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Registration Opens at N. America's Only 21+ Anime Con
posted on by Mikhail Koulikov
Registration has opened for the Providence Anime Conference, currently on track to be the only anime-related event in North America that is open only to attendees above 21 years old. It will run at the Rhode Island Convention Center and the adjacent Providence Westin Hotel on October 3-5.
The Providence Anime Convention (PAC) was founded by several staff members of Anime Boston who felt that the North American convention circuit needed an event that would be geared to the interests of older anime fans. Some of the convention's features will include a keynote address instead of an opening ceremony, a costume fashion show rather than a contest, and live-action programming based around professional and academic panels. Industry guests who have already confirmed their attendance include ADV Films' David Williams, FUNimation Entertainment's Adam Sheehan, and Harmony Gold's Kevin McKeever, and more names will be announced over the coming months.
Vendors looking to participate in the convention will be instructed to bring items that are not normally available at stores or online, while entries for PAC's cosplay skit exhibition will be pre-screened to ensure high quality.
To accommodate older fans, the convention will not start until the evening of Friday, October 3. The price structure of the PAC is also different from most other anime events. The basic three-day pass is priced at US$65.00 for the first 250 people who register. The price will then increase until the convention's attendance cap is reached. There will be a hard limit of 2,000 attendees, and the higher registration prices are set to ensure that it will still be able to pay for itself.
