cosplay as A Pimp Named Slickback from the Adult Swim cartoon “The Boondocks.” Johnson, who lives in Zebulon, came upon the idea by accident. Two weeks before Animate! Raleigh in 2024, he got notified that the items he needed for a cosplay of the “Naruto” character Kakashi would be delayed.
Johnson was back to the drawing board. He always did “Naruto” cosplays. He wanted something that would stick out. Before the convention, he watched a Boondocks scene with A Pimp Named Slickback.
“And I’m just looking, and I’m looking, and I’m like, ‘I wonder,’” Johnson said.
So he went on Amazon. He searched for a purple suit. Check. Purple hat? Check. Chain? Check. A new plan was in motion.
“Being able to dress up and not feel like I’m judged because of the activities that I like — that’s kind of what draws me here,” Johnson said.
Johnson was accompanied by his friends Adara “Rex” Mayfield and Montaya Chandler. Mayfield, of Holly Springs, has gone to conventions since 2020 but was at Animate! for the first time. She had dyed her hair blue, but it turned green after she washed it — perfect for cosplaying as Beast Boy from “Teen Titans.”
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Chandler drove from her hometown, the coastal N.C. city of Jacksonville, to Animate! She made a cosplay of Derpy from KPop Demon Hunters by cutting the nose out of a Spirit Halloween fur head and hot glueing the fur and ears onto it. Chandler feels Derpy fits how she is in her friend group: the type to peek out from the corner and just be there for the ride.
“I love coming to [conventions] because I’ve been doing it since (I was) 16 years old — 33 now — and I’ve had a great experience every time I’ve come to the conventions, and I’ve met new people,” Chandler said. “And it also helps with my social anxiety!”
Animate! will have panels and events throughout the day Saturday and stretching just past midnight Sunday. It will resume Sunday from 9 a.m. until 6:30 p.m.
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