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Anime Midwest Convention's Musical Guests Unable to Perform After Visa Issues

Several of the musical guests scheduled to appear at this year's Anime Midwest convention in Rosemont, Illinois were unable to attend entirely or in part due to visa issues. Performers Deadlift Lolita, Zwei, FEMM, and Fuki cancelled their concerts the week of the event.

Musical duo Zwei (Robotics;Notes, Steins;Gate 0) wrote on July 5 that they had to give up on appearing at the convention for their concert that day due to visa issues. Fuki (W'z) shared Zwei's status and apologized to her fans that she would also be unable to attend due to visa issues.

Deadlift Lolita updated their Facebook page on July 5 stating that they also would not be able to attend Anime Midwest due to "circumstances beyond our control".

The duo FEMM announced on their official website on July 3 that their concerts on July 5 and July 6 were cancelled. Member RiRi was able to attend the convention and the group wrote that they are in talks to attend Con+Alt+Delete in December 2019 as a "challenge for revenge."

Anime Midwest issued a statement regarding Zwei, Fuki, and Deadlift Lolita's cancellations on the Anime Midwest 2019 event page on July 4 regarding the music guests cancellations.

We're sorry to have to bring you disappointing news again. Unfortunately we had additional visa difficulties with our acts Zwei, Fuki, and DLL. They also were not able to get the appropriate visas in time. This is disappointing and sad news, and we just were able to confirm their inability come today. We've never had this problem before, but it seems like visa processing has been taking longer and longer. In fact, we received notice of approval for one of our acts's visas just yesterday - however, due to the 4th of July holiday, the actual visa would not be ready to pick up until Monday. Last year our event was a few days after the 4th of July, and so we did not run into this issue.

We, and the acts, are both terribly sorry to disappoint fans and if you would like to reach out to us about this please email [email protected] and we will be happy to help you. We're updating our online schedule with up to date events and scheduling, and moving some fantastic acts to our larger Grand Stage!

Anime Midwest's musical guests were part of the event's World Animesong Exhibition (WAX) programming dubbed the "American Midwest's biggest and best concert lineup of Japanese artists." The con previously partnered with Anime News Network to award a backstage pass to meet Ladybeard of Dead Lift Lolita and V is for Villains before their planned concert.

Additional musical guests included Lia (Air, Clannad, Angel Beats!) and Vocaloid IA. Both Lia and IA's concerts continued as planned, although Lia posted on Twitter that her panel was unattended due to a programming error.

Anime Midwest was held from July 5-7 at the Hyatt Regency O'Hare and Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, Illinois.