Arisia 2024 Saturday Cosplay Gallery And Write-up

Arisia this past weekend in Boston was much the same as Arisia in 2023 — a convention still struggling to recover from the pandemic shutdowns, while other local conventions have almost entirely recovered. As of Sunday evening, the official announcement was that 1,610 badges had been given out, including both paid memberships and comped passes. This is down from an approximate number of around 3,000 for 2020, and much reduced from the 2017 peak official count of 4,299.

The 2024 numbers represent a 10 percent increase over 2023 attendance numbers, both in paid memberships and badges picked up. The reasons for this slow recovery are many, and to some extent related to events from the fall of 2018 and the summer of 2019. You can read more detail in my article from July 2019, but the gist of it is that top management was accused of ignoring or at best mishandling abuse and harassment complaints in late 2018, followed by a badly bungled decision to relocate in January 2019 from the Weston Waterfront hotel due to a hotel workers strike. The agreement with the Westin and the nearby Aloft Hotel allowed for such a move if notice was given in enough time, and, despite Arisia management having made the relocation decision well before the deadline, they simply didn’t inform the hotels before the deadline passed. That resulted in a serious financial hit to Arisia following a judge’s arbitration decision.

Arisia 2020 was back at the Westin Waterfront (now called the Westin Boston Seaport District) and managed to hold the convention that year a mere six weeks before covid-19 landed in Boston in a big way. The resulting global pandemic shut down the convention for two straight years. The plan was to bring the convention back in 2022, but the late 2021 Omicron variant spike caused the convention management to cancel over safety concerns. So, one other reason for the weak recovery in attendance can simply be that most cons have a full year’s head start on Arisia.

A related reason could be that Arisia is one of the few conventions that still has a mask mandate policy for all attendees, volunteers and staff. Even Anime Boston went to a “masks encouraged” policy last year. Mask requirements clearly cut into the attendance numbers of nerd conventions, in the U.S. at least. While prioritizing attendees’ safety is laudable, having a diminishing event breeds a further reduction in that event’s interest among possible attendees. One oft-heard complaint this past weekend was a general sense of the “vibe” being off. Or, to paraphrase one person who went to one of the dance event panels, “nobody was really dancing.”

I still really like Arisia, because it is so focused on literate nerddom in a way that more pop culture cons — even anime cons — aren’t. I see really obscure cosplay every year at Arisia I would not find anywhere else. I do hope it continues to recover from the shutdown years, and more rapidly than just 10 percent per year.

Cosplayers in this Saturday gallery include michelleclight, inevitablebetrayal, druidicstar, Colonial Armory, Nerdcred Cosplay, Carley Winn Cosplay, monodromie, liskismis, roosterninja, kitsune_kiku, deerprincesscosplay, peafowlii, allisomnom,  makermage, cosplay_buttercup, notoriousblk, theadmiralmb, hestiatakethewheel, skyunderthxsea, snhcubed, kirkettecosplay, and many more.

We now use Smugmug to present cosplay photo galleries and will post all photos there, with a link to each gallery in its own gallery article. This will allow us to give you higher resolution images to download — still for free.

To view the entire gallery, just click on the image below. If you are pictured in any of our galleries, feel free to download the images and use them non-commercially on social media, with appropriate credit.

If you like our work and want to show your appreciation, feel free to tip us at Ko-fi or become a patron on Patreon.

Also, High-res images for sale is back!

If you are pictured in any of our galleries and want the high-resolution (3200 pixels at its widest by 300dpi) download for yourself, we can make it available via a private Smugmug link, for $10 per image. Just send an email to editor AT nerdcaliber.com. Currently limited to only photos taken by FirstPerson Shooter (aka Rodney Brown).