Anime Boston...Incentive?

So for all those people who were a bit tipsy on whether or not they would be willing to pay $100 to go to Anime Boston, maybe this will provide an incentive: NEWS!

Stereopony is coming to Anime Boston 2011! With that announcement, Anime Boston continues its fantastic trend of guests for the fourth consecutive year. Since its start in 2003, Anime Boston has grown to arguably become the fourth largest US anime convention, behind of course, Anime Expo, Otakon, and New York Anime Expo/Comic-Con. The number of attendees grow by about 1000 each year. It was only in 2005 when Anime Boston began really rolling out the big guns by finally bringing in guests from Japan, notably Sumi Shimamoto (most notable as Nausicaä in Hayao Miyazaki's Nausicaä: the Valley of the Wind and Kyoko Otonashi in Maison Ikkoku) in 2006 and Kenji Terada (staff in Final Fantasy I, II, and III, and Kimagure Orange Road) in 2007.


It was not until 2008 when Anime Boston began really hitting it home. In 2008, the biggest announcement was The Pillows, which is a J-Rock band most notable for their songs, "Ride on Shooting Star" and "I Think I Can" in Gainax's popular 2000 OVA: FLCL (or Furi Kuri). Then in 2009, famous music composer Yuki Kajiura and relatively new band Kalafina were announced as Anime Boston 2009's guests. Yuki Kajiura has been active since 1992 and is renowned for various works in the last 2 decades ranging from Kimagure Orange Road, .hack//Sign, Noir, Mai-Hime/Otome, Gundam Seed, Simoun, Tsubasa Chronicles, Baccano!, Kuroshitsuji (Black Butler), Eve no Jikan, Pandora Hearts, and currently the ongoing Winter anime Puella Magi (Mahou Shoujo/Magical Girl) Madoka Magica. Kalafina is one of the many small bands created by Yuki Kajiura and the band made its debut with the fantastic 7 movie series Kara no Kyoukai -the Garden of Sinners-. Obviously as a result of a Yuki Kajiura being the primary composer, Kalafina has mostly done projects that Yuki Kajiura has worked on since its debut. In 2010, Anime Boston had a lack of guests. Despite that, Anime Boston managed to rake in the well known Nobuo Uematsu, who is known for his music composition in the early Final Fantasy games.

Now in 2011, Anime Boston confirmed Stereopony, which is a small all-female J-Rock band. Stereopony made their first major debut with the 17th ED theme of Bleach in October 2008. Since then, they have performed songs for Gundam 00 Second Season, Darker than Black -Ryuusei no Gemini (Gemini of the Meteor)-, Yatterman Movie 2009, and the currently ongoing Tegami Bachi (Letter Bee) Reverse.

While Stereopony may not be as big as the guests Anime Expo received this year (i.e. May'n, Megumi Nakajima, and Yoko Kanno), for Anime Boston, it's definitely another step forward and worth checking out if you were iffy about attending at first.